The Delta variant looks to be capable of getting measured infection rates to around 500 per 100k quite widely in both urban and rural bits of the North West, under current vaccination rates and restrictions. It has also shown quick geographic spread, the core high infection area runs inland from north of Lancaster to Leek and is creeping it's way coastward towards Merseyside now . Elsewhere it's more patchy and the same pattern hasn't been seen, but that doesn't mean it's not possible.
I think not only was there a very bad government miss in not restricting India sooner, and thus holding off the Delta wave a few weeks till vaccination rates were somewhat higher. I think the government was horribly complacent to think that the same track and trace that failed last summer could be deployed as the sole tool at the stage things had got to - rapid acceleration of vaccination very locally in Bolton/Blackburn could have suppressed the outward spread from source and provided a model for defeating Delta. Things could have looked rather different.
Bolton STILL lags the national rate for both first and second vaccinations by over 5% after over a month of this. I mean WTAF. There may still be lower uptake for some sections, but I hardly think they have run out of willing recipients. They just barely bothered, that's all there is to it.
And now there are just too many hotspots and not enough supply to run area vaccination in that same way. You would be chasing Delta not stopping it. Perhaps there is still merit in taking vaccination faster in certain areas, but it is less obviously so than when I proposed it in May.
Controversial thought from me - I don't think Covid can be suppressed with Track and Trace because of the long period of spread before symptoms (if any show up). Its almost perfect as a tactic. In diseases where you are only infectious with symptoms, yes tracking cases will work.
Which is where rapid antigen tests ought to have come in. Way back last year.
i think they were not chosen because they were not picking up all the cases that PCR did. I'd suggest this was actually useful, because they were almost certainly only finding the infectious people, not those with very low levels, only found by high cycle count PCR. Almost certainly a very poor decision in the end.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
There's also a political element to the deal. A good deal of Australian produce has been shut out of UK markets since we joined the EU. And, Australia is currently being hit by sanctions imposed by China, due to its criticism of the regime. So, actually, it helps to bind the two countries more closely.
We had Commonwealth preference prior to 1973 (in fact, it wasn't wholly phased out until 1980) with significant Australian and New Zealand imports.
I don't remember British farming being devastated at the time.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1.
Really? Then why did it take 5 weeks for PHE to declare it a VOC?
You clearly know more about it than the chap doing the genomic sequencing!
...so why didn’t PHE immediately escalate Delta to a variant of concern in March?".......Well, first of all, the variant reported in late March was *not* Delta / B.1.617.2, but its cousin, B.1.617.1.
It was known, but not a VOC. You’ve snipped the rest of my timeline which I presume you don’t quarrel with.
The issue is not that we should have closed borders through April because of Delta.
The issue is that India should have been on the red list because it was already a comparative source of infection to its neighbours, and more besides a significant source of new variants (whether concerning or not).
This was known by April 9.
Thats fine, but this is not the line that has been used to attack the government by most.
The government let Delta in. New variants were always a risk; that’s why we track them.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
I’m not saying it will? I’m explaining that the “abolishing subsidies will regenerate the industry!” line is tosh.
I rather suspect your view about 1970s agriculture is tosh, too, but don’t have the data.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
The Delta variant looks to be capable of getting measured infection rates to around 500 per 100k quite widely in both urban and rural bits of the North West, under current vaccination rates and restrictions. It has also shown quick geographic spread, the core high infection area runs inland from north of Lancaster to Leek and is creeping it's way coastward towards Merseyside now . Elsewhere it's more patchy and the same pattern hasn't been seen, but that doesn't mean it's not possible.
I think not only was there a very bad government miss in not restricting India sooner, and thus holding off the Delta wave a few weeks till vaccination rates were somewhat higher. I think the government was horribly complacent to think that the same track and trace that failed last summer could be deployed as the sole tool at the stage things had got to - rapid acceleration of vaccination very locally in Bolton/Blackburn could have suppressed the outward spread from source and provided a model for defeating Delta. Things could have looked rather different.
Bolton STILL lags the national rate for both first and second vaccinations by over 5% after over a month of this. I mean WTAF. There may still be lower uptake for some sections, but I hardly think they have run out of willing recipients. They just barely bothered, that's all there is to it.
And now there are just too many hotspots and not enough supply to run area vaccination in that same way. You would be chasing Delta not stopping it. Perhaps there is still merit in taking vaccination faster in certain areas, but it is less obviously so than when I proposed it in May.
Controversial thought from me - I don't think Covid can be suppressed with Track and Trace because of the long period of spread before symptoms (if any show up). Its almost perfect as a tactic. In diseases where you are only infectious with symptoms, yes tracking cases will work.
Which is where rapid antigen tests ought to have come in. Way back last year.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1.
Really? Then why did it take 5 weeks for PHE to declare it a VOC?
You clearly know more about it than the chap doing the genomic sequencing!
...so why didn’t PHE immediately escalate Delta to a variant of concern in March?".......Well, first of all, the variant reported in late March was *not* Delta / B.1.617.2, but its cousin, B.1.617.1.
The issue is not that we should have closed borders through April because of Delta. .
That's what's being argued now - a charge led by Captain Hindsight.
Yes, we should have had greater control of borders (I don't advocate abandoning British citizens abroad in COVID hot spots, although some do) via quarantine - as I've argued for over a year - but this "because of Delta" is pure & simple wrong.
The borders were "closed" to India two weeks before we knew Delta was a problem.
The argument WAS, let’s close the border because the risk of a variant.
So the solution is "close the border to countries that identify new variants"?
All that will do is punish countries with decent sequencing capability and give a free pass to those that don't. Like happened to Portugal.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
When we have lamb it is and always will be Welsh
Consumer choice is a good thing.
When I buy meat I tend to look for the Red Tractor label, but that should be my choice not others choice on my behalf.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
In Victorian/Edwardian times, very often the developer would build a street. Hence houses on neighbouring streets looking different. Sometimes they differ by which side of the road they are on - the developers bought one side of the road, each.
Absolutely!
And Victorian/Edwardian houses are considered generally much better than the boxes built by modern developers. The system then worked.
Having entire segments of a town tied up by a single monopolistic developer who bribes the right politicians gets approval is in nobodies interests but the politicians and the developer.
That so many people are so keen to defend a system that is broken instead of having more competition is bizarre.
Victorian construction standards are hugely flattered by survivorship bias. But I wouldn't touch a new build put up by any of the major developers.
A lot of Victorian builders were every bit as dodgy as their modern counterparts. Materials were comparatively expensive, and labour comparatively cheap; some of the stuff they put up was built out of absolute crap.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
In Victorian/Edwardian times, very often the developer would build a street. Hence houses on neighbouring streets looking different. Sometimes they differ by which side of the road they are on - the developers bought one side of the road, each.
Absolutely!
And Victorian/Edwardian houses are considered generally much better than the boxes built by modern developers. The system then worked.
Having entire segments of a town tied up by a single monopolistic developer who bribes the right politicians gets approval is in nobodies interests but the politicians and the developer.
That so many people are so keen to defend a system that is broken instead of having more competition is bizarre.
Victorian construction standards are hugely flattered by survivorship bias. But I wouldn't touch a new build put up by any of the major developers.
A lot of Victorian builders were every bit as dodgy as their modern counterparts. Materials were comparatively expensive, and labour comparatively cheap; some of the stuff they put up was built out of absolute crap.
That's not a problem if the house is cheap.
The Japanese tend to pull down and rebuild their homes every thirty years. But it's cheap and easy to do so and the system works.
If you have ludicrously expensive homes from monopoly developers that are poor quality ... That's not an improvement is it?
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1.
Really? Then why did it take 5 weeks for PHE to declare it a VOC?
You clearly know more about it than the chap doing the genomic sequencing!
...so why didn’t PHE immediately escalate Delta to a variant of concern in March?".......Well, first of all, the variant reported in late March was *not* Delta / B.1.617.2, but its cousin, B.1.617.1.
The issue is not that we should have closed borders through April because of Delta. .
That's what's being argued now - a charge led by Captain Hindsight.
Yes, we should have had greater control of borders (I don't advocate abandoning British citizens abroad in COVID hot spots, although some do) via quarantine - as I've argued for over a year - but this "because of Delta" is pure & simple wrong.
The borders were "closed" to India two weeks before we knew Delta was a problem.
The argument WAS, let’s close the border because the risk of a variant.
So the solution is "close the border to countries that identify new variants"?
All that will do is punish countries with decent sequencing capability and give a free pass to those that don't. Like happened to Portugal.
Actually that’s pretty much what we did do to Portugal.
Anyway, if I reverse your logic you’re saying we should ignore that data point, which is even more batshit.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For Philip that is a good thing, not a problem.
Yes, he has confirmed that. That’s why I noted he was at least logically consistent.
I think I might celebrate the Aussie trade deal, with the antipodean fillet steak I have in the fridge at home - which costs about £20/kg from the local meat wholesaler here in the sandpit.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
In Victorian/Edwardian times, very often the developer would build a street. Hence houses on neighbouring streets looking different. Sometimes they differ by which side of the road they are on - the developers bought one side of the road, each.
Absolutely!
And Victorian/Edwardian houses are considered generally much better than the boxes built by modern developers. The system then worked.
Having entire segments of a town tied up by a single monopolistic developer who bribes the right politicians gets approval is in nobodies interests but the politicians and the developer.
That so many people are so keen to defend a system that is broken instead of having more competition is bizarre.
Victorian construction standards are hugely flattered by survivorship bias. But I wouldn't touch a new build put up by any of the major developers.
A lot of Victorian builders were every bit as dodgy as their modern counterparts. Materials were comparatively expensive, and labour comparatively cheap; some of the stuff they put up was built out of absolute crap.
Yes. A lot of the worst stuff is gone now, hence my point about survivorship bias. Imagining all Victorian housing was as good as what remains is like imagining everyone in the Medieval period lived in a castle. Even the relatively good stuff has problems. Our Victorian terraced house has almost no foundations, despite being built on a steep hill. As a result there are no horizontal lines at all. It's expensive to heat, too.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
In Victorian/Edwardian times, very often the developer would build a street. Hence houses on neighbouring streets looking different. Sometimes they differ by which side of the road they are on - the developers bought one side of the road, each.
Absolutely!
And Victorian/Edwardian houses are considered generally much better than the boxes built by modern developers. The system then worked.
Having entire segments of a town tied up by a single monopolistic developer who bribes the right politicians gets approval is in nobodies interests but the politicians and the developer.
That so many people are so keen to defend a system that is broken instead of having more competition is bizarre.
Victorian construction standards are hugely flattered by survivorship bias. But I wouldn't touch a new build put up by any of the major developers.
A lot of Victorian builders were every bit as dodgy as their modern counterparts. Materials were comparatively expensive, and labour comparatively cheap; some of the stuff they put up was built out of absolute crap.
Yes. A lot of the worst stuff is gone now, hence my point about survivorship bias. Imagining all Victorian housing was as good as what remains is like imagining everyone in the Medieval period lived in a castle. Even the relatively good stuff has problems. Our Victorian terraced house has almost no foundations, despite being built on a steep hill. As a result there are no horizontal lines at all. It's expensive to heat, too.
Mine is as hot as hell on the upper floors, at least it becomes so by late afternoon in this weather.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
I'm sorry, but this is naive. The issue is whether we wish to maintain higher legally required standards than Australia, on welfare, health and environmental grounds. If we decide that we're fine with packing animals into feedlots and spraying them indiscriminately with antibiotics in case the overcrowding produces rampant infections, then food will become (somewhat) cheaper, and British beef farmers may or may not survive. Logic would suggest that we should abolish the standards for British farmers too, so they can compete on a level playing field as you imply. Saying "compete, but on conditions that make you uncompetitive" is surely unfair. from the most free-market perspective?
That, however, would contradict the stated Government policy of maintaining our standards. There is therefore a fudge to protect British farmers, but only for 15 years, and a vague and seemingly implausible suggestion that farmer will be helped to find new markets for high-welfare products in Asia.
EU already insist on certain standards wrt beef imports from Australia, of which there are up to around 10k tonnes a year I think. How do they do it? I believe the category is "High Quality Grain Fed - HGF".
We need to see what the detail of the agreement says, and what the break mechanisms are eg if China suddenly bans Oz beef and causes it to be diverted.
Personally I think the farm lobby has heavily overplayed their hand - particularly in attempts to have all the trade deals nobbled by laying down global legal requirements. They ended up with a strong consultative body, whish is far more appropriate.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
I’m not saying it will? I’m explaining that the “abolishing subsidies will regenerate the industry!” line is tosh.
I rather suspect your view about 1970s agriculture is tosh, too, but don’t have the data.
If you can show me that Welsh farming was in the doldrums in the 1970s due to Commonwealth preference then I'll happily concede. But I doubt you can.
Consider the counter-argument: let's say we were planning to do a trade deal with the EU today from WTO rules and, as a price of that, the EU demanded "access" to our agricultural market for its 450 citizens. There might be stories of us being flooded by French beef, Danish bacon, German sausages, Spanish seafood and Italian olive oil.
It would, of course, proof to be nonsense just as it is for Australia - a country almost 20 times smaller and 10,000 miles away.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
In Victorian/Edwardian times, very often the developer would build a street. Hence houses on neighbouring streets looking different. Sometimes they differ by which side of the road they are on - the developers bought one side of the road, each.
Absolutely!
And Victorian/Edwardian houses are considered generally much better than the boxes built by modern developers. The system then worked.
Having entire segments of a town tied up by a single monopolistic developer who bribes the right politicians gets approval is in nobodies interests but the politicians and the developer.
That so many people are so keen to defend a system that is broken instead of having more competition is bizarre.
Victorian construction standards are hugely flattered by survivorship bias. But I wouldn't touch a new build put up by any of the major developers.
A lot of Victorian builders were every bit as dodgy as their modern counterparts. Materials were comparatively expensive, and labour comparatively cheap; some of the stuff they put up was built out of absolute crap.
Yes. A lot of the worst stuff is gone now, hence my point about survivorship bias. Imagining all Victorian housing was as good as what remains is like imagining everyone in the Medieval period lived in a castle. Even the relatively good stuff has problems. Our Victorian terraced house has almost no foundations, despite being built on a steep hill. As a result there are no horizontal lines at all. It's expensive to heat, too.
Mine is as hot as hell on the upper floors, at least it becomes so by late afternoon in this weather.
True. There's probably a 10C temperature differential between the basement and the loft by 4pm in the summer.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
There, I agree. It's one reason for our push to get supported-self-build going. Approve an entire area and sort out the archeological, environmental, access, infrastructure issues, and get a list of builders and potential designs and put those who'd like to self-build (from any degree from "pick a house from a list and select the builder" to "design it yourself within these guidelines"
One thing that would, in my opinion, really help against the NIMBY tendency is for infrastructure to lead development rather than lag development. If you're always playing catch-up, then as long as development hasn't actually stalled, you've always got overloaded infrastructure. It's very short-term thinking.
I have long meant to do a thread header on this very subject. Once again turning to look at our neighbours in Europe - and particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium - there are some excellent examples of this working extremely well in practice. Breaking the stranglehold that large developers have on our planning and building process seems to me to be an excellent first move in improving our housing stock and build rates.
We need to think about why the existing initiatives to promote self and custom housebuilding (of which there are many) have been unsuccessful. The answer is probably not enough land being bought forward for development, and it not happening fast enough.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1.
Really? Then why did it take 5 weeks for PHE to declare it a VOC?
You clearly know more about it than the chap doing the genomic sequencing!
...so why didn’t PHE immediately escalate Delta to a variant of concern in March?".......Well, first of all, the variant reported in late March was *not* Delta / B.1.617.2, but its cousin, B.1.617.1.
It was known, but not a VOC. You’ve snipped the rest of my timeline which I presume you don’t quarrel with.
The issue is not that we should have closed borders through April because of Delta.
The issue is that India should have been on the red list because it was already a comparative source of infection to its neighbours, and more besides a significant source of new variants (whether concerning or not).
This was known by April 9.
Thats fine, but this is not the line that has been used to attack the government by most.
The government let Delta in. New variants were always a risk; that’s why we track them.
Agreed, but to allege that we knew all about Delta back at the start of April is just not true. See the posts from Carlotta.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
You really have a very nasty streak
I’m afraid, Big G, you are a humourless scold.
I have no humour when it comes to mental health and the wellbeing of the elderly being used as pawns in an argument
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
Being fed up with this kind of miserabilism is one of the reasons I changed my position on Brexit.
The accusation that the government knows the price of everything and the value of nothing doesn't stack up anyway. If that were true, they would give in to pressure to align with EU law rather than placing a higher value on freeing ourselves from the Brussels system.
Cyclefree's anger at the world is pretty much limitless and the root of that anger is the existence of Boris Johnson so until Boris disappears poor old Cyclefree's inchoate rage at the universe, where everything would obviously be better if she made all the decisions, should be allowed to run it's course - in fact these days it seems to be PBs main function, lots of people raging about how awful it all is all the time - one reason to bow out again until the next UK General Election...
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
I’m not saying it will? I’m explaining that the “abolishing subsidies will regenerate the industry!” line is tosh.
I rather suspect your view about 1970s agriculture is tosh, too, but don’t have the data.
If you can show me that Welsh farming was in the doldrums in the 1970s due to Commonwealth preference then I'll happily concede. But I doubt you can.
Consider the counter-argument: let's say we were planning to do a trade deal with the EU today from WTO rules and, as a price of that, the EU demanded "access" to our agricultural market for its 450 citizens. There might be stories of us being flooded by French beef, Danish bacon, German sausages, Spanish seafood and Italian olive oil.
It would, of course, proof to be nonsense just as it is for Australia - a country almost 20 times smaller and 10,000 miles away.
I think you are I are arguing different things. Your counter-argument doesn’t really make any sense to me.
Britain doesn’t feed itself. That has long been the case*. We do need to import protein from somewhere. The question is the status, subsidy, and competitiveness of our own producers.
*I believe Britain actually feeds itself MORE than it did under the Commonwealth preference days, perhaps suggesting Welsh farmers have indeed done better within the EU.
My uncle - who grew up on a mixed sheep and dairy farm - visited Welsh farms in the late 60s on some kind of exchange. He was shocked by the appalling backwardness and lack of productivity. He still talks about it.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
I'm sorry, but this is naive. The issue is whether we wish to maintain higher legally required standards than Australia, on welfare, health and environmental grounds. If we decide that we're fine with packing animals into feedlots and spraying them indiscriminately with antibiotics in case the overcrowding produces rampant infections, then food will become (somewhat) cheaper, and British beef farmers may or may not survive. Logic would suggest that we should abolish the standards for British farmers too, so they can compete on a level playing field as you imply. Saying "compete, but on conditions that make you uncompetitive" is surely unfair. from the most free-market perspective?
That, however, would contradict the stated Government policy of maintaining our standards. There is therefore a fudge to protect British farmers, but only for 15 years, and a vague and seemingly implausible suggestion that farmer will be helped to find new markets for high-welfare products in Asia.
EU already insist on certain standards wrt beef imports from Australia, of which there are up to around 10k tonnes a year I think. How do they do it? I believe the category is "High Quality Grain Fed - HGF".
We need to see what the detail of the agreement says, and what the break mechanisms are eg if China suddenly bans Oz beef and causes it to be diverted.
Personally I think the farm lobby has heavily overplayed their hand - particularly in attempts to have all the trade deals nobbled by laying down global legal requirements. They ended up with a strong consultative body, whish is far more appropriate.
Well, this is my day job, so I'm fairly close to it, and I've been consistently positive about Defra'[s work recently. But the consultative body is not strong - indeed at present it doesn't even exist, though recruitment is under way, so it won't be able to comment on this deal. As you say, nthough, we need to see the details.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
Being fed up with this kind of miserabilism is one of the reasons I changed my position on Brexit.
The accusation that the government knows the price of everything and the value of nothing doesn't stack up anyway. If that were true, they would give in to pressure to align with EU law rather than placing a higher value on freeing ourselves from the Brussels system.
Cyclefree's anger at the world is pretty much limitless and the root of that anger is the existence of Boris Johnson so until Boris disappears poor old Cyclefree's inchoate rage at the universe, where everything would obviously be better if she made all the decisions, should be allowed to run it's course - in fact these days it seems to be PBs main function, lots of people raging about how awful it all is all the time - one reason to bow out again until the next UK General Election...
To be fair to Ms @Cyclefree, her business as a consultant has been pretty much closed for 18 months as a result of the pandemic, and her daughter’s pub/restaurant has been severely affected. She’s very much entitled to be upset with the situation.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
There, I agree. It's one reason for our push to get supported-self-build going. Approve an entire area and sort out the archeological, environmental, access, infrastructure issues, and get a list of builders and potential designs and put those who'd like to self-build (from any degree from "pick a house from a list and select the builder" to "design it yourself within these guidelines"
One thing that would, in my opinion, really help against the NIMBY tendency is for infrastructure to lead development rather than lag development. If you're always playing catch-up, then as long as development hasn't actually stalled, you've always got overloaded infrastructure. It's very short-term thinking.
I have long meant to do a thread header on this very subject. Once again turning to look at our neighbours in Europe - and particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium - there are some excellent examples of this working extremely well in practice. Breaking the stranglehold that large developers have on our planning and building process seems to me to be an excellent first move in improving our housing stock and build rates.
Please do.
It’s one of the key lags on our economic productivity and we can’t afford such luxuries post Brexit.
Infrastructure leading development was the pattern of many London suburbs (follow the tube network).
(It's a good article in the Guardian ... reprint from 1924 )
One huge issue with handing much more power over planning to Councillors and politicos is that Professional Planners and the Planning Inspectorate make decisions in accordance with law and policy rather than grubby, corrupt politics, and they are generally far better decisions.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
I’m not saying it will? I’m explaining that the “abolishing subsidies will regenerate the industry!” line is tosh.
I rather suspect your view about 1970s agriculture is tosh, too, but don’t have the data.
If you can show me that Welsh farming was in the doldrums in the 1970s due to Commonwealth preference then I'll happily concede. But I doubt you can.
Consider the counter-argument: let's say we were planning to do a trade deal with the EU today from WTO rules and, as a price of that, the EU demanded "access" to our agricultural market for its 450 citizens. There might be stories of us being flooded by French beef, Danish bacon, German sausages, Spanish seafood and Italian olive oil.
It would, of course, proof to be nonsense just as it is for Australia - a country almost 20 times smaller and 10,000 miles away.
I think you are I are arguing different things. Your counter-argument doesn’t really make any sense to me.
Britain doesn’t feed itself. That has long been the case*. We do need to import protein from somewhere. The question is the status, subsidy, and competitiveness of our own producers.
*I believe Britain actually feeds itself MORE than it did under the Commonwealth preference days, perhaps suggesting Welsh farmers have indeed done better within the EU.
My uncle - who grew up on a mixed sheep and dairy farm - visited Welsh farms in the late 60s on some kind of exchange. He was shocked by the appalling backwardness and lack of productivity. He still talks about it.
You've got to be careful not to confuse correlation with causation, however.
British farming mechanised and modernised massively from the 1960s, and to a far greater extent than elsewhere in the EU - especially France.
It's a fair point on subsidies but I don't think these are an issue provided they are phased out over a long time period. The agricultural market will be facing massive change over the coming decades anyway.
King Bongo, she's not wrong about the cause of this delay being the PM's idiotic and obviously stupid delay to putting India on the red list due to his desire for a photo op.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
There, I agree. It's one reason for our push to get supported-self-build going. Approve an entire area and sort out the archeological, environmental, access, infrastructure issues, and get a list of builders and potential designs and put those who'd like to self-build (from any degree from "pick a house from a list and select the builder" to "design it yourself within these guidelines"
One thing that would, in my opinion, really help against the NIMBY tendency is for infrastructure to lead development rather than lag development. If you're always playing catch-up, then as long as development hasn't actually stalled, you've always got overloaded infrastructure. It's very short-term thinking.
I have long meant to do a thread header on this very subject. Once again turning to look at our neighbours in Europe - and particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium - there are some excellent examples of this working extremely well in practice. Breaking the stranglehold that large developers have on our planning and building process seems to me to be an excellent first move in improving our housing stock and build rates.
Yes, please do.
I think some people react with horror by misimagining what I and others mean by a free market in construction. Especially since personally I've always said with building standards and zoning.
Instead of thinking of this as a market economics issue, or a land or countryside vs urban vs suburban issue, perhaps the one thing we can agree on is making it an issue with large developers having a stranglehold over construction.
If you have zoning and standards predetermined, potentially even determined by the local Council, then anyone who wants to build can then do so within the regulations laid out. Rural, suburban and urban land could have different standards fitting the character of the land, but there wouldn't be a need for a single developer to have a monopoly on construction.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
So if Wales doesn't have a competitive advantage why should the Welsh be doing it rather than Kiwis?
If you’re argument is that you wish to abolish farming in this country, then that is at least logically coherent.
Philip seems to have a thing against farmers. Perhaps it is because they are annoying because they spend all their time outside working pretty hard rather than on a keyboard
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
In Victorian/Edwardian times, very often the developer would build a street. Hence houses on neighbouring streets looking different. Sometimes they differ by which side of the road they are on - the developers bought one side of the road, each.
Absolutely!
And Victorian/Edwardian houses are considered generally much better than the boxes built by modern developers. The system then worked.
Having entire segments of a town tied up by a single monopolistic developer who bribes the right politicians gets approval is in nobodies interests but the politicians and the developer.
That so many people are so keen to defend a system that is broken instead of having more competition is bizarre.
Victorian construction standards are hugely flattered by survivorship bias. But I wouldn't touch a new build put up by any of the major developers.
A lot of Victorian builders were every bit as dodgy as their modern counterparts. Materials were comparatively expensive, and labour comparatively cheap; some of the stuff they put up was built out of absolute crap.
Yes. A lot of the worst stuff is gone now, hence my point about survivorship bias. Imagining all Victorian housing was as good as what remains is like imagining everyone in the Medieval period lived in a castle. Even the relatively good stuff has problems. Our Victorian terraced house has almost no foundations, despite being built on a steep hill. As a result there are no horizontal lines at all. It's expensive to heat, too.
Mine is as hot as hell on the upper floors, at least it becomes so by late afternoon in this weather.
Is this not true of all housing?
This is an issue I am very interested in currently: I live in a 1930s dormer bungalow, in which it is uncomfortably hot upstairs in the summer, and cold upstairs in the winter. From the upstairs, I can also hear the M60 from quarter of a mile away (although it's been strangely quiet these last few days). It needs a new roof, and I've been vaguely assured by builders that with a new roof all of these problems will be solved. But it seems to good to be true. Surely hot air just rises? Is anyone's house not uncomfortably hot upstairs in the summer?
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
I'm sorry, but this is naive. The issue is whether we wish to maintain higher legally required standards than Australia, on welfare, health and environmental grounds. If we decide that we're fine with packing animals into feedlots and spraying them indiscriminately with antibiotics in case the overcrowding produces rampant infections, then food will become (somewhat) cheaper, and British beef farmers may or may not survive. Logic would suggest that we should abolish the standards for British farmers too, so they can compete on a level playing field as you imply. Saying "compete, but on conditions that make you uncompetitive" is surely unfair. from the most free-market perspective?
That, however, would contradict the stated Government policy of maintaining our standards. There is therefore a fudge to protect British farmers, but only for 15 years, and a vague and seemingly implausible suggestion that farmer will be helped to find new markets for high-welfare products in Asia.
EU already insist on certain standards wrt beef imports from Australia, of which there are up to around 10k tonnes a year I think. How do they do it? I believe the category is "High Quality Grain Fed - HGF".
We need to see what the detail of the agreement says, and what the break mechanisms are eg if China suddenly bans Oz beef and causes it to be diverted.
Personally I think the farm lobby has heavily overplayed their hand - particularly in attempts to have all the trade deals nobbled by laying down global legal requirements. They ended up with a strong consultative body, whish is far more appropriate.
Even if China did ban Oz beef, most Australian produce would go to Japan, South Korea and the USA, its 2nd, 3rd and 4th largest export destinations respectively after China not to us.
The UK is only Australia's 9th largest export destination and Australia is only the UK's 19th largest destination for exports and still only 10th even including the EU only as one block.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
You really have a very nasty streak
I’m afraid, Big G, you are a humourless scold.
I have no humour when it comes to mental health and the wellbeing of the elderly being used as pawns in an argument
Come on, the phrase cretin is not very PC, nor lunatic, but I dont think there was any reference to genuine mental health. Would you be in favour of the banning of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party?
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
So if Wales doesn't have a competitive advantage why should the Welsh be doing it rather than Kiwis?
If you’re argument is that you wish to abolish farming in this country, then that is at least logically coherent.
I couldn't care less if farming in this country failed, any more than mining, but I see no reason it all would.
If you want land to be preserved for the environment then planting trees or other more natural environments can do more for the planet than having pastures for sheep.
You’re the sort of mug who would have long said the same about manufacturing, and yet has spent the last year whinging like a baby that the EU blocked exports of vaccines and that we’re not manufacturing mrna jabs domestically quickly enough.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
Yes, we need to do all we can to encourage self-building, which seems to happen well in most other parts of the world.
With regard to larger developments, the issue is more of land-banking and phased releasing by developers. Perhaps charging council tax on a development a year after planning permission is given, rather than after the building is occupied, might be a way forward - maybe with an escalator for unfinished units.
That's where LVT can come into its own. Replace council tax by an annual charge on the value of a plot with current permissions. If you've got planning permission, it kicks in immediately. (It wouldn't bankrupt farmers, as the farmland's value as farmland without permissions is orders of magnitude lower than development land with permissions. As the permissions are what catapult the value of the land up, they must be taken into account.
Only tax I know of with a negative tax wedge.
That doesn't really work because often delays of many years in building out PPs are often caused by Councils themselves.
How does this one year trigger work when, for example, work on hedges or trees is effectively impossible between April and September, with similar problems with eg bat roosts or badger sets?
Agree on a move towards LVT; we need the Proportional Property Tax which is a step in that direction.
Some of the detail of LVT proposals around has not been thought through, though. The last one I saw that Monbiot (?) was boostering was baed on a poor understanding.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
I’m not saying it will? I’m explaining that the “abolishing subsidies will regenerate the industry!” line is tosh.
I rather suspect your view about 1970s agriculture is tosh, too, but don’t have the data.
If you can show me that Welsh farming was in the doldrums in the 1970s due to Commonwealth preference then I'll happily concede. But I doubt you can.
Consider the counter-argument: let's say we were planning to do a trade deal with the EU today from WTO rules and, as a price of that, the EU demanded "access" to our agricultural market for its 450 citizens. There might be stories of us being flooded by French beef, Danish bacon, German sausages, Spanish seafood and Italian olive oil.
It would, of course, proof to be nonsense just as it is for Australia - a country almost 20 times smaller and 10,000 miles away.
I think you are I are arguing different things. Your counter-argument doesn’t really make any sense to me.
Britain doesn’t feed itself. That has long been the case*. We do need to import protein from somewhere. The question is the status, subsidy, and competitiveness of our own producers.
*I believe Britain actually feeds itself MORE than it did under the Commonwealth preference days, perhaps suggesting Welsh farmers have indeed done better within the EU.
My uncle - who grew up on a mixed sheep and dairy farm - visited Welsh farms in the late 60s on some kind of exchange. He was shocked by the appalling backwardness and lack of productivity. He still talks about it.
Many Welsh farms did not have electricity in the 1960s. They had not moved on in 100 years.
Susanna Reid forensically skewers Michael Gove over India going on the red list
We found out about the Indian variant on April 1st & they didn't go onto the red list until April the 23rd.. we didn't shut the border until it was too late
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
I'm sorry, but this is naive. The issue is whether we wish to maintain higher legally required standards than Australia, on welfare, health and environmental grounds. If we decide that we're fine with packing animals into feedlots and spraying them indiscriminately with antibiotics in case the overcrowding produces rampant infections, then food will become (somewhat) cheaper, and British beef farmers may or may not survive. Logic would suggest that we should abolish the standards for British farmers too, so they can compete on a level playing field as you imply. Saying "compete, but on conditions that make you uncompetitive" is surely unfair. from the most free-market perspective?
That, however, would contradict the stated Government policy of maintaining our standards. There is therefore a fudge to protect British farmers, but only for 15 years, and a vague and seemingly implausible suggestion that farmer will be helped to find new markets for high-welfare products in Asia.
Agreed. Either standards should be relaxed for all UK consumption, or you insist on foreign competitors meeting your existing standards in a trade deal. It makes no sense to selectively lower standards for your competitors while keeping higher ones for domestic producers, just to get a trade deal. Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
What is the point of all those police being there if protesters can simply chase someone, to whom they clearly may have violent intent, through their lines?
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
In Victorian/Edwardian times, very often the developer would build a street. Hence houses on neighbouring streets looking different. Sometimes they differ by which side of the road they are on - the developers bought one side of the road, each.
Absolutely!
And Victorian/Edwardian houses are considered generally much better than the boxes built by modern developers. The system then worked.
Having entire segments of a town tied up by a single monopolistic developer who bribes the right politicians gets approval is in nobodies interests but the politicians and the developer.
That so many people are so keen to defend a system that is broken instead of having more competition is bizarre.
Victorian construction standards are hugely flattered by survivorship bias. But I wouldn't touch a new build put up by any of the major developers.
A lot of Victorian builders were every bit as dodgy as their modern counterparts. Materials were comparatively expensive, and labour comparatively cheap; some of the stuff they put up was built out of absolute crap.
Yes. A lot of the worst stuff is gone now, hence my point about survivorship bias. Imagining all Victorian housing was as good as what remains is like imagining everyone in the Medieval period lived in a castle. Even the relatively good stuff has problems. Our Victorian terraced house has almost no foundations, despite being built on a steep hill. As a result there are no horizontal lines at all. It's expensive to heat, too.
Mine is as hot as hell on the upper floors, at least it becomes so by late afternoon in this weather.
Is this not true of all housing?
This is an issue I am very interested in currently: I live in a 1930s dormer bungalow, in which it is uncomfortably hot upstairs in the summer, and cold upstairs in the winter. From the upstairs, I can also hear the M60 from quarter of a mile away (although it's been strangely quiet these last few days). It needs a new roof, and I've been vaguely assured by builders that with a new roof all of these problems will be solved. But it seems to good to be true. Surely hot air just rises? Is anyone's house not uncomfortably hot upstairs in the summer?
I have an early 50's bungalow where the attic was, long before my time, used as a workshop for a budding electronics firm. When we bought the place it hadn't been used as such for some considerable time, so we cleared out the residual debris and converted it into an office, as I was still working and needed some dedicated space. Now it still houses my computer and is a place where I can hide away, chat on Pb and do the odd planning and correspondence for the organisations to which I belong. And Mr C, it is indeed uncomfortably hot in late afternoons in summer. No-one has suggested a new roof, although I do, every so often have offers for replacement loft insulation.
Susanna Reid forensically skewers Michael Gove over India going on the red list
We found out about the Indian variant on April 1st & they didn't go onto the red list until April the 23rd.. we didn't shut the border until it was too late
He used the same cliche with Dan Walker this morning. Walker really seemed to get under his skin. Dan Walker comes across as a Young Mr Nice Guy, but actually is a pretty good interviewer.
Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Australia more than anywhere shows the limits of gravity trade models. It became the richest country in the world per capita in the 19th century based on trade with a place that couldn't have been further away.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) update: First Minister's statement to Holyrood 7th Nov 2020 16th Feb 9th Mar 25th May 1st Jun 8th Jun etc
Tell me when she last updated Holyrood *before* her own press conference?
All those times to start with. What would be the fucking point of giving a press briefing then repeating it an hour later in parliament? That's the sort of thing BJ and his greasy crew might do.
What is the point of all those police being there if protesters can simply chase someone, to whom they clearly may have violent intent, through their lines?
Susanna Reid forensically skewers Michael Gove over India going on the red list
We found out about the Indian variant on April 1st & they didn't go onto the red list until April the 23rd.. we didn't shut the border until it was too late
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
I'm sorry, but this is naive. The issue is whether we wish to maintain higher legally required standards than Australia, on welfare, health and environmental grounds. If we decide that we're fine with packing animals into feedlots and spraying them indiscriminately with antibiotics in case the overcrowding produces rampant infections, then food will become (somewhat) cheaper, and British beef farmers may or may not survive. Logic would suggest that we should abolish the standards for British farmers too, so they can compete on a level playing field as you imply. Saying "compete, but on conditions that make you uncompetitive" is surely unfair. from the most free-market perspective?
That, however, would contradict the stated Government policy of maintaining our standards. There is therefore a fudge to protect British farmers, but only for 15 years, and a vague and seemingly implausible suggestion that farmer will be helped to find new markets for high-welfare products in Asia.
Agreed. Either standards should be relaxed for all UK consumption, or you insist on foreign competitors meeting your existing standards in a trade deal. It makes no sense to selectively lower standards for your competitors while keeping higher ones for domestic producers, just to get a trade deal. Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Boris’ logic is; A bad trade deal is better than no trade deal.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
There, I agree. It's one reason for our push to get supported-self-build going. Approve an entire area and sort out the archeological, environmental, access, infrastructure issues, and get a list of builders and potential designs and put those who'd like to self-build (from any degree from "pick a house from a list and select the builder" to "design it yourself within these guidelines"
One thing that would, in my opinion, really help against the NIMBY tendency is for infrastructure to lead development rather than lag development. If you're always playing catch-up, then as long as development hasn't actually stalled, you've always got overloaded infrastructure. It's very short-term thinking.
I have long meant to do a thread header on this very subject. Once again turning to look at our neighbours in Europe - and particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium - there are some excellent examples of this working extremely well in practice. Breaking the stranglehold that large developers have on our planning and building process seems to me to be an excellent first move in improving our housing stock and build rates.
Yes, please do.
I think some people react with horror by misimagining what I and others mean by a free market in construction. Especially since personally I've always said with building standards and zoning.
Instead of thinking of this as a market economics issue, or a land or countryside vs urban vs suburban issue, perhaps the one thing we can agree on is making it an issue with large developers having a stranglehold over construction.
If you have zoning and standards predetermined, potentially even determined by the local Council, then anyone who wants to build can then do so within the regulations laid out. Rural, suburban and urban land could have different standards fitting the character of the land, but there wouldn't be a need for a single developer to have a monopoly on construction.
What you are describing here is no different from what I and others argue for.
You then go and ruin it by saying you want to scrap the green-belts, that “sprawl is good and reduces congestion”, and that everyone has a god-given right to life in a semi-detached.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
I'm sorry, but this is naive. The issue is whether we wish to maintain higher legally required standards than Australia, on welfare, health and environmental grounds. If we decide that we're fine with packing animals into feedlots and spraying them indiscriminately with antibiotics in case the overcrowding produces rampant infections, then food will become (somewhat) cheaper, and British beef farmers may or may not survive. Logic would suggest that we should abolish the standards for British farmers too, so they can compete on a level playing field as you imply. Saying "compete, but on conditions that make you uncompetitive" is surely unfair. from the most free-market perspective?
That, however, would contradict the stated Government policy of maintaining our standards. There is therefore a fudge to protect British farmers, but only for 15 years, and a vague and seemingly implausible suggestion that farmer will be helped to find new markets for high-welfare products in Asia.
Agreed. Either standards should be relaxed for all UK consumption, or you insist on foreign competitors meeting your existing standards in a trade deal. It makes no sense to selectively lower standards for your competitors while keeping higher ones for domestic producers, just to get a trade deal. Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
I seem to recall that Australia has just had a fairly serious trade spat with China, as a result of which they are anxious to find new markets for their wine.
An issue where I am prepared, in the interests of Commonwealth solidarity, to do my bit.
Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Australia more than anywhere shows the limits of gravity trade models. It became the richest country in the world per capita in the 19th century based on trade with a place that couldn't have been further away.
The uplift for Australia trade claimed by the government for this arrangement is 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. Even that apparently depends on assumptions that never transpire in practice. This deal is of negligible value
I am told about some international journalists complaining “they were NOT allowed in Boris Johnson’s G7 press conference”. I am a UK-based international journalist based and I can say this is absolutely UNTRUE.
2 out of 8 reporters allowed were internationals: NYT and myself.
The press conference was limited to 8 journalists in person, as you could see during the broadcast. I can assure that many other Brit outlets wanted to join it but Downing Street decided to include 2 international journalists working for foreign media, UNLIKE other leaders.
I am told that:
- Biden’s press conference was attended only by embedded US journalists. - Angela Merkel took questions only by German media. - Mario Draghi took questions from 5 Italians reporters.
And I could go on.
The other problem is that some people really don’t know what are they talking about. Apart from Covid restrictions, G7 is a freaking mess: checkpoints everywhere, massive security measures, etc. Also, press conferences were at the same time in very different & protected places
But the main point to stress is: the Brexit/isolationist narrative in this case is utterly RIDICULOUS. Unlike many other G7 leaders the PM @BorisJohnson allowed a significant bunch of international media to his presser.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
You really have a very nasty streak
I’m afraid, Big G, you are a humourless scold.
I have no humour when it comes to mental health and the wellbeing of the elderly being used as pawns in an argument
Come on, the phrase cretin is not very PC, nor lunatic, but I dont think there was any reference to genuine mental health. Would you be in favour of the banning of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party?
Interestingly, the word cretin was a very early example of PC language. It was coined by well-meaning French speakers in the nineteenth century as a polite euphemism for the educationally challenged - literally 'Christian' to remind their fellow francophone that the stupid were God's children too. As so often happens, we didn't lose a vaguely insulting term, we gained one.
Interestingly #2 - many of the terms we use for stupidity - imbecile, etc. - used to have very precise and neutral meanings for exactly how stupid one is, in the same way 'obese' has a very precise meaning for how overweight one is.
Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Australia more than anywhere shows the limits of gravity trade models. It became the richest country in the world per capita in the 19th century based on trade with a place that couldn't have been further away.
The uplift for Australia trade claimed by the government for this arrangement is 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. Even that apparently depends on assumptions that never transpire in practice. This deal is of negligible value
All such estimates are based on everything else remaining equal which it never does. Things will happen that economists are incapable of predicting.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
The fact they're fellow Brits is irrelevant. They shouldn't have made the trip in the first place in the middle of the worst pandemic for 50 years.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
Yes, we need to do all we can to encourage self-building, which seems to happen well in most other parts of the world.
With regard to larger developments, the issue is more of land-banking and phased releasing by developers. Perhaps charging council tax on a development a year after planning permission is given, rather than after the building is occupied, might be a way forward - maybe with an escalator for unfinished units.
Agreed. Land banking only makes sense because owning the land with consent is valuable.
If the consent loses its value and the land is taxed then nobody would go near land until they're ready to build on it.
Depends what you mean by landbanking.
Land-banking with consent is very difficult, as consent only lasts 3 years.
Yet there is no way of knowing how long it will take to get consent, and agree details - it can be a decade or more - and then the organisation has to be maintained to build it, and have a pipeline to work on until then.
It's no use saying "build it in a year" when no building capacity is available.
At present landbanking is necessary to manage risk / liquidity on the pipeline of future development.
On the Amersham point, clearly decisions on strategic national projects should not be made by a few NIMBYs in Buckinghamshire.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
You really have a very nasty streak
I’m afraid, Big G, you are a humourless scold.
I have no humour when it comes to mental health and the wellbeing of the elderly being used as pawns in an argument
Come on, the phrase cretin is not very PC, nor lunatic, but I dont think there was any reference to genuine mental health. Would you be in favour of the banning of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party?
No of course not and there is a context, but excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile is simply unnecessary but maybe I am in his view in the senile group
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1.
Really? Then why did it take 5 weeks for PHE to declare it a VOC?
You clearly know more about it than the chap doing the genomic sequencing!
...so why didn’t PHE immediately escalate Delta to a variant of concern in March?".......Well, first of all, the variant reported in late March was *not* Delta / B.1.617.2, but its cousin, B.1.617.1.
The issue is not that we should have closed borders through April because of Delta. .
That's what's being argued now - a charge led by Captain Hindsight.
Yes, we should have had greater control of borders (I don't advocate abandoning British citizens abroad in COVID hot spots, although some do) via quarantine - as I've argued for over a year - but this "because of Delta" is pure & simple wrong.
The borders were "closed" to India two weeks before we knew Delta was a problem.
The argument WAS, let’s close the border because the risk of a variant.
So the solution is "close the border to countries that identify new variants"?
All that will do is punish countries with decent sequencing capability and give a free pass to those that don't. Like happened to Portugal.
Actually that’s pretty much what we did do to Portugal.
Anyway, if I reverse your logic you’re saying we should ignore that data point, which is even more batshit.
No, I'm saying we shouldn't confuse data points like closing the border with India (April 23) and identifying Delta as a VOC two weeks later....
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
The fact they're fellow Brits is irrelevant. They shouldn't have made the trip in the first place in the middle of the worst pandemic for 50 years.
On that basis, the Indian government bears a considerable responsibility. Trying to get back to Australia is difficult, even for an Australian.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
There, I agree. It's one reason for our push to get supported-self-build going. Approve an entire area and sort out the archeological, environmental, access, infrastructure issues, and get a list of builders and potential designs and put those who'd like to self-build (from any degree from "pick a house from a list and select the builder" to "design it yourself within these guidelines"
One thing that would, in my opinion, really help against the NIMBY tendency is for infrastructure to lead development rather than lag development. If you're always playing catch-up, then as long as development hasn't actually stalled, you've always got overloaded infrastructure. It's very short-term thinking.
I have long meant to do a thread header on this very subject. Once again turning to look at our neighbours in Europe - and particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium - there are some excellent examples of this working extremely well in practice. Breaking the stranglehold that large developers have on our planning and building process seems to me to be an excellent first move in improving our housing stock and build rates.
Yes, please do.
I think some people react with horror by misimagining what I and others mean by a free market in construction. Especially since personally I've always said with building standards and zoning.
Instead of thinking of this as a market economics issue, or a land or countryside vs urban vs suburban issue, perhaps the one thing we can agree on is making it an issue with large developers having a stranglehold over construction.
If you have zoning and standards predetermined, potentially even determined by the local Council, then anyone who wants to build can then do so within the regulations laid out. Rural, suburban and urban land could have different standards fitting the character of the land, but there wouldn't be a need for a single developer to have a monopoly on construction.
What you are describing here is no different from what I and others argue for.
You then go and ruin it by saying you want to scrap the green-belts, that “sprawl is good and reduces congestion”, and that everyone has a god-given right to life in a semi-detached.
I don't want to scrap green belts, I have never said that. I have said that protections should be based on genuine environmental reasons like protecting AONBs etc and not abused to protect land value or property values. Do you object to that?
As for sprawl, yes I like towns. Others like cities. Others like rural areas. That's not a bad thing! I don't think it should be one size fits all. Sprawling towns can be a good thing but not everyone wants to live in a sprawling town as I do, some people want to live in a city. Some people want to live in a rural area. My preference is it should be consumer choice.
Finally I never said everyone should have a god-given right to live in a semi. For one thing I am as firm in my atheism as Dawkins so I would never use that phrase. What I actually said is that anyone who wants to live in a semi and can afford to do so ought to be able to do so, we shouldn't compel people to live in a flat just because all semis that have been built are occupied even if they have the money to buy land for a semi and want to build one. Why should some people be able to live in a detached home, while being able to buy even just a semi is considered outrageous or shocking for others? If people live in flats that should be because its their choice, not because they're being denied a choice.
Even if every household in England lived in a semi detached home, which is never going to happen - some people will want terraces or flats - then what proportion of land do you think that would require for housing in this country? It would still be a very small percentage.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
You really have a very nasty streak
I’m afraid, Big G, you are a humourless scold.
I have no humour when it comes to mental health and the wellbeing of the elderly being used as pawns in an argument
Come on, the phrase cretin is not very PC, nor lunatic, but I dont think there was any reference to genuine mental health. Would you be in favour of the banning of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party?
I have stopped using “retard” under advisement (but I note it is still used by @Leon and @rcs1000) but I think cretin etc has an antique charm.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
When we have lamb it is and always will be Welsh
I was in NZ a few years ago and the lamb was bloody expensive. Don’t know if that was local taxation? The price of ciggies was a nightmare too.
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
There, I agree. It's one reason for our push to get supported-self-build going. Approve an entire area and sort out the archeological, environmental, access, infrastructure issues, and get a list of builders and potential designs and put those who'd like to self-build (from any degree from "pick a house from a list and select the builder" to "design it yourself within these guidelines"
One thing that would, in my opinion, really help against the NIMBY tendency is for infrastructure to lead development rather than lag development. If you're always playing catch-up, then as long as development hasn't actually stalled, you've always got overloaded infrastructure. It's very short-term thinking.
I have long meant to do a thread header on this very subject. Once again turning to look at our neighbours in Europe - and particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium - there are some excellent examples of this working extremely well in practice. Breaking the stranglehold that large developers have on our planning and building process seems to me to be an excellent first move in improving our housing stock and build rates.
Yes, please do.
I think some people react with horror by misimagining what I and others mean by a free market in construction. Especially since personally I've always said with building standards and zoning.
Instead of thinking of this as a market economics issue, or a land or countryside vs urban vs suburban issue, perhaps the one thing we can agree on is making it an issue with large developers having a stranglehold over construction.
If you have zoning and standards predetermined, potentially even determined by the local Council, then anyone who wants to build can then do so within the regulations laid out. Rural, suburban and urban land could have different standards fitting the character of the land, but there wouldn't be a need for a single developer to have a monopoly on construction.
What you are describing here is no different from what I and others argue for.
You then go and ruin it by saying you want to scrap the green-belts, that “sprawl is good and reduces congestion”, and that everyone has a god-given right to life in a semi-detached.
I don't want to scrap green belts, I have never said that. I have said that protections should be based on genuine environmental reasons like protecting AONBs etc and not abused to protect land value or property values. Do you object to that?
As for sprawl, yes I like towns. Others like cities. Others like rural areas. That's not a bad thing! I don't think it should be one size fits all. Sprawling towns can be a good thing but not everyone wants to live in a sprawling town as I do, some people want to live in a city. Some people want to live in a rural area. My preference is it should be consumer choice.
Finally I never said everyone should have a god-given right to live in a semi. For one thing I am as firm in my atheism as Dawkins so I would never use that phrase. What I actually said is that anyone who wants to live in a semi and can afford to do so ought to be able to do so, we shouldn't compel people to live in a flat just because all semis that have been built are occupied even if they have the money to buy land for a semi and want to build one. Why should some people be able to live in a detached home, while being able to buy even just a semi is considered outrageous or shocking for others? If people live in flats that should be because its their choice, not because they're being denied a choice.
Even if every household in England lived in a semi detached home, which is never going to happen - some people will want terraces or flats - then what proportion of land do you think that would require for housing in this country? It would still be a very small percentage.
My rough maths the other day suggested we would need to expand urban development by 250%.
Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Australia more than anywhere shows the limits of gravity trade models. It became the richest country in the world per capita in the 19th century based on trade with a place that couldn't have been further away.
The uplift for Australia trade claimed by the government for this arrangement is 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. Even that apparently depends on assumptions that never transpire in practice. This deal is of negligible value
All such estimates are based on everything else remaining equal which it never does. Things will happen that economists are incapable of predicting.
Australia traded with the UK before the deal and will trade with it after. The 0.02% uplift of UK GDP in 15 years is what Liz Truss and her lot are claiming for this deal. And even that depends on dodgy assumptions.
Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Australia more than anywhere shows the limits of gravity trade models. It became the richest country in the world per capita in the 19th century based on trade with a place that couldn't have been further away.
The uplift for Australia trade claimed by the government for this arrangement is 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. Even that apparently depends on assumptions that never transpire in practice. This deal is of negligible value
All such models are GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
No such model ever actually measures what really happens and really just demonstrates whatever assumptions the modeller has used. If you assume A, then B, but if you assume Z then Y.
In particular if you assume people don't react to changing circumstances, your model will always be garbage.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
When we have lamb it is and always will be Welsh
I was in NZ a few years ago and the lamb was bloody expensive. Don’t know if that was local taxation? The price of ciggies was a nightmare too.
Food is quite expensive in NZ.
British people have enjoyed some of the lowest food prices on earth, in part due to EU subsidy, but more to do with incredible competitiveness in the food retail sector.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
When we have lamb it is and always will be Welsh
Consumer choice is a good thing.
When I buy meat I tend to look for the Red Tractor label, but that should be my choice not others choice on my behalf.
I always buy British meat products simply because I assume the animal welfare standards are better here. I'm willing to buy meat from elsewhere if their standards are better.
What is the point of all those police being there if protesters can simply chase someone, to whom they clearly may have violent intent, through their lines?
—
Indeed.
These cretins have hijacked 'freedom' and done more for increasing support of lockdown than any politician could ever dream. They make me unspeakably angry.
According to the government's own assessment, apparently, the Australian-U.K. trade deal will increase Britain's GDP by a whopping 0.02%.
The excitement is too much. I need a lie down.
Get a nice bottle of Australian wine for your lie down.
It could be even cheaper after the deal.
Well that would have the advantage of not making me notice the harm that such a deal will likely do to the countryside around me and my farming neighbours.
But, hey, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is pretty much this government's mission statement. So no change there then.
If your farmers are competitive then they'll thrive. If your farmers aren't then why should the nation be tied to them?
New Zealand cut all its subsidies to farmers, tariffs etc - and the farming industry went from strength to strength.
On farming issues I prefer to listen to James Rebanks, an actual farmer and one who has lived and worked in Australia, and who knows more about farming, ecology and what it means for the countryside and the people in it than you (or current politicians) will ever know no matter how many posts you make.
And he has explained in depth - in articles, books and interviews - why your superficial statements and the rubbish that comes out of Ministers in this topic are so much nonsense. Rather than repeat them, you'd be wise to learn from him and other experts on this topic.
I haven’t read any Rebanks.
But I know NZ history pretty well.
The thing that pisses me off about the “NZ cut subsidies” line is that NZ had - and still has - a massive trade advantage on dairying especially due to the fact it is basically one large, grassy, temperate paddock, and we have volume production.
The idea that abolishing subsidies to Welsh hill farmers is going to do anything but send said farmers to the wall is nutty beyond belief.
For one thing, fresh Welsh milk and butter can be delivered inside 12 hours within the UK single market without any trade friction costs and with very low food miles. So, I don't think that's true.
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
When we have lamb it is and always will be Welsh
I was in NZ a few years ago and the lamb was bloody expensive. Don’t know if that was local taxation? The price of ciggies was a nightmare too.
I have been to NZ several times but always stayed with my son and his partner and we did not dine out too much so I was not price conscious re their lamb
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
In Victorian/Edwardian times, very often the developer would build a street. Hence houses on neighbouring streets looking different. Sometimes they differ by which side of the road they are on - the developers bought one side of the road, each.
Absolutely!
And Victorian/Edwardian houses are considered generally much better than the boxes built by modern developers. The system then worked.
Having entire segments of a town tied up by a single monopolistic developer who bribes the right politicians gets approval is in nobodies interests but the politicians and the developer.
That so many people are so keen to defend a system that is broken instead of having more competition is bizarre.
Victorian construction standards are hugely flattered by survivorship bias. But I wouldn't touch a new build put up by any of the major developers.
A lot of Victorian builders were every bit as dodgy as their modern counterparts. Materials were comparatively expensive, and labour comparatively cheap; some of the stuff they put up was built out of absolute crap.
Yes. A lot of the worst stuff is gone now, hence my point about survivorship bias. Imagining all Victorian housing was as good as what remains is like imagining everyone in the Medieval period lived in a castle. Even the relatively good stuff has problems. Our Victorian terraced house has almost no foundations, despite being built on a steep hill. As a result there are no horizontal lines at all. It's expensive to heat, too.
Mine is as hot as hell on the upper floors, at least it becomes so by late afternoon in this weather.
Yeah mine too even with my aversion to putting on the heating in any weather. I suspect some of that is the staggering amount of loft insulation also.
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
You really have a very nasty streak
I’m afraid, Big G, you are a humourless scold.
I have no humour when it comes to mental health and the wellbeing of the elderly being used as pawns in an argument
Come on, the phrase cretin is not very PC, nor lunatic, but I dont think there was any reference to genuine mental health. Would you be in favour of the banning of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party?
I have stopped using “retard” under advisement (but I note it is still used by @Leon and @rcs1000) but I think cretin etc has an antique charm.
Yes, retard is pretty offensive, and shouldn't be used. The interesting point touched on by @Cookie is that these terms used to be used clinically and were related to IQ. Idiot is one such term, and in fact a cretin is less challenged than an idiot, though idiot is still used in the colloquial sense though cretin and moron are not considered de rigueur.
My understanding why NZ Lamb is expensive in NZ is because of foreign demand, they can get loads from markets like the Middle East. And why most, if not all NZ lamb is halal.
The Delta variant looks to be capable of getting measured infection rates to around 500 per 100k quite widely in both urban and rural bits of the North West, under current vaccination rates and restrictions. It has also shown quick geographic spread, the core high infection area runs inland from north of Lancaster to Leek and is creeping it's way coastward towards Merseyside now . Elsewhere it's more patchy and the same pattern hasn't been seen, but that doesn't mean it's not possible.
I think not only was there a very bad government miss in not restricting India sooner, and thus holding off the Delta wave a few weeks till vaccination rates were somewhat higher. I think the government was horribly complacent to think that the same track and trace that failed last summer could be deployed as the sole tool at the stage things had got to - rapid acceleration of vaccination very locally in Bolton/Blackburn could have suppressed the outward spread from source and provided a model for defeating Delta. Things could have looked rather different.
Bolton STILL lags the national rate for both first and second vaccinations by over 5% after over a month of this. I mean WTAF. There may still be lower uptake for some sections, but I hardly think they have run out of willing recipients. They just barely bothered, that's all there is to it.
And now there are just too many hotspots and not enough supply to run area vaccination in that same way. You would be chasing Delta not stopping it. Perhaps there is still merit in taking vaccination faster in certain areas, but it is less obviously so than when I proposed it in May.
Controversial thought from me - I don't think Covid can be suppressed with Track and Trace because of the long period of spread before symptoms (if any show up). Its almost perfect as a tactic. In diseases where you are only infectious with symptoms, yes tracking cases will work.
Which is where rapid antigen tests ought to have come in. Way back last year.
i think they were not chosen because they were not picking up all the cases that PCR did. I'd suggest this was actually useful, because they were almost certainly only finding the infectious people, not those with very low levels, only found by high cycle count PCR. Almost certainly a very poor decision in the end.
Yes, I've been over this many times.
The better rapid tests have very low rates of false positives, and pick up a 90% plus of those who are actually infectious (as opposed to those who have PCR detectable virus). The fact that they give instantaneous results for presymptomatics, whereas PCR tests won't even happen until an infected individual has been infectious for a couple of days, means that they ought to be far more effective (and cheaper) for pandemic control than PCR.
I have stopped using “retard” under advisement (but I note it is still used by @Leon and @rcs1000) but I think cretin etc has an antique charm.
Surprisingly Scots terms seem to be considered not too acerbic and therefore acceptable in the wider UK discourse - numpty, dafty, glaikit, eejit (though the last is maybe more Irish)
Roaster, rocket, diddy, tube and walloper have still to break through.
Worth noting that Nippie is updating Parliament first and the media second...
Has she just flown in from NATO after hosting G7?
I'm not making excuses from Johnson - the least he could have done was send Hancock to the HoC at 18.00 and not have Downing St lie to Hoyle - but directly comparing the two is a tad fatuous.....
It's certainly a live issue in the constituency. An old friend of mine lives on the edge of Amersham and will never vote for the party again, solely because of HS2.
The timing of the lockdown farce yesterday as well as Brexit starting to unravel over the Northern Ireland protocol are also tarnishing Brand Boris. Even an announcement on a UK-Australia trade deal may not help as it is not going down well with British farmers, who feel the Aussies have an unfair advantage. In a seat that was pro-Remain these things still matter.
I'm on the LibDems with good odds following Mike's tip. It's a bet I expect to lose but stranger things have happened in by-elections.
It would be very droll if, having captured the north, the tories lost their homeland.
The LibDems are throwing everything at the by-election. It might possibly win them the seat, but I don't expect it. This is a Government in its 20th month, so I probably should be expecting it (at least, on the basis of the ramping of their chances on here - LibDems to win it in a "landslide", I recall one poster saying).
But, the LibDems are close on 40% behind the government in national polling. Plus, for decade after decade, the Tory vote has been very predictable in this seat - between 50-odd percent and 60-odd percent. Safe, but never massively so.
The LibDems are also saddling themselves with the Nimby label. Bollocks to Brexit, now Bollocks to Building. They are very keen on pushing a humanitarian agenda - as long as once people get here they don't mind living under trees.
Oh, and not THOSE trees. They are ancient woodland. Can't have people shitting in those...
And they are very keen on people using trains. Just, not THAT train.
They are starting to build up internal contradictions that again show they aren't a party of serious decisions required of government. Just say whatever it takes to win a seat. But their opponents will be watching, storing up posters and leaflets with which to whack them around the head.
It goes beyond NIMBYism to what a national planning policy should be. Objecting to building houses in places they shouldn't be built is a valid battle to fight. The NPPF has allowed planners to overrule everyone including councillors the council and the MP. I myself have fought some NIMBY not those trees battles because the proposal was utterly stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think the same way. With the Tories now openly corrupt and donations flowing to the party from developers there is a valid line of opposition to take. I don't agree with the battle against HS2 then again they aren't building it near me...
It's not a case of NIMBYism, it's a case of poor planning. Developers building vast estates of houses at £500,000 and above is not going to solve the housing crisis. If I was starting again as a small family I couldn't afford a mortgage for one of those. I think the boarded up shops and office blocks of the town centres should be the first target, constructing 3 and 2 bedroom houses or flats for people to start climbing the ladder on. This would provide much-needed accomodation and possibly the chance to save and plan for the next stage. In my old home town centre of Stafford there are many disused shops and office blocks which could be used first for housing before spoiling the countryside around first.
They are the only kind of houses developers want to build. They get planning permission, don't use it, and then force a shortage of houses being built to be able to build what they want when they want. The NPPF has been dubbed the developers charter and you can see why.
Have a free market and this issue goes away. If developers don't build houses people want then the public can build their own homes as they want (something incredibly common in most of the world and almost unheard of here with our draconian planning regime). Or competition can arise so other developers develop the homes people want.
Unless you're concerned that the developers ARE developing the homes people want.
One problem that's very frustrating is one that came up recently. We were approving a huge development of several thousand houses - which would sort out a considerable amount of the significant housing need here.
Developer "And we intend to build this site out over the next twenty-five years..."
Me, "Wait, what? Twenty-five years?" (As we need housing ASAP)
Developer: "Yes; that's what our market assessment says to meet our targeted values" (In essence: they don't want to build quickly enough to drive house prices down. Their intent is to ensure they have an income stream and acceptable profit margin for as long as possible. So 25 years of building out on a large site suits them down to the ground. And will not help with house prices, other than either slowing the increase or maybe flattening it out)
The only solution I can see is to get building social housing - which bypasses that limitation (and those developers who have the 25-year massive projects may see the value of these decline, what a pity).
This is fundamentally part of the problem of the British system of having en-bloc planning approval going to one developer alone.
In much of the rest of the world this problem isn't seen because the proposed construction zone is built piecemeal, sometimes house by house, by anyone who wants to build or own a home. Since the value of land with permission isn't dramatically artificially inflated in most countries then a single developer buying the entire land and then not building on it doesn't work economically. If several thousand people want a home then they get it constructed by whoever they want to construct it rather than one fixed developer on the developers timeline and move in, job done.
Why should the entire development go to just one developer? If each individual house, or each individual street, of your several thousand houses could be built one or many at a time by a plethora of developers or self-builders then this couldn't happen.
There, I agree. It's one reason for our push to get supported-self-build going. Approve an entire area and sort out the archeological, environmental, access, infrastructure issues, and get a list of builders and potential designs and put those who'd like to self-build (from any degree from "pick a house from a list and select the builder" to "design it yourself within these guidelines"
One thing that would, in my opinion, really help against the NIMBY tendency is for infrastructure to lead development rather than lag development. If you're always playing catch-up, then as long as development hasn't actually stalled, you've always got overloaded infrastructure. It's very short-term thinking.
I have long meant to do a thread header on this very subject. Once again turning to look at our neighbours in Europe - and particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium - there are some excellent examples of this working extremely well in practice. Breaking the stranglehold that large developers have on our planning and building process seems to me to be an excellent first move in improving our housing stock and build rates.
Yes, please do.
I think some people react with horror by misimagining what I and others mean by a free market in construction. Especially since personally I've always said with building standards and zoning.
Instead of thinking of this as a market economics issue, or a land or countryside vs urban vs suburban issue, perhaps the one thing we can agree on is making it an issue with large developers having a stranglehold over construction.
If you have zoning and standards predetermined, potentially even determined by the local Council, then anyone who wants to build can then do so within the regulations laid out. Rural, suburban and urban land could have different standards fitting the character of the land, but there wouldn't be a need for a single developer to have a monopoly on construction.
What you are describing here is no different from what I and others argue for.
You then go and ruin it by saying you want to scrap the green-belts, that “sprawl is good and reduces congestion”, and that everyone has a god-given right to life in a semi-detached.
I don't want to scrap green belts, I have never said that. I have said that protections should be based on genuine environmental reasons like protecting AONBs etc and not abused to protect land value or property values. Do you object to that?
As for sprawl, yes I like towns. Others like cities. Others like rural areas. That's not a bad thing! I don't think it should be one size fits all. Sprawling towns can be a good thing but not everyone wants to live in a sprawling town as I do, some people want to live in a city. Some people want to live in a rural area. My preference is it should be consumer choice.
Finally I never said everyone should have a god-given right to live in a semi. For one thing I am as firm in my atheism as Dawkins so I would never use that phrase. What I actually said is that anyone who wants to live in a semi and can afford to do so ought to be able to do so, we shouldn't compel people to live in a flat just because all semis that have been built are occupied even if they have the money to buy land for a semi and want to build one. Why should some people be able to live in a detached home, while being able to buy even just a semi is considered outrageous or shocking for others? If people live in flats that should be because its their choice, not because they're being denied a choice.
Even if every household in England lived in a semi detached home, which is never going to happen - some people will want terraces or flats - then what proportion of land do you think that would require for housing in this country? It would still be a very small percentage.
My rough maths the other day suggested we would need to expand urban development by 250%.
So we'd go from 5% of the UK being residential housing to 12.5%? I could live with that.
Though considering that 52% of the UK's housing sector is already detached, semi-detached or bungalows and that semis take less space than detached does I'm curious if you could show your working on that.
Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Australia more than anywhere shows the limits of gravity trade models. It became the richest country in the world per capita in the 19th century based on trade with a place that couldn't have been further away.
The uplift for Australia trade claimed by the government for this arrangement is 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. Even that apparently depends on assumptions that never transpire in practice. This deal is of negligible value
All such models are GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
No such model ever actually measures what really happens and really just demonstrates whatever assumptions the modeller has used. If you assume A, then B, but if you assume Z then Y.
In particular if you assume people don't react to changing circumstances, your model will always be garbage.
This is completely voodoo. Liz Truss' outfit has the ability to make a better economic case for her deal, if she can.
Actually why not be honest? We like the Australians better than the French, Germans, Spanish etc, so we will give them what they want and get nothing in return? At least people know where things stand ....
Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Australia more than anywhere shows the limits of gravity trade models. It became the richest country in the world per capita in the 19th century based on trade with a place that couldn't have been further away.
The uplift for Australia trade claimed by the government for this arrangement is 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. Even that apparently depends on assumptions that never transpire in practice. This deal is of negligible value
All such estimates are based on everything else remaining equal which it never does. Things will happen that economists are incapable of predicting.
Australia traded with the UK before the deal and will trade with it after. The 0.02% uplift of UK GDP in 15 years is what Liz Truss and her lot are claiming for this deal. And even that depends on dodgy assumptions.
I am sorry ...
To be honest I do not think it is the trade deal that is important to HMG, is all the others that follow and of course each and every trade deal drives us further from the EU and results in those pro EU to agitate
I think WilliamG should do a thread-header on his 180 degree flip from Remain to Brexit.
He’s now even repeating Brexity nonsense that he would have directly rebutted in his earlier incarnation.
Perhaps he could choose some of his choicest cuts from 2016-2019 and explain why he now thinks he was so fundamentally wrong.
No one else can do this, it would be truly enlightening.
I wonder whether he is the same person or whether one of Putin's bots has hacked his account lol. I have come to terms with Brexit, even though I still think it is pointless, but a 180 flip is indeed impressive.
An LD victory in C&A would be very welcome in that I can’t see anything else shaking this government out of its complacency, but unfortunately I really can’t see it happening.
The only opposition party able to hold this government to account, doesn't even stand in England.
Susanna Reid forensically skewers Michael Gove over India going on the red list
We found out about the Indian variant on April 1st & they didn't go onto the red list until April the 23rd.. we didn't shut the border until it was too late
It seems obvious in hindsight that the reason for an explosion in cases in India was the delta variant. However my recollection was that many thought it was due to things such as 50,000 at the cricket etc in a largely unvaccinated country. I know people like to blame the government for this one, and it will I am sure be looked at in the inquiry, but I don't think it is quite the slam dunk people think it is.
Good thread on this by someone who was actually doing the work
So rather than being "obvious to anyone watching the relentless exponential growth of Delta during April.", it was actually pretty confusing. I make weekly VOC/VUI monitoring plots, and here's what I saw in three weeks from 19 April (1st time I included B.1.617) to 3 May.
Now, yes, we should have quarantined arrivals sooner/faster - but at the time we did it to Pakistan/Bangladesh arrivals because we were worried about the South African variant there - and India cases/population was still very low - so "we should have stopped Delta by quarantining India arrivals" is pure hindsight.
April 29th - blocking flights from India is racist.
Actually if you read the article, it’s obvious why Australia banned entry from India, namely that regardless of percentages infected, India was already a significant source of infection.
The Johnson variant was known about April 1. Pakistan and Bangladesh were on the red list April 9.
When the red list was published, it was explained that it was based on the “number of variants” coming in from the relevant countries.
1. At the time, passengers inbound from India were already *showing the same levels of infection* as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
2. At the time, for the period Mar 25-Apr 7, PHE identified 50 variants coming in from India, versus 12 for Bangladesh and 6 for Pakistan.
There was considerable speculation in the press at India’s omission. Already by this time there were news reports about India’s overloaded cemeteries.
In the week up to April 19, press openly speculated that the reason was Johnson’s forthcoming summit with Modi.
Johnson finally announced India’s red listing April 19, but gave three day’s notice and this seems to have triggered a burst of tens of thousands of passengers returning from India in that period.
Re your last sentence I understand 20,000 returned and of course the vast majority were our fellow Brits
And we need an independent investigation to establish what really happened
At present it is a political football and will continue as such as nobody has seen the evidence of all the sage and other scientists minutes and timeliness over this period
It’s not really a political football though, is it. It’s pretty much an open and shut case.
In your mind but not others
Well, I’m excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile of course.
And those who do not need to insult mental health and the elderly to argue a point
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
You really have a very nasty streak
I’m afraid, Big G, you are a humourless scold.
I have no humour when it comes to mental health and the wellbeing of the elderly being used as pawns in an argument
Come on, the phrase cretin is not very PC, nor lunatic, but I dont think there was any reference to genuine mental health. Would you be in favour of the banning of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party?
No of course not and there is a context, but excepting cretins, lunatics and the senile is simply unnecessary but maybe I am in his view in the senile group
Particularly for one with Australia that has no economic value whatever.
Australia more than anywhere shows the limits of gravity trade models. It became the richest country in the world per capita in the 19th century based on trade with a place that couldn't have been further away.
The uplift for Australia trade claimed by the government for this arrangement is 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. Even that apparently depends on assumptions that never transpire in practice. This deal is of negligible value
All such models are GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
No such model ever actually measures what really happens and really just demonstrates whatever assumptions the modeller has used. If you assume A, then B, but if you assume Z then Y.
In particular if you assume people don't react to changing circumstances, your model will always be garbage.
This is completely voodoo. Liz Truss' outfit has the ability to make a better economic case for her deal, if she can.
Actually why not be honest? We like the Australians better than the French, Germans, Spanish etc, so we will give them what they want and get nothing in return? At least people know where things stand ....
Considering we already have a zero tariff, zero quota deal with the French, Germans, Spanish etc - and we're not years of transition where tariffs apply in the interim with that, what are we giving to the Aussies that we're not to the French?
Comments
On the meat, I suspect consumers will be very discerning of environmental standards and quality in years to come - NZ expands choice, but it doesn't "finish" Wales and it's hyperbole to suggest it will.
New variants were always a risk; that’s why we track them.
I’m explaining that the “abolishing subsidies will regenerate the industry!” line is tosh.
I rather suspect your view about 1970s agriculture is tosh, too, but don’t have the data.
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/place-them-trash-fda-warns-against-using-innova-s-rapid-covid-19-antigen-tests
All that will do is punish countries with decent sequencing capability and give a free pass to those that don't. Like happened to Portugal.
When I buy meat I tend to look for the Red Tractor label, but that should be my choice not others choice on my behalf.
The Japanese tend to pull down and rebuild their homes every thirty years. But it's cheap and easy to do so and the system works.
If you have ludicrously expensive homes from monopoly developers that are poor quality ... That's not an improvement is it?
You do not have a monopoly on opinion, and thankfully many on here argue with each other but do not descend into insulting many thousands of those less fortunate than ourselves
Did you not suggest yesterday the elderly should be rounded up and put in camps
You really have a very nasty streak
Anyway, if I reverse your logic you’re saying we should ignore that data point, which is even more batshit.
That’s why I noted he was at least logically consistent.
We need to see what the detail of the agreement says, and what the break mechanisms are eg if China suddenly bans Oz beef and causes it to be diverted.
Personally I think the farm lobby has heavily overplayed their hand - particularly in attempts to have all the trade deals nobbled by laying down global legal requirements. They ended up with a strong consultative body, whish is far more appropriate.
Consider the counter-argument: let's say we were planning to do a trade deal with the EU today from WTO rules and, as a price of that, the EU demanded "access" to our agricultural market for its 450 citizens. There might be stories of us being flooded by French beef, Danish bacon, German sausages, Spanish seafood and Italian olive oil.
It would, of course, proof to be nonsense just as it is for Australia - a country almost 20 times smaller and 10,000 miles away.
More interested in political point scoring against Johnson, than actually doing things right.
Your counter-argument doesn’t really make any sense to me.
Britain doesn’t feed itself. That has long been the case*. We do need to import protein from somewhere. The question is the status, subsidy, and competitiveness of our own producers.
*I believe Britain actually feeds itself MORE than it did under the Commonwealth preference days, perhaps suggesting Welsh farmers have indeed done better within the EU.
My uncle - who grew up on a mixed sheep and dairy farm - visited Welsh farms in the late 60s on some kind of exchange. He was shocked by the appalling backwardness and lack of productivity. He still talks about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/01/tube-underground-london-transport-train-suburbs
(It's a good article in the Guardian ... reprint from 1924
One huge issue with handing much more power over planning to Councillors and politicos is that Professional Planners and the Planning Inspectorate make decisions in accordance with law and policy rather than grubby, corrupt politics, and they are generally far better decisions.
British farming mechanised and modernised massively from the 1960s, and to a far greater extent than elsewhere in the EU - especially France.
It's a fair point on subsidies but I don't think these are an issue provided they are phased out over a long time period. The agricultural market will be facing massive change over the coming decades anyway.
I think some people react with horror by misimagining what I and others mean by a free market in construction. Especially since personally I've always said with building standards and zoning.
Instead of thinking of this as a market economics issue, or a land or countryside vs urban vs suburban issue, perhaps the one thing we can agree on is making it an issue with large developers having a stranglehold over construction.
If you have zoning and standards predetermined, potentially even determined by the local Council, then anyone who wants to build can then do so within the regulations laid out. Rural, suburban and urban land could have different standards fitting the character of the land, but there wouldn't be a need for a single developer to have a monopoly on construction.
Do you ever bother looking into stuff before thrashing your keyboard?
https://tinyurl.com/hdc6mvtk
Coronavirus (COVID-19) update: First Minister's statement to Holyrood
7th Nov 2020
16th Feb
9th Mar
25th May
1st Jun
8th Jun
etc
This is an issue I am very interested in currently: I live in a 1930s dormer bungalow, in which it is uncomfortably hot upstairs in the summer, and cold upstairs in the winter. From the upstairs, I can also hear the M60 from quarter of a mile away (although it's been strangely quiet these last few days). It needs a new roof, and I've been vaguely assured by builders that with a new roof all of these problems will be solved. But it seems to good to be true. Surely hot air just rises? Is anyone's house not uncomfortably hot upstairs in the summer?
The UK is only Australia's 9th largest export destination and Australia is only the UK's 19th largest destination for exports and still only 10th even including the EU only as one block.
This deal is nice to have and might increase trade between our nations a bit but I doubt it will have a major impact on either of our economies or indeed any sector within it, including farming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_United_Kingdom
How does this one year trigger work when, for example, work on hedges or trees is effectively impossible between April and September, with similar problems with eg bat roosts or badger sets?
Agree on a move towards LVT; we need the Proportional Property Tax which is a step in that direction.
Some of the detail of LVT proposals around has not been thought through, though. The last one I saw that Monbiot (?) was boostering was baed on a poor understanding.
We found out about the Indian variant on April 1st & they didn't go onto the red list until April the 23rd.. we didn't shut the border until it was too late
Gove accuses her of myth making
#GMB 1/2 https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1404748826334875653/video/1
What is the point of all those police being there if protesters can simply chase someone, to whom they clearly may have violent intent, through their lines?
—
Indeed.
Now it still houses my computer and is a place where I can hide away, chat on Pb and do the odd planning and correspondence for the organisations to which I belong.
And Mr C, it is indeed uncomfortably hot in late afternoons in summer. No-one has suggested a new roof, although I do, every so often have offers for replacement loft insulation.
What would be the fucking point of giving a press briefing then repeating it an hour later in parliament? That's the sort of thing BJ and his greasy crew might do.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1404743049419399173
What is the point of all those police being there if protesters can simply chase someone, to whom they clearly may have violent intent, through their lines?
—
Indeed.
The April 1st Indian variant was NOT Delta. It was a cousin that was nowhere near as dangerous.
Sad that it’s come to this.
You then go and ruin it by saying you want to scrap the green-belts, that “sprawl is good and reduces congestion”, and that everyone has a god-given right to life in a semi-detached.
An issue where I am prepared, in the interests of Commonwealth solidarity, to do my bit.
Warwick model only out on deaths by a factor of 23 so far...
I am told about some international journalists complaining “they were NOT allowed in Boris Johnson’s G7 press conference”. I am a UK-based international journalist based and I can say this is absolutely UNTRUE.
2 out of 8 reporters allowed were internationals: NYT and myself.
The press conference was limited to 8 journalists in person, as you could see during the broadcast. I can assure that many other Brit outlets wanted to join it but Downing Street decided to include 2 international journalists working for foreign media, UNLIKE other leaders.
I am told that:
- Biden’s press conference was attended only by embedded US journalists.
- Angela Merkel took questions only by German media.
- Mario Draghi took questions from 5 Italians reporters.
And I could go on.
The other problem is that some people really don’t know what are they talking about. Apart from Covid restrictions, G7 is a freaking mess: checkpoints everywhere, massive security measures, etc. Also, press conferences were at the same time in very different & protected places
But the main point to stress is: the Brexit/isolationist narrative in this case is utterly RIDICULOUS. Unlike many other G7 leaders the PM @BorisJohnson allowed a significant bunch of international media to his presser.
So, the reality of things is quite the opposite.
https://twitter.com/antoguerrera/status/1404748579583954949
As so often happens, we didn't lose a vaguely insulting term, we gained one.
Interestingly #2 - many of the terms we use for stupidity - imbecile, etc. - used to have very precise and neutral meanings for exactly how stupid one is, in the same way 'obese' has a very precise meaning for how overweight one is.
Edit - I've looked this up: the scale was:
Idiot (IQ of 0-25)
Imbecile (IQ of 26-50)
Moron (IQ of 51-70)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbecile
https://www.ft.com/content/00c6b5d9-12c2-41aa-81d4-b9d9061ba5eb
Land-banking with consent is very difficult, as consent only lasts 3 years.
Yet there is no way of knowing how long it will take to get consent, and agree details - it can be a decade or more - and then the organisation has to be maintained to build it, and have a pipeline to work on until then.
It's no use saying "build it in a year" when no building capacity is available.
At present landbanking is necessary to manage risk / liquidity on the pipeline of future development.
On the Amersham point, clearly decisions on strategic national projects should not be made by a few NIMBYs in Buckinghamshire.
He’s now even repeating Brexity nonsense that he would have directly rebutted in his earlier incarnation.
Perhaps he could choose some of his choicest cuts from 2016-2019 and explain why he now thinks he was so fundamentally wrong.
No one else can do this, it would be truly enlightening.
As for sprawl, yes I like towns. Others like cities. Others like rural areas. That's not a bad thing! I don't think it should be one size fits all. Sprawling towns can be a good thing but not everyone wants to live in a sprawling town as I do, some people want to live in a city. Some people want to live in a rural area. My preference is it should be consumer choice.
Finally I never said everyone should have a god-given right to live in a semi. For one thing I am as firm in my atheism as Dawkins so I would never use that phrase. What I actually said is that anyone who wants to live in a semi and can afford to do so ought to be able to do so, we shouldn't compel people to live in a flat just because all semis that have been built are occupied even if they have the money to buy land for a semi and want to build one. Why should some people be able to live in a detached home, while being able to buy even just a semi is considered outrageous or shocking for others? If people live in flats that should be because its their choice, not because they're being denied a choice.
Even if every household in England lived in a semi detached home, which is never going to happen - some people will want terraces or flats - then what proportion of land do you think that would require for housing in this country? It would still be a very small percentage.
I am sorry ...
No such model ever actually measures what really happens and really just demonstrates whatever assumptions the modeller has used. If you assume A, then B, but if you assume Z then Y.
In particular if you assume people don't react to changing circumstances, your model will always be garbage.
British people have enjoyed some of the lowest food prices on earth, in part due to EU subsidy, but more to do with incredible competitiveness in the food retail sector.
I'm willing to buy meat from elsewhere if their standards are better.
Drink more than a dozen bottles of shiraz in a year and you've beaten that already just on one product alone.
The better rapid tests have very low rates of false positives, and pick up a 90% plus of those who are actually infectious (as opposed to those who have PCR detectable virus).
The fact that they give instantaneous results for presymptomatics, whereas PCR tests won't even happen until an infected individual has been infectious for a couple of days, means that they ought to be far more effective (and cheaper) for pandemic control than PCR.
A road not taken.
Roaster, rocket, diddy, tube and walloper have still to break through.
I'm not making excuses from Johnson - the least he could have done was send Hancock to the HoC at 18.00 and not have Downing St lie to Hoyle - but directly comparing the two is a tad fatuous.....
Though considering that 52% of the UK's housing sector is already detached, semi-detached or bungalows and that semis take less space than detached does I'm curious if you could show your working on that.
Actually why not be honest? We like the Australians better than the French, Germans, Spanish etc, so we will give them what they want and get nothing in return? At least people know where things stand ....
the duty on still wine from Australia is £12 per 100 litres or £1.08 for a case of 12 750ml bottles
I will however save more when we order more of the fizz we like as the duty on sparkling wine £28 per 100litres.
If we weren't doing trade deals the same voices would be saying see told you we couldn't...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9687355/Scientists-warn-hundreds-Covid-deaths-day-delay-Freedom-Day.html?ito=push-notification&ci=240851&si=27499634&ai=9687355