Gallowgate in a market economy what do you think long-term leads to lower-prices?
More regulations, less supply? Or fewer regulations, more supply?
Why does regulations impact supply? In the long term supply is fed by demand and nothing else.
Only if regulations don't get in the way and there's a proper free market.
If regulations get in the way and slow down or prevent construction then that artificially constricts supply leading to not all demand getting met and higher prices.
There is no “proper free market” with housing because 1) everything gets bought up anyway, and 2) if a builder builds crap, the local community has to put up with it for the next 100 years at least.
Across the sample of housebuilders, getting from initial identification to opening a show house on strategic land can now take 10 to 20 years and up to five years or more depending on infrastructure requirements and the size and make up of sites on allocated and consented land. Delays occur in pre application discussions, from registration to determination (though several pointed out that the 13 week rule had had an impact), and after determination, during discussions on S106 matters (which can take 9 months) and pre commencement conditions, including design and materials matters. The time taken up in pre application and post consent discussions far outweighs the time taken up from the formal registration of an application and its determination.
[snip]
Good planning authorities can shave 18 months off the process from starting pre application discussions to opening the first show house.
Under those circumstances, yes it was. You buy as much as you can get hold of knowing that some might not work so that you have enough that does.
None of this shipment worked.
Speed was clearly not the most important factor in this purchasing decision.
"Hey kids, put on your safety specs for this next bit. I don't know if they work, but I got same day shipping..."
If that was the only shipment you would have a point. “This” is the whole process of rapid purchasing.
On the slightly separate point about the closeness of the advisor to the company, that I will admit does not look good after the case for the prosecution you outlined above: certainly a case to answer.
Ironically the biggest complaint on various local Facebook groups from Tory/Brexit voters here in the NE is that “affordable housing” on new build estates is not. That is despite the NE having some of the cheapest housing in England.
They basically want more regulation, not less, to force developers into selling houses cheaper. I doubt a laissez-faire policy on planning is going to be popular or beneficial up here.
I know other parts of the country are different, but just a little anecdotal report from the coal face...
Regulations don't work to make homes cheaper. What works to make homes cheaper is actually quite simple: increasing supply faster than you increase demand.
I am of the belief that policies like Help To Buy as much as anything are the reason the red wall seats fell to the Tories. For years now up here in the North housebuilding has been going with lots of new developments that is enabling house prices to stay steady rather than rising and lots of new people getting onto the property ladder.
Ultimately it is in the long-term interests of the Labour Party to ensure the poor stay impoverished. It is in their interests to ensure they have a client state of voters that need their help.
Ultimately it is in the long-term interests of the Tory Party to get people out of poverty. To get the off requiring state support. To ensure that as many people as possible can own their own home and have shares in the economy.
Protecting the house prices of existing owners who want to pull the ladder up after them is both morally reprehensible and against the long-term interests of the party. Doing the right thing for the country and doing the right thing for the party are the same thing here.
That’s a lot of words to say very little. What point are you trying to make? I’m a huge believer in home ownership and you admitted that the North has seen a huge amount of house building in the last 20 years. My point is that people still complain they are too expensive, and want them cheaper. This is despite housing in the North (and in the North East especially) being some of the cheapest in England. I doubt this policy is going to lead to cheaper housing in the North.
The point I am making is getting people onto the housing ladder is the end goal - both for the country and the party.
I don't see why you say "admitted" that the North has seen a huge amount of house building. Absolutely it has, which is why the North has gone from rock solid Labour to huge swathes of the North ending up Tory. Yes Brexit and Corbyn played a factor but they simply amplified a trend that has been going on for a decade as home ownership rates picked up. It is fantastic news that there has been house building in the past and it needs to be continued and improved wherever possible.
Secondly yes cheaper housing is wanted and the way to get that is to clear regulatory burdens that prevent increasing supply. If this policy leads to more housing being built then the fundamental economic laws of supply and demand mean that there will be cheaper housing as a result. The only long term way to get cheaper housing is to increase supply - and that supply should be of good quality homes, not "affordable" homes that are tiny crap.
I can tell you already that if there are no regulations, the houses that get built will be tiny, ugly, crap. Why wouldn’t they? They sell regardless.
My new build housing estate is beautiful only because the council forced the developer to make it “in keeping” with the village. The one just down the road had no such requirement and its ugly as sin. They still sell every single one.
All your opinions on this matter come from “economic theory” rather than any actual first hand experience in this area. Real life doesn’t work the same as a text book.
No my opinions on this come from both economic theory and from living in the North and from having in the last decade bought a new build home on a new build estate. Though my circumstances changed so we subsequently sold the home and now live on rented accommodation and are now trying to save for a deposit to try and get back on the property ladder and would like the opportunity to again buy a new home if possible. That's pretty first hand experience.
Well then you’ll know that this policy will make little difference to the supply and quality of new builds in the North.
Why do you think that housebuilders will be motivated to build homes that are not tiny, when they know they will sell regardless? What economic theory is going to convince them make less profit?
Come on...
When supply fails to match demand, then quality is less required to sell.
In addition, pressure is often applied to increase density. This is a matter of policy.
When supply matches or exceeds demand, quality as the differntiator becomes a much bigger factor.
I still remember a friend from the UK being shocked that a whole development of houses built in the US weren't selling. The reason was that in that area, there were plenty of houses that were better. The shock at the idea that any old rabbit hutch wouldn't sell was interesting to observe.
I think that first point is perfectly right, but I wonder if they truly have the guts to push it further when the effects become clear.
Fundamentally, it is something the Tories need to do for their long term prospects as home owners are more likely to vote Tory but of course it risks upsetting current home owners and landlords
I have always predicted that there will come a point where the interests of potential home buyers will be seen as politically greater than the interests of home owners.
At which point, goodbye to stopping development.
I'm not sure we are at that point yet. But they are testing it.
With lives on the line the government threw everything at getting supplies from wherever they could. Better to waste money on 10 shipments that fail while getting 40 that succeed, than to take your time identify which 40 shipments may succeed then belatedly order them only to find people are dead due to your tardiness.
No
Buying stuff that doesn't work is not better than not having stuff that works.
In both cases you don't have stuff that works.
Anybody who died "while waiting for the right stuff" would have died anyway if you used the stuff that doesn't work.
In matters of life and death, getting it right really does matter.
Ok so applying your logic we should wait for a vaccine to successfully complete PIII trials before committing to purchasing? Fine, but that means we won't take delivery until late 2021 or early 2022. The answer is to buy what's available and throw away what doesn't work. We're in a state of emergency which is causing untold personal and economic carnage. Waiting around isn't and was never an option.
There’s a difference between purchasing supply from a known entity such as the partnership of Oxford Uni and AstraZeneca and that from a shell company in a tax haven with no trading history.
For f*ck sake you guys really will defend the indefensible. It’s obscene.
Can you get any more blue chip than Astra Zenica backed by Oxford? Its not that there is a difference, it is that they are at complete opposite ends of the scale.
Gallowgate in a market economy what do you think long-term leads to lower-prices?
More regulations, less supply? Or fewer regulations, more supply?
Why does regulations impact supply? In the long term supply is fed by demand and nothing else.
Only if regulations don't get in the way and there's a proper free market.
If regulations get in the way and slow down or prevent construction then that artificially constricts supply leading to not all demand getting met and higher prices.
There is no “proper free market” with housing because 1) everything gets bought up anyway, and 2) if a builder builds crap, the local community has to put up with it for the next 100 years at least.
Everything only gets bought up because supply is artificially constrained. Increase supply and that ceases to be the case.
If a developer builds crap and supply is plentiful then nobody will buy it and the developer will go bankrupt.
Constraining supply is a boon to large, bad developers who can navigate through the planning system then make a buck selling shoddy developments. It means that developers make a profit by how well they're able to grease the wheels of the planning committees instead of how good the developments are to consumers.
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
The story upthread is about buying PPE that doesn't work...
Speed is clearly not more important than "anything else"
I hope that isn't the scientific method you teach?
Under those circumstances, yes it was. You buy as much as you can get hold of knowing that some might not work so that you have enough that does.
Just like we are currently doing with the vaccine program.
You are making the best the enemy of the good.
The FFP2 masks are not "good" as the 50 million of them are not up to standard. They have only recently been delivered too, so are too late. The company providing was merely a middleman with no background in medical equipment too. An off shore finance company speculating in PPE, why not buy direct for this scale of order?
Could these be used in less critical circumstances? When I have visited hospital recently I was offered a mask to wear that I think had ear loops rather than head loops.
Across the sample of housebuilders, getting from initial identification to opening a show house on strategic land can now take 10 to 20 years and up to five years or more depending on infrastructure requirements and the size and make up of sites on allocated and consented land. Delays occur in pre application discussions, from registration to determination (though several pointed out that the 13 week rule had had an impact), and after determination, during discussions on S106 matters (which can take 9 months) and pre commencement conditions, including design and materials matters. The time taken up in pre application and post consent discussions far outweighs the time taken up from the formal registration of an application and its determination.
[snip]
Good planning authorities can shave 18 months off the process from starting pre application discussions to opening the first show house.
Are you suggesting that local communities should have no say in the design of new estates around them? That the builder should build purely on what is most profitable? I.e. as small as possible, no parking, no garden.
Because you’ve just proven that the “delay” is because of discussions over estate layouts and whether the developer should fund schools, roads, etc.
Hmm, I think national lockdowns are about to become a thing in a lot of European countries again. I'm surprised that Spain hasn't already implemented a full national lockdown the figures are very bad, they are looking at 4-6k new cases per day at the moment. Only the UK and Italy look like a second wave might not be as bad, it could be because both had such publicly awful initial outbreaks that tourists are avoiding them or people are too scared to travel.
Spain’s outbreaks remain very localised. Why shut down Extremadura if most of the problems are hundreds of miles to the north-east?
All of the recent European increases* are localised - at least that I am aware of. UK, France, Germany, Spain etc.
So local lockdowns are the pattern....
In the rush of positive/negative nationalism, it is often useful to step back and ask yourself - what is happening elsewhere?
*Not sure that "second wave" is the right term for "Increase on the tail end of epidemic curve". Like this -
As far as I am aware, no-one has defined what 'second-wave' means. Combine this with a scientifically challenged and mathematically ignorant media and every minor increase in detected cases (for whatever reason) has suddenly become the second wave. Clearly across Europe, lockdowns of varying degrees of harshness have been lifted and inevitably more interacting people means more chance for infections to spread. Pace Newsnight last night, so far, there is minimal evidence of an increase in serious cases leading to hospital/death. Long may that continue.
Indeed, despite all the hype about the "Leicester hotspot" we now have only 18 covid patients in Leicester Hospitals, down more than 50% over the month of July.
Why dont you do a France and keep them in for an extra few weeks
Because the hospital doesn't get paid by the patient's insurance company for each night that they stay there.
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
The story upthread is about buying PPE that doesn't work...
Speed is clearly not more important than "anything else"
I hope that isn't the scientific method you teach?
Under those circumstances, yes it was. You buy as much as you can get hold of knowing that some might not work so that you have enough that does.
Just like we are currently doing with the vaccine program.
You are making the best the enemy of the good.
The FFP2 masks are not "good" as the 50 million of them are not up to standard. They have only recently been delivered too, so are too late. The company providing was merely a middleman with no background in medical equipment too. An off shore finance company speculating in PPE, why not buy direct for this scale of order?
Could these be used in less critical circumstances? When I have visited hospital recently I was offered a mask to wear that I think had ear loops rather than head loops.
I don't see a huge thing here.
I've been in for about 6-8 physical hospital appointments during lockdown, and they have always had a box of masks next to the entrance lanes.
These can just be used for visitors or day cases where otherwise our own masks or a scarf would be acceptable.
Though that might be undermined if eg the problem is they are designed for people with big ears.
Those of us who remember April remember the huge scramble to get PPE when it turned out that everyone in the world was doing the same and that supplies the government thought it had secured ended up being diverted by other governments. Going through the full formal tending process when headlines were screaming that we had less than 24 hours of stock left was not going to happen. That corners got cut is not exactly a surprise.
I seem to remember a list of suppliers compiled by Labour where a significant number tuned out to be dodgy to say the least.
The fact that the stories about shortages which had been dominating the headlines went away almost overnight suggests that whatever they did worked.
Are we going to see similar complaints about the vaccines that the government is currently backing when some turn out to be useless I wonder?
A deal brokered by a government adviser who advises the company’s board!
So he knew what he was talking about!
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
None of the PPE procured in this case seems to have been used because it turns out that buying it from a 100 quid company with no track record... didn't work.
Ultimately it was a punt, same as what the government are doing for vaccines. It went badly, countless others went well.
To my knowledge we aren't throwing 100m+ quid at a vaccine company with no track record set up by a Ministerial adviser this year.
I get that govt should take risks and not be afraid to waste money.
And fine for normal procurement to be suspended in an emergency. But handing this contract to one of your advisers is.... pretty dubious to say this least.
We are, the Moderna vaccine is a whole new type and has never previously been proven to work. Even the Oxford vaccine is fairly novel. Literally we're hoping to strike lucky and buying up options for things that have never been tried before. It's still the right thing to do.
You're talking about two different things, though. In the vaccine cases, both vaccines are technologies which have been a decade in development, not something sketched on the back of a fag packet.
Granted, there are considerable risks involved (particularly with the Moderna effort) - the largest being that they simply don't work - but thus far it looks as though both might well pay off.
The story of Moderna getting US funding to put its program into action is an interesting one - basically meant selling a science project to an ignoramus, which they did rather effectively: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/01/us/coronavirus-moderna-vaccine-invs/index.html (note, there's an error in that piece: the Regeneron treatment is manufactured antibodies, not a vaccine.)
I'm not saying they are bad decisions, they aren't but we shouldn't pretend that buying up these initial stocks before PIII is anything more than a punt. A good one sure, but still a punt. The prudent decision by traditional accounting would be to wait for PIII to conclude and purchase whichever is cheapest. Personally I'd be pretty upset if the government took that path to save a few billion.
Again, though, we're talking about a massive difference in the risk reward calculation. To be honest, I don't get all that worked up about this one particular PPE thing (it's more a symptom of the chaotic management of the procurement), but PPE items are well defined products, which if we'd been proactive enough, we could have manufactured ourselves.
The vaccines, in contact, have the potential of completely ending the crisis quickly (best case), and massively mitigating it sometime down the line (at this point, I think, the worst case).
There was a lot of luck involved - Moderna for example originally set out to develop therapeutics for a wide range of diseases, not vaccines, but their technology had the undesired, and potentially unsolvable side effect of producing an immune response. Which is, of course, just what you want with a vaccine...
Gallowgate in a market economy what do you think long-term leads to lower-prices?
More regulations, less supply? Or fewer regulations, more supply?
Why does regulations impact supply? In the long term supply is fed by demand and nothing else.
Only if regulations don't get in the way and there's a proper free market.
If regulations get in the way and slow down or prevent construction then that artificially constricts supply leading to not all demand getting met and higher prices.
There is no “proper free market” with housing because 1) everything gets bought up anyway, and 2) if a builder builds crap, the local community has to put up with it for the next 100 years at least.
Everything only gets bought up because supply is artificially constrained. Increase supply and that ceases to be the case.
If a developer builds crap and supply is plentiful then nobody will buy it and the developer will go bankrupt.
Constraining supply is a boon to large, bad developers who can navigate through the planning system then make a buck selling shoddy developments. It means that developers make a profit by how well they're able to grease the wheels of the planning committees instead of how good the developments are to consumers.
The developer will go bankrupt and then the local community is still left with an absolute eyesore of an abandoned estate, or worse, a shit one which leads to social problems.
Have you not forgotten to what happened in those huge post-war council estates?
Land is not plentiful on this island. We must ensure that what is built is good. Otherwise our towns and cities are going to be ugly as sin.
The Tory heartland and the largest percentage of Tory seats are still in the South of England outside London where housing is more expensive, not the Red Wall
That's the point.
A policy that depresses house prices in the Tory shires while making no difference "Up North" seems unlikely to go down well with Tory voters of either sort
I'd be surprised if they have the guts to truly try it.
Across the sample of housebuilders, getting from initial identification to opening a show house on strategic land can now take 10 to 20 years and up to five years or more depending on infrastructure requirements and the size and make up of sites on allocated and consented land. Delays occur in pre application discussions, from registration to determination (though several pointed out that the 13 week rule had had an impact), and after determination, during discussions on S106 matters (which can take 9 months) and pre commencement conditions, including design and materials matters. The time taken up in pre application and post consent discussions far outweighs the time taken up from the formal registration of an application and its determination.
[snip]
Good planning authorities can shave 18 months off the process from starting pre application discussions to opening the first show house.
Are you suggesting that local communities should have no say in the design of new estates around them? That the builder should build purely on what is most profitable? I.e. as small as possible, no parking, no garden.
Because you’ve just proven that the “delay” is because of discussions over estate layouts and whether the developer should fund schools, roads, etc.
Small, no parking, no garden sell for a lot less money so are not that profitable. It is regulations that are currently demanding higher amounts of those homes because the regulations demand "affordable" housing which is a misnomer. You increase affordable housing by building more homes not making them crappier.
Yes I am suggesting that local communities get far too much say at the minute and that NIMBYism a blight on this country that needs to be stopped.
Ironically the biggest complaint on various local Facebook groups from Tory/Brexit voters here in the NE is that “affordable housing” on new build estates is not. That is despite the NE having some of the cheapest housing in England.
They basically want more regulation, not less, to force developers into selling houses cheaper. I doubt a laissez-faire policy on planning is going to be popular or beneficial up here.
I know other parts of the country are different, but just a little anecdotal report from the coal face...
Regulations don't work to make homes cheaper. What works to make homes cheaper is actually quite simple: increasing supply faster than you increase demand.
I am of the belief that policies like Help To Buy as much as anything are the reason the red wall seats fell to the Tories. For years now up here in the North housebuilding has been going with lots of new developments that is enabling house prices to stay steady rather than rising and lots of new people getting onto the property ladder.
Ultimately it is in the long-term interests of the Labour Party to ensure the poor stay impoverished. It is in their interests to ensure they have a client state of voters that need their help.
Ultimately it is in the long-term interests of the Tory Party to get people out of poverty. To get the off requiring state support. To ensure that as many people as possible can own their own home and have shares in the economy.
Protecting the house prices of existing owners who want to pull the ladder up after them is both morally reprehensible and against the long-term interests of the party. Doing the right thing for the country and doing the right thing for the party are the same thing here.
That’s a lot of words to say very little. What point are you trying to make? I’m a huge believer in home ownership and you admitted that the North has seen a huge amount of house building in the last 20 years. My point is that people still complain they are too expensive, and want them cheaper. This is despite housing in the North (and in the North East especially) being some of the cheapest in England. I doubt this policy is going to lead to cheaper housing in the North.
The point I am making is getting people onto the housing ladder is the end goal - both for the country and the party.
I don't see why you say "admitted" that the North has seen a huge amount of house building. Absolutely it has, which is why the North has gone from rock solid Labour to huge swathes of the North ending up Tory. Yes Brexit and Corbyn played a factor but they simply amplified a trend that has been going on for a decade as home ownership rates picked up. It is fantastic news that there has been house building in the past and it needs to be continued and improved wherever possible.
Secondly yes cheaper housing is wanted and the way to get that is to clear regulatory burdens that prevent increasing supply. If this policy leads to more housing being built then the fundamental economic laws of supply and demand mean that there will be cheaper housing as a result. The only long term way to get cheaper housing is to increase supply - and that supply should be of good quality homes, not "affordable" homes that are tiny crap.
I can tell you already that if there are no regulations, the houses that get built will be tiny, ugly, crap. Why wouldn’t they? They sell regardless.
My new build housing estate is beautiful only because the council forced the developer to make it “in keeping” with the village. The one just down the road had no such requirement and its ugly as sin. They still sell every single one.
All your opinions on this matter come from “economic theory” rather than any actual first hand experience in this area. Real life doesn’t work the same as a text book.
No my opinions on this come from both economic theory and from living in the North and from having in the last decade bought a new build home on a new build estate. Though my circumstances changed so we subsequently sold the home and now live on rented accommodation and are now trying to save for a deposit to try and get back on the property ladder and would like the opportunity to again buy a new home if possible. That's pretty first hand experience.
Well then you’ll know that this policy will make little difference to the supply and quality of new builds in the North.
Why do you think that housebuilders will be motivated to build homes that are not tiny, when they know they will sell regardless? What economic theory is going to convince them make less profit?
Come on...
When supply fails to match demand, then quality is less required to sell.
In addition, pressure is often applied to increase density. This is a matter of policy.
When supply matches or exceeds demand, quality as the differntiator becomes a much bigger factor.
I still remember a friend from the UK being shocked that a whole development of houses built in the US weren't selling. The reason was that in that area, there were plenty of houses that were better. The shock at the idea that any old rabbit hutch wouldn't sell was interesting to observe.
Where do you think the land exists in the UK for these huge failed housing estates?
The US has plentiful land. It’s completely different.
I have not read the detail of the new planning laws. My initial impression is that like HS2, it's designed primarily with a London/commuter situation in mind. It doesn't feel entirely relevant to today's needs.
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
If it was up to me I would join up housing policy with environmental policy and say that it is in our interests that new homes should have two dedicated parking spaces with electric charging points. So I would specifically abolish all "affordable" housing requirements that insist upon tiny no-parking houses getting built and do a fast-track procedure to get planning approved rapidly so long as all houses on the development have green space and dedicated parking with electric charging points.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost. @Malmesbury The USA has lots of problems but their housing stock generally delivers decent bang for buck They're slightly depressed relative to ours as property taxes are generally higher than our council tax equivalent. But that's not the whole difference, and they are better value.
I wonder if you guys have any idea of the landholdings of these house builders. They own tons of land, with no immediate intention of building on it. The idea that as soon as planning regulations are loosened it will lead to an influx of building is for the birds. The house builders will constrain supply to keep prices high - they already do.
Gallowgate in a market economy what do you think long-term leads to lower-prices?
More regulations, less supply? Or fewer regulations, more supply?
Why does regulations impact supply? In the long term supply is fed by demand and nothing else.
Only if regulations don't get in the way and there's a proper free market.
If regulations get in the way and slow down or prevent construction then that artificially constricts supply leading to not all demand getting met and higher prices.
There is no “proper free market” with housing because 1) everything gets bought up anyway, and 2) if a builder builds crap, the local community has to put up with it for the next 100 years at least.
Everything only gets bought up because supply is artificially constrained. Increase supply and that ceases to be the case.
If a developer builds crap and supply is plentiful then nobody will buy it and the developer will go bankrupt.
Constraining supply is a boon to large, bad developers who can navigate through the planning system then make a buck selling shoddy developments. It means that developers make a profit by how well they're able to grease the wheels of the planning committees instead of how good the developments are to consumers.
The developer will go bankrupt and then the local community is still left with an absolute eyesore of an abandoned estate, or worse, a shit one which leads to social problems.
Have you not forgotten to what happened in those huge post-war council estates?
Land is not plentiful on this island. We must ensure that what is built is good. Otherwise our towns and cities are going to be ugly as sin.
For myself, I would *increase* the rules on quality. Mandate larger rooms, higher ceilings.
And massive decrease the attempt to stop building.
The building cost of, say, making every room 1m large is small. The cost is in the extra land. Which is in turn driven by the designed shortage of building land.
Those of us who remember April remember the huge scramble to get PPE when it turned out that everyone in the world was doing the same and that supplies the government thought it had secured ended up being diverted by other governments. Going through the full formal tending process when headlines were screaming that we had less than 24 hours of stock left was not going to happen. That corners got cut is not exactly a surprise.
I seem to remember a list of suppliers compiled by Labour where a significant number tuned out to be dodgy to say the least.
The fact that the stories about shortages which had been dominating the headlines went away almost overnight suggests that whatever they did worked.
Are we going to see similar complaints about the vaccines that the government is currently backing when some turn out to be useless I wonder?
A deal brokered by a government adviser who advises the company’s board!
So he knew what he was talking about!
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
None of the PPE procured in this case seems to have been used because it turns out that buying it from a 100 quid company with no track record... didn't work.
Ultimately it was a punt, same as what the government are doing for vaccines. It went badly, countless others went well.
To my knowledge we aren't throwing 100m+ quid at a vaccine company with no track record set up by a Ministerial adviser this year.
I get that govt should take risks and not be afraid to waste money.
And fine for normal procurement to be suspended in an emergency. But handing this contract to one of your advisers is.... pretty dubious to say this least.
We are, the Moderna vaccine is a whole new type and has never previously been proven to work. Even the Oxford vaccine is fairly novel. Literally we're hoping to strike lucky and buying up options for things that have never been tried before. It's still the right thing to do.
Of course they are novel, but they're all researched by proper scientists with phds working at universities or biotech companies with a track record.
Moderna has no track record, BioNTech has no track record. They've never had a single successful vaccine. Yet we've spent billions securing tens of millions of doses.
BioNTech has no track record with what? I used to design products for them ffs. They are a well respected biopharma company.
Of actually delivering an approved product, I guess. But that is true of the majority of biotech companies; product development in biopharma takes a very long time indeed. In quite a few ways, it's the same story as Moderna, though I think they are a less flying by the seat of the pants organisation.
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
Or so the government can actually act without taking forever being dragged through the courts to make any decisions. The same as dealing with planning issues.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Please not more world class! I agree with every other word, but can we not settle for homes that are near average plot size and build quality for a western country - that would be a massive improvement.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
Hmm, I think national lockdowns are about to become a thing in a lot of European countries again. I'm surprised that Spain hasn't already implemented a full national lockdown the figures are very bad, they are looking at 4-6k new cases per day at the moment. Only the UK and Italy look like a second wave might not be as bad, it could be because both had such publicly awful initial outbreaks that tourists are avoiding them or people are too scared to travel.
Spain’s outbreaks remain very localised. Why shut down Extremadura if most of the problems are hundreds of miles to the north-east?
All of the recent European increases* are localised - at least that I am aware of. UK, France, Germany, Spain etc.
So local lockdowns are the pattern....
In the rush of positive/negative nationalism, it is often useful to step back and ask yourself - what is happening elsewhere?
*Not sure that "second wave" is the right term for "Increase on the tail end of epidemic curve". Like this -
As far as I am aware, no-one has defined what 'second-wave' means. Combine this with a scientifically challenged and mathematically ignorant media and every minor increase in detected cases (for whatever reason) has suddenly become the second wave. Clearly across Europe, lockdowns of varying degrees of harshness have been lifted and inevitably more interacting people means more chance for infections to spread. Pace Newsnight last night, so far, there is minimal evidence of an increase in serious cases leading to hospital/death. Long may that continue.
The reason that the recent increases have not led to increasing numbers of serious cases is probably this -
In recent weeks, the age profile of those infected has shifted massively towards the younger groups.
The problem is that, elsewhere (such as Florida), such rises have started among the young. So lots of cases, not too many hospitalisations. Then the epidemic pivots into the elderly.
That is why, across Europe (and around the world), there is an attempt to tread on these rises early.
Which is possibly an argument for the over 50's lockdown approach...
The question is whether they can be isolated to that extent. But yes, that is why that scenario was looked into.
An over 50's lockdown just doesn't work. I am over 50, my partner is under 50 and a teacher. In an over 50's lockdown scenario, she would have to move out. Her school has many teachers over 50 none of whom would be able to teach.
Almost every household and employer will have their own similar problems.
Those of us who remember April remember the huge scramble to get PPE when it turned out that everyone in the world was doing the same and that supplies the government thought it had secured ended up being diverted by other governments. Going through the full formal tending process when headlines were screaming that we had less than 24 hours of stock left was not going to happen. That corners got cut is not exactly a surprise.
I seem to remember a list of suppliers compiled by Labour where a significant number tuned out to be dodgy to say the least.
The fact that the stories about shortages which had been dominating the headlines went away almost overnight suggests that whatever they did worked.
Are we going to see similar complaints about the vaccines that the government is currently backing when some turn out to be useless I wonder?
A deal brokered by a government adviser who advises the company’s board!
So he knew what he was talking about!
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
None of the PPE procured in this case seems to have been used because it turns out that buying it from a 100 quid company with no track record... didn't work.
Ultimately it was a punt, same as what the government are doing for vaccines. It went badly, countless others went well.
To my knowledge we aren't throwing 100m+ quid at a vaccine company with no track record set up by a Ministerial adviser this year.
I get that govt should take risks and not be afraid to waste money.
And fine for normal procurement to be suspended in an emergency. But handing this contract to one of your advisers is.... pretty dubious to say this least.
We are, the Moderna vaccine is a whole new type and has never previously been proven to work. Even the Oxford vaccine is fairly novel. Literally we're hoping to strike lucky and buying up options for things that have never been tried before. It's still the right thing to do.
You're talking about two different things, though. In the vaccine cases, both vaccines are technologies which have been a decade in development, not something sketched on the back of a fag packet.
Granted, there are considerable risks involved (particularly with the Moderna effort) - the largest being that they simply don't work - but thus far it looks as though both might well pay off.
The story of Moderna getting US funding to put its program into action is an interesting one - basically meant selling a science project to an ignoramus, which they did rather effectively: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/01/us/coronavirus-moderna-vaccine-invs/index.html (note, there's an error in that piece: the Regeneron treatment is manufactured antibodies, not a vaccine.)
An interesting feature of the global R&D search for a vaccine is that it is like a disaggregated version of the Manhatten (nuclear weapon / Los Alamos) project of parallel research efforts in which, because speed is the essence, costs are basically ignored. That worked within government. The present competitive efforts involve private sector entities, at least in the west, which need an income stream to account to their shareholders. The advance orders by various governments have put in place guarantees conditional on a successful outcome. I think we can look forward to a massive international consolidation in the pharma sector after this has played out.
I wonder if you guys have any idea of the landholdings of these house builders. They own tons of land, with no immediate intention of building on it. The idea that as soon as planning regulations are loosened it will lead to an influx of building is for the birds. The house builders will constrain supply to keep prices high - they already do.
That's silly. If planning regulations are loosened then other developers could enter the market by getting other land and building on it thus turning a profit while the developers not acting would be wasting their money. Cash tied up in an asset you're not using is costing you money.
The reason that the house builders have vast landholdings is precisely because of the planning system not despite it. It means that getting consent to build is an asset in and of itself so developers can turn a profit not by actually building but by simply buying land, getting consent then selling the land back on to someone else who will then actually build. Which adds two delays into the system - getting the consent, then finding a buyer.
The planning system means that that land with consent to build is worth much, much more than land without it. If consent was quick, cheap and easy to get then that distortion in the market would go away.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
‘Protecting the house prices of existing owners who want to pull the ladder up after them is both morally reprehensible and against the long-term interests of the party. Doing the right thing for the country and doing the right thing for the party are the same thing here.’
I agree entirely. Yet for many Tory voters protecting their house prices is what they demand.
Developers want to build big houses on greenfield sites in nice areas for vast profits. Areas which generally vote Conservative. When a planning application is submitted in such an area, phalanxes of local worthies will bombard their councillors with indignant emails. They will develop a sudden interest in the viability or not of the local flora and fauna. They will say the roads can’t cope with the increased traffic. They will say local schools and doctors and shops can’t cope (though surely the market will provide if the demand is there via academies and new surgeries and swift moving entrepreneurs?).
All these arguments will be advanced but it all boils down to one thing, my cynical mind posits - protecting house prices. And doing so by keeping oiks out.
Local authorities want to redevelop brownfield sites. Developers don’t want to do this because it is often expensive to clean up the land and profits aren’t as big on smaller units. Social housing is discouraged because it (I one heard a Tory cllr say this) ‘creates Labour voters.’
So the government is trying to encourage brownfield development (but not via social housing) for the oiks whilst maintaining well-heeled Tory enclaves for the well-off and retired. CIL encourages this. Local Plans encourage this. These new proposals, though I haven’t read up on them properly, will, I would imagine, encourage this.
Yes, loads of houses are being chucked up in the red wall. But those red wallers who’ve gone Tory probably still can’t afford them. They’d be happy probably with council housing. But that creates Labour voters.
Hmm, I think national lockdowns are about to become a thing in a lot of European countries again. I'm surprised that Spain hasn't already implemented a full national lockdown the figures are very bad, they are looking at 4-6k new cases per day at the moment. Only the UK and Italy look like a second wave might not be as bad, it could be because both had such publicly awful initial outbreaks that tourists are avoiding them or people are too scared to travel.
Spain’s outbreaks remain very localised. Why shut down Extremadura if most of the problems are hundreds of miles to the north-east?
All of the recent European increases* are localised - at least that I am aware of. UK, France, Germany, Spain etc.
So local lockdowns are the pattern....
In the rush of positive/negative nationalism, it is often useful to step back and ask yourself - what is happening elsewhere?
*Not sure that "second wave" is the right term for "Increase on the tail end of epidemic curve". Like this -
As far as I am aware, no-one has defined what 'second-wave' means. Combine this with a scientifically challenged and mathematically ignorant media and every minor increase in detected cases (for whatever reason) has suddenly become the second wave. Clearly across Europe, lockdowns of varying degrees of harshness have been lifted and inevitably more interacting people means more chance for infections to spread. Pace Newsnight last night, so far, there is minimal evidence of an increase in serious cases leading to hospital/death. Long may that continue.
Do you not think that top bit is somewhat deliberate.
As far as I can see, three different phenomena have been conflated into 'second wave fear'.
1. Small increases in R as lockdown is relaxed. 2. Larger increases in R as Summer turns into Autumn and Winter, and our behaviour changes in a seasonal, predictable manner 3. The significant and severe second wave in 1918-19 that, as far as I understand, was nothing to do with the two things above
Again, I think this has been deliberate and genuinely unhelpful.
I also note that the armchair immunologists seemed to know nothing about how white blood cells work. Deliberate? Again, I can't see beyond that conclusion.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
It self-evidently does not!
I said nothing of the sort.
You're defending our current system which is the cause of poor quality and high prices.
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
It self-evidently does not!
I said nothing of the sort.
You're defending our current system which is the cause of poor quality and high prices.
Where's he defending the current system ? Haven't seen anything like that in his posts.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
It self-evidently does not!
I said nothing of the sort.
You're defending our current system which is the cause of poor quality and high prices.
That may be so, but your laissez-faire is not the solution.
Hmm, I think national lockdowns are about to become a thing in a lot of European countries again. I'm surprised that Spain hasn't already implemented a full national lockdown the figures are very bad, they are looking at 4-6k new cases per day at the moment. Only the UK and Italy look like a second wave might not be as bad, it could be because both had such publicly awful initial outbreaks that tourists are avoiding them or people are too scared to travel.
Spain’s outbreaks remain very localised. Why shut down Extremadura if most of the problems are hundreds of miles to the north-east?
All of the recent European increases* are localised - at least that I am aware of. UK, France, Germany, Spain etc.
So local lockdowns are the pattern....
In the rush of positive/negative nationalism, it is often useful to step back and ask yourself - what is happening elsewhere?
*Not sure that "second wave" is the right term for "Increase on the tail end of epidemic curve". Like this -
As far as I am aware, no-one has defined what 'second-wave' means. Combine this with a scientifically challenged and mathematically ignorant media and every minor increase in detected cases (for whatever reason) has suddenly become the second wave. Clearly across Europe, lockdowns of varying degrees of harshness have been lifted and inevitably more interacting people means more chance for infections to spread. Pace Newsnight last night, so far, there is minimal evidence of an increase in serious cases leading to hospital/death. Long may that continue.
Do you not think that top bit is somewhat deliberate.
As far as I can see, three different phenomena have been conflated into 'second wave fear'.
1. Small increases in R as lockdown is relaxed. 2. Larger increases in R as Summer turns into Autumn and Winter, and our behaviour changes in a seasonal, predictable manner 3. The significant and severe second wave in 1918-19 that, as far as I understand, was nothing to do with the two things above
Again, I think this has been deliberate and genuinely unhelpful.
I don't think it means anything in relation to Covid. It's a term which relates to flu, where you often see a first wave, which ends with the virtual disappearance of the disease without intervention, followed by a second wave of infections the following autumn. Clearly with Covid, we've seen no such thing; without intervention, it just keeps on going.
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
Or so the government can actually act without taking forever being dragged through the courts to make any decisions. The same as dealing with planning issues.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
I think that's a pretty extreme position. It's not about judging actions it's about judging lawfulness, and even governments get that wrong sometimes, failing to account for what the laws it provides requires of them.
Certainly people will attempt to stop decision making friviously, but I think it over corrects to in essence declare they can do whatever and be judged at election time.
Hmm, I think national lockdowns are about to become a thing in a lot of European countries again. I'm surprised that Spain hasn't already implemented a full national lockdown the figures are very bad, they are looking at 4-6k new cases per day at the moment. Only the UK and Italy look like a second wave might not be as bad, it could be because both had such publicly awful initial outbreaks that tourists are avoiding them or people are too scared to travel.
Spain’s outbreaks remain very localised. Why shut down Extremadura if most of the problems are hundreds of miles to the north-east?
All of the recent European increases* are localised - at least that I am aware of. UK, France, Germany, Spain etc.
So local lockdowns are the pattern....
In the rush of positive/negative nationalism, it is often useful to step back and ask yourself - what is happening elsewhere?
*Not sure that "second wave" is the right term for "Increase on the tail end of epidemic curve". Like this -
As far as I am aware, no-one has defined what 'second-wave' means. Combine this with a scientifically challenged and mathematically ignorant media and every minor increase in detected cases (for whatever reason) has suddenly become the second wave. Clearly across Europe, lockdowns of varying degrees of harshness have been lifted and inevitably more interacting people means more chance for infections to spread. Pace Newsnight last night, so far, there is minimal evidence of an increase in serious cases leading to hospital/death. Long may that continue.
...I also note that the armchair immunologists seemed to know nothing about how white blood cells work. Deliberate? Again, I can't see beyond that conclusion.
I posted a link to this article yesterday; it is very good.
Gallowgate in a market economy what do you think long-term leads to lower-prices?
More regulations, less supply? Or fewer regulations, more supply?
Why does regulations impact supply? In the long term supply is fed by demand and nothing else.
Clearly not true, or the home counties outside London would be covered in houses. Instead, because London's natural growth was throttled, it essentially stopped expanding in the 1940s.
Those of us who remember April remember the huge scramble to get PPE when it turned out that everyone in the world was doing the same and that supplies the government thought it had secured ended up being diverted by other governments. Going through the full formal tending process when headlines were screaming that we had less than 24 hours of stock left was not going to happen. That corners got cut is not exactly a surprise.
I seem to remember a list of suppliers compiled by Labour where a significant number tuned out to be dodgy to say the least.
The fact that the stories about shortages which had been dominating the headlines went away almost overnight suggests that whatever they did worked.
Are we going to see similar complaints about the vaccines that the government is currently backing when some turn out to be useless I wonder?
A deal brokered by a government adviser who advises the company’s board!
So he knew what he was talking about!
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
None of the PPE procured in this case seems to have been used because it turns out that buying it from a 100 quid company with no track record... didn't work.
Ultimately it was a punt, same as what the government are doing for vaccines. It went badly, countless others went well.
To my knowledge we aren't throwing 100m+ quid at a vaccine company with no track record set up by a Ministerial adviser this year.
I get that govt should take risks and not be afraid to waste money.
And fine for normal procurement to be suspended in an emergency. But handing this contract to one of your advisers is.... pretty dubious to say this least.
We are, the Moderna vaccine is a whole new type and has never previously been proven to work. Even the Oxford vaccine is fairly novel. Literally we're hoping to strike lucky and buying up options for things that have never been tried before. It's still the right thing to do.
Of course they are novel, but they're all researched by proper scientists with phds working at universities or biotech companies with a track record.
Moderna has no track record, BioNTech has no track record. They've never had a single successful vaccine. Yet we've spent billions securing tens of millions of doses.
BioNTech has no track record with what? I used to design products for them ffs. They are a well respected biopharma company.
Is this the obverse of that old joke:
Man (to plumber): thanks for fixing my drain. Plumber: No problem, that's £600. Man: £600?? But you were only there for half an hour. That's £1,200 an hour; that's more than I earn and I'm a lawyer. Plumber: Yes. It's more than I earned when I was a lawyer too..
Those of us who remember April remember the huge scramble to get PPE when it turned out that everyone in the world was doing the same and that supplies the government thought it had secured ended up being diverted by other governments. Going through the full formal tending process when headlines were screaming that we had less than 24 hours of stock left was not going to happen. That corners got cut is not exactly a surprise.
I seem to remember a list of suppliers compiled by Labour where a significant number tuned out to be dodgy to say the least.
The fact that the stories about shortages which had been dominating the headlines went away almost overnight suggests that whatever they did worked.
Are we going to see similar complaints about the vaccines that the government is currently backing when some turn out to be useless I wonder?
A deal brokered by a government adviser who advises the company’s board!
So he knew what he was talking about!
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
You might have a point if the stuff arrived and worked and only then was the money paid over. But it either didn’t arrive or is useless and still the money has been paid over. That is the scandal - not the speed or trying everything in an emergency but that money was paid to a company with no track record based in a tax haven run by people with no experience of this (I have had experience of Tim Horlick in the past - seeing him involved does not reassure me) via a lot of dubious and unnecessarily complicated transactions (a sure sign that something odd is happening) which the government is trying to hide and still the NHS did not get what it needed.
What are the chances of getting that money back do you think?
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
Gallowgate in a market economy what do you think long-term leads to lower-prices?
More regulations, less supply? Or fewer regulations, more supply?
Why does regulations impact supply? In the long term supply is fed by demand and nothing else.
Clearly not true, or the home counties outside London would be covered in houses. Instead, because London's natural growth was throttled, it essentially stopped expanding in the 1940s.
The policy was to stop London expanding. This is what the advocates of the various laws and regulations said they wanted to happen. And it did.
This did not cause immediate problems, because it corresponded to a period when population growth slowed, massively.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost. @Malmesbury The USA has lots of problems but their housing stock generally delivers decent bang for buck They're slightly depressed relative to ours as property taxes are generally higher than our council tax equivalent. But that's not the whole difference, and they are better value.
Encouraging self-build is the best way to improve housing quality. That way you can be sure you're building a house that at least one person wants to live in for years, whereas developers don't really care as long as they can sell the place quickly.
In Austria, about 80% of new houses are self-built, in France and Germany about 60%, in the UK 10%, half of which are in Northern Ireland and half of the remainder are in Milton Keynes (statistics from memory).
And as a result, new-build is synonymous with shoddy here while in Austria they are amazingly well constructed.
We need to get away from the idea that we should build new "estates" rather than new individual houses.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
It self-evidently does not!
I said nothing of the sort.
You're defending our current system which is the cause of poor quality and high prices.
That may be so, but your laissez-faire is not the solution.
Why? Because some NIMBYs may see their house prices fall?
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
The story upthread is about buying PPE that doesn't work...
Speed is clearly not more important than "anything else"
I hope that isn't the scientific method you teach?
Under those circumstances, yes it was. You buy as much as you can get hold of knowing that some might not work so that you have enough that does.
Just like we are currently doing with the vaccine program.
You are making the best the enemy of the good.
The FFP2 masks are not "good" as the 50 million of them are not up to standard. They have only recently been delivered too, so are too late. The company providing was merely a middleman with no background in medical equipment too. An off shore finance company speculating in PPE, why not buy direct for this scale of order?
Could these be used in less critical circumstances? When I have visited hospital recently I was offered a mask to wear that I think had ear loops rather than head loops.
Yes, they could be used in office areas, but are not suitable for hot areas.
‘Protecting the house prices of existing owners who want to pull the ladder up after them is both morally reprehensible and against the long-term interests of the party. Doing the right thing for the country and doing the right thing for the party are the same thing here.’
I agree entirely. Yet for many Tory voters protecting their house prices is what they demand.
Developers want to build big houses on greenfield sites in nice areas for vast profits. Areas which generally vote Conservative. When a planning application is submitted in such an area, phalanxes of local worthies will bombard their councillors with indignant emails. They will develop a sudden interest in the viability or not of the local flora and fauna. They will say the roads can’t cope with the increased traffic. They will say local schools and doctors and shops can’t cope (though surely the market will provide if the demand is there via academies and new surgeries and swift moving entrepreneurs?).
All these arguments will be advanced but it all boils down to one thing, my cynical mind posits - protecting house prices. And doing so by keeping oiks out.
Local authorities want to redevelop brownfield sites. Developers don’t want to do this because it is often expensive to clean up the land and profits aren’t as big on smaller units. Social housing is discouraged because it (I one heard a Tory cllr say this) ‘creates Labour voters.’
So the government is trying to encourage brownfield development (but not via social housing) for the oiks whilst maintaining well-heeled Tory enclaves for the well-off and retired. CIL encourages this. Local Plans encourage this. These new proposals, though I haven’t read up on them properly, will, I would imagine, encourage this.
Yes, loads of houses are being chucked up in the red wall. But those red wallers who’ve gone Tory probably still can’t afford them. They’d be happy probably with council housing. But that creates Labour voters.
Red wallers who went Tory last year are almost certainly mainly home owners or mortgage holders already.
The Tories won owner occupiers 57% to just 22% for Labour at the 2019 general election and the Tories won mortgage holders by 43% to 33%.
Labour still won social renters however by 45% to just 33% for the Tories
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
Hmm, I think national lockdowns are about to become a thing in a lot of European countries again. I'm surprised that Spain hasn't already implemented a full national lockdown the figures are very bad, they are looking at 4-6k new cases per day at the moment. Only the UK and Italy look like a second wave might not be as bad, it could be because both had such publicly awful initial outbreaks that tourists are avoiding them or people are too scared to travel.
Spain’s outbreaks remain very localised. Why shut down Extremadura if most of the problems are hundreds of miles to the north-east?
All of the recent European increases* are localised - at least that I am aware of. UK, France, Germany, Spain etc.
So local lockdowns are the pattern....
In the rush of positive/negative nationalism, it is often useful to step back and ask yourself - what is happening elsewhere?
*Not sure that "second wave" is the right term for "Increase on the tail end of epidemic curve". Like this -
As far as I am aware, no-one has defined what 'second-wave' means. Combine this with a scientifically challenged and mathematically ignorant media and every minor increase in detected cases (for whatever reason) has suddenly become the second wave. Clearly across Europe, lockdowns of varying degrees of harshness have been lifted and inevitably more interacting people means more chance for infections to spread. Pace Newsnight last night, so far, there is minimal evidence of an increase in serious cases leading to hospital/death. Long may that continue.
...I also note that the armchair immunologists seemed to know nothing about how white blood cells work. Deliberate? Again, I can't see beyond that conclusion.
I posted a link to this article yesterday; it is very good.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost.
Yes I agree. Ironically @Philip_Thompson and @Malmesbury seem to want to INCREASE the regulations on how builders should build homes.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
The quality issue would be dealt with if we had an excess of housing.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
Indeed. Gallowgate seems to think that constraining supply makes quality better and prices cheaper.
It self-evidently does not!
I said nothing of the sort.
You're defending our current system which is the cause of poor quality and high prices.
That may be so, but your laissez-faire is not the solution.
Why? Because some NIMBYs may see their house prices fall?
I don't care.
I don’t care either. This is not about NIMBYism. This is about ensuring sustainable and long term housing is built, and not utter crap.
‘Protecting the house prices of existing owners who want to pull the ladder up after them is both morally reprehensible and against the long-term interests of the party. Doing the right thing for the country and doing the right thing for the party are the same thing here.’
I agree entirely. Yet for many Tory voters protecting their house prices is what they demand.
Developers want to build big houses on greenfield sites in nice areas for vast profits. Areas which generally vote Conservative. When a planning application is submitted in such an area, phalanxes of local worthies will bombard their councillors with indignant emails. They will develop a sudden interest in the viability or not of the local flora and fauna. They will say the roads can’t cope with the increased traffic. They will say local schools and doctors and shops can’t cope (though surely the market will provide if the demand is there via academies and new surgeries and swift moving entrepreneurs?).
All these arguments will be advanced but it all boils down to one thing, my cynical mind posits - protecting house prices. And doing so by keeping oiks out.
Local authorities want to redevelop brownfield sites. Developers don’t want to do this because it is often expensive to clean up the land and profits aren’t as big on smaller units. Social housing is discouraged because it (I one heard a Tory cllr say this) ‘creates Labour voters.’
So the government is trying to encourage brownfield development (but not via social housing) for the oiks whilst maintaining well-heeled Tory enclaves for the well-off and retired. CIL encourages this. Local Plans encourage this. These new proposals, though I haven’t read up on them properly, will, I would imagine, encourage this.
Yes, loads of houses are being chucked up in the red wall. But those red wallers who’ve gone Tory probably still can’t afford them. They’d be happy probably with council housing. But that creates Labour voters.
Red wallers who went Tory last year are almost certainly mainly home owners or mortgage holders already.
The Tories won owner occupiers 57% to just 22% for Labour at the 2019 general election and the Tories won mortgage holders by 43% to 33%.
Labour still won social renters however by 45% to just 33% for Labour
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
With respect you keep asking questions but not accepting my answers. Every time you ask a question I immediately give an answer and you then switch it around. You asked for evidence our system causes delays, I gave it. You asked for a small nation with an alternative system, I gave it.
Why are you so set on protecting the rights of NIMBYs to prevent new homes being built that you can't accept alternative viewpoints?
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
Or so the government can actually act without taking forever being dragged through the courts to make any decisions. The same as dealing with planning issues.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
Ah yes, I forgot. You want the government to be above the law not subject to it.
Divine right of World Kings - the Tory party’s new mission statement.
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
With respect you keep asking questions but not accepting my answers. Every time you ask a question I immediately give an answer and you then switch it around. You asked for evidence our system causes delays, I gave it. You asked for a small nation with an alternative system, I gave it.
Why are you so set on protecting the rights of NIMBYs to prevent new homes being built that you can't accept alternative viewpoints?
You say that Japan is an example of your “ideal” working. I ask what the details of their system is and you don’t know. Says it all.
@Gallowgate can I ask you one simple question. Forget for one second the rights or wrongs of a more "laissez-faire" system. Just stop for one second and think about our current planning system and can you please answer this one question:
When it comes to ensuring a good supply of new homes which can allow people to buy homes and keep prices down, do you think our current planning system is fit for purpose?
EDIT: Personally my answer is no as I think the purpose of our current system is to keep prices up not down. But what do you think?
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
The story upthread is about buying PPE that doesn't work...
Speed is clearly not more important than "anything else"
I hope that isn't the scientific method you teach?
Under those circumstances, yes it was. You buy as much as you can get hold of knowing that some might not work so that you have enough that does.
Just like we are currently doing with the vaccine program.
You are making the best the enemy of the good.
The FFP2 masks are not "good" as the 50 million of them are not up to standard. They have only recently been delivered too, so are too late. The company providing was merely a middleman with no background in medical equipment too. An off shore finance company speculating in PPE, why not buy direct for this scale of order?
Could these be used in less critical circumstances? When I have visited hospital recently I was offered a mask to wear that I think had ear loops rather than head loops.
Yes, they could be used in office areas, but are not suitable for hot areas.
@Gallowgate There needs to be a system to incentivise the building of world class homes. I think our housing stock is far too pokey generally, one unfortunate obsession we have as a nation is evaluating homes by bedrooms rather than area and plot size first and foremost. @Malmesbury The USA has lots of problems but their housing stock generally delivers decent bang for buck They're slightly depressed relative to ours as property taxes are generally higher than our council tax equivalent. But that's not the whole difference, and they are better value.
Encouraging self-build is the best way to improve housing quality. That way you can be sure you're building a house that at least one person wants to live in for years, whereas developers don't really care as long as they can sell the place quickly.
In Austria, about 80% of new houses are self-built, in France and Germany about 60%, in the UK 10%, half of which are in Northern Ireland and half of the remainder are in Milton Keynes (statistics from memory).
And as a result, new-build is synonymous with shoddy here while in Austria they are amazingly well constructed.
We need to get away from the idea that we should build new "estates" rather than new individual houses.
In NZ and Australia, building land is sold in "sections", of 1/4 acre, and the purchaser builds on it, often via a contractor. Not uncommon to buy a house somewhere else and have it moved to the new site too.
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
Or so the government can actually act without taking forever being dragged through the courts to make any decisions. The same as dealing with planning issues.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
Ah yes, I forgot. You want the government to be above the law not subject to it.
Divine right of World Kings - the Tory party’s new mission statement.
No I want the government to set the law. I want the public to hold the government to account.
The right of the voters not kings. The government are put there and held to account by the voters.
In NZ and Australia, building land is sold in "sections", of 1/4 acre, and the purchaser builds on it, often via a contractor. Not uncommon to buy a house somewhere else and have it moved to the new site too.
How many houses are typically built on the 1/4 acre ?
@Gallowgate can I ask you one simple question. Forget for one second the rights or wrongs of a more "laissez-faire" system. Just stop for one second and think about our current planning system and can you please answer this one question:
When it comes to ensuring a good supply of new homes which can allow people to buy homes and keep prices down, do you think our current planning system is fit for purpose?
EDIT: Personally my answer is no as I think the purpose of our current system is to keep prices up not down. But what do you think?
We’re not debating whether the current system is fit for purpose. We’re debating whether your proposed solution is.
Personally I think the answer to both of those questions is no.
Any planning system is going to have a whole host of unintended consequences. Yours included. I personally think that slim-lining the planning system at council level IS the right thing to do, but government level regulations on aesthetics, room sizes, plot sizes, and things like parking and renewable energy must go hand in hand - otherwise you’re still going to end up with crap.
And don’t get me started on estates management companies.
In NZ and Australia, building land is sold in "sections", of 1/4 acre, and the purchaser builds on it, often via a contractor. Not uncommon to buy a house somewhere else and have it moved to the new site too.
How many houses are typically built on the 1/4 acre ?
They are for a single house, almost always a 3 bed bungalow.
A vast amount of work has gone into producing Neighbourhood Plans which have attempted to reconcile the need for housing with environmental issues. Is all that work now to be thrown out?
Also, there is a lot of land that already has planning permission but developers have been sitting on so that prices go up. Shouldn't the first option be to put pressure on developers to build on land which already has plannning permission?
Re planning, all requirements for affordable housing, s. 106 agreements and provision of infrastructure are to go, according to reports. Houses will be built - but all the stuff that needs to go with them - will not and there is no guarantee whatsoever that there will be any money for such stuff (councils are already under huge financial pressure) or that the houses built will be affordable.
Still, when all these new houses built in a rush on flood plains are flooded, it’ll be fun watching Ministers explain how this has happened.
In NZ and Australia, building land is sold in "sections", of 1/4 acre, and the purchaser builds on it, often via a contractor. Not uncommon to buy a house somewhere else and have it moved to the new site too.
Yes, the one time self-build doesn't work well, for obvious reasons, is in blocks of flats. Otherwise I don't see why we couldn't do much more of it in this country. But I think the big developers have dominated the planning process for decades and rigged it to their advantage.
Will the government's reforms change that? I've no idea. But they could hardly be worse than the current system in this respect anyway.
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
With respect you keep asking questions but not accepting my answers. Every time you ask a question I immediately give an answer and you then switch it around. You asked for evidence our system causes delays, I gave it. You asked for a small nation with an alternative system, I gave it.
Why are you so set on protecting the rights of NIMBYs to prevent new homes being built that you can't accept alternative viewpoints?
It isn't just Nimbyism. Inappropriate building affects the value of neighbouring properties, whose owners suffer the financial external costs of someone else's profits.
Libertarians are very cavalier with the external costs that they force on other people. Not just financial costs too.
3 new social houses are being built 100 yards from me, but neither me or my neighbours objected. Good building is often quite popular.
Re planning, all requirements for affordable housing, s. 106 agreements and provision of infrastructure are to go, according to reports. Houses will be built - but all the stuff that needs to go with them - will not and there is no guarantee whatsoever that there will be any money for such stuff (councils are already under huge financial pressure) or that the houses built will be affordable.
Still, when all these new houses built in a rush on flood plains are flooded, it’ll be fun watching Ministers explain how this has happened.
My house was built on green belt, but the developers were required to contribute millions towards building a new primary school in the village, and it’s fantastic. Yes I know that we paid for it in the house price, but if the government wasn’t going to give the council money to build new schools, how else was it going to be built?
It will essentially mean higher taxes to compensate.
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
With respect you keep asking questions but not accepting my answers. Every time you ask a question I immediately give an answer and you then switch it around. You asked for evidence our system causes delays, I gave it. You asked for a small nation with an alternative system, I gave it.
Why are you so set on protecting the rights of NIMBYs to prevent new homes being built that you can't accept alternative viewpoints?
You say that Japan is an example of your “ideal” working. I ask what the details of their system is and you don’t know. Says it all.
I do but I had already given you some details and you ignored it. But to answer your most important question.
Compared to ours Japanese house prices have become relatively dramatically cheaper in the past thirty years. UK prices in the past thirty years with our constrained supply have as you know full well gone up and up and up. A little known fact but in Japan in real terms house prices peaked in 1991. In the past thirty years new house building has been growing at such a high rate that house prices have not grown for thirty years now and houses are cheaper today than they were in 1991 in real terms!
That is a system that works. Not for NIMBYs. Not for people who want to sweat housing assets to make an income. Not for Buy To Let landlords who want to buy homes, let them out to pay the mortgage and then make a tremendous windfall profit when they sell their home. It is a system that works for people who need somewhere to live.
Japan is a very comparable country to the UK. It is another small but densely populated island country. Especially since they're more mountainous so that land isn't really lived in.
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
Or so the government can actually act without taking forever being dragged through the courts to make any decisions. The same as dealing with planning issues.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
Ah yes, I forgot. You want the government to be above the law not subject to it.
Divine right of World Kings - the Tory party’s new mission statement.
No I want the government to set the law. I want the public to hold the government to account.
The right of the voters not kings. The government are put there and held to account by the voters.
However you finesse it, you are still saying that the government should not be subject to the law.
It’s very simple: if you accept that the government should be subject to the law then there has to be a means by which that is enforceable ie by citizens taking the government to court and the government having to obey the law and court rulings.
If you don’t accept that then you want the government to be above the law.
I've started getting into Grand Designs. [Is this the start of being middle aged?] Incredible to me how cheaply they seem to build houses, particularly the ones out of wood.
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
With respect you keep asking questions but not accepting my answers. Every time you ask a question I immediately give an answer and you then switch it around. You asked for evidence our system causes delays, I gave it. You asked for a small nation with an alternative system, I gave it.
Why are you so set on protecting the rights of NIMBYs to prevent new homes being built that you can't accept alternative viewpoints?
You say that Japan is an example of your “ideal” working. I ask what the details of their system is and you don’t know. Says it all.
I do but I had already given you some details and you ignored it. But to answer your most important question.
Compared to ours Japanese house prices have become relatively dramatically cheaper in the past thirty years. UK prices in the past thirty years with our constrained supply have as you know full well gone up and up and up. A little known fact but in Japan in real terms house prices peaked in 1991. In the past thirty years new house building has been growing at such a high rate that house prices have not grown for thirty years now and houses are cheaper today than they were in 1991 in real terms!
That is a system that works. Not for NIMBYs. Not for people who want to sweat housing assets to make an income. Not for Buy To Let landlords who want to buy homes, let them out to pay the mortgage and then make a tremendous windfall profit when they sell their home. It is a system that works for people who need somewhere to live.
Japan is a very comparable country to the UK. It is another small but densely populated island country. Especially since they're more mountainous so that land isn't really lived in.
You’ve demonstrated how it works for house prices, but what about all the other things I asked about, which are equally as important.
Here is another set of figures that really stuck in my memory. It is the average size of new residences built:
US - 2,200 sq ft Ger - 1,600 UK in the 1930s - 1,600 Netherlands - 1,300 Belgium - 1,300 UK today - 800.
Again from memory - but it was something very like this.
Why?
Partly, no doubt, because of smaller families, but that's not enough to explain the difference, and doesn't explain why the Germans, with smaller familes, are building houses twice as big.
Mainly because in the 1930s, before planning regulation, land took up 2% of the cost of building a house. Now, land with planning permission is to rare, that it takes up 70% of the cost of building a house. So developers squeeze as many small, cheap boxes as they can onto tiny plots of land so they can make their margins on the 30% of their cost base where they can make a profit, compared to the 98% 80 years ago.
Re planning, all requirements for affordable housing, s. 106 agreements and provision of infrastructure are to go, according to reports. Houses will be built - but all the stuff that needs to go with them - will not and there is no guarantee whatsoever that there will be any money for such stuff (councils are already under huge financial pressure) or that the houses built will be affordable.
Still, when all these new houses built in a rush on flood plains are flooded, it’ll be fun watching Ministers explain how this has happened.
My house was built on green belt, but the developers were required to contribute millions towards building a new primary school in the village, and it’s fantastic. Yes I know that we paid for it in the house price, but if the government wasn’t going to give the council money to build new schools, how else was it going to be built?
It will essentially mean higher taxes to compensate.
Or, more likely, there will be no infrastructure and we will be building the new slums of the future, much like so much of the building in the 1960’s and later turned out to be hideous slums or unsafe buildings.
A look at the evidence being given in the Grenfell Tower inquiry on what happens in reality in relation to building standards should give anyone pause for thought.
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
Or so the government can actually act without taking forever being dragged through the courts to make any decisions. The same as dealing with planning issues.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
Ah yes, I forgot. You want the government to be above the law not subject to it.
Divine right of World Kings - the Tory party’s new mission statement.
No I want the government to set the law. I want the public to hold the government to account.
The right of the voters not kings. The government are put there and held to account by the voters.
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
Or so the government can actually act without taking forever being dragged through the courts to make any decisions. The same as dealing with planning issues.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
Ah yes, I forgot. You want the government to be above the law not subject to it.
Divine right of World Kings - the Tory party’s new mission statement.
No I want the government to set the law. I want the public to hold the government to account.
The right of the voters not kings. The government are put there and held to account by the voters.
However you finesse it, you are still saying that the government should not be subject to the law.
It’s very simple: if you accept that the government should be subject to the law then there has to be a means by which that is enforceable ie by citizens taking the government to court and the government having to obey the law and court rulings.
If you don’t accept that then you want the government to be above the law.
I have no problems with the government being subject to the law after the fact. If I steal and am caught then I am subject to the law and can be fined or jailed after the fact.
I object to judicial reviews being abused for time wasting and obstructionism. If the government has broken the law then I have no problem with a review after the fact determining the law was broken and applying an appropriate punishment. That way the law is enforceable, but the system can't be abused by obstructionism.
Those of us who remember April remember the huge scramble to get PPE when it turned out that everyone in the world was doing the same and that supplies the government thought it had secured ended up being diverted by other governments. Going through the full formal tending process when headlines were screaming that we had less than 24 hours of stock left was not going to happen. That corners got cut is not exactly a surprise.
I seem to remember a list of suppliers compiled by Labour where a significant number tuned out to be dodgy to say the least.
The fact that the stories about shortages which had been dominating the headlines went away almost overnight suggests that whatever they did worked.
Are we going to see similar complaints about the vaccines that the government is currently backing when some turn out to be useless I wonder?
A deal brokered by a government adviser who advises the company’s board!
So he knew what he was talking about!
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
You might have a point if the stuff arrived and worked and only then was the money paid over. But it either didn’t arrive or is useless and still the money has been paid over. That is the scandal - not the speed or trying everything in an emergency but that money was paid to a company with no track record based in a tax haven run by people with no experience of this (I have had experience of Tim Horlick in the past - seeing him involved does not reassure me) via a lot of dubious and unnecessarily complicated transactions (a sure sign that something odd is happening) which the government is trying to hide and still the NHS did not get what it needed.
What are the chances of getting that money back do you think?
It’s incompetent at best. At worst .....
You are right that something went wrong here (and the role of the advisor does look iffy to be honest). I think the point I am trying to make is that I would have been amazed if there hadn’t been money wasted so mere in the whole program and, as long as there were enough that did work, I’m not going to get too worked up at it under the circumstances.
I've started getting into Grand Designs. [Is this the start of being middle aged?] Incredible to me how cheaply they seem to build houses, particularly the ones out of wood.
And yet also how badly they estimate costs. It usually ends up 2-3 times what they thought it would
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
Characteristics of Japan's system:
1) Based around "nuisance level" rather than the government micro-managing what should be there, so there's zoning with residential / industrial etc, but you can build a little, quiet factory in a residential area, or a big house in an industrial area. This is one of the things that makes Japan really convenient to live in, because there are shops where people want to buy things, and houses where they want to live. There are also lots of little workshops and teensy factories with people living above them.
2) Mostly based on national policy, not that much local involvement (although they draw up the zones in [1]), and fairly objective rules - things like the ratio of floor space to land area. If my neighbours want a say in what I build on my land I'm happy to talk to them and see what they want and how much they're willing to pay me.
3) The government doesn't decide on aesthetics, they're not art critics
4) There's no "green belt", cities don't have trousers and if they did they wouldn't fall down
5) Prices:
Rural areas are gradually depopulating, so land is dirt cheap - my place (in a small town called Mashiko) was like 7 million yen (50,000 GBP) for 1000 square meters, an old house built by a great ceramic artist, another building, and several more pottery kilns than I need.
Urban areas are probably a more interesting comparison. I'm not exactly sure what to compare with what district but Tokyo prices are cheap and stable, despite increasing population, and floor area per head is increasing. There are some bit tower blocks and things but for reasons related to fire regulations most places around stations are under 11 floors, and beyond a couple of hundreds of meters from stations mostly 2-story or 3-story. Development is particularly concentrated close to transit, so if you look from the train it looks like everything is built up, but in fact there's quite a bit of land still used for agriculture pretty close to the city.
In NZ and Australia, building land is sold in "sections", of 1/4 acre, and the purchaser builds on it, often via a contractor. Not uncommon to buy a house somewhere else and have it moved to the new site too.
How many houses are typically built on the 1/4 acre ?
They are for a single house, almost always a 3 bed bungalow.
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
With respect you keep asking questions but not accepting my answers. Every time you ask a question I immediately give an answer and you then switch it around. You asked for evidence our system causes delays, I gave it. You asked for a small nation with an alternative system, I gave it.
Why are you so set on protecting the rights of NIMBYs to prevent new homes being built that you can't accept alternative viewpoints?
It isn't just Nimbyism. Inappropriate building affects the value of neighbouring properties, whose owners suffer the financial external costs of someone else's profits.
Libertarians are very cavalier with the external costs that they force on other people. Not just financial costs too.
3 new social houses are being built 100 yards from me, but neither me or my neighbours objected. Good building is often quite popular.
I don't care if the value of neighbouring properties goes down.
Houses should be somewhere for you to live not an asset to make a profit from. It is this idea of trying to protect the value of houses that causes most of the problems in this countries market. Quite frankly I couldn't care less if every house in the country saw its prices fall by half - in fact I would be delighted.
Those of us who remember April remember the huge scramble to get PPE when it turned out that everyone in the world was doing the same and that supplies the government thought it had secured ended up being diverted by other governments. Going through the full formal tending process when headlines were screaming that we had less than 24 hours of stock left was not going to happen. That corners got cut is not exactly a surprise.
I seem to remember a list of suppliers compiled by Labour where a significant number tuned out to be dodgy to say the least.
The fact that the stories about shortages which had been dominating the headlines went away almost overnight suggests that whatever they did worked.
Are we going to see similar complaints about the vaccines that the government is currently backing when some turn out to be useless I wonder?
A deal brokered by a government adviser who advises the company’s board!
So he knew what he was talking about!
Seriously, getting PPE at that point was literal life and death stuff: speed was more important than anything else.
None of the PPE procured in this case seems to have been used because it turns out that buying it from a 100 quid company with no track record... didn't work.
Ultimately it was a punt, same as what the government are doing for vaccines. It went badly, countless others went well.
To my knowledge we aren't throwing 100m+ quid at a vaccine company with no track record set up by a Ministerial adviser this year.
I get that govt should take risks and not be afraid to waste money.
And fine for normal procurement to be suspended in an emergency. But handing this contract to one of your advisers is.... pretty dubious to say this least.
We are, the Moderna vaccine is a whole new type and has never previously been proven to work. Even the Oxford vaccine is fairly novel. Literally we're hoping to strike lucky and buying up options for things that have never been tried before. It's still the right thing to do.
You're talking about two different things, though. In the vaccine cases, both vaccines are technologies which have been a decade in development, not something sketched on the back of a fag packet.
Granted, there are considerable risks involved (particularly with the Moderna effort) - the largest being that they simply don't work - but thus far it looks as though both might well pay off.
The story of Moderna getting US funding to put its program into action is an interesting one - basically meant selling a science project to an ignoramus, which they did rather effectively: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/01/us/coronavirus-moderna-vaccine-invs/index.html (note, there's an error in that piece: the Regeneron treatment is manufactured antibodies, not a vaccine.)
I'm not saying they are bad decisions, they aren't but we shouldn't pretend that buying up these initial stocks before PIII is anything more than a punt. A good one sure, but still a punt. The prudent decision by traditional accounting would be to wait for PIII to conclude and purchase whichever is cheapest. Personally I'd be pretty upset if the government took that path to save a few billion.
Again, though, we're talking about a massive difference in the risk reward calculation. To be honest, I don't get all that worked up about this one particular PPE thing (it's more a symptom of the chaotic management of the procurement), but PPE items are well defined products, which if we'd been proactive enough, we could have manufactured ourselves.
The vaccines, in contact, have the potential of completely ending the crisis quickly (best case), and massively mitigating it sometime down the line (at this point, I think, the worst case).
There was a lot of luck involved - Moderna for example originally set out to develop therapeutics for a wide range of diseases, not vaccines, but their technology had the undesired, and potentially unsolvable side effect of producing an immune response. Which is, of course, just what you want with a vaccine...
I don't disagree with any of that. I criticised the government heavily at the time for completely taking its eye off the ball wrt domestic manufacturing and that was the original sin. Everything they've done since then is paying for that mistake. I also agree on the vaccine, as I've said many times the approach taken by the government is absolutely the correct one and I'm glad that on this they seem to be absolutely on the ball.
On the specific contract obviously it looks completely dodgy and with hindsight it should have been signed, however, that's today when we know how everything played out. At the time there was no time for this and someone who has secured delivery 50m masks will get taken seriously regardless of their background. What people don't seem to understand is that to catch these types of undesirable contracts is you need to introduce across the board checks on every contract which means adding a layer of bureaucracy which slows the whole process down.
As I said, the solution was, considering that domestic manufacturing had, at best, a 3-4 month lead time, to buy everything available and then throw away the crap. That's basically exactly what happened but it does mean that the Trotter's Independent Traders types have done well out of it. If there is a second wave then at least we do have domestic manufacturing set up.
Here is another set of figures that really stuck in my memory. It is the average size of new residences built:
US - 2,200 sq ft Ger - 1,600 UK in the 1930s - 1,600 Netherlands - 1,300 Belgium - 1,300 UK today - 800.
Again from memory - but it was something very like this.
Why?
Partly, no doubt, because of smaller families, but that's not enough to explain the difference, and doesn't explain why the Germans, with smaller familes, are building houses twice as big.
Mainly because in the 1930s, before planning regulation, land took up 2% of the cost of building a house. Now, land with planning permission is to rare, that it takes up 70% of the cost of building a house. So developers squeeze as many small, cheap boxes as they can onto tiny plots of land so they can make their margins on the 30% of their cost base where they can make a profit, compared to the 98% 80 years ago.
After living in Germany, it seems really odd to me that houses in the UK are advertised primarily by number of bedrooms rather than by floor area. Yes, I know the floor area is sometimes given in the small print, but in Germany the floor area is the headline figure in an advert, making it much easier to compare properties. Number of rooms comes further down the ad.
Perhaps this is why UK houses are build with as many tiny bedrooms as can be crammed into a small floor area, while German houses tend to have fewer, large rooms!
@Philip_Thompson you debate like a 16 year old communist. Everything sounds great in “theory” but you conveniently forget human nature and how the real world works.
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Japan.
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
So tell me about Japan’s system? Do they have regulations on what can be built and what cant? Do local residents get any say in whats built? What about aesthetics?
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
Characteristics of Japan's system:
1) Based around "nuisance level" rather than the government micro-managing what should be there, so there's zoning with residential / industrial etc, but you can build a little, quiet factory in a residential area, or a big house in an industrial area. This is one of the things that makes Japan really convenient to live in, because there are shops where people want to buy things, and houses where they want to live.
2) Mostly based on national policy, not that much local involvement (although they draw up the zones in [1]), and fairly objective rules - things like the ratio of floor space to land area. If my neighbours want a say in what I build on my land I'm happy to talk to them and see what they want and how much they're willing to pay me.
3) The government doesn't decide on aesthetics, they're not art critics
4) There's no "green belt", cities don't have trousers and if they did they wouldn't fall down
5) Prices:
Rural areas are gradually depopulating, so land is dirt cheap - my place (in a small town called Mashiko) was like 7 million yen (50,000 GBP) for 1000 square meters, an old house built by a great ceramic artist, another building, and several more pottery kilns than I need.
Urban areas are probably a more interesting comparison. I'm not exactly sure what to compare with what district but Tokyo prices are cheap and stable, despite increasing population, and floor area per head is increasing. There are some bit tower blocks and things but for reasons related to fire regulations most places around stations are under 11 floors, and beyond a couple of hundreds of meters from stations mostly 2-story or 3-story. Development is particularly concentrated close to transit, so if you look from the train it looks like everything is built up, but in fact there's quite a bit of land still used for agriculture pretty close to the city.
I was hoping you’d chime in. Thank you.
That all sounds very sensible, but not exactly what the UK government is proposing.
How do they ensure there is adequate infrastructure like schools, parks, parking, etc?
What (if any) local criticism of the system is there?
In NZ and Australia, building land is sold in "sections", of 1/4 acre, and the purchaser builds on it, often via a contractor. Not uncommon to buy a house somewhere else and have it moved to the new site too.
How many houses are typically built on the 1/4 acre ?
They are for a single house, almost always a 3 bed bungalow.
Both countries have vast sprawling suburbs.
With corrugated roofs!
Not sure about that bit, 1/4 of an acre is loads though. I think new builds in this country should be 1/10th of an acre (Or 400 sq metres) minimum in plot though...
The answer has to be sort out trade agreements with everyone, and protect, so far as possible, the British economy. The trouble is that none of that is likely to be dramatic and eye-catching.
See what you mean! In other words, yes, there will be eye-catching drama, but with PM Johnson having to explain himself. And there won't be a fridge in which to hide. One wonders, how many old-fashioned Conservatives there still are in the House; who put honour and reputation above fortune, or perchance, becoming a Lord.
Why do you think the government wants to limit judicial review? So that the government won’t have to explain itself.
Or so the government can actually act without taking forever being dragged through the courts to make any decisions. The same as dealing with planning issues.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
Ah yes, I forgot. You want the government to be above the law not subject to it.
Divine right of World Kings - the Tory party’s new mission statement.
No I want the government to set the law. I want the public to hold the government to account.
The right of the voters not kings. The government are put there and held to account by the voters.
However you finesse it, you are still saying that the government should not be subject to the law.
It’s very simple: if you accept that the government should be subject to the law then there has to be a means by which that is enforceable ie by citizens taking the government to court and the government having to obey the law and court rulings.
If you don’t accept that then you want the government to be above the law.
I have no problems with the government being subject to the law after the fact. If I steal and am caught then I am subject to the law and can be fined or jailed after the fact.
I object to judicial reviews being abused for time wasting and obstructionism. If the government has broken the law then I have no problem with a review after the fact determining the law was broken and applying an appropriate punishment. That way the law is enforceable, but the system can't be abused by obstructionism.
Not wanting the system abused friviously is quite different to stating governments should only be accountable at the ballot box. The latter very much would mean governments could wilfully be unlawful and hope the unlawfullness is popular.
If the government is to be challenged on lawfulness then we cannot so flippantly erode JR. And your justifications reveal it would be flippantly done as the itd be done in anger because how dare anyone but the voters judge it.
If the system is too easy to abuse it needs revision. Itd be far from the only legal issue that needs revision. But it would need to be done cautiously, with care and consideration. Your words, if reflective of the government position, demonstrate no intention of such care or consideration. Just 'voters judge not lawyers'.
Here is another set of figures that really stuck in my memory. It is the average size of new residences built:
US - 2,200 sq ft Ger - 1,600 UK in the 1930s - 1,600 Netherlands - 1,300 Belgium - 1,300 UK today - 800.
Again from memory - but it was something very like this.
Why?
Partly, no doubt, because of smaller families, but that's not enough to explain the difference, and doesn't explain why the Germans, with smaller familes, are building houses twice as big.
Mainly because in the 1930s, before planning regulation, land took up 2% of the cost of building a house. Now, land with planning permission is to rare, that it takes up 70% of the cost of building a house. So developers squeeze as many small, cheap boxes as they can onto tiny plots of land so they can make their margins on the 30% of their cost base where they can make a profit, compared to the 98% 80 years ago.
After living in Germany, it seems really odd to me that houses in the UK are advertised primarily by number of bedrooms rather than by floor area. Yes, I know the floor area is sometimes given in the small print, but in Germany the floor area is the headline figure in an advert, making it much easier to compare properties. Number of rooms comes further down the ad.
Perhaps this is why UK houses are build with as many tiny bedrooms as can be crammed into a small floor area, while German houses tend to have fewer, large rooms!
I did two years worth of research before I bought my new build, but during my hunt it was so frustrating. The amount of three bedroom homes that I saw that would have been lovely two bedroom homes, but were ruined when the developed decided to cram a third room upstairs was mad.
In fact on my estate there are a number of 4-beds that are really no bigger than my 3-bed. Cramp-city-upon-tyne.
In NZ and Australia, building land is sold in "sections", of 1/4 acre, and the purchaser builds on it, often via a contractor. Not uncommon to buy a house somewhere else and have it moved to the new site too.
How many houses are typically built on the 1/4 acre ?
They are for a single house, almost always a 3 bed bungalow.
Both countries have vast sprawling suburbs.
With corrugated roofs!
Not sure about that bit, 1/4 of an acre is loads though. I think new builds in this country should be 1/10th of an acre (Or 400 sq metres) minimum in plot though...
My wife is from NZ. When I visited in 2003 I was so confused when people kept asking how big someones "section" was.
Other than Christchurch city centre it seemed every house was a 3 Bed bungalow with a corrugated roof.
On the subject of self-build, what would everyone build for themselves if they had the chance, like a lottery win or iffy PPE contract?
I’d go for Anderson’s apartment from the Citadel DLC of Mass Effect...
I’d build a “normal looking house” but with a bigger garage and some more renewable energy provision. Basically my existing home with a few tweaks to make it better.
In NZ and Australia, building land is sold in "sections", of 1/4 acre, and the purchaser builds on it, often via a contractor. Not uncommon to buy a house somewhere else and have it moved to the new site too.
How many houses are typically built on the 1/4 acre ?
They are for a single house, almost always a 3 bed bungalow.
Both countries have vast sprawling suburbs.
With corrugated roofs!
Australasian suburbia is part of the culture there, the areas covered are vast, and some suburbs very posh and others very much not. Generally people want to live there rather than rural areas or city centres though. Not cheap housing though.
Comments
Across the sample of housebuilders, getting from initial identification to opening a show
house on strategic land can now take 10 to 20 years and up to five years or more depending
on infrastructure requirements and the size and make up of sites on allocated and consented
land. Delays occur in pre application discussions, from registration to determination (though
several pointed out that the 13 week rule had had an impact), and after determination, during
discussions on S106 matters (which can take 9 months) and pre commencement conditions,
including design and materials matters. The time taken up in pre application and post
consent discussions far outweighs the time taken up from the formal registration of an
application and its determination.
[snip]
Good planning authorities can shave 18 months off the process from starting pre application
discussions to opening the first show house.
On the slightly separate point about the closeness of the advisor to the company, that I will admit does not look good after the case for the prosecution you outlined above: certainly a case to answer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53670199
In addition, pressure is often applied to increase density. This is a matter of policy.
When supply matches or exceeds demand, quality as the differntiator becomes a much bigger factor.
I still remember a friend from the UK being shocked that a whole development of houses built in the US weren't selling. The reason was that in that area, there were plenty of houses that were better. The shock at the idea that any old rabbit hutch wouldn't sell was interesting to observe.
If a developer builds crap and supply is plentiful then nobody will buy it and the developer will go bankrupt.
Constraining supply is a boon to large, bad developers who can navigate through the planning system then make a buck selling shoddy developments. It means that developers make a profit by how well they're able to grease the wheels of the planning committees instead of how good the developments are to consumers.
Because you’ve just proven that the “delay” is because of discussions over estate layouts and whether the developer should fund schools, roads, etc.
I've been in for about 6-8 physical hospital appointments during lockdown, and they have always had a box of masks next to the entrance lanes.
These can just be used for visitors or day cases where otherwise our own masks or a scarf would be acceptable.
Though that might be undermined if eg the problem is they are designed for people with big ears.
To be honest, I don't get all that worked up about this one particular PPE thing (it's more a symptom of the chaotic management of the procurement), but PPE items are well defined products, which if we'd been proactive enough, we could have manufactured ourselves.
The vaccines, in contact, have the potential of completely ending the crisis quickly (best case), and massively mitigating it sometime down the line (at this point, I think, the worst case).
There was a lot of luck involved - Moderna for example originally set out to develop therapeutics for a wide range of diseases, not vaccines, but their technology had the undesired, and potentially unsolvable side effect of producing an immune response.
Which is, of course, just what you want with a vaccine...
Have you not forgotten to what happened in those huge post-war council estates?
Land is not plentiful on this island. We must ensure that what is built is good. Otherwise our towns and cities are going to be ugly as sin.
Yes I am suggesting that local communities get far too much say at the minute and that NIMBYism a blight on this country that needs to be stopped.
Then again, a Common or Garden Rattled the Right People, a seasonal shitpost. One for the notebook.
The US has plentiful land. It’s completely different.
@Malmesbury The USA has lots of problems but their housing stock generally delivers decent bang for buck
They're slightly depressed relative to ours as property taxes are generally higher than our council tax equivalent. But that's not the whole difference, and they are better value.
And massive decrease the attempt to stop building.
The building cost of, say, making every room 1m large is small. The cost is in the extra land. Which is in turn driven by the designed shortage of building land.
But that is true of the majority of biotech companies; product development in biopharma takes a very long time indeed.
In quite a few ways, it's the same story as Moderna, though I think they are a less flying by the seat of the pants organisation.
In both cases, very impressive science, though.
Let the public at elections be the ones that judge the government's decision making, not lawyers.
I can’t say I disagree, but that’s not what is happening here.
Good Lord.
What happens if you want to get exercise on a rainy day, with a family bicycle ride through the state rooms?
I shall have to ask the head butler to ask the butler to the domestic staff if he knows someone who lives like that.
Her school has many teachers over 50 none of whom would be able to teach.
Almost every household and employer will have their own similar problems.
The reason that the house builders have vast landholdings is precisely because of the planning system not despite it. It means that getting consent to build is an asset in and of itself so developers can turn a profit not by actually building but by simply buying land, getting consent then selling the land back on to someone else who will then actually build. Which adds two delays into the system - getting the consent, then finding a buyer.
The planning system means that that land with consent to build is worth much, much more than land without it. If consent was quick, cheap and easy to get then that distortion in the market would go away.
We need to get from where we are, to that situation.
‘Protecting the house prices of existing owners who want to pull the ladder up after them is both morally reprehensible and against the long-term interests of the party. Doing the right thing for the country and doing the right thing for the party are the same thing here.’
I agree entirely. Yet for many Tory voters protecting their house prices is what they demand.
Developers want to build big houses on greenfield sites in nice areas for vast profits. Areas which generally vote Conservative. When a planning application is submitted in such an area, phalanxes of local worthies will bombard their councillors with indignant emails. They will develop a sudden interest in the viability or not of the local flora and fauna. They will say the roads can’t cope with the increased traffic. They will say local schools and doctors and shops can’t cope (though surely the market will provide if the demand is there via academies and new surgeries and swift moving entrepreneurs?).
All these arguments will be advanced but it all boils down to one thing, my cynical mind posits - protecting house prices. And doing so by keeping oiks out.
Local authorities want to redevelop brownfield sites. Developers don’t want to do this because it is often expensive to clean up the land and profits aren’t as big on smaller units. Social housing is discouraged because it (I one heard a Tory cllr say this) ‘creates Labour voters.’
So the government is trying to encourage brownfield development (but not via social housing) for the oiks whilst maintaining well-heeled Tory enclaves for the well-off and retired. CIL encourages this. Local Plans encourage this. These new proposals, though I haven’t read up on them properly, will, I would imagine, encourage this.
Yes, loads of houses are being chucked up in the red wall. But those red wallers who’ve gone Tory probably still can’t afford them. They’d be happy probably with council housing. But that creates Labour voters.
As far as I can see, three different phenomena have been conflated into 'second wave fear'.
1. Small increases in R as lockdown is relaxed.
2. Larger increases in R as Summer turns into Autumn and Winter, and our behaviour changes in a seasonal, predictable manner
3. The significant and severe second wave in 1918-19 that, as far as I understand, was nothing to do with the two things above
Again, I think this has been deliberate and genuinely unhelpful.
I also note that the armchair immunologists seemed to know nothing about how white blood cells work. Deliberate? Again, I can't see beyond that conclusion.
It self-evidently does not!
Give me an example of a small country with limited land that has the laissez-faire approach to planning that you advocate, and we can debate how well it works compared to the current system - not how it compares in your head with “pure capitalism”.
Where's he defending the current system ? Haven't seen anything like that in his posts.
It's a term which relates to flu, where you often see a first wave, which ends with the virtual disappearance of the disease without intervention, followed by a second wave of infections the following autumn.
Clearly with Covid, we've seen no such thing; without intervention, it just keeps on going.
Certainly people will attempt to stop decision making friviously, but I think it over corrects to in essence declare they can do whatever and be judged at election time.
https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/1291027292878069760
Man (to plumber): thanks for fixing my drain.
Plumber: No problem, that's £600.
Man: £600?? But you were only there for half an hour. That's £1,200 an hour; that's more than I earn and I'm a lawyer.
Plumber: Yes. It's more than I earned when I was a lawyer too..
What are the chances of getting that money back do you think?
It’s incompetent at best. At worst .....
Like us a small island country with high population density but they have a much simpler and cleaner planning system by zoning that allows developments much quicker. As a result homes get built much quicker and developers don't sit on land as long. Because the system works. In the real world.
This did not cause immediate problems, because it corresponded to a period when population growth slowed, massively.
In Austria, about 80% of new houses are self-built, in France and Germany about 60%, in the UK 10%, half of which are in Northern Ireland and half of the remainder are in Milton Keynes (statistics from memory).
And as a result, new-build is synonymous with shoddy here while in Austria they are amazingly well constructed.
We need to get away from the idea that we should build new "estates" rather than new individual houses.
I don't care.
The Tories won owner occupiers 57% to just 22% for Labour at the 2019 general election and the Tories won mortgage holders by 43% to 33%.
Labour still won social renters however by 45% to just 33% for the Tories
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election
How do Japan’s house prices compare to ours? How does the Japanese system compare with what the Government is proposing? Do they have an equivalent of the green belt?
With all due respect I doubt you know anything about the Japanese planning system.
Why are you so set on protecting the rights of NIMBYs to prevent new homes being built that you can't accept alternative viewpoints?
Divine right of World Kings - the Tory party’s new mission statement.
When it comes to ensuring a good supply of new homes which can allow people to buy homes and keep prices down, do you think our current planning system is fit for purpose?
EDIT: Personally my answer is no as I think the purpose of our current system is to keep prices up not down. But what do you think?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/home-property/77415124/relocating-a-house-can-be-a-cheaper-option-for-first-home-buyers
The right of the voters not kings. The government are put there and held to account by the voters.
Personally I think the answer to both of those questions is no.
Any planning system is going to have a whole host of unintended consequences. Yours included. I personally think that slim-lining the planning system at council level IS the right thing to do, but government level regulations on aesthetics, room sizes, plot sizes, and things like parking and renewable energy must go hand in hand - otherwise you’re still going to end up with crap.
And don’t get me started on estates management companies.
Both countries have vast sprawling suburbs.
Also, there is a lot of land that already has planning permission but developers have been sitting on so that prices go up. Shouldn't the first option be to put pressure on developers to build on land which already has plannning permission?
Still, when all these new houses built in a rush on flood plains are flooded, it’ll be fun watching Ministers explain how this has happened.
Will the government's reforms change that? I've no idea. But they could hardly be worse than the current system in this respect anyway.
Libertarians are very cavalier with the external costs that they force on other people. Not just financial costs too.
3 new social houses are being built 100 yards from me, but neither me or my neighbours objected. Good building is often quite popular.
It will essentially mean higher taxes to compensate.
On that subject, this is interesting :
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/apr/17/who-owns-england-thousand-secret-landowners-author
Compared to ours Japanese house prices have become relatively dramatically cheaper in the past thirty years. UK prices in the past thirty years with our constrained supply have as you know full well gone up and up and up. A little known fact but in Japan in real terms house prices peaked in 1991. In the past thirty years new house building has been growing at such a high rate that house prices have not grown for thirty years now and houses are cheaper today than they were in 1991 in real terms!
That is a system that works. Not for NIMBYs. Not for people who want to sweat housing assets to make an income. Not for Buy To Let landlords who want to buy homes, let them out to pay the mortgage and then make a tremendous windfall profit when they sell their home. It is a system that works for people who need somewhere to live.
Japan is a very comparable country to the UK. It is another small but densely populated island country. Especially since they're more mountainous so that land isn't really lived in.
It’s very simple: if you accept that the government should be subject to the law then there has to be a means by which that is enforceable ie by citizens taking the government to court and the government having to obey the law and court rulings.
If you don’t accept that then you want the government to be above the law.
US - 2,200 sq ft
Ger - 1,600
UK in the 1930s - 1,600
Netherlands - 1,300
Belgium - 1,300
UK today - 800.
Again from memory - but it was something very like this.
Why?
Partly, no doubt, because of smaller families, but that's not enough to explain the difference, and doesn't explain why the Germans, with smaller familes, are building houses twice as big.
Mainly because in the 1930s, before planning regulation, land took up 2% of the cost of building a house. Now, land with planning permission is to rare, that it takes up 70% of the cost of building a house. So developers squeeze as many small, cheap boxes as they can onto tiny plots of land so they can make their margins on the 30% of their cost base where they can make a profit, compared to the 98% 80 years ago.
A look at the evidence being given in the Grenfell Tower inquiry on what happens in reality in relation to building standards should give anyone pause for thought.
I object to judicial reviews being abused for time wasting and obstructionism. If the government has broken the law then I have no problem with a review after the fact determining the law was broken and applying an appropriate punishment. That way the law is enforceable, but the system can't be abused by obstructionism.
1) Based around "nuisance level" rather than the government micro-managing what should be there, so there's zoning with residential / industrial etc, but you can build a little, quiet factory in a residential area, or a big house in an industrial area. This is one of the things that makes Japan really convenient to live in, because there are shops where people want to buy things, and houses where they want to live. There are also lots of little workshops and teensy factories with people living above them.
2) Mostly based on national policy, not that much local involvement (although they draw up the zones in [1]), and fairly objective rules - things like the ratio of floor space to land area. If my neighbours want a say in what I build on my land I'm happy to talk to them and see what they want and how much they're willing to pay me.
3) The government doesn't decide on aesthetics, they're not art critics
4) There's no "green belt", cities don't have trousers and if they did they wouldn't fall down
5) Prices:
Rural areas are gradually depopulating, so land is dirt cheap - my place (in a small town called Mashiko) was like 7 million yen (50,000 GBP) for 1000 square meters, an old house built by a great ceramic artist, another building, and several more pottery kilns than I need.
Urban areas are probably a more interesting comparison. I'm not exactly sure what to compare with what district but Tokyo prices are cheap and stable, despite increasing population, and floor area per head is increasing. There are some bit tower blocks and things but for reasons related to fire regulations most places around stations are under 11 floors, and beyond a couple of hundreds of meters from stations mostly 2-story or 3-story. Development is particularly concentrated close to transit, so if you look from the train it looks like everything is built up, but in fact there's quite a bit of land still used for agriculture pretty close to the city.
Houses should be somewhere for you to live not an asset to make a profit from. It is this idea of trying to protect the value of houses that causes most of the problems in this countries market. Quite frankly I couldn't care less if every house in the country saw its prices fall by half - in fact I would be delighted.
On the specific contract obviously it looks completely dodgy and with hindsight it should have been signed, however, that's today when we know how everything played out. At the time there was no time for this and someone who has secured delivery 50m masks will get taken seriously regardless of their background. What people don't seem to understand is that to catch these types of undesirable contracts is you need to introduce across the board checks on every contract which means adding a layer of bureaucracy which slows the whole process down.
As I said, the solution was, considering that domestic manufacturing had, at best, a 3-4 month lead time, to buy everything available and then throw away the crap. That's basically exactly what happened but it does mean that the Trotter's Independent Traders types have done well out of it. If there is a second wave then at least we do have domestic manufacturing set up.
There is no subject the PB Brains Trust can't handle admirably.
Perhaps this is why UK houses are build with as many tiny bedrooms as can be crammed into a small floor area, while German houses tend to have fewer, large rooms!
That all sounds very sensible, but not exactly what the UK government is proposing.
How do they ensure there is adequate infrastructure like schools, parks, parking, etc?
What (if any) local criticism of the system is there?
I’d go for Anderson’s apartment from the Citadel DLC of Mass Effect...
If the government is to be challenged on lawfulness then we cannot so flippantly erode JR. And your justifications reveal it would be flippantly done as the itd be done in anger because how dare anyone but the voters judge it.
If the system is too easy to abuse it needs revision. Itd be far from the only legal issue that needs revision. But it would need to be done cautiously, with care and consideration. Your words, if reflective of the government position, demonstrate no intention of such care or consideration. Just 'voters judge not lawyers'.
In fact on my estate there are a number of 4-beds that are really no bigger than my 3-bed. Cramp-city-upon-tyne.
Other than Christchurch city centre it seemed every house was a 3 Bed bungalow with a corrugated roof.