I am not in that union, but why on earth is Unite spending so much on a conference centre? Particularly in the post covid Zoom era.
Because a lot of people not on the front line like your good self, who may not have seen first hand the devastation this disease can cause, are, increasingly, impatient not to have to use Zoom any more. It’s shit, unreliable, causes mental health problems (cannot find the citation admittedly) and starting to become something of a standing joke. That’s not particularly responsible from a public health perspective but is something I have noted as this long dark winter has drawn on. Zoom is considered to be like a mask - a regrettable necessity to be ditched as soon as it is safe to do so. I’ve got one client who point blank refuses to have a mediation via video link and is waiting until it is safe to do it in person.
Country is full of wimps and snowflakes. Need their bums wiped and fragile ego's polished constantly. WTF happened to the stiff upper lip, England has gone to the dogs.
I’m not sure how you extrapolated that from my post given that I was making the exact opposite point to your reflexive anti-English diatribe. You don’t read posts before lashing out do you?
I did read it and it was a whinge about the fact that people cannot even survive a few months of mild restrictions. I said England as it was you pontificating about it and you live there so I assumed that was what you were talking about. Your insecurity about your Englishness and taking every comment as anti-English is most irritating. I did not want to presume you were bumping your gums about another country you knew nothing about, but happy to be corrected if you want to state the country clearly. My reply is accurate, people today are a bunch of jessie wimps, whining , spineless and me me me mummy types.
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That must be one hell of house you have there Gallowgate.
To clarify, all the developers building new estates in my part of Newcastle were required to contribute towards the new school.
Funny thing is I've never seen those contributions sway doubters though. Half the time they talk about it being wrong for developers to be able to 'bribe' councils like that as if they invented CIL and S106.
Not that people are generally shy about alleging bribery in planning in any case (granted, a discussion of Liverpool may not be the best time to refute that given the arrests).
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
But then the EU didn't get a joyous headline for a day or two, for saving Christmas, did they?
It was clearly worth it on the Johnson-Cnservvative balance sheet.....
We seem to assume that if Boris banned Christmas, people would have observed the ban. I'd say for most, this would not have been the case. It's important that we keep as many as possible within the regulations, and that means understanding when something is an impossible ask.
One thing to "ban" Christmas, quite another to encourage everybody to go mad. This is one reason why I think Johnson is so irresponsible, and even stupid.
Nonsense, and I'm sure you know it's nonsense.
The 5 days was cut back to 1, and we were strongly encouraged to minimise mixing. Nobody was encouraged to go mad. In tier 4 areas it was household and support bubble only.
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.
In the latest council meeting my flat was sneered at by a Tory councillor, who demanded that councillors should "maintain a decent standard, not participate from their bedrooms" - we gently pointed out that not all of us have a separate study for political work.
What an idiot - he sneered like that on camera, in public?
It's possible to put a virtual background on Zoom; have to be a but careful about lighting, but the one's I have used seem to have worked well, and often act as ice-breakers. I use my own pictures, rather than the suggested ones. Can I suggest, Mr P, that you get a photo of the inside of a grand stately home; that should silence your snobbish 'colleague'!
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
I am not in that union, but why on earth is Unite spending so much on a conference centre? Particularly in the post covid Zoom era.
Because a lot of people not on the front line like your good self, who may not have seen first hand the devastation this disease can cause, are, increasingly, impatient not to have to use Zoom any more. It’s shit, unreliable, causes mental health problems (cannot find the citation admittedly) and starting to become something of a standing joke. That’s not particularly responsible from a public health perspective but is something I have noted as this long dark winter has drawn on. Zoom is considered to be like a mask - a regrettable necessity to be ditched as soon as it is safe to do so. I’ve got one client who point blank refuses to have a mediation via video link and is waiting until it is safe to do it in person.
Country is full of wimps and snowflakes. Need their bums wiped and fragile ego's polished constantly. WTF happened to the stiff upper lip, England has gone to the dogs.
I mean, if you’re willing to wipe my bum for free?
I will pass on that unappealing offer, I did not at any time suggest I would be involved in the practice.
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.
In the latest council meeting my flat was sneered at by a Tory councillor, who demanded that councillors should "maintain a decent standard, not participate from their bedrooms" - we gently pointed out that not all of us have a separate study for political work.
What an idiot - he sneered like that on camera, in public?
It's possible to put a virtual background on Zoom; have to be a but careful about lighting, but the one's I have used seem to have worked well, and often act as ice-breakers. I use my own pictures, rather than the suggested ones. Can I suggest, Mr P, that you get a photo of the inside of a grand stately home; that should silence your snobbish 'colleague'!
Have the background be the Commons, to remind him that Dr P has seen tougher and worse people than him in the flesh.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
But then the EU didn't get a joyous headline for a day or two, for saving Christmas, did they?
It was clearly worth it on the Johnson-Cnservvative balance sheet.....
We seem to assume that if Boris banned Christmas, people would have observed the ban. I'd say for most, this would not have been the case. It's important that we keep as many as possible within the regulations, and that means understanding when something is an impossible ask.
One thing to "ban" Christmas, quite another to encourage everybody to go mad. This is one reason why I think Johnson is so irresponsible, and even stupid.
Nonsense, and I'm sure you know it's nonsense.
The 5 days was cut back to 1, and we were strongly encouraged to minimise mixing. Nobody was encouraged to go mad. In tier 4 areas it was household and support bubble only.
And what about the weeks running up to Christmas? That was where he set expectations.
But then the EU didn't get a joyous headline for a day or two, for saving Christmas, did they?
It was clearly worth it on the Johnson-Cnservvative balance sheet.....
We seem to assume that if Boris banned Christmas, people would have observed the ban. I'd say for most, this would not have been the case. It's important that we keep as many as possible within the regulations, and that means understanding when something is an impossible ask.
One thing to "ban" Christmas, quite another to encourage everybody to go mad. This is one reason why I think Johnson is so irresponsible, and even stupid.
Nonsense, and I'm sure you know it's nonsense.
The 5 days was cut back to 1, and we were strongly encouraged to minimise mixing. Nobody was encouraged to go mad. In tier 4 areas it was household and support bubble only.
There you go putting reality in the way of bile.
Good luck with that. Clipp doesn't care about such petty things like truth, honesty and integrity, not if ranting and raving about a fictionalised parallel universe he has invented is so much more fun.
But then the EU didn't get a joyous headline for a day or two, for saving Christmas, did they?
It was clearly worth it on the Johnson-Cnservvative balance sheet.....
We seem to assume that if Boris banned Christmas, people would have observed the ban. I'd say for most, this would not have been the case. It's important that we keep as many as possible within the regulations, and that means understanding when something is an impossible ask.
One thing to "ban" Christmas, quite another to encourage everybody to go mad. This is one reason why I think Johnson is so irresponsible, and even stupid.
Nonsense, and I'm sure you know it's nonsense.
The 5 days was cut back to 1, and we were strongly encouraged to minimise mixing. Nobody was encouraged to go mad. In tier 4 areas it was household and support bubble only.
And what about the weeks running up to Christmas? That was where he set expectations.
In the run up like when he said "have yourself a merry little Christmas - and I do mean little"?
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
I see the 'I, a smart non-fisherman, will now tell you dumb fishermen what a good deal you've got' approach can be modified to any situation.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
Yes the stamp duty holiday has been a particularly stupid idea.
Sarwar's defeat of Lennon is yet another defeat for Corbynites.
Now Corbyn has been replaced as UK Labour leader by Starmer and Leonard has been replaced as Scottish Labour leader by Sarwar, Drakeford in Wales is the last Corbynista Labour leader left standing (though to be fair Wales was the only country Corbyn won in 2019, he lost England and Scotland)
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
Challenging times in store for you. You're on record as believing it economically illiterate to hike taxes before the recovery is well underway. Yet I hear that such is the intention of the Magnificent Johnson. TBC in the budget but it looks like you will be faced with having to label the Magnificent an economic illiterate. Not a nice prospect. It will be interesting to see how you tackle it.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
That's a great speech. I love the way he's open about his ethnic background and steers into Scottish unity.
I knew his dad quite well when we were both MPs - unlike me he refused ever to talk to single-sex audiences ("it's easier for me to say no without being suspected of prejudice", he said mildly).
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
Challenging times in store for you. You're on record as believing it economically illiterate to hike taxes before the recovery is well underway. Yet I hear that such is the intention of the Magnificent Johnson. TBC in the budget but it looks like you will be faced with having to label the Magnificent an economic illiterate. Not a nice prospect. It will be interesting to see how you tackle it.
No challenge. If taxes are put up I will call it madness. I'm hoping this is expectations management and it isn't done.
I have no qualms departing with my party when my party does the wrong thing. Did you think I was a partisan hack always backing my party right or wrong? Did you miss me utterly rejecting my party 2017-2019.
I'm sure all the goons who go on and on about Diane Abbott's choices on how her kid was educated will be totally on board with a millionaire that sends his kids to private school making a case for a socially just Scotland.
Narrator: of course they will because these people will endure any contortion of principle to save the Union.
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
I was agreeing with you. Implying that it essentially already existed and therefore would have little effect on prices, etc.
I think your proposal would work better as it also gives councils more discretion on what to use the money for - for example a school on the other side of town not explicitly linked to any new development.
I'm sure all the goons who go on and on about Diane Abbott's choices on how her kid was educated will be totally on board with a millionaire that sends his kids to private school making a case for a socially just Scotland.
Narrator: of course they will because these people will endure any contortion of principle to save the Union.
Well duh! People will ensure any cortotion of principle to end the Union too, why would the reverse be any different? It's called politics, and people are the same regardless of the cause.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
Yes, thanks for picking up my spelling error and also for the lesson in interest rates. With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
Anyway, I have work to so will dip out now. Deposit aint gonna earn itself.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
I think massive house inflation caused by the new Mortgage Guarantee Scheme is a myth.
If you consider that it was a small numbers of houses - approx 100k houses in toto out of a stock of 28 million or around 10-20% of newbuilds - that makes sense.
So I would not worry unduly, unless you are planning to wait a few years.
I think there will be plenty of stock in a number of cities going through from zombie rental businesses.
I would agree on the Stamp Duty holiday being a stupid idea, however. They should be taking the whole Stamp Duty distortion out of the market by implementing the Proportional Property Tax.
Well all of Labour's UK leaders now appear to be not threatening and not dangerous to anyone and Corbynism is now in the bin. That is surely worth a few points on 2019 in any GE.
I'm sure all the goons who go on and on about Diane Abbott's choices on how her kid was educated will be totally on board with a millionaire that sends his kids to private school making a case for a socially just Scotland.
Narrator: of course they will because these people will endure any contortion of principle to save the Union.
Sarwar will be looking to attract Tory tactical votes to beat the SNP in central belt seats where Labour are the main alternative to the SNP, so sending his kids to private school will do him no harm on that front
Well all of Labour's UK leaders now appear to be not threatening and not dangerous to anyone and Corbynism is now in the bin. That is surely worth a few points on 2019 in any GE.
Apart from Drakeford in Wales yes, though as I said earlier Wales was the only country in the UK that Corbyn won in 2019 anyway
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
Yes the stamp duty holiday has been a particularly stupid idea.
Grandson-in-Law (acting) is in the process of buying a house; was somewhat worried about stamp duty until the extension. Seems to be all going through now. Job must pay well; just got a new Merc as a company car.
I'm sure all the goons who go on and on about Diane Abbott's choices on how her kid was educated will be totally on board with a millionaire that sends his kids to private school making a case for a socially just Scotland.
Narrator: of course they will because these people will endure any contortion of principle to save the Union.
Sarwar will be looking to attract Tory tactical votes to beat the SNP in central belt seats where Labour are the main alternative to the SNP, so sending his kids to private school will do him no harm on that front
Still guddling about the shrinking pool of Unionist voters then. Looking forward to Anas doing his Holyrood PPB in front of a Union flag, maybe two!
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
The problem with "lets build houses" is that the only real control seems to sit with the developer. My old Stockton-on-Tees haunt had seen endless housebuilding over ab 20 year period. Anywhere that houses could be built had them built. My own Mandale Park" development cleared poor quality early 70s housing and built north of 1,500 homes over a 12 year period. And that's just one project - literally hundreds of new homes built on top of the many thousands that make up Ingleby Barwick.
The same picture north of the river - constant construction of houses to the point where those of us who bought in early got stuck in massive negative equity due to the endless tide of new homes being built. Despite this, the council was ruled by the government not to be building enough new houses which meant that developers won every single appeal. Despite the opposition at one point of residents, the council, the MP and Eric Pickles the Secretary of State.
The answer to housing issues isn't build more houses. Its build houses that people can afford to buy that aren't tiny shitboxes. Too many developers sit on land with planning permission, don't build for years - which allows developers to win every appeal due to not enough houses being built - before building houses at the lowest possible cost at the top of the market. Frankly the planning process brought in by the Tories is not fit for purpose - the only way to stop developers building houses is to let them build houses...
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
Yes, thanks for picking up my spelling error and also for the lesson in interest rates. With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
Anyway, I have work to so will dip out now. Deposit aint gonna earn itself.
Well without wanting to get into your personal circumstances if you could explain why 25 years of renting (including potentially annual rent increases) would cost you more than 25 years of mortgage repayments then I'd be all ears.
It is the deposit that is the hardest hurdle for many people, not what is repaid over the lifetime of the mortgage.
Especially considering the interest only element of the mortgage is what you lose. The equity element is yours to keep at the end of the day.
But then the EU didn't get a joyous headline for a day or two, for saving Christmas, did they?
It was clearly worth it on the Johnson-Cnservvative balance sheet.....
We seem to assume that if Boris banned Christmas, people would have observed the ban. I'd say for most, this would not have been the case. It's important that we keep as many as possible within the regulations, and that means understanding when something is an impossible ask.
One thing to "ban" Christmas, quite another to encourage everybody to go mad. This is one reason why I think Johnson is so irresponsible, and even stupid.
Nonsense, and I'm sure you know it's nonsense.
The 5 days was cut back to 1, and we were strongly encouraged to minimise mixing. Nobody was encouraged to go mad. In tier 4 areas it was household and support bubble only.
And what about the weeks running up to Christmas? That was where he set expectations.
In the run up like when he said "have yourself a merry little Christmas - and I do mean little"?
You took that to mean go wild? Give it a break.
No, if you think back to December, Boris was all Father Christmas but right at the last moment, what was to be permitted was drastically scaled back. Unfortunately, by that time plans were already made and it is doubtful many families even noticed the change.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
Well if I was wrong then perhaps say what was wrong rather than petulant ad hominem remarks.
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
Well all of Labour's UK leaders now appear to be not threatening and not dangerous to anyone and Corbynism is now in the bin. That is surely worth a few points on 2019 in any GE.
So you're saying that Starker is not threatening and not dangerous to Johnson? 😉
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
I was agreeing with you. Implying that it essentially already existed and therefore would have little effect on prices, etc.
I think your proposal would work better as it also gives councils more discretion on what to use the money for - for example a school on the other side of town not explicitly linked to any new development.
CIL has no restrictions on where it is spent (with exception of a mandated proportion, possibly 15% which must be spent locally to 'compensate' other locals for burden of development). Section 106 contributions are more linked specifically to developments, although they can be pretty broadly written (which is where the accusations of "bribery" come in), and Affordable Housing contributions in particular are spent at Local authority discretion.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
I was agreeing with you. Implying that it essentially already existed and therefore would have little effect on prices, etc.
I think your proposal would work better as it also gives councils more discretion on what to use the money for - for example a school on the other side of town not explicitly linked to any new development.
CIL has no restrictions on where it is spent (with exception of 20% which must be spent locally to 'compensate' other locals for burden of development). Section 106 contributions are more linked specifically to developments, although they can be pretty broadly written (which is where the accusations of "bribery" come in), and Affordable Housing contributions in particular are spent at Local authority discretion.
Ah. Interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks for the details!
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
Well if I was wrong then perhaps say what was wrong rather than petulant ad hominem remarks.
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
It's not as simple as that. High interest rates also mean lower house prices which is great for first time buyers. Especially if the government follow through and remove basic rate relief for BTL, the competition from investors also goes away.
I am not in that union, but why on earth is Unite spending so much on a conference centre? Particularly in the post covid Zoom era.
Because a lot of people not on the front line like your good self, who may not have seen first hand the devastation this disease can cause, are, increasingly, impatient not to have to use Zoom any more. It’s shit, unreliable, causes mental health problems (cannot find the citation admittedly) and starting to become something of a standing joke. That’s not particularly responsible from a public health perspective but is something I have noted as this long dark winter has drawn on. Zoom is considered to be like a mask - a regrettable necessity to be ditched as soon as it is safe to do so. I’ve got one client who point blank refuses to have a mediation via video link and is waiting until it is safe to do it in person.
I'd punt on "Monument to McCluskey".
Quite appropriate that it should go 1000% over budget.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
Well if I was wrong then perhaps say what was wrong rather than petulant ad hominem remarks.
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
It's not as simple as that. High interest rates also mean lower house prices which is great for first time buyers. Especially if the government follow through and remove basic rate relief for BTL, the competition from investors also goes away.
Except that falling house prices means negative equity and the banks stop approving loans which is terrible for first time buyers.
House prices soared more in the decade 2000-2010 than they did in the decade 2010-2020. Interest rates were higher in the former than the latter.
Low interest rates, stable rather than increasing prices, plus removing any incentives for BTL (and taxing BTL) is a decent combination.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
Well if I was wrong then perhaps say what was wrong rather than petulant ad hominem remarks.
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
Not if they are permanently low - but that seems exceedingly unlikely. Buying at a high price with assistance on the deposit, at rock bottom interest rates is potentially a financial trap for a lot of people.
Increasing supply rather than demand might be preferable.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
Well if I was wrong then perhaps say what was wrong rather than petulant ad hominem remarks.
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
Not if they are permanently low - but that seems exceedingly unlikely. Buying at a high price with assistance on the deposit, at rock bottom interest rates is potentially a financial trap for a lot of people.
Increasing supply rather than demand might be preferable.
Increasing supply is the best long term solution, I 100% agree with that. I am a massive advocate for supply side reforms of this market.
In the meantime though helping owner occupiers while taxing BTLs is a good combination. Especially if the tax on BTL pays for the help towards owner occupiers getting their deposits.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
That's assuming that all soft SNP voters are implacable 'indy-now' supporters.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
Challenging times in store for you. You're on record as believing it economically illiterate to hike taxes before the recovery is well underway. Yet I hear that such is the intention of the Magnificent Johnson. TBC in the budget but it looks like you will be faced with having to label the Magnificent an economic illiterate. Not a nice prospect. It will be interesting to see how you tackle it.
No challenge. If taxes are put up I will call it madness. I'm hoping this is expectations management and it isn't done.
I have no qualms departing with my party when my party does the wrong thing. Did you think I was a partisan hack always backing my party right or wrong? Did you miss me utterly rejecting my party 2017-2019.
There are two taxes that I think can be put up without any harm:
a) the vat reduction to 5% to encourage tourism and going out can be reversed. It is a tax on the consumer and not the business and only impacts the business if it deters the consumer and by all accounts we are desperate to get out there and spend on these things so this is a free hit for the treasury.
b) A modest increase in Corporation Tax should be fairly painless and those businesses hit by the pandemic will be able to bring their losses forward so will only impact those doing ok during these times.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
Well if I was wrong then perhaps say what was wrong rather than petulant ad hominem remarks.
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
It's not as simple as that. High interest rates also mean lower house prices which is great for first time buyers. Especially if the government follow through and remove basic rate relief for BTL, the competition from investors also goes away.
Except that falling house prices means negative equity and the banks stop approving loans which is terrible for first time buyers.
House prices soared more in the decade 2000-2010 than they did in the decade 2010-2020. Interest rates were higher in the former than the latter.
Low interest rates, stable rather than increasing prices, plus removing any incentives for BTL (and taxing BTL) is a decent combination.
Not necessarily, the last time we had falling prices net mortgage lending continued to rise, especially lending to first time buyers. Mortgage lending to existing property investors and BTL fell quite significantly though but that's no bad thing IMO.
Long term low interest rates as we're currently in results in fewer first time buyers as we're currently seeing.
I'm not sure your hypothesis of low interest rates being good for first time buyers holds water, at least the evidence from mortgage lending and purchase stats that I can remember showed that first time buyers benefited the most when the BoE started raising interest rates.
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
Challenging times in store for you. You're on record as believing it economically illiterate to hike taxes before the recovery is well underway. Yet I hear that such is the intention of the Magnificent Johnson. TBC in the budget but it looks like you will be faced with having to label the Magnificent an economic illiterate. Not a nice prospect. It will be interesting to see how you tackle it.
No challenge. If taxes are put up I will call it madness. I'm hoping this is expectations management and it isn't done.
I have no qualms departing with my party when my party does the wrong thing. Did you think I was a partisan hack always backing my party right or wrong? Did you miss me utterly rejecting my party 2017-2019.
There are two taxes that I think can be put up without any harm:
a) the vat reduction to 5% to encourage tourism and going out can be reversed. It is a tax on the consumer and not the business and only impacts the business if it deters the consumer and by all accounts we are desperate to get out there and spend on these things so this is a free hit for the treasury.
b) A modest increase in Corporation Tax should be fairly painless and those businesses hit by the pandemic will be able to bring their losses forward so will only impact those doing ok during these times.
What about a significant increase in Corporation Tax, with a tax free allowance of say £250,000, thereby helping small businesses?
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
I've made these points before, but quite a bit proposed above is not joined up.
1 - There is already a tax in place called S106 / CIL which raises multiple billions (between 5 and 10 billion pa) towards things like infrastructure. I did a biggish planning application for a 100+ house estate recently where those charges took more than half of the post-planning permission (ie inflated) value of the land. Contributions included town square renovations, playground improvement, sections of bike path, 23 school places primary and secondary, open space contribution in addition to the statutory 10% of site area, and others.
You don't have much scope for increase there - or not as much as you might think.
2 - Allowing anyone to build whatever they want on land they own *does* require appropriate controls, otherwise AONBs and National Parks will be full of shitboxes and gn-palaces.
3 - NIMBYs are an extreme expression of an appropriate involvement - it is right that local communities should have an involvement in what is built there.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
Challenging times in store for you. You're on record as believing it economically illiterate to hike taxes before the recovery is well underway. Yet I hear that such is the intention of the Magnificent Johnson. TBC in the budget but it looks like you will be faced with having to label the Magnificent an economic illiterate. Not a nice prospect. It will be interesting to see how you tackle it.
No challenge. If taxes are put up I will call it madness. I'm hoping this is expectations management and it isn't done.
I have no qualms departing with my party when my party does the wrong thing. Did you think I was a partisan hack always backing my party right or wrong? Did you miss me utterly rejecting my party 2017-2019.
There are two taxes that I think can be put up without any harm:
a) the vat reduction to 5% to encourage tourism and going out can be reversed. It is a tax on the consumer and not the business and only impacts the business if it deters the consumer and by all accounts we are desperate to get out there and spend on these things so this is a free hit for the treasury.
b) A modest increase in Corporation Tax should be fairly painless and those businesses hit by the pandemic will be able to bring their losses forward so will only impact those doing ok during these times.
I completely disagree.
a) The hospitality and tourism industries need to recover, they the 5% allows them to do so. It also is a tax on the business since anything that hits the consumer hits the business too, you can't divorce the two concepts. In particular VAT on food is doubly egregious. Prices are sticky, if a struggling business has the VAT cut to 5% they can maintain their existing prices and that fattens their margins allowing them to rebuild the business. The VAT cut should be maintained for two years IMHO to allow these businesses to recover after having suffered the most in the past year.
Secondly there's no VAT on food in supermarkets etc so people forget when they go out that they're getting whacked for 20% tax which isn't the case at home and the business has to swallow this cost within the ticket price they're charging the customer since we do not add VAT to the bill in this country like they do in the USA, its all included within the price originally.
b) We should be looking to be getting businesses to invest now so they can employ people who've lost their jobs, not be looking to displace activity.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
Hyufd, if 28% of people prefer decapitation to slow slicing, that doesn't mean 28% of people want their nappers knocked off.
We would need polling comparing him to Sturgeon and Ross to make a judgement on his electoral impact.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
It doesn't mean that at all, Hyufd. It means that 28% of possible voters thought him better than a possible alternative Labour leader. Who will not be part of the choice in May.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
I thought Keir was a better candidate than RLB. I would not vote for him though.
Did you seriously think that poll meant 53% of Scotland (25+28) were considering voting for Labour?
That's rather misleading, because an average of 27 different datasets will always be smoothed. But then he is a bit of a troll.
I think you've misunderstood what smoothing is, Matt.
There was a big Xmas spike in the UK compared with other European countries, either taken collectively or individually. That was predictable, and many people were urging the Government at the time to be tougher earlier.
I'm not one of those who is reflexively critical of all aspects of what the Government does on this, but it's simply mindless denialism to say that important mistakes weren't made in the run up to Xmas.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
Hyufd, if 28% of people prefer decapitation to slow slicing, that doesn't mean 28% of people want their nappers knocked off.
We would need polling comparing him to Sturgeon and Ross to make a judgement on his electoral impact.
In seats like Rutherglen, Midlothian North and Musselburgh, Cowdenbeath, Dunfermline, Aberdeen Central, Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Edinburgh Northern and Leith, Edinburgh Eastern and Renfrewshire South the SNP won in 2016 with less than 50% of the vote with Labour in second place.
However the Labour, Conservative and LD vote combined was clearly more than the SNP vote, so he is best placed to win Unionist tactical votes which is key
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
Hyufd, if 28% of people prefer decapitation to slow slicing, that doesn't mean 28% of people want their nappers knocked off.
We would need polling comparing him to Sturgeon and Ross to make a judgement on his electoral impact.
In seats like Rutherglen, Midlothian North and Musselburgh, Cowdenbeath, Dunfermline, Aberdeen Central, Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley and Renfrewshire South the SNP won in 2016 with less than 50% of the vote with Labour in second place.
However the Labour, Conservative and LD vote combined was clearly more than the SNP vote, so he is best placed to win Unionist tactical votes which is key
You cannot make that assumption based on this poll. It simply doesn’t ask the right questions.
What it says, and this actually suggests the opposite of what you’re saying, is that Labour’s leadership is considered rubbish by around half of voters (or just possibly, that half of voters wanted Jackie Baillie).
That’s not at all a good sign for their electoral prospects.
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
I've made these points before, but quite a bit proposed above is not joined up.
1 - There is already a tax in place called S106 / CIL which raises multiple billions (between 5 and 10 billion pa) towards things like infrastructure. I did a biggish planning application for a 100+ house estate recently where those charges took more than half of the post-planning permission (ie inflated) value of the land. Contributions included town square renovations, playground improvement, sections of bike path, 23 school places primary and secondary, open space contribution in addition to the statutory 10% of site area, and others.
You don't have much scope for increase there - or not as much as you might think.
2 - Allowing anyone to build whatever they want on land they own *does* require appropriate controls, otherwise AONBs and National Parks will be full of shitboxes and gn-palaces.
3 - NIMBYs are an extreme expression of an appropriate involvement - it is right that local communities should have an involvement in what is built there.
All of them are a matter of a correct balance.
1) If there's a tax already then use that tax, problem solved.
2) People should only be able to build on land they own. Are AONBs and National Parks privately owned? If not they can't be built on.
3) I disagree. I'd have a zoning system so communities can decide where is built on, but then if its zoned for residential then consent would be automatic so long as it meets predetermined building controls and standards. I'd also insist of course than an appropriate minimum amount of land must be zoned to give consent.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
It does not mean anything of the sort. I'd have put him down as preferred leader believing he is less likely to win for Labour. Just as I've voted for RBL to lead Labour instead of Starmer.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
Well if I was wrong then perhaps say what was wrong rather than petulant ad hominem remarks.
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
Not if they are permanently low - but that seems exceedingly unlikely. Buying at a high price with assistance on the deposit, at rock bottom interest rates is potentially a financial trap for a lot of people.
Increasing supply rather than demand might be preferable.
Increasing supply is the best long term solution, I 100% agree with that. I am a massive advocate for supply side reforms of this market.
In the meantime though helping owner occupiers while taxing BTLs is a good combination. Especially if the tax on BTL pays for the help towards owner occupiers getting their deposits.
What are your proposals for taxing BTLs?
Bearing in mind the sector has now been under the cosh for quite some time, and came to a screeching halt in 2016 after Osborne's 'Gordon Brown' budget in 2014 or 2015 (can't remember which, but so complicated no one could understand the impact including probably Osborne himself), and has been at best flat since.
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
Challenging times in store for you. You're on record as believing it economically illiterate to hike taxes before the recovery is well underway. Yet I hear that such is the intention of the Magnificent Johnson. TBC in the budget but it looks like you will be faced with having to label the Magnificent an economic illiterate. Not a nice prospect. It will be interesting to see how you tackle it.
No challenge. If taxes are put up I will call it madness. I'm hoping this is expectations management and it isn't done.
I have no qualms departing with my party when my party does the wrong thing. Did you think I was a partisan hack always backing my party right or wrong? Did you miss me utterly rejecting my party 2017-2019.
There are two taxes that I think can be put up without any harm:
a) the vat reduction to 5% to encourage tourism and going out can be reversed. It is a tax on the consumer and not the business and only impacts the business if it deters the consumer and by all accounts we are desperate to get out there and spend on these things so this is a free hit for the treasury.
b) A modest increase in Corporation Tax should be fairly painless and those businesses hit by the pandemic will be able to bring their losses forward so will only impact those doing ok during these times.
I completely disagree.
a) The hospitality and tourism industries need to recover, they the 5% allows them to do so. It also is a tax on the business since anything that hits the consumer hits the business too, you can't divorce the two concepts. In particular VAT on food is doubly egregious. Prices are sticky, if a struggling business has the VAT cut to 5% they can maintain their existing prices and that fattens their margins allowing them to rebuild the business. The VAT cut should be maintained for two years IMHO to allow these businesses to recover after having suffered the most in the past year.
Secondly there's no VAT on food in supermarkets etc so people forget when they go out that they're getting whacked for 20% tax which isn't the case at home and the business has to swallow this cost within the ticket price they're charging the customer since we do not add VAT to the bill in this country like they do in the USA, its all included within the price originally.
b) We should be looking to be getting businesses to invest now so they can employ people who've lost their jobs, not be looking to displace activity.
Philip, If what you say is correct, and I'm not saying it isn't, then I would agree, but I gave my reasons why it wasn't a hit on the businesses in both cases. Now of course I might be wrong but:
a) By all accounts we are chomping at the bit to go out and go on holiday and to visit the pub etc. If the demand exceeds supply then for once you will not be impacting the businesses. If you are right and it does then I would agree with you. There is clearly a lot of anecdotal evidence that we are looking at a consumer boom when this is over.
b) Don't really understand your reply to part b). A corporation tax increase to companies bringing forward losses from the pandemic has no effect at all on those companies. If you don't pay tax an increase in the tax rate is still nothing. So this will only impact organisations that have done well out of the pandemic. Those that have suffered will pay no tax. So this suggestion has no negative impact on investment whatsoever and allows those that have done well out of the pandemic to pay something back.
Really pissed off having scraped together a relatively (well, for anywhere except London) decent deposit, that might, at a push, buy a half decent two bed somewhere not on fire.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
What are you talking about?
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
The cost of the asset I'd be borrowing a chunk of money for is being artificially inflated by government policy. What's required is lower prices, so I have to pay less back over the life of a mortgage.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Souring?
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
With respect, I think I understand my financial circumstances better than you.
You are talking to @Philip_Thompson in respect of whom the word “omniscience” is a woeful understatement; so no, you don’t understand better.
Well if I was wrong then perhaps say what was wrong rather than petulant ad hominem remarks.
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
Not if they are permanently low - but that seems exceedingly unlikely. Buying at a high price with assistance on the deposit, at rock bottom interest rates is potentially a financial trap for a lot of people.
Increasing supply rather than demand might be preferable.
Increasing supply is the best long term solution, I 100% agree with that. I am a massive advocate for supply side reforms of this market.
In the meantime though helping owner occupiers while taxing BTLs is a good combination. Especially if the tax on BTL pays for the help towards owner occupiers getting their deposits.
What are your proposals for taxing BTLs?
Bearing in mind the sector has now been under the cosh for quite some time, and came to a screeching halt in 2016 after Osborne's 'Gordon Brown' budget in 2014 or 2015 (can't remember which, but so complicated no one could understand the impact including probably Osborne himself), and has been at best flat since.
Chart from the latest English Housing Survey.
Flat is a good start, Osborne did a good job there. The question is how to get it onto a downward trend now without majorly upsetting the applecart. Possibly adding 1% to that precept and using that to fund the HTB extension might be a good idea?
Next I'd suggest when Council Tax is reformed making the owner of the property be the one who pays the bill rather than the tenant. Yes that may mean rents are increased but not likely by more than the cost of the Council Tax.
Plus of course removing any tax relief that BTL gets.
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
It does not mean anything of the sort. I'd have put him down as preferred leader believing he is less likely to win for Labour. Just as I've voted for RBL to lead Labour instead of Starmer.
Sarwar was the centrist candidate, like Starmer, Lennon was the leftwing candidate like RBL, so wrong comparison.
In Scotland anyway the SNP are the enemy so any gains SLab can make from the SNP is good news for Tories, as Sarwar opposes indyref2.
Can Labour ever hope to pull off what Blair-Brown did in late 1990s?
Very interesting from Polly Toynbee, but her best solution is to get a new electorate with views closer to hers.
And as for the King's survey she is distraught about, it is another example, as we get daily, that when very intelligent researchers ask ordinary people to give one word/phrase answers to questions which in truth only have complicated answers available, you get simplistic rubbish on broadly predictable party lines.
Just ask: Would the very intelligent researchers be willing to give one word simplistic answers to complex questions, or expect their students to do so?
SLAB must have decided that they don’t want to win back their ex voters that switched to the SNP. Otherwise they would have chosen Monica Lennon. I would have thought that there more more votes to be won from the SNP than from the few Central Scotland unionist voters that would transfer from Tory to Labour.
There are few votes to be won from the SNP, the SNP nationalist vote might split between SNP, ISP and Green but they will not go Labour on the whole apart from a few Unionists who may vote SNP for Holyrood but are put of by their civil war. Labour made the correct choice to attract Unionist tactical votes and Sarwar was also the most popular choice amongst Scots
28% would see Scottish Labour at its highest vote in Scotland since 2011
And the poll does not say that.
It says 28% think he would make the best leader, which means he could get at least 28% of Scots to vote for him, Lennon only got 25%.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
It does not mean anything of the sort. I'd have put him down as preferred leader believing he is less likely to win for Labour. Just as I've voted for RBL to lead Labour instead of Starmer.
Sarwar was the centrist candidate, like Starmer, Lennon was the leftwing candidate like RBL, so wrong comparison.
In Scotland anyway the SNP are the enemy so any gains SLab can make from the SNP is good news for Tories, as Sarwar opposes indyref2
Your ability to misunderstand polls is only matched by your failure to understand posts. What a waste of time.
@Philip_Thompson is right (as discussed in previous debates) that the best way to ensure quality and sustainable housing is built is for competition to ensure its not feasible to build anything but. The problem is getting to that point without building hundreds of thousands of @Pulpstar ’s favourite Persimmon shit boxes. I don’t know the answer.
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.
Thanks for the hat tip.
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.
Hundreds/thousands of new houses cannot be built in a vacuum though. There is a whole local infrastructure that has to be developed around them (schools/shops/health facilities etc etc)
So just do it then.
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.
In some ways that tax already exists. Councils will often require developers to contribute (significant) money towards infrastructure which ultimately is passed onto buyers.
For example the builder of my house basically paid for a new 1st school to be built by the council.
That's not a tax, that's tieing it in to getting planning consent, which means the only way to get consent is to build an entire estate while building a school etc.
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
Challenging times in store for you. You're on record as believing it economically illiterate to hike taxes before the recovery is well underway. Yet I hear that such is the intention of the Magnificent Johnson. TBC in the budget but it looks like you will be faced with having to label the Magnificent an economic illiterate. Not a nice prospect. It will be interesting to see how you tackle it.
No challenge. If taxes are put up I will call it madness. I'm hoping this is expectations management and it isn't done.
I have no qualms departing with my party when my party does the wrong thing. Did you think I was a partisan hack always backing my party right or wrong? Did you miss me utterly rejecting my party 2017-2019.
There are two taxes that I think can be put up without any harm:
a) the vat reduction to 5% to encourage tourism and going out can be reversed. It is a tax on the consumer and not the business and only impacts the business if it deters the consumer and by all accounts we are desperate to get out there and spend on these things so this is a free hit for the treasury.
b) A modest increase in Corporation Tax should be fairly painless and those businesses hit by the pandemic will be able to bring their losses forward so will only impact those doing ok during these times.
I completely disagree.
a) The hospitality and tourism industries need to recover, they the 5% allows them to do so. It also is a tax on the business since anything that hits the consumer hits the business too, you can't divorce the two concepts. In particular VAT on food is doubly egregious. Prices are sticky, if a struggling business has the VAT cut to 5% they can maintain their existing prices and that fattens their margins allowing them to rebuild the business. The VAT cut should be maintained for two years IMHO to allow these businesses to recover after having suffered the most in the past year.
Secondly there's no VAT on food in supermarkets etc so people forget when they go out that they're getting whacked for 20% tax which isn't the case at home and the business has to swallow this cost within the ticket price they're charging the customer since we do not add VAT to the bill in this country like they do in the USA, its all included within the price originally.
b) We should be looking to be getting businesses to invest now so they can employ people who've lost their jobs, not be looking to displace activity.
Philip, If what you say is correct, and I'm not saying it isn't, then I would agree, but I gave my reasons why it wasn't a hit on the businesses in both cases. Now of course I might be wrong but:
a) By all accounts we are chomping at the bit to go out and go on holiday and to visit the pub etc. If the demand exceeds supply then for once you will not be impacting the businesses. If you are right and it does then I would agree with you. There is clearly a lot of anecdotal evidence that we are looking at a consumer boom when this is over.
b) Don't really understand your reply to part b). A corporation tax increase to companies bringing forward losses from the pandemic has no effect at all on those companies. If you don't pay tax an increase in the tax rate is still nothing. So this will only impact organisations that have done well out of the pandemic. Those that have suffered will pay no tax. So this suggestion has no negative impact on investment whatsoever and allows those that have done well out of the pandemic to pay something back.
a) We may be chomping on the bit to go out but those pubs and holiday businesses etc have seen their savings evaporated and loans taken on. A VAT-reduction means thicker margins at the same price for the consumer which allows the businesses that have been hammered to make up their losses and rebuild their balance sheets. The consumer boom isn't some windfall to be taxed, the businesses need that money to recuperate.
b) We don't just need pre-existing companies we need new companies and expansion of old ones to fill the gaps in the market. If taxes are higher that reduces the incentive for companies to invest.
In a couple of years once the economy is at an even keel and has recovered then yes it will be necessary to balance the deficit. It isn't necessary today, restoring the economy comes first - restoring the finances follows and it follows largely automatically, it is the structural element that will need to be fixed in a couple of years time.
Comments
I did not want to presume you were bumping your gums about another country you knew nothing about, but happy to be corrected if you want to state the country clearly. My reply is accurate, people today are a bunch of jessie wimps, whining , spineless and me me me mummy types.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1365619768401793026?s=20
Not that people are generally shy about alleging bribery in planning in any case (granted, a discussion of Liverpool may not be the best time to refute that given the arrests).
LOL, JK. I doubt anyone will notice.
Yay, more house price inflation. Guess I'll just rent for another few years. Thanks Rishi, wasn't voting for you anyway, but. Yup.
The 5 days was cut back to 1, and we were strongly encouraged to minimise mixing. Nobody was encouraged to go mad. In tier 4 areas it was household and support bubble only.
Can I suggest, Mr P, that you get a photo of the inside of a grand stately home; that should silence your snobbish 'colleague'!
Memo to self; could try that!
I'm saying to break the link between building and planning, so it isn't all estates. If someone wants to buy a parcel of land and build six houses on it let them do so - and pay the tax for six homes. Rather than an estate or nothing.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1365621372748201985?s=20
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1365621794279981058?s=20
If your deposit was enough to buy a two bed at 10% deposit, then with Rishi's scheme it should be enough eg for you to buy a three bed at 5%.
Why are you pissed off, you're exactly the kind of person this scheme is aiming to help? 😕
Good luck with that. Clipp doesn't care about such petty things like truth, honesty and integrity, not if ranting and raving about a fictionalised parallel universe he has invented is so much more fun.
You took that to mean go wild? Give it a break.
I guess the point is I'm in a slightly advantageous position that I'm not a 5% borrower. This is how my financial prudence over the years has been rewarded, rock bottom interest rates and souring asset prices.
Now Corbyn has been replaced as UK Labour leader by Starmer and Leonard has been replaced as Scottish Labour leader by Sarwar, Drakeford in Wales is the last Corbynista Labour leader left standing (though to be fair Wales was the only country Corbyn won in 2019, he lost England and Scotland)
If you mean soaring then no, house prices haven't soared over the past decade. They did soar when Labour were in charge, they've grown relatively slowly over the past decade.
The deposit is the hardest part of getting a house, not the amount you pay over the lifetime of the mortgage. Over the lifetime of a mortgage you'll pay less in mortgage repayments than you would in rent - it is the deposit that is the stumbling block people struggle with the most
PS why the heck would you as a prospective buyer be whinging about low interest rates? Literally nothing you are writing makes any sense whatsoever. Low interest rates are good for buyers.
I knew his dad quite well when we were both MPs - unlike me he refused ever to talk to single-sex audiences ("it's easier for me to say no without being suspected of prejudice", he said mildly).
I have no qualms departing with my party when my party does the wrong thing. Did you think I was a partisan hack always backing my party right or wrong? Did you miss me utterly rejecting my party 2017-2019.
Narrator: of course they will because these people will endure any contortion of principle to save the Union.
I think your proposal would work better as it also gives councils more discretion on what to use the money for - for example a school on the other side of town not explicitly linked to any new development.
Anyway, I have work to so will dip out now. Deposit aint gonna earn itself.
According to Shelter (who love accusing things of causing house price inflation) the last Mortgage Guarantee Scheme only caused a 1.4% rise in prices over 3 years, which is not very much at all.
https://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/1188073/2015_09_how_much_help_is_Help_to_Buy.pdf
(See Table 1).
If you consider that it was a small numbers of houses - approx 100k houses in toto out of a stock of 28 million or around 10-20% of newbuilds - that makes sense.
So I would not worry unduly, unless you are planning to wait a few years.
I think there will be plenty of stock in a number of cities going through from zombie rental businesses.
I would agree on the Stamp Duty holiday being a stupid idea, however. They should be taking the whole Stamp Duty distortion out of the market by implementing the Proportional Property Tax.
Job must pay well; just got a new Merc as a company car.
Looking forward to Anas doing his Holyrood PPB in front of a Union flag, maybe two!
The same picture north of the river - constant construction of houses to the point where those of us who bought in early got stuck in massive negative equity due to the endless tide of new homes being built. Despite this, the council was ruled by the government not to be building enough new houses which meant that developers won every single appeal. Despite the opposition at one point of residents, the council, the MP and Eric Pickles the Secretary of State.
The answer to housing issues isn't build more houses. Its build houses that people can afford to buy that aren't tiny shitboxes. Too many developers sit on land with planning permission, don't build for years - which allows developers to win every appeal due to not enough houses being built - before building houses at the lowest possible cost at the top of the market. Frankly the planning process brought in by the Tories is not fit for purpose - the only way to stop developers building houses is to let them build houses...
It is the deposit that is the hardest hurdle for many people, not what is repaid over the lifetime of the mortgage.
Especially considering the interest only element of the mortgage is what you lose. The equity element is yours to keep at the end of the day.
https://twitter.com/POLITICOEurope/status/1365627361614573569?s=20
http://www.hopehomes.co.uk/news-and-offers-more.asp?news=582
Do you think high or low interest rates are best for buyers?
Quite appropriate that it should go 1000% over budget.
"McLuskey Hall" anyone?
House prices soared more in the decade 2000-2010 than they did in the decade 2010-2020. Interest rates were higher in the former than the latter.
Low interest rates, stable rather than increasing prices, plus removing any incentives for BTL (and taxing BTL) is a decent combination.
Buying at a high price with assistance on the deposit, at rock bottom interest rates is potentially a financial trap for a lot of people.
Increasing supply rather than demand might be preferable.
In the meantime though helping owner occupiers while taxing BTLs is a good combination. Especially if the tax on BTL pays for the help towards owner occupiers getting their deposits.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1365295960826470403?s=20
a) the vat reduction to 5% to encourage tourism and going out can be reversed. It is a tax on the consumer and not the business and only impacts the business if it deters the consumer and by all accounts we are desperate to get out there and spend on these things so this is a free hit for the treasury.
b) A modest increase in Corporation Tax should be fairly painless and those businesses hit by the pandemic will be able to bring their losses forward so will only impact those doing ok during these times.
Long term low interest rates as we're currently in results in fewer first time buyers as we're currently seeing.
I'm not sure your hypothesis of low interest rates being good for first time buyers holds water, at least the evidence from mortgage lending and purchase stats that I can remember showed that first time buyers benefited the most when the BoE started raising interest rates.
1 - There is already a tax in place called S106 / CIL which raises multiple billions (between 5 and 10 billion pa) towards things like infrastructure. I did a biggish planning application for a 100+ house estate recently where those charges took more than half of the post-planning permission (ie inflated) value of the land. Contributions included town square renovations, playground improvement, sections of bike path, 23 school places primary and secondary, open space contribution in addition to the statutory 10% of site area, and others.
You don't have much scope for increase there - or not as much as you might think.
2 - Allowing anyone to build whatever they want on land they own *does* require appropriate controls, otherwise AONBs and National Parks will be full of shitboxes and gn-palaces.
3 - NIMBYs are an extreme expression of an appropriate involvement - it is right that local communities should have an involvement in what is built there.
All of them are a matter of a correct balance.
Given the SNP are a threat to the unity of the UK they must be stopped no matter what the cost, so in that sense it is good news Labour picked the most electable candidate
However, I think Benjamin Disraeli was an ethnic minority leader before Anas. Apart from that, a good speech.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/25/its-heartless-to-blame-job-losses-on-unemployed-people-but-its-how-much-of-britain-thinks
Can Labour ever hope to pull off what Blair-Brown did in late 1990s?
a) The hospitality and tourism industries need to recover, they the 5% allows them to do so. It also is a tax on the business since anything that hits the consumer hits the business too, you can't divorce the two concepts. In particular VAT on food is doubly egregious. Prices are sticky, if a struggling business has the VAT cut to 5% they can maintain their existing prices and that fattens their margins allowing them to rebuild the business. The VAT cut should be maintained for two years IMHO to allow these businesses to recover after having suffered the most in the past year.
Secondly there's no VAT on food in supermarkets etc so people forget when they go out that they're getting whacked for 20% tax which isn't the case at home and the business has to swallow this cost within the ticket price they're charging the customer since we do not add VAT to the bill in this country like they do in the USA, its all included within the price originally.
b) We should be looking to be getting businesses to invest now so they can employ people who've lost their jobs, not be looking to displace activity.
We would need polling comparing him to Sturgeon and Ross to make a judgement on his electoral impact.
Did you seriously think that poll meant 53% of Scotland (25+28) were considering voting for Labour?
There was a big Xmas spike in the UK compared with other European countries, either taken collectively or individually. That was predictable, and many people were urging the Government at the time to be tougher earlier.
I'm not one of those who is reflexively critical of all aspects of what the Government does on this, but it's simply mindless denialism to say that important mistakes weren't made in the run up to Xmas.
However the Labour, Conservative and LD vote combined was clearly more than the SNP vote, so he is best placed to win Unionist tactical votes which is key
What it says, and this actually suggests the opposite of what you’re saying, is that Labour’s leadership is considered rubbish by around half of voters (or just possibly, that half of voters wanted Jackie Baillie).
That’s not at all a good sign for their electoral prospects.
2) People should only be able to build on land they own. Are AONBs and National Parks privately owned? If not they can't be built on.
3) I disagree. I'd have a zoning system so communities can decide where is built on, but then if its zoned for residential then consent would be automatic so long as it meets predetermined building controls and standards. I'd also insist of course than an appropriate minimum amount of land must be zoned to give consent.
Bearing in mind the sector has now been under the cosh for quite some time, and came to a screeching halt in 2016 after Osborne's 'Gordon Brown' budget in 2014 or 2015 (can't remember which, but so complicated no one could understand the impact including probably Osborne himself), and has been at best flat since.
Chart from the latest English Housing Survey.
a) By all accounts we are chomping at the bit to go out and go on holiday and to visit the pub etc. If the demand exceeds supply then for once you will not be impacting the businesses. If you are right and it does then I would agree with you. There is clearly a lot of anecdotal evidence that we are looking at a consumer boom when this is over.
b) Don't really understand your reply to part b). A corporation tax increase to companies bringing forward losses from the pandemic has no effect at all on those companies. If you don't pay tax an increase in the tax rate is still nothing. So this will only impact organisations that have done well out of the pandemic. Those that have suffered will pay no tax. So this suggestion has no negative impact on investment whatsoever and allows those that have done well out of the pandemic to pay something back.
Next I'd suggest when Council Tax is reformed making the owner of the property be the one who pays the bill rather than the tenant. Yes that may mean rents are increased but not likely by more than the cost of the Council Tax.
Plus of course removing any tax relief that BTL gets.
In Scotland anyway the SNP are the enemy so any gains SLab can make from the SNP is good news for Tories, as Sarwar opposes indyref2.
https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/1365566292347006978/photo/1
And as for the King's survey she is distraught about, it is another example, as we get daily, that when very intelligent researchers ask ordinary people to give one word/phrase answers to questions which in truth only have complicated answers available, you get simplistic rubbish on broadly predictable party lines.
Just ask: Would the very intelligent researchers be willing to give one word simplistic answers to complex questions, or expect their students to do so?
b) We don't just need pre-existing companies we need new companies and expansion of old ones to fill the gaps in the market. If taxes are higher that reduces the incentive for companies to invest.
In a couple of years once the economy is at an even keel and has recovered then yes it will be necessary to balance the deficit. It isn't necessary today, restoring the economy comes first - restoring the finances follows and it follows largely automatically, it is the structural element that will need to be fixed in a couple of years time.