And what a weird quote about the Chilterns. "The [Chiltern] district council failed to make a local plan, leaving the area extra vulnerable to a developers free for all in the green belt."
I'm not from the area, but I would have thought a logical solution to that would be to make a local plan. That makes the not having a local plan problem go away surely?
Not sure I understand your point on the local plan.
Councils are responsible for producing local plans to supplement national planning legislation. Chiltern District Council was Tory controlled (merged into Buckinghamshire Council since 2020, which is Tory controlled).
So the argument is that the Conservative Council failed to produce a local plan which moderated the excesses of the Conservative Government's planning shake up.
That's a totally fair argument to make. You can argue against it if you like (e.g. by saying the Government planning shake up isn't so bad - although Mrs May disagrees - or that the Council wasn't such a disaster) but it's a totally reasonable case for the Lib Dems to try to land, and they appear to have done so very successfully.
Yes I know Mrs May disagrees and not for the first time I don't agree with Mrs May.
If the Council not providing a local plan is a problem, the solution is for the Council to provide a local plan. Not to oppose planning going ahead while simultaneously calling for more immigration while opposing all construction.
That really is utter tosh, Philip, and totally misunderstands the planning system.
Firstly, opposing a very major relaxation of the planning process isn't "opposing all construction". It's making the point that, if you do that, you will get some very inappropriate and insensitive developments with insufficient infrastructure, which become the dismal sink estates of the future. Everyone supports SOME level of control on planning, and the issue is the form and extent of that.
Secondly, as mentioned, a local plan supplements but doesn't override the national planning framework. So the national framework isn't optional and a council can't say "we don't like that so won't bother". What they can do is, within prescribed limits and subject to legal challenges, supplement it to take into account local circumstances. So the issue is a combination of national legislation and (absence of) local moderation of that.
As I say, in this case, both the national and local situation are and were within the control of Conservative politicians. The voting public said they didn't like those policies. Now you can whine and rant that you and Bob Jenrick know better than the ignorant scum in leafy Buckinghamshire, or you can listen to what they've said and, in a democracy, adapt to it. Your choice.
For me this was the ultimate NIMBY by-election. HS2 was the overriding factor. You just need to drive through the constituency to see protests everywhere. Tories are delivering HS2 and they were going to get punished.
The LDs did their normal approach of saying completely different things in different parts of the country to win. Candidate was massively against HS2 in C&A but her party is massively for it.
The Tory agenda of levelling up places in the North, one part of which is building HS2, has a downside. The loss of C&A was the embodiment of that.
For Labour the result is worse than the Tories. They are still losing votes in the North but their supporters in the South are prepared to vote LD instead to stop the Tories. Where do they get their votes from now?
The big question for me is what would happen in a GE? As we all know, by-elections are very different. In the South will Labour voters and previous Tory voters be prepared to vote LD then? At the last GE there were many voters in the South who would have voted LD but they were so terrified of Corbyn getting in that they couldn't risk it. For all SKS faults he isn't seen as a threat in the Home Counties quite like Corbyn was. My mother is in Wokingham and really dislikes Redwood but wasn't going to risk Corbyn in 2019. At the next GE she might be tempted to go LD. So SKS's de-toxification of Labour just helps the LDs in the South.
B&S will be very interesting to get some more details of what is happening in the North. Right now the Tories are in danger at the next GE of losing a host of Remainerland seats to the LDs. If the Tories continue to make progress in the North then it would probably equal-out. In that scenario, Labour will be the only losers.
Since the Brexit vote the political landscape in this country has been massively changing. I think we are only half-way through it and the next 5 years will be very interesting, particularly the next GE.
A shift of Conservative votes from South to North doesn't just equal-out it makes the Conservative vote more efficient.
Until it isn’t of course. Lab’s vote was very efficient for a while.
Yes, but in terms of whether they can retain enough efficiency for 2024, given majority size the scale of shift is very relevant. Will it be fast enough?
I had not been aware that Stop Funding Hate had had a grant of 50k from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
Perhaps we will now see the end of Stop Funding Hate, after their suicidal antics over GB News.
I watched GB News last night when Andrew Neil was on. Can't see what the fuss is about. Seemed pretty balanced to me.
I've not seen any of it nor do I intend to as I don't tend to watch tv news, but despite motivation raising quotes about taking on woke or whatever, the reaction in the build up was hysterical, and because of that it raises suspicion about the campaigns now it has aired.
BBC : ONE AZ vaccine dose reduces chance of hospitalisation by 75%...
But we have 7 million doses sitting in a warehouse doing nought....
And who do you want to give them too Francis?
We should have been giving them out a month ago...to anybody who wanted one.
But a month ago the JCVI data said getting an AZ vaccine was higher risk than the risk from Covid.
And as of now absolutely anybody who wants a vaccine is eligible for a Pfizer or Moderna one which is quicker working and safer. So why not give them that?
It does feel like it, even from unpolitical people I've been hearing a lot of "what's the point of the vaccines" type of comments. People who were supportive of the lockdown are now wondering whether we'll ever be allowed out.
I think the framing of the extension based on saving lives has been much less well received than they anticipated as people have put two and two together and realised that this extension is to save the lives of people aged 50+ that refused the vaccine.
I was out with an ultra covid-dovish lady last night. When I heard her utter the words “what then was the point of the vaccine?” I started to wonder whether the tide was indeed turning at last.
Surely the vaccine was to keep her 'safe' and others around her 'safe?'
The government never explicitly linked vaccination to freedom (certainly not in raw numbers anyway).
Bollocks. We were repeatedly told vaccines were the way out of this.
Well then it is manifestly clear by now you were repeatedly lied to.
And on that point I have no argument. At best they are guilty of extreme shifting of the goalposts and at worst blatantly dishonest.
OK, OK, this is Dom C going off on one, but a) he was right about this question, wasn't he? b) why did he work so hard to get "a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government" a huge majority?
7/ Pundits: not doing ANeil 'a huge campaign blunder' Me: why the fu*k wd be put a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government up to be grilled for ages, upside=0 for what?! This is not a hard decision... Pundits don't understand comms, power or management. Tune out!
I think the answer to question 2 might be that he thought he could control said gaffe machine. He obviously thought himself as a kind of Prime Minister to the Prime Minister, a sort of Cardinal Richelieu of the modern age. He didn't reckon the on the fact that Boris Johnson is always led by his Johnson, so Dom was replaced by Carrie . He is now at war with Carrie via media.
They might make a series of films about it. They will be known as the CarrieDom films.
Starting, no doubt, with CarrieDom Dick.
I'm sure something like that was the plan- that like Zaphod Beeblebrox, BoJo would so enjoy the flummery and pallaver of Being Prime Minister that not even he would notice that someone else was doing the actual job of running the country.
But it's also the kind of plan that, the attosecond you write it down, becomes utterly absurd. As we are seeing.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
One thing I like about you is your ability to paint such an inspiring vision of the future. YOU TOO could live next to a mostly vacant new build slum. Hill Dale in the Biff Tannon timeline but with a Home Counties accent. Sounds fucking lush mate.
If there's a vacant slum then why wouldn't you demolish it?
And why would it be built in the first place, if there's no demand for it.
Oh and slums exist today in our current timeline. That's the reality for millions of your compatriots and there are no houses free for them to move into, so if you have a better solution for them than mine then I'd love to hear it!
Or is your solution simply that you are very happy with slums existing, but you want them to be someone else's problem?
It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.
Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.
Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.
Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.
I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.
Not voting for anyone else mind.
I can understand normal people not voting because they aren't that fussed... but for political obsessives... especially someone like you who is clearly unhappy about how things are going... how can you not want to vote for someone else?
Lib Dem/Lab/Green/UKIP whoever... there's a wide range of choice out there.
I can’t vote Labour, I’m opposed to socialism.
The Lib Dems have Vera Hobhouse on their front bench. She’s a conspiracy theorist.
Can’t vote for the Greens as they are watermelons.
Can’t vote for UKIP or any Farage type party.
I live in a Lab/LD marginal so it doesn’t really matter to the Tories who wins this seat.
For the foreseeable future I shall be spoiling my ballot paper in increasingly amusing ways.
Hmm... it's obviously none of my business -> but your reason for not voting Lib Dem seems weak.
You don't like 1 of their people on the front bench... you surely have voted Tory whilst not liking at least 1 person on their front bench... if you are opposed to socialism, why not vote against it?
I guess I just feel people are very quick to take voting for granted and say-> they're all the same, doesn't matter who I vote for... when it's patently obviously politicians/parties are not all the same, there are some really awful ones out there!
In the middle of a pandemic an MP should not be peddling myths that 5G may cause health issues.
BBC : ONE AZ vaccine dose reduces chance of hospitalisation by 75%...
But we have 7 million doses sitting in a warehouse doing nought....
And who do you want to give them too Francis?
We should have been giving them out a month ago...to anybody who wanted one.
Anecdotally though I think the “message” on the “danger” of AZ has got through. I know there are places offering walk ins and people are turning it down when finding out what it is. It would be interesting to have some proper polling on how many U40s now would take it if offered it (knowing of course that at some point they will get an alternative, or even perhaps if they weren’t!)
On topic, I think Boris is safe for now. Mrs Thatcher was indeed gone after the large swing against the Conservatives in Eastbourne, but all the other circumstances are different:
- the Conservatives are about 10 points ahead in the national polls, whereas in 1990 they were 20 points behind - they have just had a sensational by-election win of their own in Hartlepool - Margaret had been in power for 10 years, whereas Boris has only been there for two - the local elections were very positive - Margaret was opposed to the mainstream of the Parliamentary party on Europe, while Boris has its support = there's no equivalent of the Poll Tax. - there's no leader who would obviously be more popular than Boris - there's three years before the Conservatives need to face the voters rather than two
So, overall, my guess is that Boris will still be there in a year's time, given what I know now. And if the Conservatives manage to win Batley, he's definitely safe, or as definite as these things ever are.
I think any extension of the 19th July date would be Boris' poll tax moment. The party would have to get rid of him.
I want to agree with you, but I'm afraid I don't, because rather too many people have got used to, or even enjoy, the restrictions, and those who object - young party animals - don't vote Conservative anyway. They are certainly nothing like the electoral disaster that was the Community Charge.
I don't think there's much risk to July 19th unless there's a genuine shock in hospitalization numbers.
BBC : ONE AZ vaccine dose reduces chance of hospitalisation by 75%...
But we have 7 million doses sitting in a warehouse doing nought....
And who do you want to give them too Francis?
We should have been giving them out a month ago...to anybody who wanted one.
But a month ago the JCVI data said getting an AZ vaccine was higher risk than the risk from Covid.
And as of now absolutely anybody who wants a vaccine is eligible for a Pfizer or Moderna one which is quicker working and safer. So why not give them that?
No, you can book an appointment for a jab. That's a different thing. At the moment, there is only supply for 150-200k first jabs a day. We could be doing double that easily with AZN.
As for JCVI advice, has it ever been updated in response to risk assessment / modelling of Indian variant vs AZN and the rapid spread?
I would suggest if they have, they are wrong. We should have started a blitz a month ago. The risk of AZN blood clot is same as a long haul flight, but it is spreading rapidly and widely throughout the young and we know delta variant hospitalisations for young are higher.
Obviously there are a myriad of reasons why the Tory vote collapsed last night, and I'm sure planning laws and HS2 were significant. However, I suspect the Covid restrictions debate was not.
I also have a hypothesis that the Tories are losing some votes because of the cronyism, whiff of corruption, disregard for accountability, disregard for Parliamentary convention and the constitution, and propensity to tell straightforward lies that permeate this government. These matters are compounded by some of the more reactionary rhetoric - for example, the unseemly attacks on asylum seekers and their (illegal) treatment in the Dover barracks - that 'decent' Tories find beyond the pale. There's a certain type of educated, middle-class voter, who is Tory but not tribal Tory, who I suspect is pretty disgusted with the shenanigans of Boris and his mates. Heck, I even wonder if Theresa May could bring herself to vote for Boris's Tories in a secret ballot.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Well. The planning bill hasn't yet been published, so you are ahead of the entire industry with this analysis.
Your comments just about make sense if they are a criticism of planning reform since 2012 (ie the NPPF and permitted development rights) which did replace the previous system of PPG's and PPS's. What really changed at this point though was the political removal of regional government and regional planning through which a lot of strategic large scale development was being driven.
It may not have been published in its final form but I have seen much of the consultation material and also had sight of the plans for specific areas such as the downgrading of archaeological protections (removing the need for pre-construction assessments, watching briefs and rescue archaeology) and environmental protections (removing the need for mitigations such as building alternative habitats and conducting impact studies).
The NPPF system was not as good as the old PPG system but it did retain much of the basic assumptions and practices - I know as I have operated under both systems. What is being said at all levels of the new proposals is that much of the sensible protection put in place by the PPG system in the 80s and 90s and carried forward by the NPPF system is to be weakened or scrapped.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
I have long thought that the failure of planning policy is related to one principle obsession of the British middle class: house prices. Successive governments are terrified of doing what is necessary because if they overheat supply there will be a resultant collapse in the house price bubble, leading to negative equity and very pissed off voters. Therefore better to have high demand and low supply so the bubble remains inflated. Young people therefore get stuffed unless the Bank of Mum and Dad coughs up.
House price inflation has brought equality of opportunity back to mid 20th century levels.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
We support rail (but not here!) We support house building (but not here!)
Not sure how you build a national platform off that....
It's nuts. How the hell can the Lib Dems be against public transport and building homes?
Pure NIMBYism at its very worst. Gosh these grapes are sour, almost bitter.
What are the Boris's idiots offering southern constituency tories in exchange for their goodwill on planning restrictions?
The highest taxes ever The biggest debts ever Ongoing restrictions on liberty. No travel overseas either holiday or business. The end of gas central heating. No more nice fuel injected BMWs. Ongoing lecturing and hectoring from a mob of common purpose aparatchiks.
In short, a f8cking political gulag. Now and stretching into the future.
Not really. Highest taxes? I remember when the top rate of tax was over 85% and before my time it was even higher.
Biggest debts? Certainly not as a share of GDP, nowhere near where we were after WW2.
Ongoing restrictions on liberty. Well, for a short time. This was almost certainly a factor in Tories not turning out.
No travel overseas. See above. The government has provided vaccines which should facilitate this shortly.
The end of gas central heating. Somewhat overstated but I agree that the green drive of the government is not enthusing many of their traditional supporters.
No more nice fuel injected BMWs. They will have electric one's instead so they can still drive like dicks.
Ongoing lecturing etc. Not from Boris. Or Patel.
There is NIMBYism, NOTA, irritation about freedom day and some uncertainty about where we are going. Given a free hit like a by election its easy to be self indulgent. Faced with SKS and the threat of far more of all of these irritants, not so much.
Well you have a point.
I remember the massive cheer in the dealing room I was working in when Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 60 to 40.
And that was 1988. Not 1980.
Lawson has got more than a tad unreliable as he has got older but in my view he was the best Chancellor in my life time. His book, the View from No 11, is still one of the best books on politics around.
What made him so spectacular is that he saw beyond the noise and used economic policy to shape the sort of society the Conservatives wanted. So, the increase in property ownership through council house sales, the tell Sid army of small shareholders, the significant reduction in marginal rates of tax making earning more attractive, the removal of restrictive practices and the opening up of our economy to international opportunities. It wasn't just him but there was a clear vision that went well beyond bringing the deficit down. They had a purpose and a vision beyond day to day management. I see very little of that today.
I think he's hugely overrated. He presided over an unsustainable housing boom that ended up in a crippling recession, surging interest rates, soaring unemployment and people losing their homes. The privatisation programmes sold off public sector assets too cheaply, basically giving away free money to participants at the expense of taxpayers. Similarly council housing sold at a discount. The legacy isn't higher rates of share ownership, and home ownership has gone down too, with people renting ex council homes at elevated rents, a new landlord class benefiting at their expense. Then of course there was the shadowing the DM debacle. And as he's got older he's turned into a climate change denier and argued for Leave from his French home so is a hypocrite too. I can't remember what his private views were on the grotesque poll tax, but he didn't do anything to stop it. Even Thatcher wanted to cut the top rate of tax only to 50%, which is the right level in my opinion. He pushed for 40%. He embodies everything that was vile about that era - a celebration of greed and self-interest over the common good.
» show previous quotes Because they've paid for it and because all benefits should be universal and then they'll pay taxes on it anyway.
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
Actually I’m paying for it. What they paid for was general government spending at the time.
Gallowgate, that is utter bollox. I have paid for 50 years for my poxy state pension and will never recoup a fraction of what they got from me. Hopefully they raise state pension age to 90 so you never get a sniff of it , would see if you are such a smartarse then. I paid for your education as well.
OK, OK, this is Dom C going off on one, but a) he was right about this question, wasn't he? b) why did he work so hard to get "a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government" a huge majority?
7/ Pundits: not doing ANeil 'a huge campaign blunder' Me: why the fu*k wd be put a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government up to be grilled for ages, upside=0 for what?! This is not a hard decision... Pundits don't understand comms, power or management. Tune out!
I think the answer to question 2 might be that he thought he could control said gaffe machine. He obviously thought himself as a kind of Prime Minister to the Prime Minister, a sort of Cardinal Richelieu of the modern age. He didn't reckon the on the fact that Boris Johnson is always led by his Johnson, so Dom was replaced by Carrie . He is now at war with Carrie via media.
They might make a series of films about it. They will be known as the CarrieDom films.
Starting, no doubt, with CarrieDom Dick.
I'm sure something like that was the plan- that like Zaphod Beeblebrox, BoJo would so enjoy the flummery and pallaver of Being Prime Minister that not even he would notice that someone else was doing the actual job of running the country.
But it's also the kind of plan that, the attosecond you write it down, becomes utterly absurd. As we are seeing.
Perhaps we should stop calling Johnson Bozo and call him Beeblebrox. After all, Beeblebrox is described as "hedonistic and irresponsible, narcissistic almost to the point of solipsism" and was briefly the President of the Galaxy -a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who's really in charge, a role for which Zaphod was perfectly suited.
....and he was voted "Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Known Universe" seven consecutive times, though I think Corbyn might have won that at the eighth attempt!
OK, OK, this is Dom C going off on one, but a) he was right about this question, wasn't he? b) why did he work so hard to get "a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government" a huge majority?
7/ Pundits: not doing ANeil 'a huge campaign blunder' Me: why the fu*k wd be put a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government up to be grilled for ages, upside=0 for what?! This is not a hard decision... Pundits don't understand comms, power or management. Tune out!
I think the answer to question 2 might be that he thought he could control said gaffe machine. He obviously thought himself as a kind of Prime Minister to the Prime Minister, a sort of Cardinal Richelieu of the modern age. He didn't reckon the on the fact that Boris Johnson is always led by his Johnson, so Dom was replaced by Carrie . He is now at war with Carrie via media.
They might make a series of films about it. They will be known as the CarrieDom films.
Starting, no doubt, with CarrieDom Dick.
I'm sure something like that was the plan- that like Zaphod Beeblebrox, BoJo would so enjoy the flummery and pallaver of Being Prime Minister that not even he would notice that someone else was doing the actual job of running the country.
But it's also the kind of plan that, the attosecond you write it down, becomes utterly absurd. As we are seeing.
Actually it sounded far more believable when Douglas Adams wrote it. Who knew that Johnson would take that as a template for Government?
Thankfully for the Tories, the solution is pretty straightforward. Replace Boris with almost anyone else and they would be much better placed in home-county-type fights.
Compare that with Labour's troubles, which currently feels like move left and lose votes, move right and lose votes.
Why would they give up all the red wall leave seats for a few southern Remain seats.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
Why would you only rely upon existing local facilities?
If thousands of new homes go up, then how about creating new facilities? Which can be used by new and existing residents alike.
I agree that a developer controlled system is a very big part of the problem, but that's part of our current planning system. Getting permission is so convoluted that it is the developers who do it, which then leads to them being monopolistic and stifled like 1970s companies.
Having a more competitive housing system where planning was easier to get would be about not just planning but breaking the grasp of new construction being done by developers.
In much of the world houses are built one at a time by people building their own home, on their own land. Something that's almost unheard of in this nation thanks to the planning regime, meaning we get large estates instead. We would get more carefully built homes if people were building their own (or contracting people to build their own) unilaterally as is done in much of the world, instead of new estates being thrown up en-mass as the only alternative.
Can you agree with me there, that breaking the monopolistic grasp of the developers on the sector would be a good thing?
The real question on our rollout is why couldn't everywhere else switch to whatever it is Wales was doing earlier on. They are now 28 whole days ahead of England on first doses at our current pace. They've just about caught up and will probably overtake on seconds too as they're down to stragglers on 1sts now.
» show previous quotes Because they've paid for it and because all benefits should be universal and then they'll pay taxes on it anyway.
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
Actually I’m paying for it. What they paid for was general government spending at the time.
Gallowgate, that is utter bollox. I have paid for 50 years for my poxy state pension and will never recoup a fraction of what they got from me. Hopefully they raise state pension age to 90 so you never get a sniff of it , would see if you are such a smartarse then. I paid for your education as well.
You paid for my education. I will be paying for your state pension. Thank you, and you’re welcome.
I have no expectation of a state pension anyway, but thanks for your comments.
C&A might be a classic Tory seat, but let's not stretch ourselves that it is a typical Tory seat. There are buckets of Tory seats across Southern England with attitudes far more akin to the Red Wall than here - all over Kent, Essex, Hampshire, most counties. C&A is definitely not Hemel or Ashford or Basingstoke. C&A is indicative of a chunk of Tory seats but by no means all.
I was minded of one of Mrs Rata's folks who lived just over into a very C&A type part of Aylesbury constituency. Voted Leave, not because it was easy or beneficial, but because the EU hadn't signed off the accounts for years and that was just not the done thing. The demographics match this anecdata - C&A has a significantly old average age (good for Tories), yet level of qualifications that are high (fewer older people have) and high earnings.
I suspect C&A was all about 'the done thing', in general or in specifics like HS2, and Boris, quite simply, isn't the done thing. This has somewhat limited applicability to the Southern Ruddy Wall ((including many that have never actually been red) constituencies and voters.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
We support rail (but not here!) We support house building (but not here!)
Not sure how you build a national platform off that....
It's nuts. How the hell can the Lib Dems be against public transport and building homes?
Pure NIMBYism at its very worst. Gosh these grapes are sour, almost bitter.
What are the Boris's idiots offering southern constituency tories in exchange for their goodwill on planning restrictions?
The highest taxes ever The biggest debts ever Ongoing restrictions on liberty. No travel overseas either holiday or business. The end of gas central heating. No more nice fuel injected BMWs. Ongoing lecturing and hectoring from a mob of common purpose aparatchiks.
In short, a f8cking political gulag. Now and stretching into the future.
Not really. Highest taxes? I remember when the top rate of tax was over 85% and before my time it was even higher.
Biggest debts? Certainly not as a share of GDP, nowhere near where we were after WW2.
Ongoing restrictions on liberty. Well, for a short time. This was almost certainly a factor in Tories not turning out.
No travel overseas. See above. The government has provided vaccines which should facilitate this shortly.
The end of gas central heating. Somewhat overstated but I agree that the green drive of the government is not enthusing many of their traditional supporters.
No more nice fuel injected BMWs. They will have electric one's instead so they can still drive like dicks.
Ongoing lecturing etc. Not from Boris. Or Patel.
There is NIMBYism, NOTA, irritation about freedom day and some uncertainty about where we are going. Given a free hit like a by election its easy to be self indulgent. Faced with SKS and the threat of far more of all of these irritants, not so much.
Well you have a point.
I remember the massive cheer in the dealing room I was working in when Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 60 to 40.
And that was 1988. Not 1980.
Lawson has got more than a tad unreliable as he has got older but in my view he was the best Chancellor in my life time. His book, the View from No 11, is still one of the best books on politics around.
What made him so spectacular is that he saw beyond the noise and used economic policy to shape the sort of society the Conservatives wanted. So, the increase in property ownership through council house sales, the tell Sid army of small shareholders, the significant reduction in marginal rates of tax making earning more attractive, the removal of restrictive practices and the opening up of our economy to international opportunities. It wasn't just him but there was a clear vision that went well beyond bringing the deficit down. They had a purpose and a vision beyond day to day management. I see very little of that today.
I think he's hugely overrated. He presided over an unsustainable housing boom that ended up in a crippling recession, surging interest rates, soaring unemployment and people losing their homes. The privatisation programmes sold off public sector assets too cheaply, basically giving away free money to participants at the expense of taxpayers. Similarly council housing sold at a discount. The legacy isn't higher rates of share ownership, and home ownership has gone down too, with people renting ex council homes at elevated rents, a new landlord class benefiting at their expense. Then of course there was the shadowing the DM debacle. And as he's got older he's turned into a climate change denier and argued for Leave from his French home so is a hypocrite too. I can't remember what his private views were on the grotesque poll tax, but he didn't do anything to stop it. Even Thatcher wanted to cut the top rate of tax only to 50%, which is the right level in my opinion. He pushed for 40%. He embodies everything that was vile about that era - a celebration of greed and self-interest over the common good.
» show previous quotes Because they've paid for it and because all benefits should be universal and then they'll pay taxes on it anyway.
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
Actually I’m paying for it. What they paid for was general government spending at the time.
Gallowgate, that is utter bollox. I have paid for 50 years for my poxy state pension and will never recoup a fraction of what they got from me. Hopefully they raise state pension age to 90 so you never get a sniff of it , would see if you are such a smartarse then. I paid for your education as well.
Blimey @Gallowgate , I didn't realise you went to Fettes?! And all that time you had an anonymous benevolent benefactor called Malcolm who desperately wanted a protégé that unlike him could string a coherent sentence or argument together. Blimey, sounds like the opening plot for a SeanT novel!
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
Why would you only rely upon existing local facilities?
If thousands of new homes go up, then how about creating new facilities? Which can be used by new and existing residents alike.
I agree that a developer controlled system is a very big part of the problem, but that's part of our current planning system. Getting permission is so convoluted that it is the developers who do it, which then leads to them being monopolistic and stifled like 1970s companies.
Having a more competitive housing system where planning was easier to get would be about not just planning but breaking the grasp of new construction being done by developers.
In much of the world houses are built one at a time by people building their own home, on their own land. Something that's almost unheard of in this nation thanks to the planning regime, meaning we get large estates instead. We would get more carefully built homes if people were building their own (or contracting people to build their own) unilaterally as is done in much of the world, instead of new estates being thrown up en-mass as the only alternative.
Can you agree with me there, that breaking the monopolistic grasp of the developers on the sector would be a good thing?
Because they are not building the new facilities. That is the issue. And that is why these planning changes are so poor. They take a real problem and use it as an excuse to deal with a non existent problem - all driven by the people who have the vested interest in both seeing the changes through and not dealing with the underling problem.
On the more substantive new point you raise I agree 100%. As promised I am currently trying to put together a piece on self build and non developer driven systems in other parts of Europe. It is a change that would have a real impact on housing and massively improve our built environment.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Well. The planning bill hasn't yet been published, so you are ahead of the entire industry with this analysis.
Your comments just about make sense if they are a criticism of planning reform since 2012 (ie the NPPF and permitted development rights) which did replace the previous system of PPG's and PPS's. What really changed at this point though was the political removal of regional government and regional planning through which a lot of strategic large scale development was being driven.
It may not have been published in its final form but I have seen much of the consultation material and also had sight of the plans for specific areas such as the downgrading of archaeological protections (removing the need for pre-construction assessments, watching briefs and rescue archaeology) and environmental protections (removing the need for mitigations such as building alternative habitats and conducting impact studies).
The NPPF system was not as good as the old PPG system but it did retain much of the basic assumptions and practices - I know as I have operated under both systems. What is being said at all levels of the new proposals is that much of the sensible protection put in place by the PPG system in the 80s and 90s and carried forward by the NPPF system is to be weakened or scrapped.
Out of interest, what material have you been looking at? Where is the proposal to downgrade archaeology and environmental protections?
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
I have long thought that the failure of planning policy is related to one principle obsession of the British middle class: house prices. Successive governments are terrified of doing what is necessary because if they overheat supply there will be a resultant collapse in the house price bubble, leading to negative equity and very pissed off voters. Therefore better to have high demand and low supply so the bubble remains inflated. Young people therefore get stuffed unless the Bank of Mum and Dad coughs up.
I had that down on my super short list of TBOBS* - a property crash. Ideally you'd want stagnant prices over many years to get a gradual, pain free adjustment, but sadly markets don't work that way. It's up and up until it pops.
C&A might be a classic Tory seat, but let's not stretch ourselves that it is a typical Tory seat. There are buckets of Tory seats across Southern England with attitudes far more akin to the Red Wall than here - all over Kent, Essex, Hampshire, most counties. C&A is definitely not Hemel or Ashford or Basingstoke. C&A is indicative of a chunk of Tory seats but by no means all.
I was minded of one of Mrs Rata's folks who lived just over into a very C&A type part of Aylesbury constituency. Voted Leave, not because it was easy or beneficial, but because the EU hadn't signed off the accounts for years and that was just not the done thing. The demographics match this anecdata - C&A has a significantly old average age (good for Tories), yet level of qualifications that are high (fewer older people have) and high earnings.
I suspect C&A was all about 'the done thing', in general or in specifics like HS2, and Boris, quite simply, isn't the done thing. This has somewhat limited applicability to the Southern Ruddy Wall ((including many that have never actually been red) constituencies and voters.
A post I nearly made earlier today but got sidetrack was that the South is made up of two types of Tory seats, those where the main opposition comes from the Lib Dems - highly educated, wealthy and those where the opposition comes from Labour, educated but probably not quite as many and relatively poorer than the wealthy seats.
And if you look at the seats so far mention today that's the case - C&A, Henley, Wokingham will switch orange, Wycombe, Slough, Watford are going to trend red.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
Why would you only rely upon existing local facilities?
If thousands of new homes go up, then how about creating new facilities? Which can be used by new and existing residents alike.
I agree that a developer controlled system is a very big part of the problem, but that's part of our current planning system. Getting permission is so convoluted that it is the developers who do it, which then leads to them being monopolistic and stifled like 1970s companies.
Having a more competitive housing system where planning was easier to get would be about not just planning but breaking the grasp of new construction being done by developers.
In much of the world houses are built one at a time by people building their own home, on their own land. Something that's almost unheard of in this nation thanks to the planning regime, meaning we get large estates instead. We would get more carefully built homes if people were building their own (or contracting people to build their own) unilaterally as is done in much of the world, instead of new estates being thrown up en-mass as the only alternative.
Can you agree with me there, that breaking the monopolistic grasp of the developers on the sector would be a good thing?
Because they are not building the new facilities. That is the issue. And that is why these planning changes are so poor. They take a real problem and use it as an excuse to deal with a non existent problem - all driven by the people who have the vested interest in both seeing the changes through and not dealing with the underling problem.
On the more substantive new point you raise I agree 100%. As promised I am currently trying to put together a piece on self build and non developer driven systems in other parts of Europe. It is a change that would have a real impact on housing and massively improve our built environment.
Obviously there are a myriad of reasons why the Tory vote collapsed last night, and I'm sure planning laws and HS2 were significant. However, I suspect the Covid restrictions debate was not.
I also have a hypothesis that the Tories are losing some votes because of the cronyism, whiff of corruption, disregard for accountability, disregard for Parliamentary convention and the constitution, and propensity to tell straightforward lies that permeate this government. These matters are compounded by some of the more reactionary rhetoric - for example, the unseemly attacks on asylum seekers and their (illegal) treatment in the Dover barracks - that 'decent' Tories find beyond the pale. There's a certain type of educated, middle-class voter, who is Tory but not tribal Tory, who I suspect is pretty disgusted with the shenanigans of Boris and his mates. Heck, I even wonder if Theresa May could bring herself to vote for Boris's Tories in a secret ballot.
Hope you're right. Think you are.
Of course I'm right. The only problem is that the people I described in my post would never vote Labour. Still, they could help the cause.
C&A might be a classic Tory seat, but let's not stretch ourselves that it is a typical Tory seat. There are buckets of Tory seats across Southern England with attitudes far more akin to the Red Wall than here - all over Kent, Essex, Hampshire, most counties. C&A is definitely not Hemel or Ashford or Basingstoke. C&A is indicative of a chunk of Tory seats but by no means all.
I was minded of one of Mrs Rata's folks who lived just over into a very C&A type part of Aylesbury constituency. Voted Leave, not because it was easy or beneficial, but because the EU hadn't signed off the accounts for years and that was just not the done thing. The demographics match this anecdata - C&A has a significantly old average age (good for Tories), yet level of qualifications that are high (fewer older people have) and high earnings.
I suspect C&A was all about 'the done thing', in general or in specifics like HS2, and Boris, quite simply, isn't the done thing. This has somewhat limited applicability to the Southern Ruddy Wall ((including many that have never actually been red) constituencies and voters.
A post I nearly made earlier today but got sidetrack was that the South is made up of two types of Tory seats, those where the main opposition comes from the Lib Dems - highly educated, wealthy and those where the opposition comes from Labour, educated but probably not quite as many and relatively poorer than the wealthy seats.
And if you look at the seats so far mention today that's the case - C&A, Henley, Wokingham will switch orange, Wycombe, Slough, Watford are going to trend red.
Massively in northern and midland voters interests to keep or switch to voting Tory I think in that case.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
We support rail (but not here!) We support house building (but not here!)
Not sure how you build a national platform off that....
It's nuts. How the hell can the Lib Dems be against public transport and building homes?
Pure NIMBYism at its very worst. Gosh these grapes are sour, almost bitter.
What are the Boris's idiots offering southern constituency tories in exchange for their goodwill on planning restrictions?
The highest taxes ever The biggest debts ever Ongoing restrictions on liberty. No travel overseas either holiday or business. The end of gas central heating. No more nice fuel injected BMWs. Ongoing lecturing and hectoring from a mob of common purpose aparatchiks.
In short, a f8cking political gulag. Now and stretching into the future.
Not really. Highest taxes? I remember when the top rate of tax was over 85% and before my time it was even higher.
Biggest debts? Certainly not as a share of GDP, nowhere near where we were after WW2.
Ongoing restrictions on liberty. Well, for a short time. This was almost certainly a factor in Tories not turning out.
No travel overseas. See above. The government has provided vaccines which should facilitate this shortly.
The end of gas central heating. Somewhat overstated but I agree that the green drive of the government is not enthusing many of their traditional supporters.
No more nice fuel injected BMWs. They will have electric one's instead so they can still drive like dicks.
Ongoing lecturing etc. Not from Boris. Or Patel.
There is NIMBYism, NOTA, irritation about freedom day and some uncertainty about where we are going. Given a free hit like a by election its easy to be self indulgent. Faced with SKS and the threat of far more of all of these irritants, not so much.
Well you have a point.
I remember the massive cheer in the dealing room I was working in when Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 60 to 40.
And that was 1988. Not 1980.
Lawson has got more than a tad unreliable as he has got older but in my view he was the best Chancellor in my life time. His book, the View from No 11, is still one of the best books on politics around.
What made him so spectacular is that he saw beyond the noise and used economic policy to shape the sort of society the Conservatives wanted. So, the increase in property ownership through council house sales, the tell Sid army of small shareholders, the significant reduction in marginal rates of tax making earning more attractive, the removal of restrictive practices and the opening up of our economy to international opportunities. It wasn't just him but there was a clear vision that went well beyond bringing the deficit down. They had a purpose and a vision beyond day to day management. I see very little of that today.
I think he's hugely overrated. He presided over an unsustainable housing boom that ended up in a crippling recession, surging interest rates, soaring unemployment and people losing their homes. The privatisation programmes sold off public sector assets too cheaply, basically giving away free money to participants at the expense of taxpayers. Similarly council housing sold at a discount. The legacy isn't higher rates of share ownership, and home ownership has gone down too, with people renting ex council homes at elevated rents, a new landlord class benefiting at their expense. Then of course there was the shadowing the DM debacle. And as he's got older he's turned into a climate change denier and argued for Leave from his French home so is a hypocrite too. I can't remember what his private views were on the grotesque poll tax, but he didn't do anything to stop it. Even Thatcher wanted to cut the top rate of tax only to 50%, which is the right level in my opinion. He pushed for 40%. He embodies everything that was vile about that era - a celebration of greed and self-interest over the common good.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
I have long thought that the failure of planning policy is related to one principle obsession of the British middle class: house prices. Successive governments are terrified of doing what is necessary because if they overheat supply there will be a resultant collapse in the house price bubble, leading to negative equity and very pissed off voters. Therefore better to have high demand and low supply so the bubble remains inflated. Young people therefore get stuffed unless the Bank of Mum and Dad coughs up.
I had that down on my super short list of TBOBS* - a property crash. Ideally you'd want stagnant prices over many years to get a gradual, pain free adjustment, but sadly markets don't work that way. It's up and up until it pops.
* tangible benefits of brexit
Not a terribly nice wish. Property crashes of the past have lead to debt, repossessions, family breakdown and suicide. What else is on your shortlist? A pandemic that reduces the surplus population?
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
Why would you only rely upon existing local facilities?
If thousands of new homes go up, then how about creating new facilities? Which can be used by new and existing residents alike.
I agree that a developer controlled system is a very big part of the problem, but that's part of our current planning system. Getting permission is so convoluted that it is the developers who do it, which then leads to them being monopolistic and stifled like 1970s companies.
Having a more competitive housing system where planning was easier to get would be about not just planning but breaking the grasp of new construction being done by developers.
In much of the world houses are built one at a time by people building their own home, on their own land. Something that's almost unheard of in this nation thanks to the planning regime, meaning we get large estates instead. We would get more carefully built homes if people were building their own (or contracting people to build their own) unilaterally as is done in much of the world, instead of new estates being thrown up en-mass as the only alternative.
Can you agree with me there, that breaking the monopolistic grasp of the developers on the sector would be a good thing?
Because they are not building the new facilities. That is the issue. And that is why these planning changes are so poor. They take a real problem and use it as an excuse to deal with a non existent problem - all driven by the people who have the vested interest in both seeing the changes through and not dealing with the underling problem.
On the more substantive new point you raise I agree 100%. As promised I am currently trying to put together a piece on self build and non developer driven systems in other parts of Europe. It is a change that would have a real impact on housing and massively improve our built environment.
I think we might be coming across cross-wires leading to a misunderstanding.
I've not seen the proposed planning reforms and haven't said they're good or bad. I do not want to see more power given to the developers, and if you think that, its backwards.
I believe in free market economics and I think, so long as protections and regulations are sensible, that should work in the housing system too.
My ideal solution, which almost certainly won't be what the government proposes, is to have local areas set zoning - eg zone AONBs as off limits, zone areas where housing is permissible - and then to have standards and regulations determined to fit the local area. EG if all houses in the area are built with red bricks you might want to say that new houses should be too so they fit with the area.
Then if people meet the local standards and are in the right zone, it should take only a matter of weeks to go from getting the land to being able to start construction. Not months or years of planning. Which would allow self-builders and small developers to get it done, rather than just large estates that get banked for years to construct.
I'm glad we can agree on the final point and if there's a better solution to enable people to be able to self-build then I'd be happy with that too.
Obviously there are a myriad of reasons why the Tory vote collapsed last night, and I'm sure planning laws and HS2 were significant. However, I suspect the Covid restrictions debate was not.
I also have a hypothesis that the Tories are losing some votes because of the cronyism, whiff of corruption, disregard for accountability, disregard for Parliamentary convention and the constitution, and propensity to tell straightforward lies that permeate this government. These matters are compounded by some of the more reactionary rhetoric - for example, the unseemly attacks on asylum seekers and their (illegal) treatment in the Dover barracks - that 'decent' Tories find beyond the pale. There's a certain type of educated, middle-class voter, who is Tory but not tribal Tory, who I suspect is pretty disgusted with the shenanigans of Boris and his mates. Heck, I even wonder if Theresa May could bring herself to vote for Boris's Tories in a secret ballot.
Hope you're right. Think you are.
That begs the question of why Boris swept England in 2019 in the first place. All this stuff was front and centre.
Obviously there are a myriad of reasons why the Tory vote collapsed last night, and I'm sure planning laws and HS2 were significant. However, I suspect the Covid restrictions debate was not.
I also have a hypothesis that the Tories are losing some votes because of the cronyism, whiff of corruption, disregard for accountability, disregard for Parliamentary convention and the constitution, and propensity to tell straightforward lies that permeate this government. These matters are compounded by some of the more reactionary rhetoric - for example, the unseemly attacks on asylum seekers and their (illegal) treatment in the Dover barracks - that 'decent' Tories find beyond the pale. There's a certain type of educated, middle-class voter, who is Tory but not tribal Tory, who I suspect is pretty disgusted with the shenanigans of Boris and his mates. Heck, I even wonder if Theresa May could bring herself to vote for Boris's Tories in a secret ballot.
Hope you're right. Think you are.
That begs the question of why Boris swept England in 2019 in the first place. All this stuff was front and centre.
The state of Labour? I think that is likely to get worse not better.
I see a random study is out saying c. 75% of Urban Indians have had Covid, and c. 55% of rural Indians.
Looks like the Delta varient will be far too trasnmissible for its own good and run out of road in just a few weeks per area it arrives.
Can you link to the study ?
That and the SHAPE of the indian cases covid curve on worldometers could potentially point to herd immunity being achieved there. It's almost a classic SEIR...
I just noticed that Lady Whiplash of The Corrective Party got 216 votes in the Eastbourne 1990 by election! Eastbourne is clearly a more interesting place than I thought!
I see a random study is out saying c. 75% of Urban Indians have had Covid, and c. 55% of rural Indians.
Looks like the Delta varient will be far too trasnmissible for its own good and run out of road in just a few weeks per area it arrives.
Can you link to the study ?
That and the SHAPE of the indian cases covid curve on worldometers could potentially point to herd immunity being achieved there.
Worth noting the seropositivity rates there are no higher that we now have in the UK - further points to delta exit wave just being about filling in local pockets of weakness where vaccine take-up has been slack / kids.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
One thing I like about you is your ability to paint such an inspiring vision of the future. YOU TOO could live next to a mostly vacant new build slum. Hill Dale in the Biff Tannon timeline but with a Home Counties accent. Sounds fucking lush mate.
If there's a vacant slum then why wouldn't you demolish it?
And why would it be built in the first place, if there's no demand for it.
Oh and slums exist today in our current timeline. That's the reality for millions of your compatriots and there are no houses free for them to move into, so if you have a better solution for them than mine then I'd love to hear it!
Or is your solution simply that you are very happy with slums existing, but you want them to be someone else's problem?
Like most others, I would rather see self building made easier. No one particularly cares in a village of 100 houses if a few annexes are out in. What they care about is a developer being carte Blanche to stick 400 houses next to it, especially so if on green built and with no care or concern for local amenities and infrastructure.
Personally as a small shareholder of UK Government Inc, I am pissed off about always giving the upside to others in the market. Seems to me if you go back to the 1950s, the only periods when there was sufficient building to meet demand was when the state built homes.
The UK government is in a far better position to take equity risk on development projects, not least because it owns the planning system. I get fed up that as a shareholder in the state, my money gets whazzed away to improve infrastructure that the private sector then profits from. That us shareholders in the state give up green space in rezoning that the private sector then profits from.
In short Philip, I want the state to be highly interventionist in the housing market.
Interestingly that puts their prevalence as lower than our own rate of antibodies in adults in the UK.
As I've said before, we're pretty much at herd immunity here now which is why we won't see another wave with tens of thousands of dead. All we can see now is the virus take off in the pockets were immunity is low, then burn itself out. Which is evidenced by the virus already falling away in places like Bolton too.
He's right of course. But pundits have to be saying things the whole time or people forget about them (worst fate of all).
I mean, have you tried saying things the whole time without sliding into drivel? - And did you manage it?
*Looks at past posts on PB*
Err...
- Me too.
My worst ever post on PB was where I suggested (in prolonged fashion) that Theresa May's strategy as she sought to pass her Brexit Deal was, contrary to popular perception, a masterly example of rope-a-dope with her as Ali and those opposing her as George Foreman.
I just noticed that Lady Whiplash of The Corrective Party got 216 votes in the Eastbourne 1990 by election! Eastbourne is clearly a more interesting place than I thought!
That was Lindi St Clair, who was a fairly well known personality at one time and stood repeatedly in by-elections.
At one point, she was reported to have offered to defect to the Lib Dems in exchange for a peerage (I think) and to give up her little black book, which she claimed listed many Major-era MPs. Paddy Ashdown politely declined her kind offer.
Ultimately, I believe she found God after a car crash, and devoted herself to a quiet life of prayer and... well, whatever.
Obviously there are a myriad of reasons why the Tory vote collapsed last night, and I'm sure planning laws and HS2 were significant. However, I suspect the Covid restrictions debate was not.
I also have a hypothesis that the Tories are losing some votes because of the cronyism, whiff of corruption, disregard for accountability, disregard for Parliamentary convention and the constitution, and propensity to tell straightforward lies that permeate this government. These matters are compounded by some of the more reactionary rhetoric - for example, the unseemly attacks on asylum seekers and their (illegal) treatment in the Dover barracks - that 'decent' Tories find beyond the pale. There's a certain type of educated, middle-class voter, who is Tory but not tribal Tory, who I suspect is pretty disgusted with the shenanigans of Boris and his mates. Heck, I even wonder if Theresa May could bring herself to vote for Boris's Tories in a secret ballot.
Hope you're right. Think you are.
That begs the question of why Boris swept England in 2019 in the first place. All this stuff was front and centre.
Not necessarily. There is always a time lag in public perception. Marketers refer to the phases of adoption of ideas and products. You get the early adopters who get hold of it at the start and then it gathers pace. I think the realisation that Boris Johnson is shit has only just passed the Early Adopter Phase
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
One thing I like about you is your ability to paint such an inspiring vision of the future. YOU TOO could live next to a mostly vacant new build slum. Hill Dale in the Biff Tannon timeline but with a Home Counties accent. Sounds fucking lush mate.
If there's a vacant slum then why wouldn't you demolish it?
And why would it be built in the first place, if there's no demand for it.
Oh and slums exist today in our current timeline. That's the reality for millions of your compatriots and there are no houses free for them to move into, so if you have a better solution for them than mine then I'd love to hear it!
Or is your solution simply that you are very happy with slums existing, but you want them to be someone else's problem?
Like most others, I would rather see self building made easier. No one particularly cares in a village of 100 houses if a few annexes are out in. What they care about is a developer being carte Blanche to stick 400 houses next to it, especially so if on green built and with no care or concern for local amenities and infrastructure.
Personally as a small shareholder of UK Government Inc, I am pissed off about always giving the upside to others in the market. Seems to me if you go back to the 1950s, the only periods when there was sufficient building to meet demand was when the state built homes.
The UK government is in a far better position to take equity risk on development projects, not least because it owns the planning system. I get fed up that as a shareholder in the state, my money gets whazzed away to improve infrastructure that the private sector then profits from. That us shareholders in the state give up green space in rezoning that the private sector then profits from.
In short Philip, I want the state to be highly interventionist in the housing market.
Urgh. The state is not good at managing that sort of thing, that sounds like an absolute nightmare to me.
We need the state to get out of the way, not take on more responsibilities.
Thankfully for the Tories, the solution is pretty straightforward. Replace Boris with almost anyone else and they would be much better placed in home-county-type fights.
Compare that with Labour's troubles, which currently feels like move left and lose votes, move right and lose votes.
Why would they give up all the red wall leave seats for a few southern Remain seats.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
I don't know about Batley & Spen. But, in general, the trade of Home Counties' and London Remain votes for gains in the North and Midlands works very much in the Conservatives' favour. The Conservatives need 335 seats for a working majority. It matters little where those 335 seats are located.
Interestingly that puts their prevalence as lower than our own rate of antibodies in adults in the UK.
As I've said before, we're pretty much at herd immunity here now which is why we won't see another wave with tens of thousands of dead. All we can see now is the virus take off in the pockets were immunity is low, then burn itself out. Which is evidenced by the virus already falling away in places like Bolton too.
That depends on the current efficacy of our vaccine mix for transmission compared to naturally acquired immunity they seem to have gained in India.
Thankfully for the Tories, the solution is pretty straightforward. Replace Boris with almost anyone else and they would be much better placed in home-county-type fights.
Compare that with Labour's troubles, which currently feels like move left and lose votes, move right and lose votes.
Why would they give up all the red wall leave seats for a few southern Remain seats.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
I don't know about Batley & Spen. But, in general, the trade of Home Counties' and London Remain votes for gains in the North and Midlands works very much in the Conservatives' favour. The Conservatives need 335 seats for a working majority. It matters little where those 335 seats are located.
It matters little electorally, but could have a big impact on their governing agenda, and personally the more the views of London and the South are ignored the better - they've had a good run but it's not their turn now.
Thankfully for the Tories, the solution is pretty straightforward. Replace Boris with almost anyone else and they would be much better placed in home-county-type fights.
Compare that with Labour's troubles, which currently feels like move left and lose votes, move right and lose votes.
Why would they give up all the red wall leave seats for a few southern Remain seats.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
I don't know about Batley & Spen. But, in general, the trade of Home Counties' and London Remain votes for gains in the North and Midlands works very much in the Conservatives' favour. The Conservatives need 335 seats for a working majority. It matters little where those 335 seats are located.
Apart from those MPs whose seats get lost in the churn.
He's right of course. But pundits have to be saying things the whole time or people forget about them (worst fate of all).
I mean, have you tried saying things the whole time without sliding into drivel? - And did you manage it?
*Looks at past posts on PB*
Err...
- Me too.
My worst ever post on PB was where I suggested (in prolonged fashion) that Theresa May's strategy as she sought to pass her Brexit Deal was, contrary to popular perception, a masterly example of rope-a-dope with her as Ali and those opposing her as George Foreman.
It really should have been moderated.
Too many to mention but the one just a few days ago when I said something like:
"I am not fully up on this betting malarky, but AIUI if you bet £10 on the Lib Dems winning C&A at 12/1 you lose £10" has proven to be pretty spectacular.
Obviously there are a myriad of reasons why the Tory vote collapsed last night, and I'm sure planning laws and HS2 were significant. However, I suspect the Covid restrictions debate was not.
I also have a hypothesis that the Tories are losing some votes because of the cronyism, whiff of corruption, disregard for accountability, disregard for Parliamentary convention and the constitution, and propensity to tell straightforward lies that permeate this government. These matters are compounded by some of the more reactionary rhetoric - for example, the unseemly attacks on asylum seekers and their (illegal) treatment in the Dover barracks - that 'decent' Tories find beyond the pale. There's a certain type of educated, middle-class voter, who is Tory but not tribal Tory, who I suspect is pretty disgusted with the shenanigans of Boris and his mates. Heck, I even wonder if Theresa May could bring herself to vote for Boris's Tories in a secret ballot.
Hope you're right. Think you are.
That begs the question of why Boris swept England in 2019 in the first place. All this stuff was front and centre.
But only to an extent. There'll be lots of people who hoped for better from him. People who suspected he'd be like this but decided to give him a whirl. To suck him and see, as it were. Well, now they've sucked - and lo they can see.
Interestingly that puts their prevalence as lower than our own rate of antibodies in adults in the UK.
As I've said before, we're pretty much at herd immunity here now which is why we won't see another wave with tens of thousands of dead. All we can see now is the virus take off in the pockets were immunity is low, then burn itself out. Which is evidenced by the virus already falling away in places like Bolton too.
That depends on the current efficacy of our vaccine mix for transmission compared to naturally acquired immunity they seem to have gained in India.
After a year of public health figures trying to cast doubt on the protective value of prior infection it would be a fun reverse ferrit to now say it's better than immunisation.
I just noticed that Lady Whiplash of The Corrective Party got 216 votes in the Eastbourne 1990 by election! Eastbourne is clearly a more interesting place than I thought!
PS. Following on from what I said, I've had a quick look at the ledgers in Passmore Towers, and it does seem Eastbourne was, by some way, Ms St Clair's best by-election performance. So there may be something in what you say - something about the sea air, I expect.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
We support rail (but not here!) We support house building (but not here!)
Not sure how you build a national platform off that....
It's nuts. How the hell can the Lib Dems be against public transport and building homes?
Pure NIMBYism at its very worst. Gosh these grapes are sour, almost bitter.
What are the Boris's idiots offering southern constituency tories in exchange for their goodwill on planning restrictions?
The highest taxes ever The biggest debts ever Ongoing restrictions on liberty. No travel overseas either holiday or business. The end of gas central heating. No more nice fuel injected BMWs. Ongoing lecturing and hectoring from a mob of common purpose aparatchiks.
In short, a f8cking political gulag. Now and stretching into the future.
Not really. Highest taxes? I remember when the top rate of tax was over 85% and before my time it was even higher.
Biggest debts? Certainly not as a share of GDP, nowhere near where we were after WW2.
Ongoing restrictions on liberty. Well, for a short time. This was almost certainly a factor in Tories not turning out.
No travel overseas. See above. The government has provided vaccines which should facilitate this shortly.
The end of gas central heating. Somewhat overstated but I agree that the green drive of the government is not enthusing many of their traditional supporters.
No more nice fuel injected BMWs. They will have electric one's instead so they can still drive like dicks.
Ongoing lecturing etc. Not from Boris. Or Patel.
There is NIMBYism, NOTA, irritation about freedom day and some uncertainty about where we are going. Given a free hit like a by election its easy to be self indulgent. Faced with SKS and the threat of far more of all of these irritants, not so much.
Well you have a point.
I remember the massive cheer in the dealing room I was working in when Lawson cut the top rate of tax from 60 to 40.
And that was 1988. Not 1980.
Lawson has got more than a tad unreliable as he has got older but in my view he was the best Chancellor in my life time. His book, the View from No 11, is still one of the best books on politics around.
What made him so spectacular is that he saw beyond the noise and used economic policy to shape the sort of society the Conservatives wanted. So, the increase in property ownership through council house sales, the tell Sid army of small shareholders, the significant reduction in marginal rates of tax making earning more attractive, the removal of restrictive practices and the opening up of our economy to international opportunities. It wasn't just him but there was a clear vision that went well beyond bringing the deficit down. They had a purpose and a vision beyond day to day management. I see very little of that today.
I think he's hugely overrated. He presided over an unsustainable housing boom that ended up in a crippling recession, surging interest rates, soaring unemployment and people losing their homes. The privatisation programmes sold off public sector assets too cheaply, basically giving away free money to participants at the expense of taxpayers. Similarly council housing sold at a discount. The legacy isn't higher rates of share ownership, and home ownership has gone down too, with people renting ex council homes at elevated rents, a new landlord class benefiting at their expense. Then of course there was the shadowing the DM debacle. And as he's got older he's turned into a climate change denier and argued for Leave from his French home so is a hypocrite too. I can't remember what his private views were on the grotesque poll tax, but he didn't do anything to stop it. Even Thatcher wanted to cut the top rate of tax only to 50%, which is the right level in my opinion. He pushed for 40%. He embodies everything that was vile about that era - a celebration of greed and self-interest over the common good.
Nigella is the standout in that family.
Had the latest Nigella vehicle on in the background this week, and while the food looked nice I was astounded to see that Nigella appears to be growing more fragrant and beautiful with the years; her dad otoh seems to be turning into a mad old lady. Perhaps there’s some sort of Dorian Gray thing going on..
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
I have long thought that the failure of planning policy is related to one principle obsession of the British middle class: house prices. Successive governments are terrified of doing what is necessary because if they overheat supply there will be a resultant collapse in the house price bubble, leading to negative equity and very pissed off voters. Therefore better to have high demand and low supply so the bubble remains inflated. Young people therefore get stuffed unless the Bank of Mum and Dad coughs up.
I had that down on my super short list of TBOBS* - a property crash. Ideally you'd want stagnant prices over many years to get a gradual, pain free adjustment, but sadly markets don't work that way. It's up and up until it pops.
* tangible benefits of brexit
Not a terribly nice wish. Property crashes of the past have lead to debt, repossessions, family breakdown and suicide. What else is on your shortlist? A pandemic that reduces the surplus population?
That was number 2. Number 1 is more 100% benign - a collapse of the City of London financial sector. But wait! - to be followed by a new, unbloated, real value-added version.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
Thankfully for the Tories, the solution is pretty straightforward. Replace Boris with almost anyone else and they would be much better placed in home-county-type fights.
Compare that with Labour's troubles, which currently feels like move left and lose votes, move right and lose votes.
Why would they give up all the red wall leave seats for a few southern Remain seats.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
I don't know about Batley & Spen. But, in general, the trade of Home Counties' and London Remain votes for gains in the North and Midlands works very much in the Conservatives' favour. The Conservatives need 335 seats for a working majority. It matters little where those 335 seats are located.
This is very true. But necessitates a completely different membership, funding stream, ideology and policies. Not a problem if you are just a Blue Team fan. But it is if you have any political beliefs.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Well. The planning bill hasn't yet been published, so you are ahead of the entire industry with this analysis.
Your comments just about make sense if they are a criticism of planning reform since 2012 (ie the NPPF and permitted development rights) which did replace the previous system of PPG's and PPS's. What really changed at this point though was the political removal of regional government and regional planning through which a lot of strategic large scale development was being driven.
It may not have been published in its final form but I have seen much of the consultation material and also had sight of the plans for specific areas such as the downgrading of archaeological protections (removing the need for pre-construction assessments, watching briefs and rescue archaeology) and environmental protections (removing the need for mitigations such as building alternative habitats and conducting impact studies).
The NPPF system was not as good as the old PPG system but it did retain much of the basic assumptions and practices - I know as I have operated under both systems. What is being said at all levels of the new proposals is that much of the sensible protection put in place by the PPG system in the 80s and 90s and carried forward by the NPPF system is to be weakened or scrapped.
Out of interest, what material have you been looking at? Where is the proposal to downgrade archaeology and environmental protections?
Consultation documents being circulated by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists amongst others.
In some ways it is already too late. The Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 already prevents local authorities from imposing pre-commencement conditions on planning applications without developer agreement. This basically means that the developer can refuse to have archaeological or environmental mitigations included in the planning permission and the only authority the council has is to refuse permission entirely. But the ability to refuse permission is also taken away from the council in many cases so the developer just has to hold out and they get permission anyway.
And what a weird quote about the Chilterns. "The [Chiltern] district council failed to make a local plan, leaving the area extra vulnerable to a developers free for all in the green belt."
I'm not from the area, but I would have thought a logical solution to that would be to make a local plan. That makes the not having a local plan problem go away surely?
That quote is tricky as 4 councils were merged in April 2020, and no one gets a local plan created and approved in less than about 3 years.
I'm not convinced that this is less control for local people. The Local Plan will still be a consulted Council Document. And Zonal is I think a small step towards a more European style system - it i too big for me to have followed in real detail. Try Nabavi.
Thankfully for the Tories, the solution is pretty straightforward. Replace Boris with almost anyone else and they would be much better placed in home-county-type fights.
Compare that with Labour's troubles, which currently feels like move left and lose votes, move right and lose votes.
Why would they give up all the red wall leave seats for a few southern Remain seats.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
I don't know about Batley & Spen. But, in general, the trade of Home Counties' and London Remain votes for gains in the North and Midlands works very much in the Conservatives' favour. The Conservatives need 335 seats for a working majority. It matters little where those 335 seats are located.
I agree. There is nothing in this to worry the Tories with any new problems, just the old ones. LD gains at Tory by elections are an ancient tradition, at least back to Orpington. What is not an ancient tradition is Tory government northern gains at by elections - Copeland, Hartlepool.
Unless Lab and LD with Green form a real pact the Tories can carry on winning in England with a large and coherent spectrum of the middling sort from South Holland to Hartlepool, while Lab and LD are both competing in the same ideological territory for a strange mixture of: too posh to vote Tory, too urban ditto, too BAME ditto, too poor ditto, too intelligent ditto, too woke ditto, too NIMBY ditto. There aren't (yet) enough of them. And when there are they have to cope with the voters' worries about letting the SNP and the Labour left in by the back door.
And the Tories can afford to lose B&S, while Labour can't. Interesting times.
Surely this is the terminal spasm of a dying culture. Apparently political discourse is now universally mediated by the visual metaphor of fake walls being breached by fat middle aged white men. We can only hope the cetacean civilisation that will follow our very welcome extinction will be better.
Thankfully for the Tories, the solution is pretty straightforward. Replace Boris with almost anyone else and they would be much better placed in home-county-type fights.
Compare that with Labour's troubles, which currently feels like move left and lose votes, move right and lose votes.
Why would they give up all the red wall leave seats for a few southern Remain seats.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
I don't know about Batley & Spen. But, in general, the trade of Home Counties' and London Remain votes for gains in the North and Midlands works very much in the Conservatives' favour. The Conservatives need 335 seats for a working majority. It matters little where those 335 seats are located.
There's a fair element of truth in that.
The trouble is that, to maintain it, they do need their so-called "levelling up" agenda to deliver. I recall a chap interviewed in Hartlepool who'd switched red to blue saying he'd done so because Labour had done nothing for him and "over the past ten years" the area had gone downhill horribly. Hmmm... the danger for the Tories is he puts two and two together at some point.
It's rather like leaving your wife for your much younger mistress. It all sounds a good trade but, if the mistress bails on you having seen the real you 24/7, then you're left with sod all and it doesn't look half as clever.
Just thought I'd throw in an analogy the PM would appreciate there.
ONS infection survey data doesn't look particularly alarming. Don't see how that series which measures all infections will hit anything like the Warwick predictions that were used to justify the lockdown extension.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
Yep, for all the usual chaff about EXPONENTIAL GROWTH the ONS survey over the last 3 weeks shows a clear levelling off at a level about 10% that of January.
Interestingly that puts their prevalence as lower than our own rate of antibodies in adults in the UK.
As I've said before, we're pretty much at herd immunity here now which is why we won't see another wave with tens of thousands of dead. All we can see now is the virus take off in the pockets were immunity is low, then burn itself out. Which is evidenced by the virus already falling away in places like Bolton too.
That depends on the current efficacy of our vaccine mix for transmission compared to naturally acquired immunity they seem to have gained in India.
After a year of public health figures trying to cast doubt on the protective value of prior infection it would be a fun reverse ferrit to now say it's better than immunisation.
Yeah but you need to get infected in the first place to acquire the potential prior acquisition transmission immunity. If you truly needed infection on top of vaccination for sterlising immunity then the main effect on health is that you strip away any free rider effect for the unvaccinated. The better the vaccines work, the less the refuseniks need them..........
Isn’t this just a case of posh Remain seat going to a Remain party? As Hartlepool was a case of poor working class leave seat going to the Leave party. It’s not a secret that Brexit might cause a realignment of the voters, and it seems to be happening
Seems to be a realignment ol' Starmer can't take advantage of mind.
Perhaps the Lib Dems will challenge Labour for second place.
If Con win B&S, Sir Keir's record in by elections will be lost safe seat, lost deposit, lost safe seat! His fans say LDs doing well is a sign Con/LDs feel comfortable to vote LD now Jez has gone, but I'd say they fell comfortable becasue the Cons have an 80 seat maj
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Which would be great if the system had worked, but it hasn't. Our population has grown by over ten million in a generation and the housing market didn't keep up with that.
As for "slums" its ironic that I see some people here complaining that developers are only building small, boxy "slums", while others here complain that developers are only building large expensive homes that can't be afforded (while ignoring the fact that people who buy a large home, sell their smaller one they move out of).
As Thatcher showed herself, the more there is a free market, the more competition there is, the more standards need to rise. Those who build slums will find their slums unsellable if they can be competed against by people building good homes.
The point being that the planning system has had bugger all to do with the failure to build more houses. Yes the population has grown but the failure to build houses to accommodate them has been due to strategic failures by government combined with a developer controlled system that allows them to land bank to maintain and increase the value of their assets. Given the ability of local councils to approve huge numbers of new houses in secret during that same period it can hardly be claimed that the planning system was preventing developments going ahead.
All the planning reforms do is remove the responsibility of developers to act in a manner we would all expect and should demand. And those large expensive homes are the very future slums I am talking about. They are poorly built with no amenities and no regard for existing local facilities. You are defending the indefensible and I assume this is due to complete ignorance of the subject.
I have long thought that the failure of planning policy is related to one principle obsession of the British middle class: house prices. Successive governments are terrified of doing what is necessary because if they overheat supply there will be a resultant collapse in the house price bubble, leading to negative equity and very pissed off voters. Therefore better to have high demand and low supply so the bubble remains inflated. Young people therefore get stuffed unless the Bank of Mum and Dad coughs up.
I had that down on my super short list of TBOBS* - a property crash. Ideally you'd want stagnant prices over many years to get a gradual, pain free adjustment, but sadly markets don't work that way. It's up and up until it pops.
* tangible benefits of brexit
Not a terribly nice wish. Property crashes of the past have lead to debt, repossessions, family breakdown and suicide. What else is on your shortlist? A pandemic that reduces the surplus population?
That was number 2. Number 1 is more 100% benign - a collapse of the City of London financial sector. But wait! - to be followed by a new, unbloated, real value-added version.
Ah, ok, I guess that will also have the benefit of most people's pension schemes collapsing, R&D funding on medical and environmental products drying up and insufficient corporation tax to fund the NHS et al. We could call it a "levelling down" agenda, or the Venezuela Project. Interesting Utopia.
Surely this is the terminal spasm of a dying culture. Apparently political discourse is now universally mediated by the visual metaphor of fake walls being breached by fat middle aged white men. We can only hope the cetacean civilisation that will follow our very welcome extinction will be better.
My long-term goal is to do a self build somewhere in Northumberland. Nothing fancy, just a normal house with a bit of land.
'.......A future tory voter, there......'
I think I’m far too woke to vote Tory
Its amazing, Mr G. how attitudes change when you become a property owner!
Deserving welfare cases become scrounging layabouts overnight. You becomes strangely attracted to the headlines in the Daily Telegraph. And yes maybe you ARE paying a lot of tax!
Interestingly a big part of my new job is construction disputes. I love it so far.
I have found over the last 20 years or so that most construction disputes boil down to it being the architect's fault. Either it could never have been built for the budget or there have been far too many changes as it went along. Either way everyone else is left to sort out the mess.
Thankfully for the Tories, the solution is pretty straightforward. Replace Boris with almost anyone else and they would be much better placed in home-county-type fights.
Compare that with Labour's troubles, which currently feels like move left and lose votes, move right and lose votes.
Why would they give up all the red wall leave seats for a few southern Remain seats.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
I don't know about Batley & Spen. But, in general, the trade of Home Counties' and London Remain votes for gains in the North and Midlands works very much in the Conservatives' favour. The Conservatives need 335 seats for a working majority. It matters little where those 335 seats are located.
This is very true. But necessitates a completely different membership, funding stream, ideology and policies. Not a problem if you are just a Blue Team fan. But it is if you have any political beliefs.
No it doesn't. Tory policy constantly evolves, and there is nothing anti Tory about wanting a strong national middling sort aspirational base. Capitalism + state intervention is an ancient Tory ideology. Levelling up has been rightly borrowed from Labour who abandoned it in favour of their unpleasant mixture of elites patronising the poor while describing the centre right as 'scum' and 'vermin'.
I'm not sure Mike was around in the early hours, or indeed now, so I simply want to express my thanks to him again for a sensational betting tip. I took it up not once but twice and I have a big smile still on my face.
Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.
As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦♂️
Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.
People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I would suggest that the planning changes are not going to change very much. We don't know yet what they are but they look like procedural changes as to how land gets allocated for development through the local plan process, to try and speed it all up. Green Belt, AONB's etc will in all likelihood remain as they are and will in all reality probably be even more protected. The biggest problem as I see it is that they are trying to restructure the system too quickly, to try and get it all done in one parliament for political reasons.
The problem is that people who have plundered in to this, including Dominic Cummings, failed to see the difficulties. Cummings was sent to look at planning in his later days as an advisor, possibly they just wanted to direct his energy in to an intractable problem with no solutions so he exhausted himself.
Actually they are going to change a great deal and not for the better.
The changes are not primarily designed to make it easier to get planning permissions or get more houses built. That is another myth. What they do is sweep away the Thatcherite planning reforms of the 1980s and 90s which ensured that planning included environmental and other controls so that development is not as damaging as it once was.
So the PPG system that Thatcher created did not stop anyone building houses, nor did it make it easier for NIMBYs to prevent development. It ensured that when houses were built there was proper environmental and archaeological mitigation, proper investigation and preserving - either in situ or by recording - of historical features, alternative locations for sensitive environmental concerns. It also ensured there were proper transport and telecommunications links, that there was mitigation against noise, against pollution and against flooding and that there were the open spaces and amenities to make communities rather than dormitories. It basically made sure that the houses that were built were not created at an excessive cost to the existing environment in all its forms and that they were fit to live in (beyond just the basic structural elements) for those buying them.
Much of that has been swept away with the planning revisions. These are not aimed at making it easier to get permissions, they are aimed at making it cheaper for developers to build poorer houses with fewer controls and far more impact on the environment. We are building the slums of tomorrow.
Well. The planning bill hasn't yet been published, so you are ahead of the entire industry with this analysis.
Your comments just about make sense if they are a criticism of planning reform since 2012 (ie the NPPF and permitted development rights) which did replace the previous system of PPG's and PPS's. What really changed at this point though was the political removal of regional government and regional planning through which a lot of strategic large scale development was being driven.
It may not have been published in its final form but I have seen much of the consultation material and also had sight of the plans for specific areas such as the downgrading of archaeological protections (removing the need for pre-construction assessments, watching briefs and rescue archaeology) and environmental protections (removing the need for mitigations such as building alternative habitats and conducting impact studies).
The NPPF system was not as good as the old PPG system but it did retain much of the basic assumptions and practices - I know as I have operated under both systems. What is being said at all levels of the new proposals is that much of the sensible protection put in place by the PPG system in the 80s and 90s and carried forward by the NPPF system is to be weakened or scrapped.
Out of interest, what material have you been looking at? Where is the proposal to downgrade archaeology and environmental protections?
Consultation documents being circulated by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists amongst others.
In some ways it is already too late. The Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 already prevents local authorities from imposing pre-commencement conditions on planning applications without developer agreement. This basically means that the developer can refuse to have archaeological or environmental mitigations included in the planning permission and the only authority the council has is to refuse permission entirely. But the ability to refuse permission is also taken away from the council in many cases so the developer just has to hold out and they get permission anyway.
I'll be interested to see it.
In my view consultees need cutting down to size quite significantly - particularly perhaps archaeology and bats, and the default way in which reports can be required sometimes without justification because it is the "safe" option for the Planning Officer.
OK, OK, this is Dom C going off on one, but a) he was right about this question, wasn't he? b) why did he work so hard to get "a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government" a huge majority?
7/ Pundits: not doing ANeil 'a huge campaign blunder' Me: why the fu*k wd be put a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government up to be grilled for ages, upside=0 for what?! This is not a hard decision... Pundits don't understand comms, power or management. Tune out!
Ah, the central paradox of DC. Total disdain for the politicians he works so hard to get into power.
I think he just enjoys solving the puzzle of “hacking” elections more than he cares to admit - it feeds his ego to work out how to prod the electorate “just so” & confound his opponents. What he’s actually campaining for is beside the point.
And what a weird quote about the Chilterns. "The [Chiltern] district council failed to make a local plan, leaving the area extra vulnerable to a developers free for all in the green belt."
I'm not from the area, but I would have thought a logical solution to that would be to make a local plan. That makes the not having a local plan problem go away surely?
That quote is tricky as 4 councils were merged in April 2020, and no one gets a local plan created and approved in less than about 3 years.
I'm not convinced that this is less control for local people. The Local Plan will still be a consulted Council Document. And Zonal is I think a small step towards a more European style system - it i too big for me to have followed in real detail. Try Nabavi.
OK, OK, this is Dom C going off on one, but a) he was right about this question, wasn't he? b) why did he work so hard to get "a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government" a huge majority?
7/ Pundits: not doing ANeil 'a huge campaign blunder' Me: why the fu*k wd be put a gaffe machine clueless about policy & government up to be grilled for ages, upside=0 for what?! This is not a hard decision... Pundits don't understand comms, power or management. Tune out!
I think the answer to question 2 might be that he thought he could control said gaffe machine. He obviously thought himself as a kind of Prime Minister to the Prime Minister, a sort of Cardinal Richelieu of the modern age. He didn't reckon the on the fact that Boris Johnson is always led by his Johnson, so Dom was replaced by Carrie . He is now at war with Carrie via media.
They might make a series of films about it. They will be known as the CarrieDom films.
This is pretty much what the Republicans did in America with Reagan and GW Bush. Even with half of Trump.
Surely this is the terminal spasm of a dying culture. Apparently political discourse is now universally mediated by the visual metaphor of fake walls being breached by fat middle aged white men. We can only hope the cetacean civilisation that will follow our very welcome extinction will be better.
Yeah, I'm happy about the result and everything. But I did prefer it when Miley Cyrus did it, if I'm honest.
Comments
I mean, have you tried saying things the whole time without sliding into drivel? - And did you manage it?
Firstly, opposing a very major relaxation of the planning process isn't "opposing all construction". It's making the point that, if you do that, you will get some very inappropriate and insensitive developments with insufficient infrastructure, which become the dismal sink estates of the future. Everyone supports SOME level of control on planning, and the issue is the form and extent of that.
Secondly, as mentioned, a local plan supplements but doesn't override the national planning framework. So the national framework isn't optional and a council can't say "we don't like that so won't bother". What they can do is, within prescribed limits and subject to legal challenges, supplement it to take into account local circumstances. So the issue is a combination of national legislation and (absence of) local moderation of that.
As I say, in this case, both the national and local situation are and were within the control of Conservative politicians. The voting public said they didn't like those policies. Now you can whine and rant that you and Bob Jenrick know better than the ignorant scum in leafy Buckinghamshire, or you can listen to what they've said and, in a democracy, adapt to it. Your choice.
And as of now absolutely anybody who wants a vaccine is eligible for a Pfizer or Moderna one which is quicker working and safer. So why not give them that?
I'm sure something like that was the plan- that like Zaphod Beeblebrox, BoJo would so enjoy the flummery and pallaver of Being Prime Minister that not even he would notice that someone else was doing the actual job of running the country.
But it's also the kind of plan that, the attosecond you write it down, becomes utterly absurd. As we are seeing.
BBC News - Euro 2020: London hosts growing Tartan Army ahead of match
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57516928
And why would it be built in the first place, if there's no demand for it.
Oh and slums exist today in our current timeline. That's the reality for millions of your compatriots and there are no houses free for them to move into, so if you have a better solution for them than mine then I'd love to hear it!
Or is your solution simply that you are very happy with slums existing, but you want them to be someone else's problem?
As for JCVI advice, has it ever been updated in response to risk assessment / modelling of Indian variant vs AZN and the rapid spread?
I would suggest if they have, they are wrong. We should have started a blitz a month ago. The risk of AZN blood clot is same as a long haul flight, but it is spreading rapidly and widely throughout the young and we know delta variant hospitalisations for young are higher.
The NPPF system was not as good as the old PPG system but it did retain much of the basic assumptions and practices - I know as I have operated under both systems. What is being said at all levels of the new proposals is that much of the sensible protection put in place by the PPG system in the 80s and 90s and carried forward by the NPPF system is to be weakened or scrapped.
The privatisation programmes sold off public sector assets too cheaply, basically giving away free money to participants at the expense of taxpayers. Similarly council housing sold at a discount. The legacy isn't higher rates of share ownership, and home ownership has gone down too, with people renting ex council homes at elevated rents, a new landlord class benefiting at their expense.
Then of course there was the shadowing the DM debacle. And as he's got older he's turned into a climate change denier and argued for Leave from his French home so is a hypocrite too.
I can't remember what his private views were on the grotesque poll tax, but he didn't do anything to stop it.
Even Thatcher wanted to cut the top rate of tax only to 50%, which is the right level in my opinion. He pushed for 40%. He embodies everything that was vile about that era - a celebration of greed and self-interest over the common good.
Philip_Thompson said:
» show previous quotes
Because they've paid for it and because all benefits should be universal and then they'll pay taxes on it anyway.
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
Actually I’m paying for it. What they paid for was general government spending at the time.
Gallowgate, that is utter bollox. I have paid for 50 years for my poxy state pension and will never recoup a fraction of what they got from me. Hopefully they raise state pension age to 90 so you never get a sniff of it , would see if you are such a smartarse then. I paid for your education as well.
They may be losing their touch on that score. Feels wrong somehow.
Err...
....and he was voted "Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Known Universe" seven consecutive times, though I think Corbyn might have won that at the eighth attempt!
Makes you wonder who the old man in the shack is.
They should happily give up on a few urban London commuter seats for the much richer pickings in the Midlands and North.
In that respect Boris is a winner. Batley and Spen will be a tory gain.
If thousands of new homes go up, then how about creating new facilities? Which can be used by new and existing residents alike.
I agree that a developer controlled system is a very big part of the problem, but that's part of our current planning system. Getting permission is so convoluted that it is the developers who do it, which then leads to them being monopolistic and stifled like 1970s companies.
Having a more competitive housing system where planning was easier to get would be about not just planning but breaking the grasp of new construction being done by developers.
In much of the world houses are built one at a time by people building their own home, on their own land. Something that's almost unheard of in this nation thanks to the planning regime, meaning we get large estates instead. We would get more carefully built homes if people were building their own (or contracting people to build their own) unilaterally as is done in much of the world, instead of new estates being thrown up en-mass as the only alternative.
Can you agree with me there, that breaking the monopolistic grasp of the developers on the sector would be a good thing?
I have no expectation of a state pension anyway, but thanks for your comments.
I was minded of one of Mrs Rata's folks who lived just over into a very C&A type part of Aylesbury constituency. Voted Leave, not because it was easy or beneficial, but because the EU hadn't signed off the accounts for years and that was just not the done thing. The demographics match this anecdata - C&A has a significantly old average age (good for Tories), yet level of qualifications that are high (fewer older people have) and high earnings.
I suspect C&A was all about 'the done thing', in general or in specifics like HS2, and Boris, quite simply, isn't the done thing. This has somewhat limited applicability to the Southern Ruddy Wall ((including many that have never actually been red) constituencies and voters.
They’d start talking about religion and try to rope people in,” Jon continued.
“They were really pressuring about it, there were like ‘you know, if you don't go to Islam you're going to hell, you're going to die'.”
https://www.mylondon.news/news/east-london-news/shamima-begums-school-days-students-20846306.amp
And the school let them wear ISIS badges!
On the more substantive new point you raise I agree 100%. As promised I am currently trying to put together a piece on self build and non developer driven systems in other parts of Europe. It is a change that would have a real impact on housing and massively improve our built environment.
* tangible benefits of brexit
And if you look at the seats so far mention today that's the case - C&A, Henley, Wokingham will switch orange, Wycombe, Slough, Watford are going to trend red.
Looks like the Delta varient will be far too trasnmissible for its own good and run out of road in just a few weeks per area it arrives.
https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/10269281.the-sex-club-run-by-mistress-sarah-in-the-home-of-a-councillor/
Sudden zeal like transformation. Parroting of preprepared lines.
I've not seen the proposed planning reforms and haven't said they're good or bad. I do not want to see more power given to the developers, and if you think that, its backwards.
I believe in free market economics and I think, so long as protections and regulations are sensible, that should work in the housing system too.
My ideal solution, which almost certainly won't be what the government proposes, is to have local areas set zoning - eg zone AONBs as off limits, zone areas where housing is permissible - and then to have standards and regulations determined to fit the local area. EG if all houses in the area are built with red bricks you might want to say that new houses should be too so they fit with the area.
Then if people meet the local standards and are in the right zone, it should take only a matter of weeks to go from getting the land to being able to start construction. Not months or years of planning. Which would allow self-builders and small developers to get it done, rather than just large estates that get banked for years to construct.
I'm glad we can agree on the final point and if there's a better solution to enable people to be able to self-build then I'd be happy with that too.
That and the SHAPE of the indian cases covid curve on worldometers could potentially point to herd immunity being achieved there. It's almost a classic SEIR...
It'd also mean underreporting by a facotr of 28.
I under recalled it - more like 80/60
Personally as a small shareholder of UK Government Inc, I am pissed off about always giving the upside to others in the market. Seems to me if you go back to the 1950s, the only periods when there was sufficient building to meet demand was when the state built homes.
The UK government is in a far better position to take equity risk on development projects, not least because it owns the planning system. I get fed up that as a shareholder in the state, my money gets whazzed away to improve infrastructure that the private sector then profits from. That us shareholders in the state give up green space in rezoning that the private sector then profits from.
In short Philip, I want the state to be highly interventionist in the housing market.
As I've said before, we're pretty much at herd immunity here now which is why we won't see another wave with tens of thousands of dead. All we can see now is the virus take off in the pockets were immunity is low, then burn itself out. Which is evidenced by the virus already falling away in places like Bolton too.
My worst ever post on PB was where I suggested (in prolonged fashion) that Theresa May's strategy as she sought to pass her Brexit Deal was, contrary to popular perception, a masterly example of rope-a-dope with her as Ali and those opposing her as George Foreman.
It really should have been moderated.
At one point, she was reported to have offered to defect to the Lib Dems in exchange for a peerage (I think) and to give up her little black book, which she claimed listed many Major-era MPs. Paddy Ashdown politely declined her kind offer.
Ultimately, I believe she found God after a car crash, and devoted herself to a quiet life of prayer and... well, whatever.
We need the state to get out of the way, not take on more responsibilities.
Poor old Raab, what a shame.
"I am not fully up on this betting malarky, but AIUI if you bet £10 on the Lib Dems winning C&A at 12/1 you lose £10" has proven to be pretty spectacular.
It will be interesting to see how PCR positives trend over the next 10 days. I think we will be seeing the specimen date trend going down by then but the LFT rate steady or increasing as more people report asymptomatic infections and fewer report symptomatic COVID.
It will be very difficult to justify continued measures if PCR positives are trending downwards, but I'm sure the scientists will try and use LFTs to keep their restrictions going. I enjoyed Professor Pollard saying it was time to call and end to LFTs in schools, I think it's the right policy now that everyone is eligible to be vaccinated and by the start of the next school year all adults will have been called for both doses.
But necessitates a completely different membership, funding stream, ideology and policies.
Not a problem if you are just a Blue Team fan.
But it is if you have any political beliefs.
In some ways it is already too late. The Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 already prevents local authorities from imposing pre-commencement conditions on planning applications without developer agreement. This basically means that the developer can refuse to have archaeological or environmental mitigations included in the planning permission and the only authority the council has is to refuse permission entirely. But the ability to refuse permission is also taken away from the council in many cases so the developer just has to hold out and they get permission anyway.
I'm not convinced that this is less control for local people. The Local Plan will still be a consulted Council Document. And Zonal is I think a small step towards a more European style system - it i too big for me to have followed in real detail. Try Nabavi.
CPRE are mainly bullshit merchants.
Unless Lab and LD with Green form a real pact the Tories can carry on winning in England with a large and coherent spectrum of the middling sort from South Holland to Hartlepool, while Lab and LD are both competing in the same ideological territory for a strange mixture of: too posh to vote Tory, too urban ditto, too BAME ditto, too poor ditto, too intelligent ditto, too woke ditto, too NIMBY ditto. There aren't (yet) enough of them. And when there are they have to cope with the voters' worries about letting the SNP and the Labour left in by the back door.
And the Tories can afford to lose B&S, while Labour can't. Interesting times.
Surely this is the terminal spasm of a dying culture. Apparently political discourse is now universally mediated by the visual metaphor of fake walls being breached by fat middle aged white men. We can only hope the cetacean civilisation that will follow our very welcome extinction will be better.
https://www.gentlydownthe.stream/
The trouble is that, to maintain it, they do need their so-called "levelling up" agenda to deliver. I recall a chap interviewed in Hartlepool who'd switched red to blue saying he'd done so because Labour had done nothing for him and "over the past ten years" the area had gone downhill horribly. Hmmm... the danger for the Tories is he puts two and two together at some point.
It's rather like leaving your wife for your much younger mistress. It all sounds a good trade but, if the mistress bails on you having seen the real you 24/7, then you're left with sod all and it doesn't look half as clever.
Just thought I'd throw in an analogy the PM would appreciate there.
If Con win B&S, Sir Keir's record in by elections will be lost safe seat, lost deposit, lost safe seat! His fans say LDs doing well is a sign Con/LDs feel comfortable to vote LD now Jez has gone, but I'd say they fell comfortable becasue the Cons have an 80 seat maj
You are Jeremy Corbyn and I claim my £5 !
@IoWBobSeely tells me: "Tory seats are being treated like foie gras geese with endless housing shoved down their gullet"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/18/boris-johnson-must-listen-voters-concerns-planning-reforms-risk/
Deserving welfare cases become scrounging layabouts overnight. You becomes strangely attracted to the headlines in the Daily Telegraph. And yes maybe you ARE paying a lot of tax!
Thank you again, Mike.
In my view consultees need cutting down to size quite significantly - particularly perhaps archaeology and bats, and the default way in which reports can be required sometimes without justification because it is the "safe" option for the Planning Officer.
I think he just enjoys solving the puzzle of “hacking” elections more than he cares to admit - it feeds his ego to work out how to prod the electorate “just so” & confound his opponents. What he’s actually campaining for is beside the point.