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)
another millionaire Labour leader will be a great boost for the sub regional office
Isn't Ian Blackford a multimillionaire? I seem to remember his company publishing an annual report recently lamenting the amount being paid out of the company coffers currently for funerals. Doesn't seem to prevent him trying to portray himself as a man of the people, so not sure why it should for Sarwar.
what does he lead though. windbaggery at Westminster is no great thing , list donkeys in Holyrood are higher on the food chain than MP's.
If WM is as insignificant as you suggest, I'm not sure why you're so keen on independence.
Fed up living in a colony under tyrannical rule of fcukwits.
It's amazing how primal my fantasies have become for post lockdown liberation: I want to eat the very best food in the very best restaurants with friends, drink like a fish, laugh as hard and as loud as I can, run really fast through a city centre, go to the top of a hill and take in an amazing view, maybe scream and sing at the same time, dance my legs off, flirt with girls, fuck like a champion, sleep the sleep of thousand dreams.
I'd advise spreading that out over more than 1 night.
You could manage that in an evening - Calton Hill is in the very centre of Edinburgh and you could jog through the city centre and sprint up that in ten minutes or so. Best restaurants, world class booze, and girls are there too. How lucky Casino Royal gets is of course down to him.
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
Starmer's error is the same as Blair? I'd hate to think how successful Blair would have been at winning elections if he hadn't made errors.
Starmer's error is that he is slavishly following Blair -- but the times really have changed out of all recognition since 1997.
Blair looked fresh & imaginative in 1997. Starmer just doesn't in 2021.
Partly this is because Starmer does not have Blair's lethal charm & partly because -- as Blair's mini-me -- it comes across as though Starmer has no ideas of his own.
Labour made the wrong choice.
There is still time to fix it. They need a rush of Aussie Labor to the head -- the ALP ruthlessly knives under-performing leaders.
Starmer is a Brownite not a Blairite, he was still the best choice of the contenders, if RLB was Labour leader the Tory lead would be unchanged on 2019, not halved.
It's amazing how primal my fantasies have become for post lockdown liberation: I want to eat the very best food in the very best restaurants with friends, drink like a fish, laugh as hard and as loud as I can, run really fast through a city centre, go to the top of a hill and take in an amazing view, maybe scream and sing at the same time, dance my legs off, flirt with girls, fuck like a champion, sleep the sleep of thousand dreams.
I'd advise spreading that out over more than 1 night.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
The thing that gets forgotten is the part played by double incomes. That increase was a big part of the price surge it the late 90s.
Double incomes didn't begin in the 90s and doesn't excuse prices tripling.
I think it was still changing the market. The other big thing, I think, is the whole 3x your salary thing became more like 6x your salary.
I’m a way, high house prices can be seen as a compulsory saving scheme. The problem is the potential for prices to crash.
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)
another millionaire Labour leader will be a great boost for the sub regional office
Isn't Ian Blackford a multimillionaire? I seem to remember his company publishing an annual report recently lamenting the amount being paid out of the company coffers currently for funerals. Doesn't seem to prevent him trying to portray himself as a man of the people, so not sure why it should for Sarwar.
what does he lead though. windbaggery at Westminster is no great thing , list donkeys in Holyrood are higher on the food chain than MP's.
If WM is as insignificant as you suggest, I'm not sure why you're so keen on independence.
Fed up living in a colony under tyrannical rule of fcukwits.
At least under an independent Scotland, they'll be tyrannical SCOTTISH fuckwits ruling over you, huh?
Some progress.
Try finding non-fuckwit Scots to vote for first, maybe?
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
Starmer's error is the same as Blair? I'd hate to think how successful Blair would have been at winning elections if he hadn't made errors.
Starmer's error is that he is slavishly following Blair -- but the times really have changed out of all recognition since 1997.
Blair looked fresh & imaginative in 1997. Starmer just doesn't in 2021.
Partly this is because Starmer does not have Blair's lethal charm & partly because -- as Blair's mini-me -- it comes across as though Starmer has no ideas of his own.
Labour made the wrong choice.
There is still time to fix it. They need a rush of Aussie Labor to the head -- the ALP ruthlessly knives under-performing leaders.
Starmer is a Brownite not a Blairite, he was still the best choice of the contenders, if RLB was Labour leader the Tory lead would be unchanged on 2019, not halved.
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)
another millionaire Labour leader will be a great boost for the sub regional office
Isn't Ian Blackford a multimillionaire? I seem to remember his company publishing an annual report recently lamenting the amount being paid out of the company coffers currently for funerals. Doesn't seem to prevent him trying to portray himself as a man of the people, so not sure why it should for Sarwar.
what does he lead though. windbaggery at Westminster is no great thing , list donkeys in Holyrood are higher on the food chain than MP's.
If WM is as insignificant as you suggest, I'm not sure why you're so keen on independence.
Fed up living in a colony under tyrannical rule of fcukwits.
'Tyrannical Rule' by a parliament so insignificant to what actually goes on in Scotland that you don't even rate leadership of the party there as being more important than a list MSP?
Seems like a pretty light touch tyranny, and a pretty savage process you want to put Scotland through so you can say you're no longer 'a colony'.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
The speed with which you can sell houses on an Estate is limited in most places by local demographics / sociology. Cities with metropolitan transport systems may be different, but then so are the economics. Most buyers will live within commuting distance to work, and won't change jobs at the same time. That's human society, not just "markets".
They build in small batches as needed, for obvious reasons (experience of last Recession, management of workforce, and other things.
Estates under 100 are difficult due to the need to cover the overheads of a marketing suite etc, and there are not enough units to support them.
I would say that further boost to housing should perhaps be via smaller developers, and housing Associations. Not Councils due to conflicts of interest.
We should also note possible upward pressure on prices because the leasehold income stream is being taken away. Plus Green Reforms over the next several years.
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
Starmer's error is the same as Blair? I'd hate to think how successful Blair would have been at winning elections if he hadn't made errors.
Yes, but political time has sped up. It took 20 years of Blairism to erode the Red Wall. It cannot be regained by the same policies that lost it, particularly while shedding votes on the other wing to the Greens.
I don't see much evidence that the Red Wall wants New Labour back, indeed the opposite.
I was a Labour member then, but am not now. I see little reason to return.
Corbyn is a Blairite? It’s a view, I suppose.
Not that I think Blairites would automatically win those seats back.
Corbyn performed better than the long term trend in these areas in 2017. I don't think that the Red Wall is as monolithic as it is made out to be, and is as susceptible to left wing populism as much as right.
But certainly Blair is as toxic there as elsewhere. New Labour is dead. New ideas are needed, and there is scant sign of those. "Fun with flags" ain't going well.
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
Starmer's error is the same as Blair? I'd hate to think how successful Blair would have been at winning elections if he hadn't made errors.
Starmer's error is that he is slavishly following Blair -- but the times really have changed out of all recognition since 1997.
Blair looked fresh & imaginative in 1997. Starmer just doesn't in 2021.
Partly this is because Starmer does not have Blair's lethal charm & partly because -- as Blair's mini-me -- it comes across as though Starmer has no ideas of his own.
Labour made the wrong choice.
There is still time to fix it. They need a rush of Aussie Labor to the head -- the ALP ruthlessly knives under-performing leaders.
Starmer is a Brownite not a Blairite, he was still the best choice of the contenders, if RLB was Labour leader the Tory lead would be unchanged on 2019, not halved.
RLB's approach to the EHRC report would have been interesting
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
I think the Greens' problem is that other parties are paying far more than lip service to the Green party polies.
They already ate the Greens' lunch, and the Greens have no response other than to deny it is happening, and going ever more extreme.
A lot of the disparity in London may well be less to do with the ethnic makeup of the capital, which in truth differs little from the big urban areas of the North and Midlands, as with the difficulty in getting to a vaccination centre. Elderly people, at the moment, are understandably less inclined to take public transport but that is often the only way of getting anywhere in London.
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
I think the Greens' problem is that other parties are paying far more than lip service to the Green party polies.
They already ate the Greens' lunch, and the Greens have no response other than to deny it is happening, and going ever more extreme.
They are boxed by their own rhetoric.
Do you think people moving to the Greens is to do with environmental policy? I don't. They're the very left wing option in this country.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
But those problems are symptoms of our irrational planning system.
It's because you're dealing with developers who are building large estates. Which they do because the planning system is so convoluted that only developers can manage it.
Plus having consent gives a tremendous increase in value without putting a shovel into the ground or laying a single brick. So they've already made the first stage of their profit and can "bank" that without doing anything else for now.
In other countries with simplified planning system getting consent doesn't increase value of the land tremendously, which means that developers don't sit on land as much - and it means you get much more construction of small developments, even one house at a time getting constructed on a road to the owners specs which we don't see so much here. If consent is easy to get then anyone who gets consent but doesn't build will see their profits eroded by others getting consent and actually building.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
What about an expiry on the planning permissions?
Big Planning Permissions are usually phased by agreement with the Council, for one reason they have to be coordinated with new schools, school places, facilities etc. And these are not put in place without years of planning.
Planning Permissions already expire in 2 or 3 years, and you have to make a start after often meeting umpteen "pre-commencement conditions" to keep it extant.
If you consider that eg something as simple as trees (work can only be done between Sep/Oct and February) or bats can stop it in it's tracks for months, you can see the challenge. Or eg that groundwors are heavily dependent on time of year.
Also there are many more reasons than building it immediately to apply for PP. One may be a Housing Association or Developer requiring proof that it can be developed before they will even consider the land. Proof is PP.
The PP I obtained in 2013 for a 100 unit Housing Estate started building in 2020, after that time wrangling with the Council.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
The speed with which you can sell houses on an Estate is limited in most places by local demographics / sociology. Cities with metropolitan transport systems may be different, but then so are the economics. Most buyers will live within commuting distance to work, and won't change jobs at the same time. That's human society, not just "markets".
They build in small batches as needed, for obvious reasons (experience of last Recession, management of workforce, and other things.
Estates under 100 are difficult due to the need to cover the overheads of a marketing suite etc, and there are not enough units to support them.
I would say that further boost to housing should perhaps be via smaller developers, and housing Associations. Not Councils due to conflicts of interest.
We should also note possible upward pressure on prices because the leasehold income stream is being taken away. Plus Green Reforms over the next several years.
But housing supply targets are set by Councils not by developers !
No one is stopping you making it bigger if you want more supply.
I see you addressed this.
Another reason developers delay is that they need a long pipeline because it takes many years for sites to get to fruition, so when one does it is at the back of a long queue and they need to keep a stable core workforce for an extended time.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
But those problems are symptoms of our irrational planning system.
It's because you're dealing with developers who are building large estates. Which they do because the planning system is so convoluted that only developers can manage it.
Plus having consent gives a tremendous increase in value without putting a shovel into the ground or laying a single brick. So they've already made the first stage of their profit and can "bank" that without doing anything else for now.
In other countries with simplified planning system getting consent doesn't increase value of the land tremendously, which means that developers don't sit on land as much - and it means you get much more construction of small developments, even one house at a time getting constructed on a road to the owners specs which we don't see so much here. If consent is easy to get then anyone who gets consent but doesn't build will see their profits eroded by others getting consent and actually building.
When they built Chiswick - the area was laid out, roads, sewers, water, gas etc put in. Then it was sold by the road (or part of a road) to developers. So you often get one side of a road with houses all the same - plus one big one at the end that the developer built for himself.
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
I think the Greens' problem is that other parties are paying far more than lip service to the Green party polies.
They already ate the Greens' lunch, and the Greens have no response other than to deny it is happening, and going ever more extreme.
They are boxed by their own rhetoric.
Not really, other wise they wouldn't be the third party in this poll.
While having limited electoral success, the Greens have driven an agenda as effectively as UKIP ever did, perhaps more so. It depends whether you want personal power or your objectives sometimes. Even Lady MacBeth realises the importance of the green agenda.
But also the Greens have an audience of people with other radical views of how society should be reshaped. There is more going on than just environmentalism.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
But those problems are symptoms of our irrational planning system.
It's because you're dealing with developers who are building large estates. Which they do because the planning system is so convoluted that only developers can manage it.
Plus having consent gives a tremendous increase in value without putting a shovel into the ground or laying a single brick. So they've already made the first stage of their profit and can "bank" that without doing anything else for now.
In other countries with simplified planning system getting consent doesn't increase value of the land tremendously, which means that developers don't sit on land as much - and it means you get much more construction of small developments, even one house at a time getting constructed on a road to the owners specs which we don't see so much here. If consent is easy to get then anyone who gets consent but doesn't build will see their profits eroded by others getting consent and actually building.
Consent is fairly easy to get - I think 75% go through.
Plus huge amounts of enlargement, alterations, conversions etc are Permitted Development where PP is not even required.
It mainly gets contentious where the applicant is trying to overprofit or overdevelop or is incompetent or do something in the wrong place.
In that last I agree some policies need to change.
I would like to see some real comparisons across European countries, as they are artefacts of history and planning systems. eg Why does most of modern Holland look like one big suburb?
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.
Nothing to misunderstand. Sarwar was the centrist candidate, you said he was the leftwing candidate so were wrong.
Stopping Scottish independence at all costs is the top priority of this Tory government for the rest of its term so in that sense Sarwar's win helps on that front
Care to quote where I stated Sarwar was a left-wing candidate? I await your apology.
You compared Sarwar to RLB not Starmer, so no
So what. You claimed I said something which I did not say. You lack the common decency to admit you lied. As so often your tunnel vision leads you to misuderstand the points being made to you. You are a liar.
A lot of the disparity in London may well be less to do with the ethnic makeup of the capital, which in truth differs little from the big urban areas of the North and Midlands, as with the difficulty in getting to a vaccination centre. Elderly people, at the moment, are understandably less inclined to take public transport but that is often the only way of getting anywhere in London.
Old folk dependent on public transport can be found all over. London is bigger and there are more options, that's all.
Now, look at the pattern again. It's London *and* Birmingham (to a slightly lesser extent, but there appears to be a signal nonetheless) that are most affected. The Northern conurbations are faring better.
My guess would be that differential take-up between communities is playing its part, but that efforts to break down hesitancy have been less successful amongst black people than other groups. According to ONS figures from the last census, London and the West Midlands are the two regions of England and Wales where the percentage of black residents exceeds the national average.
I'm indebted to @Malmesbury for the vaccination numbers.
In my neck of the woods (Newham CCG), there is an estimated adult population of 275,000 made up of roughly 248,000 or just over 90% between 16-64 and the other 10% 65+ so I suspect a significantly "younger" population than other areas.
The numbers show, of the 65+ cohort, 19,150 or 71% have had a first vaccination and of those just 112 have had the second vaccination. Among the younger population, 24,510 or about 10% have had a first vaccination (279 have had two).
In total, 43,660 people have had a first vaccination out of an adult population of 275,000 which is just under 16%. Across England, 15 million first doses out of a population of 45 million so a third of all adults 16+.
I don't share the statistical and analytical skills of so many on here but if my area has only vaccinated one sixth of its population while across England one in three has been vaccinated that suggests Newham is lagging well off the pace and moving at half the speed of other areas.
I'd argue that at 71%, the numbers of older people looks poor - some of that may be refusal but it's impossible to know. Compare that with Surrey Heartlands where of an estimated 65+ population of 200,000 185,500 have received their first vaccination which is 92.75%.
There are some big problems and challenges behind these figures which need to be resolved.
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
But those problems are symptoms of our irrational planning system.
It's because you're dealing with developers who are building large estates. Which they do because the planning system is so convoluted that only developers can manage it.
Plus having consent gives a tremendous increase in value without putting a shovel into the ground or laying a single brick. So they've already made the first stage of their profit and can "bank" that without doing anything else for now.
In other countries with simplified planning system getting consent doesn't increase value of the land tremendously, which means that developers don't sit on land as much - and it means you get much more construction of small developments, even one house at a time getting constructed on a road to the owners specs which we don't see so much here. If consent is easy to get then anyone who gets consent but doesn't build will see their profits eroded by others getting consent and actually building.
Consent is fairly easy to get - I think 75% go through.
Plus huge amounts of enlargement, alterations, conversions etc are Permitted Development where PP is not even required.
It mainly gets contentious where the applicant is trying to overprofit or overdevelop or is incompetent or do something in the wrong place.
In that last I agree some policies need to change.
I would like to see some real comparisons across European countries, as they are artefacts of history and planning systems. eg Why does most of modern Holland look like one big suburb?
One thing that we could usefully copy from the mainland of Europe is advertising by square meters rather than number of bedrooms. It is part of the reason that we have so many rabbit hutches .
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.
You need to justify why you would shrink a Private Rental sector that is already smaller than in many other comparable countries.
Do you think that people who rent should not have a reasonable choice of places to live, or that rents should be forced higher by restricting supply etc?
I don't want to eliminate the private rental sector, just gradually get it back to what it was stable at until the end of the 20th century according to your chart - and get the amount buying with mortgage back up to what it used to be according to your chart instead.
Why do you think 8-10% is the right number?
And is that not a strange stance for a free marketeer - to decide what sort of tenure other people should live under?
One specific problem is that there are probably more people than that who will not be able to get a mortgage, or buy a house even if prices shifted down significantly, never mind people who would rather have someone else look after it or are mobile workers etc.
I'd call it an awful muckup by Osborne, not least because he choked off billions of investment in improving housing that was not being made by anyone else, and I am not aware has been replaced since.
(Yes, there are a lot of issues there, and I'm about to pop out - will reply later.)
It’s NOT a free market. People don’t have £300k in the bank and think “I quite like that property, I’ll buy it.”
Leaving interest rates at rock bottom for 12 years has distorted the market. The idea that people have chosen to rent rather than buy is utterly stupid.
The problem is that we’ve got so many people on the ladder who would not be able to afford a moderate rate rise. So we carry on as we are hoping that the whole thing doesn’t collapse.
While I agree with all the rest of what you have written can I please point out the market got distorted before interest rates hit rock bottom.
2000-2010 population increased much more than housing stocks did. That caused the house prices to surge. The interest rate falls came after the house price rises, not before it.
Certainly the population increase had contributed to the problem, but pre-2008 I reckon a lot of the increase was related to the 100%+ mortgages and other nonsense.
Perhaps. But either way from 1997 to 2010 house prices tripled but from 2010-2020 they increased by about a third.
A third is considerably less than tripling. Indeed its not that far off general inflation levels.
But from a much higher base. Really, we needed them to stagnate if not fall slightly.
Indeed. The damage was done and its hard to reverse it now. They are relatively stagnant now compared to what it was.
Liberalising planning consent would allow more construction, would add more supply, would see prices fall gradually as new stocks are added. There's no need to have major increases in interest rates to achieve that - the prices rose in the first place when rates were much higher than today anyway.
There is one serious fly in that ointment, and it's one that's only become apparent to me since becoming a councillor (and one who pays a LOT of attention to the planning permission and new development area, as I want to see supply rise and prices drop):
Developers know about supply and demand.
It's bloody obvious when I think of it, but I never really dwelt on it before. We issue planning permission for, say, 4500 houses. They decide to build out at a rate of 250 houses per year. "Due to market pressures."
They don't want prices to crater, because then they'd make a loss on the land they bought at overblown prices.
Of course, if prices drop, land prices will drop, but the monkey's fist is already in the bottle. He can't extract it without releasing those juicy sweets.
Developers will never willingly build out at sufficient a rate to bring house prices down - a slow upwards trend is better for them. If house prices aren't coming down, the value of the land isn't coming down with it. And we're stuck in the loop.
We're looking hard at the land we already own as a council with the view to finding suitable locations and commissioning self-build-support for people and finding a way to fund a chunky amount of social housing (think of it as "trickle-up" - as long as the numbers are increasing, the pressure on house prices will decrease).
But we went past the point where we could just liberalise planning consent (we've issued significantly more permissions than would be needed to support a national rate of 450,000 per year if everywhere went like we did) but the developers just won't build out fast enough off their own bat. I mean, it would be irrational for them to do so - no-one wants to shoot the hen that lays the golden eggs.
But those problems are symptoms of our irrational planning system.
It's because you're dealing with developers who are building large estates. Which they do because the planning system is so convoluted that only developers can manage it.
Plus having consent gives a tremendous increase in value without putting a shovel into the ground or laying a single brick. So they've already made the first stage of their profit and can "bank" that without doing anything else for now.
In other countries with simplified planning system getting consent doesn't increase value of the land tremendously, which means that developers don't sit on land as much - and it means you get much more construction of small developments, even one house at a time getting constructed on a road to the owners specs which we don't see so much here. If consent is easy to get then anyone who gets consent but doesn't build will see their profits eroded by others getting consent and actually building.
Consent is fairly easy to get - I think 75% go through.
Plus huge amounts of enlargement, alterations, conversions etc are Permitted Development where PP is not even required.
It mainly gets contentious where the applicant is trying to overprofit or overdevelop or is incompetent or do something in the wrong place.
In that last I agree some policies need to change.
I would like to see some real comparisons across European countries, as they are artefacts of history and planning systems. eg Why does most of modern Holland look like one big suburb?
Its easy to get for a developer with a team of expert lawyers etc doing it in banks of developments? Or its easy to get full stop?
In Japan with their zonal system there are preset building standards that must be met but other than that if land is zoned for housing it is very easy to get a house built. Meaning that rather than taking years to develop hundreds of houses built you can rapidly get even down to just one house built at a time to spec by those who want a house built, something you don't see much here where everything is in the hands of the developers for most new homes.
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
I think the Greens' problem is that other parties are paying far more than lip service to the Green party polies.
They already ate the Greens' lunch, and the Greens have no response other than to deny it is happening, and going ever more extreme.
They are boxed by their own rhetoric.
Not really, other wise they wouldn't be the third party in this poll.
While having limited electoral success, the Greens have driven an agenda as effectively as UKIP ever did, perhaps more so. It depends whether you want personal power or your objectives sometimes. Even Lady MacBeth realises the importance of the green agenda.
But also the Greens have an audience of people with other radical views of how society should be reshaped. There is more going on than just environmentalism.
Exactly right. Which is whty it is insane to talk of Scottish politics as a simple transfer of votes from/to Labour and SCUP etc. and ignore the Scottish Greens (who have had much more electoral success and arguabl more impact on policy, e.g. forcing through the Edinburgh Trams).
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
I think the Greens' problem is that other parties are paying far more than lip service to the Green party polies.
They already ate the Greens' lunch, and the Greens have no response other than to deny it is happening, and going ever more extreme.
They are boxed by their own rhetoric.
Not really, other wise they wouldn't be the third party in this poll.
While having limited electoral success, the Greens have driven an agenda as effectively as UKIP ever did, perhaps more so. It depends whether you want personal power or your objectives sometimes. Even Lady MacBeth realises the importance of the green agenda.
But also the Greens have an audience of people with other radical views of how society should be reshaped. There is more going on than just environmentalism.
There was that massive switch from Labour to SNP, but also an election where not a single seat changed. It seems voting en masse for the reds have just been replaced with voting en masse for the yellows.
Or, is this a case of the independence side having one party and the other half of the country vote-splitting between three parties, leaving them all with a fraction of a half?
Starmers error is the same as Blair, to think that you can ignore some voters as they will always turn out for Labour. Only that this time he is losing the left to the Greens rather than the right to UKIP.
All parties give lip service to green policies, the shift to Greens is being driven by those who reject Starmerism. In marginal seats they may be squeezed, but it is a threat that he should not ignore. I think the Greens will do well in May, especially in London.
Starmer's error is the same as Blair? I'd hate to think how successful Blair would have been at winning elections if he hadn't made errors.
Yes, but political time has sped up. It took 20 years of Blairism to erode the Red Wall. It cannot be regained by the same policies that lost it, particularly while shedding votes on the other wing to the Greens.
I don't see much evidence that the Red Wall wants New Labour back, indeed the opposite.
I was a Labour member then, but am not now. I see little reason to return.
Corbyn is a Blairite? It’s a view, I suppose.
Not that I think Blairites would automatically win those seats back.
Corbyn performed better than the long term trend in these areas in 2017. I don't think that the Red Wall is as monolithic as it is made out to be, and is as susceptible to left wing populism as much as right.
But certainly Blair is as toxic there as elsewhere. New Labour is dead. New ideas are needed, and there is scant sign of those. "Fun with flags" ain't going well.
There was that massive switch from Labour to SNP, but also an election where not a single seat changed. It seems voting en masse for the reds have just been replaced with voting en masse for the yellows.
Or, is this a case of the independence side having one party and the other half of the country vote-splitting between three parties, leaving them all with a fraction of a half?
Or something else?
That would actually give the unionists more MSPs under the gerrymandered d'Hondt system than they 'deserve' in a more rational system. But, in any case, on a point of order: the indy side has 2 parties, both bigger than the LDs. (More if you include the SSP, of course, but then the same point could be made about the BNP, Mr Galloway's lot, etc.)
There was that massive switch from Labour to SNP, but also an election where not a single seat changed. It seems voting en masse for the reds have just been replaced with voting en masse for the yellows.
Or, is this a case of the independence side having one party and the other half of the country vote-splitting between three parties, leaving them all with a fraction of a half?
Or something else?
I think increasingly the Unionist parties are not seen as Scottish, but as puppet regimes of their English namesakes.
There was that massive switch from Labour to SNP, but also an election where not a single seat changed. It seems voting en masse for the reds have just been replaced with voting en masse for the yellows.
Or, is this a case of the independence side having one party and the other half of the country vote-splitting between three parties, leaving them all with a fraction of a half?
Or something else?
I think increasingly the Unionist parties are not seen as Scottish, but as puppet regimes of their English namesakes.
It is hard to campaign against that.
SLAB IS in fact the UK Labour Party legally and financially. It was only a deliberate fiddle of the electoral legislation which allows them to call themselves the 'Scottish Labour Party' on the ballot paper, electoral bumf, etc. So they're actually much better unionists than thje LDs or Conservatives.
BBC Wales report that Wales expect to get 160-190k doses delivered every week in March.
What would that mean for England, Scotland, NI, UK on the pro-rata basis?
Between 3.5 and 4m doses nationally.
I was hoping a “bumper” March meant accelerating beyond those numbers.
We have never done close to 4m in a week.
True, but we've done 2.9m. Be nice to do well more, but acceleration is acceleration.
Just got to keep fingers crossed we get the other vaccines come online by April and maybe we can start to do 5m+ a week.
I am still disappointed that the government don't really seem to have set a proper stretch target e.g. 750k -1 million a day. But then perhaps they are being told the supply just won't be there for the next 6 months.
BBC Wales report that Wales expect to get 160-190k doses delivered every week in March.
What would that mean for England, Scotland, NI, UK on the pro-rata basis?
Between 3.5 and 4m doses nationally.
I was hoping a “bumper” March meant accelerating beyond those numbers.
We have never done close to 4m in a week.
True but we got up to 600k a day a month ago. It will still be good to hit that rate consistently.
Given the way these things fluctuate with weekend effects etc doing 4m in a week would almost certainly involve doing over 800k if not a million on some days.
6th to 12th February was our quickest 7 day period, 3116429 doses with 3091617 first doses. Whilst I think we'll crack the first number easily I'd be surprised if we hit over 3 million first doses any week in March.
BBC Wales report that Wales expect to get 160-190k doses delivered every week in March.
What would that mean for England, Scotland, NI, UK on the pro-rata basis?
Between 3.5 and 4m doses nationally.
I was hoping a “bumper” March meant accelerating beyond those numbers.
We have never done close to 4m in a week.
True but we got up to 600k a day a month ago. It will still be good to hit that rate consistently.
That was a single day, and I am now a little sceptical if it really was that many in a single day, and that it might actually have been a combination of days via reporting lag. In those early days, there was lots of pencil and paper recording going on.
There was that massive switch from Labour to SNP, but also an election where not a single seat changed. It seems voting en masse for the reds have just been replaced with voting en masse for the yellows.
Or, is this a case of the independence side having one party and the other half of the country vote-splitting between three parties, leaving them all with a fraction of a half?
Or something else?
I think increasingly the Unionist parties are not seen as Scottish, but as puppet regimes of their English namesakes.
It is hard to campaign against that.
The 2 most recent polls have the Tories up slightly on the 2016 election. It is Labour which is 7% down on 2016. We may yet see changes over the next few weeks which alter that.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
The best and worst thing about Keir Starmer is that he doesn't annoy anyone
Not true!!
Labour have dropped from 42% to anywhere between 33 to 36 must be annoying someone
Tories stayed at circa 40% in same time spell
He has annoyed you from day 1 whetever he does. Even though he was voted in by the membership by a good majority. I guess you voted for RLB. What would you do in a pandemic and after the greatest defeat since 1935 Just carry on as normal with a Corbyn style leadership. You seem happy never to win GE, and repeating we nearly won in 2017 Labour did not even May won many more seats than Labour.
I listened to the entire testimony by Alex Salmond from his swearing of the oath to the end and it was a consummate performance, full of well presented arguments, and coruscating of Sturgeon and her government.
The hearing was also interesting for the shocking level of interrogation by his former SNP colleagues and the Lib Dem, who was plain embarrassing, and the way Salmond made them look incompetent in the extreme
Indeed, it seems to be generally accepted that Jackie Baillie (labour) and Murdo Fraser (consevstive) were far more forensic in their questions, and it has to be said they opened the door for Salmond to make his case
I understand the hearing has requested important documents from the Crown office by Tuesday and before Sturgeon's attendance at the meeting the following day
This story has many more twists and turns but it does make the SNP look as if it is at war with itself
And polls have not yet taken place post yesterday, and more importantly as this saga develops over the weeks and months ahead
The SNP may survive unscathed but it is less certain today, then before yesterday extraordinary events
BBC Wales report that Wales expect to get 160-190k doses delivered every week in March.
What would that mean for England, Scotland, NI, UK on the pro-rata basis?
Between 3.5 and 4m doses nationally.
I was hoping a “bumper” March meant accelerating beyond those numbers.
We have never done close to 4m in a week.
True but we got up to 600k a day a month ago. It will still be good to hit that rate consistently.
That was a single day, and I am now a little sceptical if it really was that many in a single day, and that it might actually have been a combination of days via reporting lag. In those early days, there was lots of pencil and paper recording going on.
I'm quite sure that part of the effect we see is GPs etc doing, say, a three day vaccine drive.. line up the appointments, get the delivery and then report at the end. Hence a lot of reporting at the end of weeks.
I listened to the entire testimony by Alex Salmond from his swearing of the oath to the end and it was a consummate performance, full of well presented arguments, and coruscating of Sturgeon and her government.
The hearing was also interesting for the shocking level of interrogation by his former SNP colleagues and the Lib Dem, who was plain embarrassing, and the way Salmond made them look incompetent in the extreme
Indeed, it seems to be generally accepted that Jackie Baillie (labour) and Murdo Fraser (consevstive) were far more forensic in their questions, and it has to be said they opened the door for Salmond to make his case
I understand the hearing has requested important documents from the Crown office by Tuesday and before Sturgeon's attendance at the meeting the following day
This story has many more twists and turns but it does make the SNP look as if it is at war with itself
And polls have not yet taken place post yesterday, and more importantly as this saga develops over the weeks and months ahead
The SNP may survive unscathed but it is less certain today, then before yesterday extraordinary events
The SNP could win the May election at a canter with Pol Pot in charge.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
It is why I don't think this idea of opening up again for foreign summer holidays is a good idea. Unless we see rapid expansion in jabbing, too many people won't be covered by the time there is a mad rush to get on their EasyS##t flight to SunVille....and despite all the you will need a vaccination passport stuff, like last summer too many countries economies depend upon foreign tourism e.g. Portugal, Spain, Greece.
I listened to the entire testimony by Alex Salmond from his swearing of the oath to the end and it was a consummate performance, full of well presented arguments, and coruscating of Sturgeon and her government.
The hearing was also interesting for the shocking level of interrogation by his former SNP colleagues and the Lib Dem, who was plain embarrassing, and the way Salmond made them look incompetent in the extreme
Indeed, it seems to be generally accepted that Jackie Baillie (labour) and Murdo Fraser (consevstive) were far more forensic in their questions, and it has to be said they opened the door for Salmond to make his case
I understand the hearing has requested important documents from the Crown office by Tuesday and before Sturgeon's attendance at the meeting the following day
This story has many more twists and turns but it does make the SNP look as if it is at war with itself
And polls have not yet taken place post yesterday, and more importantly as this saga develops over the weeks and months ahead
The SNP may survive unscathed but it is less certain today, then before yesterday extraordinary events
The SNP could win the May election at a canter with Pol Pot in charge.
Not Salmond’s biggest fan but it seems harsh to compare him to Pol Pot.
In any case, the question is how well they will do under Sturgeon.
I listened to the entire testimony by Alex Salmond from his swearing of the oath to the end and it was a consummate performance, full of well presented arguments, and coruscating of Sturgeon and her government.
The hearing was also interesting for the shocking level of interrogation by his former SNP colleagues and the Lib Dem, who was plain embarrassing, and the way Salmond made them look incompetent in the extreme
Indeed, it seems to be generally accepted that Jackie Baillie (labour) and Murdo Fraser (consevstive) were far more forensic in their questions, and it has to be said they opened the door for Salmond to make his case
I understand the hearing has requested important documents from the Crown office by Tuesday and before Sturgeon's attendance at the meeting the following day
This story has many more twists and turns but it does make the SNP look as if it is at war with itself
And polls have not yet taken place post yesterday, and more importantly as this saga develops over the weeks and months ahead
The SNP may survive unscathed but it is less certain today, then before yesterday extraordinary events
The SNP could win the May election at a canter with Pol Pot in charge.
Not Salmond’s biggest fan but it seems harsh to compare him to Pol Pot.
In any case, the question is how well they will do under Sturgeon.
Now now, you know perfectly well what I'm getting it. Sturgeon isn't relevant to the result one way or another.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
One factor that may work in our favour making it easier to accelerate is that previously age groups have been done alongside younger ages. EG over 80s + NHS + Care. Over 70s + very vulnerable. Over 60 + vulnerable.
Going forwards not only will the younger cohorts not be seeing even younger done simultaneously, but some of the younger cohorts will already be done. Indeed over 1/6th of under 65s are already done.
So when it gets to 40s it will be doing the 40s - NHS - care - vulnerable.
I listened to the entire testimony by Alex Salmond from his swearing of the oath to the end and it was a consummate performance, full of well presented arguments, and coruscating of Sturgeon and her government.
The hearing was also interesting for the shocking level of interrogation by his former SNP colleagues and the Lib Dem, who was plain embarrassing, and the way Salmond made them look incompetent in the extreme
Indeed, it seems to be generally accepted that Jackie Baillie (labour) and Murdo Fraser (consevstive) were far more forensic in their questions, and it has to be said they opened the door for Salmond to make his case
I understand the hearing has requested important documents from the Crown office by Tuesday and before Sturgeon's attendance at the meeting the following day
This story has many more twists and turns but it does make the SNP look as if it is at war with itself
And polls have not yet taken place post yesterday, and more importantly as this saga develops over the weeks and months ahead
The SNP may survive unscathed but it is less certain today, then before yesterday extraordinary events
The real issue, I think, is not so much Sturgeon herself, but who else is involved.
Salmond was claiming that he had written/typed evidence that a number of senior SNP people had conspired to get him convicted. And he really, really meant conspired.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
One factor that may work in our favour making it easier to accelerate is that previously age groups have been done alongside younger ages. EG over 80s + NHS + Care. Over 70s + very vulnerable. Over 60 + vulnerable.
Going forwards not only will the younger cohorts not be seeing even younger done simultaneously, but some of the younger cohorts will already be done. Indeed over 1/6th of under 65s are already done.
So when it gets to 40s it will be doing the 40s - NHS - care - vulnerable.
My wife, who is 67, hasn;'t had a call yet. Should she ring her surgery, or wait patiently? I think it's only the over-70s who are at ther "call if we missed you" stage?
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
It is why I don't think this idea of opening up again for foreign summer holidays is a good idea. Unless we see rapid expansion in jabbing, too many people won't be covered by the time there is a mad rush to get on their EasyS##t flight to SunVille....and despite all the you will need a vaccination passport stuff, like last summer too many countries economies depend upon foreign tourism e.g. Portugal, Spain, Greece.
I’m very very optimistic about 2022 but 2021 is bonkers.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
One factor that may work in our favour making it easier to accelerate is that previously age groups have been done alongside younger ages. EG over 80s + NHS + Care. Over 70s + very vulnerable. Over 60 + vulnerable.
Going forwards not only will the younger cohorts not be seeing even younger done simultaneously, but some of the younger cohorts will already be done. Indeed over 1/6th of under 65s are already done.
So when it gets to 40s it will be doing the 40s - NHS - care - vulnerable.
My wife, who is 67, hasn;'t had a call yet. Should she ring her surgery, or wait patiently? I think it's only the over-70s who are at ther "call if we missed you" stage?
Book online via the website. Hancock said that last week, if you are over 65 and haven't been contacted, don't wait, book it yourself.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
One factor that may work in our favour making it easier to accelerate is that previously age groups have been done alongside younger ages. EG over 80s + NHS + Care. Over 70s + very vulnerable. Over 60 + vulnerable.
Going forwards not only will the younger cohorts not be seeing even younger done simultaneously, but some of the younger cohorts will already be done. Indeed over 1/6th of under 65s are already done.
So when it gets to 40s it will be doing the 40s - NHS - care - vulnerable.
My wife, who is 67, hasn;'t had a call yet. Should she ring her surgery, or wait patiently? I think it's only the over-70s who are at ther "call if we missed you" stage?
I think she can book it online if she hasn't had her call yet.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
One factor that may work in our favour making it easier to accelerate is that previously age groups have been done alongside younger ages. EG over 80s + NHS + Care. Over 70s + very vulnerable. Over 60 + vulnerable.
Going forwards not only will the younger cohorts not be seeing even younger done simultaneously, but some of the younger cohorts will already be done. Indeed over 1/6th of under 65s are already done.
So when it gets to 40s it will be doing the 40s - NHS - care - vulnerable.
My wife, who is 67, hasn;'t had a call yet. Should she ring her surgery, or wait patiently? I think it's only the over-70s who are at ther "call if we missed you" stage?
I listened to the entire testimony by Alex Salmond from his swearing of the oath to the end and it was a consummate performance, full of well presented arguments, and coruscating of Sturgeon and her government.
The hearing was also interesting for the shocking level of interrogation by his former SNP colleagues and the Lib Dem, who was plain embarrassing, and the way Salmond made them look incompetent in the extreme
Indeed, it seems to be generally accepted that Jackie Baillie (labour) and Murdo Fraser (consevstive) were far more forensic in their questions, and it has to be said they opened the door for Salmond to make his case
I understand the hearing has requested important documents from the Crown office by Tuesday and before Sturgeon's attendance at the meeting the following day
This story has many more twists and turns but it does make the SNP look as if it is at war with itself
And polls have not yet taken place post yesterday, and more importantly as this saga develops over the weeks and months ahead
The SNP may survive unscathed but it is less certain today, then before yesterday extraordinary events
Good post I agree as I said earlier the SNP may be coming to complacent. Been in power a long time does that. A past first minister in essence trying to get the present won sacked is huge. With all due respect to David Herdon thread which was excellent. The Labour mayor problems in Liverpool is not on the same scale.
Many like me who support independence for Scotland may think is this the way to lead a country and might conclude not yet. It amazes me that a man who fought for independence all his life would put that at risk. He must be so aggrieved that to do that.
Black Wednesday was a slow burner for the conservatives in the polls I believe back in 1992. Once you lose competence as a government can be hard to get back.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
One factor that may work in our favour making it easier to accelerate is that previously age groups have been done alongside younger ages. EG over 80s + NHS + Care. Over 70s + very vulnerable. Over 60 + vulnerable.
Going forwards not only will the younger cohorts not be seeing even younger done simultaneously, but some of the younger cohorts will already be done. Indeed over 1/6th of under 65s are already done.
So when it gets to 40s it will be doing the 40s - NHS - care - vulnerable.
Very true. I know loads of 30-somethings who are already done (including yours truly). For example prior history of gestational diabetes is now a condition for priority jabbing.
Part of the reason why it feels like it’s taking longer is uptake has been so overwhelmingly high in the older groups. This will reduce quite a bit with each decade one assumes. I’m still expecting general 40-somethings to have begun well before the end of March in most places.
For my taste, Prince Charles has too few periods of design he likes, and it all ends up a bit "ersatz history" and "Trumpton".
The recent 'Build Beautiful' document by Scruton was quite good imo.
But what is good design? And what is beautiful?
(Remember that tastes change constantly - in the 1960s they were happily putting dual carriageways through medieval town centres)
And what matters? For example, should we have permeable estates and street patterns, or should we follow crime prevention guidelines of the last 25 years and prevent scrotes having so many escape routes they are never caught?
You raise a fascinating question - but I'd disagree with some of the points here. People in the 1960's knew those buildings and projects were f**k ugly. A vanguard of brutalists insisted on them, most went along with the Emperor's new clothes, and a few who called it right were dismissed.
There are certain universal principles as to what pleases the human eye, and they have good 'primeval' reasons. We prefer natural, or natural looking materials, as they evoke lush, fertile, natural landscape. We prefer curves and undulations to jagged edges for the same reason. We prefer thick looking walls with deeply recessed windows, because they look like the buildings will be safer and warmer. We prefer rich decoration to lack of ornament because it reflects wealth and abundance. If we develop these and other natural preferences into a set of principles for beautiful buildings, we can steer clear of monstrosities, whatever the trends of the future - that would be incredibly worthwhile.
Regarding Prince Charles, all the criticism I have seen of Poundbury and his other architectural pastiches seems to be that they lack authenticity - comparing them to real 18th and 19th century buildings. That is not a valid comparison, because there was never any possibility of 18th and 19th century buildings being conjured up. The real comparison is with modern grey rabbit hutches, and I think few of his critics would not overcome their aversion to Poundbury if their alternative was living on a grey estate in Crawley or Milton Keynes.
I think you somewhat stereotype by decade. There was far more than "Brutalist" (let's not argue about the precise meaning) built in the 60s/early 70s (allowing for time to build), and some of the brutalist that was built was very attractive; much of it is still popular.
One or two that are arguably brutalist and works in say London: Barbican & Silver Lane, Brentford Dock for housing estates, and many in Camden. Plus plenty of others.
Where they don't work I would say it is more down to people who are put there, or insufficient concern for the human scale, or skimping on the design / care / maintenance of the building. Equally non-brutalist things fail for similar reasons.
And some brutalist materials are back in the last 15 years eg textured concrete.
Plus the 60s gave us things like Span and Segal. If I point you at one good 1960s place to visit it would be Peter Aldington's House at Turn End in Bucks. https://www.turnend.org.uk/
On your 'universal principles' - is that in part a "Royal We"?
I agree some way on proportions etc, but the definition of "monstrosity" is very personal. OTOH the proportions for urban highways in the Manual for Streets policy document are not dissimilar to those used by Haussman for rebuilding Paris in the 1850s-1880s.
My preferred architectural style is probably what I call 'humanist' which emerged in the early 60s/70s, and relies on light, space, proportion, simplicity, practicality. For eg churches I am more attracted to Wren preaching boxes or East Anglian wool churches, rather than Baroque or High Gothic (say St Giles, Cheadle), perhaps for similar reasons. That is different to your suggestions wrt to eg decoration.
Have you read "A Pattern Language"? - which is very interesting on how people live socially in their spaces. Somewhere there is a website with much content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
On Prince Charles, I think Poundbury can arguably be called a little post-modern, because the exterior is in some ways a curtain wrapped around a different style of interior - like a stage set.
Not sure why this couldn't have been included in your 'breathless wank sold to gullible journalists' post, though I suppose calling the people who cobble together The National 'journalists' is somewhat of a stretch.
I've got May pencilled in for the 40-49 yr olds, June for those of us in our thirties and 18 - 29 will really have to try and dodge* when the country is fully open and they're unjabbed till July. * Noone is going to care
Of course only those vaccinated by 31/5 will have their immunity by 21/6.
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
We might have half a chance if the 50 - 55 cohort can be done by April 15th, followed by 40s to May 15th ? Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
One factor that may work in our favour making it easier to accelerate is that previously age groups have been done alongside younger ages. EG over 80s + NHS + Care. Over 70s + very vulnerable. Over 60 + vulnerable.
Going forwards not only will the younger cohorts not be seeing even younger done simultaneously, but some of the younger cohorts will already be done. Indeed over 1/6th of under 65s are already done.
So when it gets to 40s it will be doing the 40s - NHS - care - vulnerable.
Very true. I know loads of 30-somethings who are already done (including yours truly). For example prior history of gestational diabetes is now a condition for priority jabbing.
Part of the reason why it feels like it’s taking longer is uptake has been so overwhelmingly high in the older groups. This will reduce quite a bit with each decade one assumes. I’m still expecting general 40-somethings to have begun well before the end of March in most places.
Indeed.
I expect 60-69 + anyone vulnerable will be the biggest cohort of all by quite some margin. At last count I think over 7 million fall under the "under 65 but vulnerable" category. So we may be stuck doing the sixties for quite some time, but if supply accelerates hopefully we can accelerate through other decades sooner. Even while doing increasing numbers of second jabs.
Hopefully it doesn't accelerate due to people refusing the jab. I'd rather wait another week than get it sooner because others before me refused.
For my taste, Prince Charles has too few periods of design he likes, and it all ends up a bit "ersatz history" and "Trumpton".
The recent 'Build Beautiful' document by Scruton was quite good imo.
But what is good design? And what is beautiful?
(Remember that tastes change constantly - in the 1960s they were happily putting dual carriageways through medieval town centres)
And what matters? For example, should we have permeable estates and street patterns, or should we follow crime prevention guidelines of the last 25 years and prevent scrotes having so many escape routes they are never caught?
You raise a fascinating question - but I'd disagree with some of the points here. People in the 1960's knew those buildings and projects were f**k ugly. A vanguard of brutalists insisted on them, most went along with the Emperor's new clothes, and a few who called it right were dismissed.
There are certain universal principles as to what pleases the human eye, and they have good 'primeval' reasons. We prefer natural, or natural looking materials, as they evoke lush, fertile, natural landscape. We prefer curves and undulations to jagged edges for the same reason. We prefer thick looking walls with deeply recessed windows, because they look like the buildings will be safer and warmer. We prefer rich decoration to lack of ornament because it reflects wealth and abundance. If we develop these and other natural preferences into a set of principles for beautiful buildings, we can steer clear of monstrosities, whatever the trends of the future - that would be incredibly worthwhile.
Regarding Prince Charles, all the criticism I have seen of Poundbury and his other architectural pastiches seems to be that they lack authenticity - comparing them to real 18th and 19th century buildings. That is not a valid comparison, because there was never any possibility of 18th and 19th century buildings being conjured up. The real comparison is with modern grey rabbit hutches, and I think few of his critics would not overcome their aversion to Poundbury if their alternative was living on a grey estate in Crawley or Milton Keynes.
I think you somewhat stereotype by decade. There was far more than "Brutalist" (let's not argue about the precise meaning) built in the 60s/early 70s (allowing for time to build), and some of the brutalist that was built was very attractive; much of it is still popular.
One or two that are arguably brutalist and works in say London: Barbican & Silver Lane, Brentford Dock for housing estates, and many in Camden. Plus plenty of others.
Where they don't work I would say it is more down to people who are put there, or insufficient concern for the human scale, or skimping on the design / care / maintenance of the building. Equally non-brutalist things fail for similar reasons.
And some brutalist materials are back in the last 15 years eg textured concrete.
Plus the 60s gave us things like Span and Segal. If I point you at one good 1960s place to visit it would be Peter Aldington's House at Turn End in Bucks. https://www.turnend.org.uk/
On your 'universal principles' - is that in part a "Royal We"?
I agree some way on proportions etc, but the definition of "monstrosity" is very personal. OTOH the proportions for urban highways in the Manual for Streets policy document are not dissimilar to those used by Haussman for rebuilding Paris in the 1850s-1880s.
My preferred architectural style is probably what I call 'humanist' which emerged in the early 60s/70s, and relies on light, space, proportion, simplicity, practicality. For eg churches I am more attracted to Wren preaching boxes or East Anglian wool churches, rather than Baroque or High Gothic (say St Giles, Cheadle), perhaps for similar reasons. That is different to your suggestions wrt to eg decoration.
Have you read "A Pattern Language"? - which is very interesting on how people live socially in their spaces. Somewhere there is a website with much content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
On Prince Charles, I think Poundbury can arguably be called a little post-modern, because the exterior is in some ways a curtain wrapped around a different style of interior - like a stage set.
Comments
Labour have dropped from 42% to anywhere between 33 to 36 must be annoying someone
Tories stayed at circa 40% in same time spell
I’m a way, high house prices can be seen as a compulsory saving scheme. The problem is the potential for prices to crash.
Great post @Andy_Cooke btw.
Some progress.
Try finding non-fuckwit Scots to vote for first, maybe?
See https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-vaccinations/
Seems like a pretty light touch tyranny, and a pretty savage process you want to put Scotland through so you can say you're no longer 'a colony'.
Blatant try missed.
They build in small batches as needed, for obvious reasons (experience of last Recession, management of workforce, and other things.
Estates under 100 are difficult due to the need to cover the overheads of a marketing suite etc, and there are not enough units to support them.
I would say that further boost to housing should perhaps be via smaller developers, and housing Associations. Not Councils due to conflicts of interest.
We should also note possible upward pressure on prices because the leasehold income stream is being taken away. Plus Green Reforms over the next several years.
@Andy_Cooke
But housing supply targets are set by Councils not by developers !
No one is stopping you making it bigger if you want more supply.
We keep making more old people....
But certainly Blair is as toxic there as elsewhere. New Labour is dead. New ideas are needed, and there is scant sign of those. "Fun with flags" ain't going well.
They already ate the Greens' lunch, and the Greens have no response other than to deny it is happening, and going ever more extreme.
They are boxed by their own rhetoric.
It's because you're dealing with developers who are building large estates. Which they do because the planning system is so convoluted that only developers can manage it.
Plus having consent gives a tremendous increase in value without putting a shovel into the ground or laying a single brick. So they've already made the first stage of their profit and can "bank" that without doing anything else for now.
In other countries with simplified planning system getting consent doesn't increase value of the land tremendously, which means that developers don't sit on land as much - and it means you get much more construction of small developments, even one house at a time getting constructed on a road to the owners specs which we don't see so much here. If consent is easy to get then anyone who gets consent but doesn't build will see their profits eroded by others getting consent and actually building.
Planning Permissions already expire in 2 or 3 years, and you have to make a start after often meeting umpteen "pre-commencement conditions" to keep it extant.
If you consider that eg something as simple as trees (work can only be done between Sep/Oct and February) or bats can stop it in it's tracks for months, you can see the challenge. Or eg that groundwors are heavily dependent on time of year.
Also there are many more reasons than building it immediately to apply for PP. One may be a Housing Association or Developer requiring proof that it can be developed before they will even consider the land. Proof is PP.
The PP I obtained in 2013 for a 100 unit Housing Estate started building in 2020, after that time wrangling with the Council.
Another reason developers delay is that they need a long pipeline because it takes many years for sites to get to fruition, so when one does it is at the back of a long queue and they need to keep a stable core workforce for an extended time.
While having limited electoral success, the Greens have driven an agenda as effectively as UKIP ever did, perhaps more so. It depends whether you want personal power or your objectives sometimes. Even Lady MacBeth realises the importance of the green agenda.
But also the Greens have an audience of people with other radical views of how society should be reshaped. There is more going on than just environmentalism.
https://twitter.com/elashton/status/1365571942514884613?s=20
And they are getting worse not better.
What would that mean for England, Scotland, NI, UK on the pro-rata basis?
https://twitter.com/MarinaHyde/status/1365556817804296192?s=19
Plus huge amounts of enlargement, alterations, conversions etc are Permitted Development where PP is not even required.
It mainly gets contentious where the applicant is trying to overprofit or overdevelop or is incompetent or do something in the wrong place.
In that last I agree some policies need to change.
I would like to see some real comparisons across European countries, as they are artefacts of history and planning systems. eg Why does most of modern Holland look like one big suburb?
Strewth that's a lot.
Edit.
Hey I kept pace with uber knowledgeable @MaxPB on vaccines and stats.
Buffs nails.
Now, look at the pattern again. It's London *and* Birmingham (to a slightly lesser extent, but there appears to be a signal nonetheless) that are most affected. The Northern conurbations are faring better.
My guess would be that differential take-up between communities is playing its part, but that efforts to break down hesitancy have been less successful amongst black people than other groups. According to ONS figures from the last census, London and the West Midlands are the two regions of England and Wales where the percentage of black residents exceeds the national average.
I'm indebted to @Malmesbury for the vaccination numbers.
In my neck of the woods (Newham CCG), there is an estimated adult population of 275,000 made up of roughly 248,000 or just over 90% between 16-64 and the other 10% 65+ so I suspect a significantly "younger" population than other areas.
The numbers show, of the 65+ cohort, 19,150 or 71% have had a first vaccination and of those just 112 have had the second vaccination. Among the younger population, 24,510 or about 10% have had a first vaccination (279 have had two).
In total, 43,660 people have had a first vaccination out of an adult population of 275,000 which is just under 16%. Across England, 15 million first doses out of a population of 45 million so a third of all adults 16+.
I don't share the statistical and analytical skills of so many on here but if my area has only vaccinated one sixth of its population while across England one in three has been vaccinated that suggests Newham is lagging well off the pace and moving at half the speed of other areas.
I'd argue that at 71%, the numbers of older people looks poor - some of that may be refusal but it's impossible to know. Compare that with Surrey Heartlands where of an estimated 65+ population of 200,000 185,500 have received their first vaccination which is 92.75%.
There are some big problems and challenges behind these figures which need to be resolved.
In Japan with their zonal system there are preset building standards that must be met but other than that if land is zoned for housing it is very easy to get a house built. Meaning that rather than taking years to develop hundreds of houses built you can rapidly get even down to just one house built at a time to spec by those who want a house built, something you don't see much here where everything is in the hands of the developers for most new homes.
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1365635677652742145?s=19
Are Scots the most habitual voters in the UK?
There was that massive switch from Labour to SNP, but also an election where not a single seat changed. It seems voting en masse for the reds have just been replaced with voting en masse for the yellows.
Or, is this a case of the independence side having one party and the other half of the country vote-splitting between three parties, leaving them all with a fraction of a half?
Or something else?
If we dose "tight" to the 12 week requirement, it's around 400,000 daily first doses or so.
It is hard to campaign against that.
I am still disappointed that the government don't really seem to have set a proper stretch target e.g. 750k -1 million a day. But then perhaps they are being told the supply just won't be there for the next 6 months.
Whilst I think we'll crack the first number easily I'd be surprised if we hit over 3 million first doses any week in March.
* Noone is going to care
I don't expect to be done by then, since I agree with your timeline as likely.
https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/1365685808573874177?s=20
Even though he was voted in by the membership by a good majority.
I guess you voted for RLB.
What would you do in a pandemic and after the greatest defeat since 1935
Just carry on as normal with a Corbyn style leadership.
You seem happy never to win GE, and repeating we nearly won in 2017
Labour did not even May won many more seats than Labour.
The hearing was also interesting for the shocking level of interrogation by his former SNP colleagues and the Lib Dem, who was plain embarrassing, and the way Salmond made them look incompetent in the extreme
Indeed, it seems to be generally accepted that Jackie Baillie (labour) and Murdo Fraser (consevstive) were far more forensic in their questions, and it has to be said they opened the door for Salmond to make his case
I understand the hearing has requested important documents from the Crown office by Tuesday and before Sturgeon's attendance at the meeting the following day
This story has many more twists and turns but it does make the SNP look as if it is at war with itself
And polls have not yet taken place post yesterday, and more importantly as this saga develops over the weeks and months ahead
The SNP may survive unscathed but it is less certain today, then before yesterday extraordinary events
Touch and go by the 21st with the lag factor for antibodies.
In any case, the question is how well they will do under Sturgeon.
Going forwards not only will the younger cohorts not be seeing even younger done simultaneously, but some of the younger cohorts will already be done. Indeed over 1/6th of under 65s are already done.
So when it gets to 40s it will be doing the 40s - NHS - care - vulnerable.
Salmond was claiming that he had written/typed evidence that a number of senior SNP people had conspired to get him convicted. And he really, really meant conspired.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/
"you are aged 64 or over"
seems pretty clear to me - she should book online.
Been in power a long time does that.
A past first minister in essence trying to get the present won sacked is huge.
With all due respect to David Herdon thread which was excellent.
The Labour mayor problems in Liverpool is not on the same scale.
Many like me who support independence for Scotland may think is this the way to lead a country and might conclude not yet.
It amazes me that a man who fought for independence all his life would put that at risk.
He must be so aggrieved that to do that.
Black Wednesday was a slow burner for the conservatives in the polls I believe back in 1992.
Once you lose competence as a government can be hard to get back.
Part of the reason why it feels like it’s taking longer is uptake has been so overwhelmingly high in the older groups. This will reduce quite a bit with each decade one assumes. I’m still expecting general 40-somethings to have begun well before the end of March in most places.
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
One or two that are arguably brutalist and works in say London: Barbican & Silver Lane, Brentford Dock for housing estates, and many in Camden. Plus plenty of others.
Where they don't work I would say it is more down to people who are put there, or insufficient concern for the human scale, or skimping on the design / care / maintenance of the building. Equally non-brutalist things fail for similar reasons.
And some brutalist materials are back in the last 15 years eg textured concrete.
Plus the 60s gave us things like Span and Segal. If I point you at one good 1960s place to visit it would be Peter Aldington's House at Turn End in Bucks. https://www.turnend.org.uk/
On your 'universal principles' - is that in part a "Royal We"?
I agree some way on proportions etc, but the definition of "monstrosity" is very personal. OTOH the proportions for urban highways in the Manual for Streets policy document are not dissimilar to those used by Haussman for rebuilding Paris in the 1850s-1880s.
My preferred architectural style is probably what I call 'humanist' which emerged in the early 60s/70s, and relies on light, space, proportion, simplicity, practicality. For eg churches I am more attracted to Wren preaching boxes or East Anglian wool churches, rather than Baroque or High Gothic (say St Giles, Cheadle), perhaps for similar reasons. That is different to your suggestions wrt to eg decoration.
Have you read "A Pattern Language"? - which is very interesting on how people live socially in their spaces. Somewhere there is a website with much content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
On Prince Charles, I think Poundbury can arguably be called a little post-modern, because the exterior is in some ways a curtain wrapped around a different style of interior - like a stage set.
Enough for now.
I expect 60-69 + anyone vulnerable will be the biggest cohort of all by quite some margin. At last count I think over 7 million fall under the "under 65 but vulnerable" category. So we may be stuck doing the sixties for quite some time, but if supply accelerates hopefully we can accelerate through other decades sooner. Even while doing increasing numbers of second jabs.
Hopefully it doesn't accelerate due to people refusing the jab. I'd rather wait another week than get it sooner because others before me refused.
Two jabs each !