I would say that's a pretty muddled article, speaking personally. There are the two separate issues of woke as "political correctness gawn mad" and a catch-all for reactionary bores, and then genuine or specific issues to do with modern identity politics, but that article is a mess.
It quickly veers off into generalised Fox-talking points about "Cultural Marxism". and by the end we're even on to Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, which are the classic conspiracist tropes.
The problem is the lack of a reasonable centre space, to discuss some of the issues connected with modern "woke", without lapsing either into saloon-bar boredom about the "modern world today", or conspiracist twaddle.
Both right and left are to blame for this, and sadly that article is not that space,
I got as far as the list of taboos and, given the nonsense there, couldn't gind the motivation to continue.
There was a time (I think, I seem to remember...) when the conspiracist loons were mostly found on the left, now there's some serious competition.
ETA: @Taz - given you're not a loon (on posts I've seen, at least) I'm genuinely interested in what you think are the 'fair points' to be pulled from this
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Yes, I was being sarcastic. I think the Tory objective is to help better off renters who want to buy by forcing landlords to sell up, but in the short term at least the effect is to reduce the supply of homes to rent, pushing up rents and hurting renters, especially those who have no intention/ability to become homeowners. As even a fleeting acquaintance with economic logic would tell them, the problem isn't landlords but an insufficient supply of homes, that is boosting both rents and house prices. Build build build! And build council houses especially.
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She’s discovered there are ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ and daytime TV talking heads slots by being a high profile twitter gobshite. She’s not alone.
Is it just that thought? Her tactical voting campaign seems quite well thought through (at least at first blush). And, as a genuinely superior mathematician, she has the credentials.
It certainly was that. Ranting about PPE certainly did her no harm.
As for tactical voting campaigns. There’s nothing new original in it. We get them every election.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
‘I’d rather stay in Communist China than return to inheritance tax Britain’ Prohibitively high death taxes are blocking British expats from returning home
"His estate, divided across property, stocks, and shares, will certainly incur a hefty inheritance tax bill.
“We have three properties in Beijing, one in England, and one in Portugal,” he says.
“I’ve put as much of it in my wife’s name as possible but my worry is that because I am male and older, I will die before she does.”
Mr Mosely says Xiaomo will likely move to Britain if she is widowed. He says: “By the time she dies, she could have been living in the UK for 15 years, and then she’ll be subject to inheritance tax.”
In the meantime, Mr Mosely says he is miserable. Beijing has lost its appeal now that he is retired – and he wants to live out the rest of his years in Kent, where he and his wife own a house."
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She’s discovered there are ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ and daytime TV talking heads slots by being a high profile twitter gobshite. She’s not alone.
Is it just that thought? Her tactical voting campaign seems quite well thought through (at least at first blush). And, as a genuinely superior mathematician, she has the credentials.
It certainly was that. Ranting about PPE certainly did her no harm.
As for tactical voting campaigns. There’s nothing new original in it. We get them every election.
The difference here is that, as @eek notes, she is known primarily as a mathematician. She is a high profile public figure who is good at maths and hence might have somewhat more leverage than your common or garden tactical voting sites.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
Would argue that isn't quite true - when the children move out of this house, both will be buying houses and not renting properties first.
But yep the solution is build, build build which is why I suggested getting pension funds focussed on doing so.
But don’t we need reform of the regulation art burdens as well to make it easier.
As for pensions funds, why should they be used like this ? Why is it people seem to see, more and more, pension funds as a pot of money to dip into to found whatever they want funding. We need to make it more attractive to invest here not compel pensions funds to invest to plug investment gaps.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
Would argue that isn't quite true - when the children move out of this house, both will be buying houses and not renting properties first.
But yep the solution is build, build build which is why I suggested getting pension funds focussed on doing so.
But don’t we need reform of the regulation art burdens as well to make it easier.
As for pensions funds, why should they be used like this ? Why is it people seem to see, more and more, pension funds as a pot of money to dip into to found whatever they want funding. We need to make it more attractive to invest here not compel pensions funds to invest to plug investment gaps.
I'm not looking at pension funds as a source of funding I'm looking at it as renting fills a particular niche of investment returns that many pensions funds want more of.
This isn't we are going to force them to invest money here - more we(I) know pension funds want to invest more money in this area how can we help them do so...
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
Actually my son retained his home when he and his now wife started their relationship 14 years ago and has been renting it
However, he has jut sold it to a first time buyer, not the tenant or for another buy to let
I think the combination of higher interest rates, the threat of rent freezes, and the requirement for rental homes to meet category C energy efficiency (which by the way I think is not realised by many) will see a very serious outbreak of landlords selling and the only solution is to build more houses, but frankly the number required will not be reached for a very long time
It is an ongoing housing crisis that seems destined to get worse each year and I do not see labour (or any government) being able to offer a short term fix
Indeed most all of our problems require long term planning and the electoral cycle is not inducive to it
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She was. Like all the most interesting people, she seems to have moved to the left as she has got older. Or maybe the Tories just became harder to support. Either way, I think the fact they now have her as an enemy is indicative of their general fuckedness.
I didn't think I was interesting, but there we go...
‘I’d rather stay in Communist China than return to inheritance tax Britain’ Prohibitively high death taxes are blocking British expats from returning home
"His estate, divided across property, stocks, and shares, will certainly incur a hefty inheritance tax bill.
“We have three properties in Beijing, one in England, and one in Portugal,” he says.
“I’ve put as much of it in my wife’s name as possible but my worry is that because I am male and older, I will die before she does.”
Mr Mosely says Xiaomo will likely move to Britain if she is widowed. He says: “By the time she dies, she could have been living in the UK for 15 years, and then she’ll be subject to inheritance tax.”
In the meantime, Mr Mosely says he is miserable. Beijing has lost its appeal now that he is retired – and he wants to live out the rest of his years in Kent, where he and his wife own a house."
So, give it away and stop whining.
That's not even a first world problem it's a 1% problem created by someone obviously unwilling to pay for proper advice.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
Who knows? Yet many people do, for reasons unclear!
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
Actually my son retained his home when he and his now wife started their relationship 14 years ago and has been renting it
However, he has jut sold it to a first time buyer, not the tenant or for another buy to let
I think the combination of higher interest rates, the threat of rent freezes, and the requirement for rental homes to meet category C energy efficiency (which by the way I think is not realised by many) will see a very serious outbreak of landlords selling and the only solution is to build more houses, but frankly the number required will not be reached for a very long tome
It is an ongoing housing crisis that seems destined to get worse each year and I do not see labour (or any government) being able to offer a short term fix
But maybe they can offer a medium term fix? And councils building more social housing is a good start (and cuts their housing benefit bills!).
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She’s discovered there are ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ and daytime TV talking heads slots by being a high profile twitter gobshite. She’s not alone.
Is it just that thought? Her tactical voting campaign seems quite well thought through (at least at first blush). And, as a genuinely superior mathematician, she has the credentials.
It certainly was that. Ranting about PPE certainly did her no harm.
As for tactical voting campaigns. There’s nothing new original in it. We get them every election.
The difference here is that, as @eek notes, she is known primarily as a mathematician. She is a high profile public figure who is good at maths and hence might have somewhat more leverage than your common or garden tactical voting sites.
+1 - my test is would my parents follow her advice - and they would.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
My legal advice to any residential landlord is straightforward. Sell. And to any would-be residential landlord. Don’t bother.
One thing we can be sure of is that in the next Parliament, security of tenure will be matched by a return to “fair” (ie very unfair) rents. In essence, a reversion to 1965-88.
Good riddance if so.
Would help restore balance to both the housing market and the economy to have houses be an expense to live in, rather than an "investment" to accrue risk free gains, without the risk of negative equity and without the risk of having to pay your own mortgage because the housing shortage means you'll always have a tenant no matter how run down your property is.
Going back to 1980s with people getting on the ladder with affordable homes doesn't sound like a problem to me.
Of course, but there’s always a need for people to take short term lettings. You can’t have labour mobility without that. Imagine if the only way to take up a job in another part of the country is to buy a house there, or live in a hotel.
Essentially, that market was killed off, from 1965-88. Existing tenants got a one-off benefit, at the expense of future tenants.
People who had let out houses found they were devalued, once they were stuck with protected tenants. Frequently, they sold out to people like Nicholas Hoogstraten who had their own ways of persuading such tenants to leave.
There is a need for short-term lettings, but the current system is broken. Section 21 is an abomination that allows tenants to be thrown out of their home, at no fault of their own, even mid contract.
I would have no objection to a landlord being able to say they will not renew the contract and giving a decent, lengthy, notice period as a result.
And I have no objection to tenants who are at fault being dealt with via the court system - that is what the courts are there for.
But to turf out existing tenants, with an existing contract, who have committed no fault via Section 21 in order to circumvent the court system is not how things should be operating.
If the court system is broken for those who are at fault then fix the court system. Allowing those who aren't at fault to be thrown out of their home for no fault of their own, even if they have a contract, is not a solution. Its like saying we should allow employers to sack anyone for any reason, which they then use to sack people rather than pay out redundancy, because the disciplinary process is too complex and time consuming otherwise.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
STV was also used to elect some (albeit a small number of) MPs at Westminster within the lifespan of some people on PB.com.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
Would argue that isn't quite true - when the children move out of this house, both will be buying houses and not renting properties first.
But yep the solution is build, build build which is why I suggested getting pension funds focussed on doing so.
But don’t we need reform of the regulation art burdens as well to make it easier.
As for pensions funds, why should they be used like this ? Why is it people seem to see, more and more, pension funds as a pot of money to dip into to found whatever they want funding. We need to make it more attractive to invest here not compel pensions funds to invest to plug investment gaps.
Also, the rental market is distorted by many people who want to buy. But are forced to rent by high prices.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
Mostly offset by the fact that rentals have void periods which are negligible amongst homeowners only home.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
Actually my son retained his home when he and his now wife started their relationship 14 years ago and has been renting it
However, he has jut sold it to a first time buyer, not the tenant or for another buy to let
I think the combination of higher interest rates, the threat of rent freezes, and the requirement for rental homes to meet category C energy efficiency (which by the way I think is not realised by many) will see a very serious outbreak of landlords selling and the only solution is to build more houses, but frankly the number required will not be reached for a very long tome
It is an ongoing housing crisis that seems destined to get worse each year and I do not see labour (or any government) being able to offer a short term fix
But maybe they can offer a medium term fix? And councils building more social housing is a good start (and cuts their housing benefit bills!).
To be honest it is the size of the problem which is worsening due to specific factors as I outlined, none of which are going away, and neither is NIMBYism
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She was. Like all the most interesting people, she seems to have moved to the left as she has got older. Or maybe the Tories just became harder to support. Either way, I think the fact they now have her as an enemy is indicative of their general fuckedness.
I didn't think I was interesting, but there we go...
On the contrary, I think I am at least a little bit interesting, and I have also done the same ...
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She’s discovered there are ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ and daytime TV talking heads slots by being a high profile twitter gobshite. She’s not alone.
Is it just that thought? Her tactical voting campaign seems quite well thought through (at least at first blush). And, as a genuinely superior mathematician, she has the credentials.
It certainly was that. Ranting about PPE certainly did her no harm.
As for tactical voting campaigns. There’s nothing new original in it. We get them every election.
The difference here is that, as @eek notes, she is known primarily as a mathematician. She is a high profile public figure who is good at maths and hence might have somewhat more leverage than your common or garden tactical voting sites.
+1 - my test is would my parents follow her advice - and they would.
Anyone know what la Vorderman looks like in a white suit?
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
Mostly offset by the fact that rentals have void periods which are negligible amongst homeowners only home.
Have you rented lately? Currently void periods are usually because the landlord is doing work. When I was last looking for a rental (last year) I said I will take it and was told we will let you know by the end of the week there are 20 other people also willing to take it.
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She was. Like all the most interesting people, she seems to have moved to the left as she has got older. Or maybe the Tories just became harder to support. Either way, I think the fact they now have her as an enemy is indicative of their general fuckedness.
I didn't think I was interesting, but there we go...
The same thought occurred to me (about myself, not you).
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She’s discovered there are ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ and daytime TV talking heads slots by being a high profile twitter gobshite. She’s not alone.
Is it just that thought? Her tactical voting campaign seems quite well thought through (at least at first blush). And, as a genuinely superior mathematician, she has the credentials.
It certainly was that. Ranting about PPE certainly did her no harm.
As for tactical voting campaigns. There’s nothing new original in it. We get them every election.
The difference here is that, as @eek notes, she is known primarily as a mathematician. She is a high profile public figure who is good at maths and hence might have somewhat more leverage than your common or garden tactical voting sites.
She is primarily known as a former presenter on Countdown.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
STV was also used to elect some (albeit a small number of) MPs at Westminster within the lifespan of some people on PB.com.
I don't suppose it helps the reputation of non-FPTP viting systems within Labour that Labour itself used them - overtly, and with LD help - in Scotland to try and do down the SNP.
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She’s discovered there are ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ and daytime TV talking heads slots by being a high profile twitter gobshite. She’s not alone.
Is it just that thought? Her tactical voting campaign seems quite well thought through (at least at first blush). And, as a genuinely superior mathematician, she has the credentials.
It certainly was that. Ranting about PPE certainly did her no harm.
As for tactical voting campaigns. There’s nothing new original in it. We get them every election.
The difference here is that, as @eek notes, she is known primarily as a mathematician. She is a high profile public figure who is good at maths and hence might have somewhat more leverage than your common or garden tactical voting sites.
+1 - my test is would my parents follow her advice - and they would.
Anyone know what la Vorderman looks like in a white suit?
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
On-topic, if I was in charge of the Tory election campaign, I'd be worried about swing-away. Everyone is assuming the "Don't Knows" will be coming back at least in part, so things will tighten up. But look at 2017 where the opposite happened. It's not a given.
Based on what I've seen of Rishi Sunak under pressure, there's got to be a good chance that he does some daft things in a GE campaign which hurt rather than help the Tories. They seem less united than ever (look at all the contradictory reasons they think they lost seats last month) and it seems many people have a reason for voting the Tories out, often totally at odds e.g. anti-Brexit, not happy with this Brexit, immigration on both sides, public spending/debt on both sides. I'm not quite sure what the Tories can do to win many of the 'time for a change' voters back.
So all the wishful blue thinking about Starmer cracking under pressure, especially when his policy platform comes under attack, looks wishful indeed. The Tories haven't found anything that really lands on him - lying about Jimmy Saville seems to be their most successful attack line so far. And, sadly as with much from team blue, it is an outright lie. They will need to find something better for the GE - or it's not impossible that the MRP may be on the right lines after all.
‘I’d rather stay in Communist China than return to inheritance tax Britain’ Prohibitively high death taxes are blocking British expats from returning home
"His estate, divided across property, stocks, and shares, will certainly incur a hefty inheritance tax bill.
“We have three properties in Beijing, one in England, and one in Portugal,” he says.
“I’ve put as much of it in my wife’s name as possible but my worry is that because I am male and older, I will die before she does.”
Mr Mosely says Xiaomo will likely move to Britain if she is widowed. He says: “By the time she dies, she could have been living in the UK for 15 years, and then she’ll be subject to inheritance tax.”
In the meantime, Mr Mosely says he is miserable. Beijing has lost its appeal now that he is retired – and he wants to live out the rest of his years in Kent, where he and his wife own a house."
So, give it away and stop whining.
"My heart bleeds purple piss" is my reaction. The only thing that is blocking his return is a desire not to pay tax,
He could go and live in somewhere like Somalia, if he wants to experience a no-tax society,
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
STV was also used to elect some (albeit a small number of) MPs at Westminster within the lifespan of some people on PB.com.
I don't suppose it helps the reputation of non-FPTP viting systems within Labour that Labour itself used them - overtly, and with LD help - in Scotland to try and do down the SNP.
Worked OK for them in Wales though. It's given them a dominance that even FPTP would have struggled to match.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
STV was also used to elect some (albeit a small number of) MPs at Westminster within the lifespan of some people on PB.com.
I don't suppose it helps the reputation of non-FPTP viting systems within Labour that Labour itself used them - overtly, and with LD help - in Scotland to try and do down the SNP.
Worked OK for them in Wales though. It's given them a dominance that even FPTP would have struggled to match.
Oh good, thanks. I had been wondering about Wales but wasn't sure if there was actual evidence of malice there (I'm too nice really).
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
Would argue that isn't quite true - when the children move out of this house, both will be buying houses and not renting properties first.
But yep the solution is build, build build which is why I suggested getting pension funds focussed on doing so.
But don’t we need reform of the regulation art burdens as well to make it easier.
As for pensions funds, why should they be used like this ? Why is it people seem to see, more and more, pension funds as a pot of money to dip into to found whatever they want funding. We need to make it more attractive to invest here not compel pensions funds to invest to plug investment gaps.
I'm not looking at pension funds as a source of funding I'm looking at it as renting fills a particular niche of investment returns that many pensions funds want more of.
This isn't we are going to force them to invest money here - more we(I) know pension funds want to invest more money in this area how can we help them do so...
Okay, so if they want to what is stopping them ?
Legal and General were certainly involved in making homes for rental as well as shared ownership. They featured in a documentary a couple of years ago about property development in Manchester. So it is happening.
They were also involved in making modular homes. However that business is ceasing as it lost a fortune.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
‘I’d rather stay in Communist China than return to inheritance tax Britain’ Prohibitively high death taxes are blocking British expats from returning home
"His estate, divided across property, stocks, and shares, will certainly incur a hefty inheritance tax bill.
“We have three properties in Beijing, one in England, and one in Portugal,” he says.
“I’ve put as much of it in my wife’s name as possible but my worry is that because I am male and older, I will die before she does.”
Mr Mosely says Xiaomo will likely move to Britain if she is widowed. He says: “By the time she dies, she could have been living in the UK for 15 years, and then she’ll be subject to inheritance tax.”
In the meantime, Mr Mosely says he is miserable. Beijing has lost its appeal now that he is retired – and he wants to live out the rest of his years in Kent, where he and his wife own a house."
So, give it away and stop whining.
"My heart bleeds purple piss" is my reaction. The only thing that is blocking his return is a desire not to pay tax,
He could go and live in somewhere like Somalia, if he wants to experience a no-tax society,
I recall a poster here, whose primary objection to Brexit seemed to be that he would have to bring financial assets onshore.
‘I’d rather stay in Communist China than return to inheritance tax Britain’ Prohibitively high death taxes are blocking British expats from returning home
"His estate, divided across property, stocks, and shares, will certainly incur a hefty inheritance tax bill.
“We have three properties in Beijing, one in England, and one in Portugal,” he says.
“I’ve put as much of it in my wife’s name as possible but my worry is that because I am male and older, I will die before she does.”
Mr Mosely says Xiaomo will likely move to Britain if she is widowed. He says: “By the time she dies, she could have been living in the UK for 15 years, and then she’ll be subject to inheritance tax.”
In the meantime, Mr Mosely says he is miserable. Beijing has lost its appeal now that he is retired – and he wants to live out the rest of his years in Kent, where he and his wife own a house."
So, give it away and stop whining.
"My heart bleeds purple piss" is my reaction. The only thing that is blocking his return is a desire not to pay tax,
He could go and live in somewhere like Somalia, if he wants to experience a no-tax society,
Quite. Also as already noted, too mean to pay for advice. One huge mistake is assuming he will die first - a common error in the older generation in my experience. And if they are married there is no CGT on inheritance by the spouse ...
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
The new parliamentary constituency boundaries report has to be delivered to the Speaker of the House of Commons by 1 July 2023.
So three weeks to go before the final details are known.
Parties have been selecting candidates based on the new boundaries, but this was on the draft proposals from last year. So there may be changes in the final report.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
Would argue that isn't quite true - when the children move out of this house, both will be buying houses and not renting properties first.
But yep the solution is build, build build which is why I suggested getting pension funds focussed on doing so.
But don’t we need reform of the regulation art burdens as well to make it easier.
As for pensions funds, why should they be used like this ? Why is it people seem to see, more and more, pension funds as a pot of money to dip into to found whatever they want funding. We need to make it more attractive to invest here not compel pensions funds to invest to plug investment gaps.
I'm not looking at pension funds as a source of funding I'm looking at it as renting fills a particular niche of investment returns that many pensions funds want more of.
This isn't we are going to force them to invest money here - more we(I) know pension funds want to invest more money in this area how can we help them do so...
Okay, so if they want to what is stopping them ?
Legal and General were certainly involved in making homes for rental as well as shared ownership. They featured in a documentary a couple of years ago about property development in Manchester. So it is happening.
They were also involved in making modular homes. However that business is ceasing as it lost a fortune.
What is blocking them is actually very simple - it's a lot easier to get planning permission to build student accommodation than actual flats in the areas they want to build housing.
So a common ploy to build student accommodation in a way that allows it to be cheaply converted later.
See also nimbys and the ability to get suitable sites...
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Rishi with his finger on the pulse of the nation again.
The abiding feeling I am picking up is that people are just ready to get this completely clapped-out set of chancers out of government and consigned to the dustbin. No, people aren’t particularly sold on Starmer, but he’s a new broom and there is always a honeymoon period for a new government where they can re-energise things and make some meaningful and generally well-supported change.
It’s worth a change of government now even if just for that.
Still think we’re looking at small Lab majority given the swings needed and the fact that the Tories will run a “stick to nurse” dirty campaign, but the government is done.
There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.
But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?
Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.
So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?
He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.
So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.
The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.
What do I want it to do?
Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.
I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.
I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.
I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.
I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.
That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.
And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.
That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?
I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.
My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.
They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.
The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.
It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.
As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.
If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.
If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.
Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.
I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.
See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.
Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.
I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.
In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.
A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.
PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
The housing market is stuffed on a number of levels. Shortages of all types of property - rented, bought, flats, houses - mean that many people are doing what they must, not what they want.
We need more of everything until there is a sustained surplus of housing in all categories.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't been going down
Back to 2006 prices in real terms according to Nationwide. Even some recent nominal falls
There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.
But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?
Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.
So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?
He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.
So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.
The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.
I hope at least for a change for a change of emphasis. More focus on helping families, and not just those earning at least £100 000 a year, removal of the 2 child limit for benefits that is counterproductive and cruel. More house building. Limited mitigation of the damage caused by Brexit. Some rebuilding of trust, including within the Union.
Labour has a realistic opportunity of being quite radical while appearing to be technocratic. Whether it will be, I don't know.
Easier to be radical if it doesn't sound radical. Starmer may be made for that, but all PMs disappoint after all.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
The housing market is stuffed on a number of levels. Shortages of all types of property - rented, bought, flats, houses - mean that many people are doing what they must, not what they want.
We need more of everything until there is a sustained surplus of housing in all categories.
I totally agree, we need to build more. I am just disagreeing with barty than reducing the rental pool is neutral in terms of renters/rental pool
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
+1 - the amount a company will lend you for a mortgage is dependent on the amount their computer says you can afford - not the amount you are paying in rent.
Which means that the mortgage company will look at child care costs and instantly calculate that you can afford only £700 say on mortgage repayments even though it's clear from the same bank statement that you spending £1200 a month on rent.
Result - the family can't afford enough to buy a house and are trapped in rental properties.
Rishi with his finger on the pulse of the nation again.
The abiding feeling I am picking up is that people are just ready to get this completely clapped-out set of chancers out of government and consigned to the dustbin. No, people aren’t particularly sold on Starmer, but he’s a new broom and there is always a honeymoon period for a new government where they can re-energise things and make some meaningful and generally well-supported change.
It’s worth a change of government now even if just for that.
Still think we’re looking at small Lab majority given the swings needed and the fact that the Tories will run a “stick to nurse” dirty campaign, but the government is done.
This thing with an image of Sunak bending over to knight Stanley Johnson on both shoulders with that air of sunny, transparent technocracy of his, is vaguely reminding me of Caligula making his horse a Senator.
Rishi with his finger on the pulse of the nation again.
The abiding feeling I am picking up is that people are just ready to get this completely clapped-out set of chancers out of government and consigned to the dustbin. No, people aren’t particularly sold on Starmer, but he’s a new broom and there is always a honeymoon period for a new government where they can re-energise things and make some meaningful and generally well-supported change.
It’s worth a change of government now even if just for that.
Still think we’re looking at small Lab majority given the swings needed and the fact that the Tories will run a “stick to nurse” dirty campaign, but the government is done.
The problem with a "hold on to nurse" campaign is that the nurse on our doorstep has filthy fingernails and is snarling at us with a fag end somehow clamped between their teeth.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Quite a lot of people can’t get a mortgage on a property because they are assessed as having too little income and/or not enough deposit. That they are paying more than this, already, to rent a property is part of the farce.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Quite a lot of people can’t get a mortgage on a property because they are assessed as having too little income and/or not enough deposit. That they are paying more than this, already, to rent a property is part of the farce.
Overreaction to the A+++++ securitisation of 120% NINJA mortgages in 2008 isn't it.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Quite a lot of people can’t get a mortgage on a property because they are assessed as having too little income and/or not enough deposit. That they are paying more than this, already, to rent a property is part of the farce.
Absolutely, the housing market is broken at the minute.
It is utterly irrational that a landlord can charge enough rent to cover a buy to let mortgage including capital repayments. If a tenant can afford to make a landlord's mortgage, they ought to be able to afford their own.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Quite a lot of people can’t get a mortgage on a property because they are assessed as having too little income and/or not enough deposit. That they are paying more than this, already, to rent a property is part of the farce.
Overreaction to the A+++++ securitisation of 120% NINJA mortgages in 2008 isn't it.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
I think lostpassword is right it being a manifesto commitment is the key. The Tories changed, albeit for regional and pcc, without explicit manifesto commitment but claimed vague talk of supporting FPTP in there as sufficient. The Lords and opposition would still fight it but they cannot argue it is not permissable, as you note that is about political reality, and I think a manifesto provides enough political capital to see it through if they have the will.
I think a referendum would be lost. It will be called confusing, expensive, leading to constant coalitions and undermines local connection. Enough Labour voters will object, especially after a big win.
Like Trudeau many PR supporters are only supporters in the abstract, before they win.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
Who knows? Yet many people do, for reasons unclear!
The last Liberal Govenment was doing precisely that, when the process was interrupted by the outbreak of the First Wolrd War.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Quite a lot of people can’t get a mortgage on a property because they are assessed as having too little income and/or not enough deposit. That they are paying more than this, already, to rent a property is part of the farce.
Absolutely, the housing market is broken at the minute.
It is utterly irrational that a landlord can charge enough rent to cover a buy to let mortgage including capital repayments. If a tenant can afford to make a landlord's mortgage, they ought to be able to afford their own.
The current tax system means repaying capital is a dead loss iirc. So most landlords are on 75% LTV I think.
Rishi with his finger on the pulse of the nation again.
The abiding feeling I am picking up is that people are just ready to get this completely clapped-out set of chancers out of government and consigned to the dustbin. No, people aren’t particularly sold on Starmer, but he’s a new broom and there is always a honeymoon period for a new government where they can re-energise things and make some meaningful and generally well-supported change.
It’s worth a change of government now even if just for that.
Still think we’re looking at small Lab majority given the swings needed and the fact that the Tories will run a “stick to nurse” dirty campaign, but the government is done.
The problem with a "hold on to nurse" campaign is that the nurse on our doorstep has filthy fingernails and is snarling at us with a fag end somehow clamped between their teeth.
Florence Nightingale they ain't.
Agreed. It won’t make the difference in the places that matter, but it will probably save them in some of the traditional shire seats so as to avoid complete calamity.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.
But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?
Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.
So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?
He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.
So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.
The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.
What do I want it to do?
Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.
I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.
I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.
I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.
I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.
That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.
And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.
That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?
I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.
My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.
They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.
The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.
It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.
As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power.
See Germany with PR where the AfD now on 19% and Linke has seats in the German Parliament too or Italy with PR where the hard right Meloni is now PM, or Spain with PR where Vox will win significant numbers of seats in the Spanish Parliament next month on current polls or Ireland with PR where SF tops the polls or Sweden with PR where the Sweden Democrats are now second biggest party or New Zealand with PR where New Zealand First have often won MPs.
See also Israel with PR where hard right nationalist and Orthodox Jewish parties have great influence over government. Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany too after using PR to get a foothold in the Reichstag
There are extremist parties elected under FPTP too: see India, Bosnia and even the US. Other countries with PR don’t have significant extremist parties doing well: e.g., South Africa, New Zealand, Malta, Japan.
See also Scotland where the SCons will never get their sweaty little hands on the levers of power.
Rishi with his finger on the pulse of the nation again.
The abiding feeling I am picking up is that people are just ready to get this completely clapped-out set of chancers out of government and consigned to the dustbin. No, people aren’t particularly sold on Starmer, but he’s a new broom and there is always a honeymoon period for a new government where they can re-energise things and make some meaningful and generally well-supported change.
It’s worth a change of government now even if just for that.
Still think we’re looking at small Lab majority given the swings needed and the fact that the Tories will run a “stick to nurse” dirty campaign, but the government is done.
It's just time.
That's not very profound and of course a new broom can be a crap one, but things need a shake up, any shake up.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Quite a lot of people can’t get a mortgage on a property because they are assessed as having too little income and/or not enough deposit. That they are paying more than this, already, to rent a property is part of the farce.
Absolutely, the housing market is broken at the minute.
It is utterly irrational that a landlord can charge enough rent to cover a buy to let mortgage including capital repayments. If a tenant can afford to make a landlord's mortgage, they ought to be able to afford their own.
The current tax system means repaying capital is a dead loss iirc. So most landlords are on 75% LTV I think.
Well at present rent costs more than a mortgage including capital repayments, so if the landlord is pocketing what could have been capital repayments and taking it as profit and keeping the debt then that's on their head. If there's high interest rates and they're forced to sell at negative equity, then that will be entirely their own avarice that is behind it.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Quite a lot of people can’t get a mortgage on a property because they are assessed as having too little income and/or not enough deposit. That they are paying more than this, already, to rent a property is part of the farce.
Absolutely, the housing market is broken at the minute.
It is utterly irrational that a landlord can charge enough rent to cover a buy to let mortgage including capital repayments. If a tenant can afford to make a landlord's mortgage, they ought to be able to afford their own.
The current tax system means repaying capital is a dead loss iirc. So most landlords are on 75% LTV I think.
On that basis the historic tax system made repaying capital a dead loss.
But you are missing a secondary issue (from 2016 onwards) where mortgage interest relief (for personally owned property) covers only basic rate tax. So once you earn £50,000 or more you are paying tax on some of the interest payments.
Most recent calcuations are based on moving your BTL business into a limited company (for which there be dragons isn't an adequate warning for future changes) or by minimizing the amount borrowed. The days of borrowing as much as possible at zero real cost disappeared years ago.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
I would say that's a pretty muddled article, speaking personally. There are the two separate issues of woke as "political correctness gawn mad" and a catch-all for reactionary bores, and then genuine or specific issues to do with modern identity politics, but that article is a mess.
It quickly veers off into generalised Fox-talking points about "Cultural Marxism". and by the end we're even on to Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, which are the classic conspiracist tropes.
The problem is the lack of a reasonable centre space, to discuss some of the issues connected with modern "woke", without lapsing either into saloon-bar boredom about the "modern world today", or conspiracist twaddle.
Both right and left are to blame for this, and sadly that article is not that space,
I got as far as the list of taboos and, given the nonsense there, couldn't gind the motivation to continue.
There was a time (I think, I seem to remember...) when the conspiracist loons were mostly found on the left, now there's some serious competition.
ETA: @Taz - given you're not a loon (on posts I've seen, at least) I'm genuinely interested in what you think are the 'fair points' to be pulled from this
Basically a couple of things. The civil service openly being hostile to respective Home Secretaries policies, the targetting of farming also the banning of certain products.
As to whether or not institutions have been ‘captured’ by the likes of Stonewall remains to be seen however they are certainly influential.
I think the flaw with this article and line of thinking is to take a couple of controversial issues and extrapolate that into something rather sinister which I think it isn’t.
as you say, the rest of it is conspiracy theorist nonsense. WEF, 15 minute cities, GB News presenters and so on.
‘I’d rather stay in Communist China than return to inheritance tax Britain’ Prohibitively high death taxes are blocking British expats from returning home
"His estate, divided across property, stocks, and shares, will certainly incur a hefty inheritance tax bill.
“We have three properties in Beijing, one in England, and one in Portugal,” he says.
“I’ve put as much of it in my wife’s name as possible but my worry is that because I am male and older, I will die before she does.”
Mr Mosely says Xiaomo will likely move to Britain if she is widowed. He says: “By the time she dies, she could have been living in the UK for 15 years, and then she’ll be subject to inheritance tax.”
In the meantime, Mr Mosely says he is miserable. Beijing has lost its appeal now that he is retired – and he wants to live out the rest of his years in Kent, where he and his wife own a house."
So, give it away and stop whining.
Sounds to me like he's weighed up his options and chosen his preferred one, I don't get the complaint.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
The rate of selling by landlords is fart in a thunderstorm compared to the undersupply of housing. The demand to buy is increasing (with the population) by six figures a year.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and PR would make a repeat more likely. However, if you are looking for some form of more proportional system that Labour might be prepared to adopt, and which would promote stable government, I suggest that something similar to the majority bonus system currently in use in Greece and formerly in Italy is your best bet. (The Greece version awards the seat bonus to the largest party, the Italian version awarded the bonus to the largest pre-formed coalition.) It puts a high premium on parties forming a coalition before an election, so that would benefit Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens and the mutual interest would make a coalition likely in order to deliver bonus seats and a stable government. It's much more democratic because the choice of coalition would be made transparent before people vote, just about every other PR system leaves it coalitions to form in smoke filled rooms with no regard to the electorate may have wanted.
What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.
But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?
Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.
So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?
He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.
So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.
The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.
What do I want it to do?
Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.
I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.
I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.
I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.
I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.
That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.
And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.
That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?
I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.
My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.
They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.
The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.
It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.
As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power.
See Germany with PR where the AfD now on 19% and Linke has seats in the German Parliament too or Italy with PR where the hard right Meloni is now PM, or Spain with PR where Vox will win significant numbers of seats in the Spanish Parliament next month on current polls or Ireland with PR where SF tops the polls or Sweden with PR where the Sweden Democrats are now second biggest party or New Zealand with PR where New Zealand First have often won MPs.
See also Israel with PR where hard right nationalist and Orthodox Jewish parties have great influence over government. Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany too after using PR to get a foothold in the Reichstag
Nearly 4m people voted for Farage's party in 2015. I dislike him and his politics, but I am a democrat. And you can't deny democracy by going straight to Hitler. If "we can't have democracy because Hitler" was a valid argument then we should just stop having elections because...
Hitler may well never have come to power under FPTP, instead the Reichstag would have been dominated by traditional Conservative and Christian Democrat parties and the Social Democrats from 1920-1930 with the Nazis never having won a seat.
If you want Farage to get MPs with PR you also have to accept Farage may well end up Kingmaker one election and in the Cabinet and then maybe even one day UK PM
If people want Farage let them vote for Farage.
You either support democracy or you don't. Your posts have twice now said that people should not be allowed to vote for Farage if there is a chance that he could become important. That is *not* democracy.
There’s a convincing argument that the politics espoused by Farage being thwarted of UK political representation gave him a vastly disproportionate platform (especially from the BBC) to influence events.
I always thought Carol Vorderman was a Tory for some reason. Huh.
She’s discovered there are ‘likes’, ‘retweets’ and daytime TV talking heads slots by being a high profile twitter gobshite. She’s not alone.
Is it just that thought? Her tactical voting campaign seems quite well thought through (at least at first blush). And, as a genuinely superior mathematician, she has the credentials.
It certainly was that. Ranting about PPE certainly did her no harm.
As for tactical voting campaigns. There’s nothing new original in it. We get them every election.
The difference here is that, as @eek notes, she is known primarily as a mathematician. She is a high profile public figure who is good at maths and hence might have somewhat more leverage than your common or garden tactical voting sites.
Come on - its not hard though is it? Remember voters only vote in one constituency (apart from students who have registered at both - naughty). So you only have one conundrum to solve (get it?) Which party is best placed to beat the Tory in my constituency? There are not many three way marginals, and if they are, I suspect the Tory vote will be far enough down that it won't matter.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
Stats don't show falling house prices since Osborne's reforms, since house prices are a function of supply and demand as I said, so my premise is right.
Nothing I have ever said suggests Osborne's reforms should have triggered a house price fall. They shouldn't, the lack of building is behind prices, as I've said all along.
The number of second homes in this country is excessively tiny. It is inconsequential and there needs to be more building, not messing at the edges.
Most renters can't buy due to issues at the present, those issues can be addressed by constructing more. If landlords sell up, then they will be selling primarily to either alternative landlords (so no net change) or to former tenants (so tenants now on housing ladder, which is a positive, and no net change to number of tenants looking to rent relative to landlords letting).
You seem to have this bizarre notion in your head that a landlord selling mystically changes supply and demand. It doesn't. You can't trump supply and demand. Building is the only way to change it.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and PR would make a repeat more likely. However, if you are looking for some form of more proportional system that Labour might be prepared to adopt, and which would promote stable government, I suggest that something similar to the majority bonus system currently in use in Greece and formerly in Italy is your best bet. (The Greece version awards the seat bonus to the largest party, the Italian version awarded the bonus to the largest pre-formed coalition.) It puts a high premium on parties forming a coalition before an election, so that would benefit Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens and the mutual interest would make a coalition likely in order to deliver bonus seats and a stable government. It's much more democratic because the choice of coalition would be made transparent before people vote, just about every other PR system leaves it coalitions to form in smoke filled rooms with no regard to the electorate may have wanted.
What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
If we had PR and that happened the LDs would split into Orange Book wings leaning Tory and Social Democrat wings leaning Labour
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
The rate of selling by landlords is fart in a thunderstorm compared to the undersupply of housing. The demand to buy is increasing (with the population) by six figures a year.
Who will be the politician that dares to say that each Parliamentary constituency now has a compulsory target of 3,000 new homes in the next five years, and the local decision is purely down to where to build them?
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
The rate of selling by landlords is fart in a thunderstorm compared to the undersupply of housing. The demand to buy is increasing (with the population) by six figures a year.
I'm wondering about a perhaps underdiscussed element of housing supply - the Barrett building site I drive past each morning, it well.. hasn't exactly looked chock full of builders recently. I have no idea how long a site should take to complete though.
There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.
But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?
Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.
So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?
He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.
So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.
The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.
What do I want it to do?
Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.
I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.
I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.
I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.
I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.
That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.
And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.
That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?
I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.
My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.
They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.
The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.
It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.
As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power.
See Germany with PR where the AfD now on 19% and Linke has seats in the German Parliament too or Italy with PR where the hard right Meloni is now PM, or Spain with PR where Vox will win significant numbers of seats in the Spanish Parliament next month on current polls or Ireland with PR where SF tops the polls or Sweden with PR where the Sweden Democrats are now second biggest party or New Zealand with PR where New Zealand First have often won MPs.
See also Israel with PR where hard right nationalist and Orthodox Jewish parties have great influence over government. Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany too after using PR to get a foothold in the Reichstag
There are extremist parties elected under FPTP too: see India, Bosnia and even the US. Other countries with PR don’t have significant extremist parties doing well: e.g., South Africa, New Zealand, Malta, Japan.
See also Scotland where the SCons will never get their sweaty little hands on the levers of power.
On current Holyrood polls the SCons will have the balance of power between SNP and Labour and the LDs in 2026
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
Stats don't show falling house prices since Osborne's reforms, since house prices are a function of supply and demand as I said, so my premise is right.
Nothing I have ever said suggests Osborne's reforms should have triggered a house price fall. They shouldn't, the lack of building is behind prices, as I've said all along.
The number of second homes in this country is excessively tiny. It is inconsequential and there needs to be more building, not messing at the edges.
Most renters can't buy due to issues at the present, those issues can be addressed by constructing more. If landlords sell up, then they will be selling primarily to either alternative landlords (so no net change) or to former tenants (so tenants now on housing ladder, which is a positive, and no net change to number of tenants looking to rent relative to landlords letting).
You seem to have this bizarre notion in your head that a landlord selling mystically changes supply and demand. It doesn't. You can't trump supply and demand. Building is the only way to change it.
Ok you are avoiding my point I see
So please explain how renters who can't afford to buy (most of them) are suddenly going to magically able to buy when landlords sell up if as you just admitted it won't cause house prices to drop?
There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.
But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?
Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.
So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?
He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.
So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.
The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.
What do I want it to do?
Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.
I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.
I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.
I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.
I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.
That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.
And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.
That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?
I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.
My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.
They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.
The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.
It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.
As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power.
See Germany with PR where the AfD now on 19% and Linke has seats in the German Parliament too or Italy with PR where the hard right Meloni is now PM, or Spain with PR where Vox will win significant numbers of seats in the Spanish Parliament next month on current polls or Ireland with PR where SF tops the polls or Sweden with PR where the Sweden Democrats are now second biggest party or New Zealand with PR where New Zealand First have often won MPs.
See also Israel with PR where hard right nationalist and Orthodox Jewish parties have great influence over government. Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany too after using PR to get a foothold in the Reichstag
Nearly 4m people voted for Farage's party in 2015. I dislike him and his politics, but I am a democrat. And you can't deny democracy by going straight to Hitler. If "we can't have democracy because Hitler" was a valid argument then we should just stop having elections because...
Hitler may well never have come to power under FPTP, instead the Reichstag would have been dominated by traditional Conservative and Christian Democrat parties and the Social Democrats from 1920-1930 with the Nazis never having won a seat.
If you want Farage to get MPs with PR you also have to accept Farage may well end up Kingmaker one election and in the Cabinet and then maybe even one day UK PM
If people want Farage let them vote for Farage.
You either support democracy or you don't. Your posts have twice now said that people should not be allowed to vote for Farage if there is a chance that he could become important. That is *not* democracy.
There’s a convincing argument that the politics espoused by Farage being thwarted of UK political representation gave him a vastly disproportionate platform (especially from the BBC) to influence events.
It would be far better all round if Farage and co had 5-10 seats in Parliament that everyone could point at and say - yep your views are being heard (and treated with the respect they deserve).
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
The SNP do in this case. I wouldn’t be surprised if your other apoplexy triggerer, Sinn Féinn, do as well, but since they don’t take their seats in Westminster the concept of benefit doesn’t really apply.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
The rate of selling by landlords is fart in a thunderstorm compared to the undersupply of housing. The demand to buy is increasing (with the population) by six figures a year.
Yes, if the population is constant, then the ratio of renting to owning makes no immediate difference. To simplify it, if a renter buys the house they are living in, it has absolutely no effect on the rest of the market one way or the other.
The biggest driver of the house price boom was would-be owner-occupiers bidding for an insufficient number of properties to cope with the level of immigration.
The net result was that people with higher and higher incomes ended up competing for properties lower and lower down the scale of desirability, leaving more and more people frozen out completely.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
The rate of selling by landlords is fart in a thunderstorm compared to the undersupply of housing. The demand to buy is increasing (with the population) by six figures a year.
I'm wondering about a perhaps underdiscussed element of housing supply - the Barrett building site I drive past each morning, it well.. hasn't exactly looked chock full of builders recently. I have no idea how long a site should take to complete though.
If our planning system wasn't such a mess, then the likes of Barrett wouldn't be able to own the rights to build and have no competition. Anyone who wants to build should be able to, and then if Barrett don't then someone else will and will beat them to the market. Let the invisible hand deal with it.
Though I have to say in my area houses are flying up, on greenfield land, which is fantastic to see. It helps that there are about a dozen or more developments all competing with each other, rather than just one solitary developer. Barrett are down the road, I went with someone else, and there's about eight other developers also putting up their own developments all within walking distance of here, more in driving distance.
That's the way it needs to be in far more places. Not pissing about at the edges with a solitary developer, but a whole suite of developments all competing with each other. Competition works.
There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.
But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?
Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.
So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?
He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.
So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.
The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.
What do I want it to do?
Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.
I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.
I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.
I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.
I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.
That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.
And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.
That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?
I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.
My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.
They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.
The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.
It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.
As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power.
See Germany with PR where the AfD now on 19% and Linke has seats in the German Parliament too or Italy with PR where the hard right Meloni is now PM, or Spain with PR where Vox will win significant numbers of seats in the Spanish Parliament next month on current polls or Ireland with PR where SF tops the polls or Sweden with PR where the Sweden Democrats are now second biggest party or New Zealand with PR where New Zealand First have often won MPs.
See also Israel with PR where hard right nationalist and Orthodox Jewish parties have great influence over government. Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany too after using PR to get a foothold in the Reichstag
Nearly 4m people voted for Farage's party in 2015. I dislike him and his politics, but I am a democrat. And you can't deny democracy by going straight to Hitler. If "we can't have democracy because Hitler" was a valid argument then we should just stop having elections because...
Hitler may well never have come to power under FPTP, instead the Reichstag would have been dominated by traditional Conservative and Christian Democrat parties and the Social Democrats from 1920-1930 with the Nazis never having won a seat.
If you want Farage to get MPs with PR you also have to accept Farage may well end up Kingmaker one election and in the Cabinet and then maybe even one day UK PM
If people want Farage let them vote for Farage.
You either support democracy or you don't. Your posts have twice now said that people should not be allowed to vote for Farage if there is a chance that he could become important. That is *not* democracy.
There’s a convincing argument that the politics espoused by Farage being thwarted of UK political representation gave him a vastly disproportionate platform (especially from the BBC) to influence events.
It would be far better all round if Farage and co had 5-10 seats in Parliament that everyone could point at and say - yep your views are being heard (and treated with the respect they deserve).
Of course your problem comes when they have 150 seats in Parliament and are still being ignored as is the case in a number of other countries in Europe. All that does is further undermine faith in the democratic process.
I am not saying this is wrong per se, just that the idea that PR would negate the threat of extremists is not borne out by experience.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
Stats don't show falling house prices since Osborne's reforms, since house prices are a function of supply and demand as I said, so my premise is right.
Nothing I have ever said suggests Osborne's reforms should have triggered a house price fall. They shouldn't, the lack of building is behind prices, as I've said all along.
The number of second homes in this country is excessively tiny. It is inconsequential and there needs to be more building, not messing at the edges.
Most renters can't buy due to issues at the present, those issues can be addressed by constructing more. If landlords sell up, then they will be selling primarily to either alternative landlords (so no net change) or to former tenants (so tenants now on housing ladder, which is a positive, and no net change to number of tenants looking to rent relative to landlords letting).
You seem to have this bizarre notion in your head that a landlord selling mystically changes supply and demand. It doesn't. You can't trump supply and demand. Building is the only way to change it.
Ok you are avoiding my point I see
So please explain how renters who can't afford to buy (most of them) are suddenly going to magically able to buy when landlords sell up if as you just admitted it won't cause house prices to drop?
Most won't, most will continue to rent, and supply and demand of rental properties won't have had any net change since the number of landlords selling up is as was aptly put "a fart in a thunderstorm" and are cancelled out by the number of tenants buying.
But some will, and they will be better off.
If a landlord sells to a tenant then the net effects are. The landlord has lost a way to make money from renting out. The tenant is better off. Other tenants are no different, since there's one fewer home on the market, but one fewer household seeking to rent too, so no change.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
The rate of selling by landlords is fart in a thunderstorm compared to the undersupply of housing. The demand to buy is increasing (with the population) by six figures a year.
I'm wondering about a perhaps underdiscussed element of housing supply - the Barrett building site I drive past each morning, it well.. hasn't exactly looked chock full of builders recently. I have no idea how long a site should take to complete though.
I think I heard that house prices in Britain are now falling on an annual rate. Seems like it would be obvious that housebuilders will respond by slowing down completions in the hope that they'll make more money selling next year, or the year after.
This is why the State needs to be a major housebuilder, and/or it needs to be much easier for individuals to buy a plot of land with planning permission and pay a builder to build a single house on it.
The big housebuilders are never going to increase supply of houses in a market where prices are falling. Just as SeanF said in relation to parties and voting systems, why would they act against their own interests to do that?
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
The rate of selling by landlords is fart in a thunderstorm compared to the undersupply of housing. The demand to buy is increasing (with the population) by six figures a year.
I'm wondering about a perhaps underdiscussed element of housing supply - the Barrett building site I drive past each morning, it well.. hasn't exactly looked chock full of builders recently. I have no idea how long a site should take to complete though.
I think I heard that house prices in Britain are now falling on an annual rate. Seems like it would be obvious that housebuilders will respond by slowing down completions in the hope that they'll make more money selling next year.
This is why the State needs to be a major housebuilder, and/or it needs to be much easier for individuals to buy a plot of land with planning permission and pay a builder to build a single house on it.
The big housebuilders are never going to increase supply of houses in a market where prices are falling. Just as SeanF said in relation to parties and voting systems, why would they act against their own interests to do that?
Average UK house prices increased by 4.1% in the 12 months to March 2023, down from 5.8% in February 2023.
The rate of increase is slowing, its not the same as house prices falling
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and PR would make a repeat more likely. However, if you are looking for some form of more proportional system that Labour might be prepared to adopt, and which would promote stable government, I suggest that something similar to the majority bonus system currently in use in Greece and formerly in Italy is your best bet. (The Greece version awards the seat bonus to the largest party, the Italian version awarded the bonus to the largest pre-formed coalition.) It puts a high premium on parties forming a coalition before an election, so that would benefit Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens and the mutual interest would make a coalition likely in order to deliver bonus seats and a stable government. It's much more democratic because the choice of coalition would be made transparent before people vote, just about every other PR system leaves it coalitions to form in smoke filled rooms with no regard to the electorate may have wanted.
What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and occurred under FPTP. It's hardly a good argument against PR to say we got these problems without PR!
If you prize "stability" in a system, defined here as a clear winner (be it a single party or a pre-formed coalition), then the approach used in many countries is to directly elect the executive. I think that's neater than a majority bonus system in some ways, but the problem with directly electing the executive is that usually means electing a president and there are downsides to presidential systems.
Higher rents means higher rental inflation. Workers will need to go on strike for higher pay to pay their rent. Controls on the rental market are leading to baked-in higher inflation.
I've done a fair bit of private renting, and I despair at some of the policies that come out of the left on this. As a renter, I wanted to a vibrant market that would give me a lot of choice at affordable prices with some measure of protection that would stop me being made homeless on a whim. That's about it.
Rent controls coupled with eviction freezes just fucks the whole thing.
The latest policy wheeze - help renters by pushing landlords out of business - hasn't come from the left, though. It is Tory policy.
Stupid question - how are the Government doing that - via the 2016 tax changes and a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of the house?
Asking because neither of those changes are making things easier for renters where supply is down, demand is equal (or higher than before due to population growth) and prices are rising.
What we actually need is for pension funds to actually focus on build to rent...
Any problems with supply are solely due to the fact that construction hasn't kept pace with population. The only answer to that is to build more, but the Government are siding with NIMBYs instead.
If a landlord sells up and exits the market then that doesn't adjust supply and demand net because either the landlord sells to another landlord (so no net change) or they sell to someone who used to be a tenant but is now an owner occupier instead (so 1 fewer supply, 1 fewer demand, no net change).
Build, build, build to boost supply.
This though is not true. The number of houses does not change I agree however the size of rental households is generally larger than owner occupied households so a house moving from rental to owner occupied actually increases the ratio of people looking to rent/houses to rent
That's due to age not rental/ownership primarily.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
It may be due to age but that is irrelevant. You will still have more people chasing fewer properties
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Sorry your maths are wrong, age is entirely relevant to this.
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Do you not consider that families with young children would already have bought if they could afford it? They can't so they rent. So yes age is irrelevant
Families with young children used to be able to afford to buy homes at a much higher rate, and if landlords are selling up to owner occupiers as per our scenario we are discussing, then they would be again.
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
Landlords have been selling up since the Osborne reforms, the rental pool has been diminishing since the Osborne reforms. House prices haven't been going down. Few people rent if they can afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy landlords selling up and reducing the rental pool is not going to help them in the least. Your theory seems predicated on "they could buy but they are just being obstinate and rent"
House prices haven't gone down because supply hasn't kept up with demand. Not enough houses are being built.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Yes but people that rent aren't going to be buying them is the point. If they could afford to buy then most of them would have already done so. Your assumption that rental properties are going to be magically affordable to those forced to rent now due to lack of choice is wrong.
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
Sorry but who do you think is going to buy if the landlord sells up?
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
A fair number will be bought as second homes I have no doubt for a start. The simple fact is house prices aren't falling even though landlords have been selling up. Most renters cannot buy or they would have. Your whole premise is built on them suddenly being able to buy a house they already can't afford.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
The rate of selling by landlords is fart in a thunderstorm compared to the undersupply of housing. The demand to buy is increasing (with the population) by six figures a year.
I'm wondering about a perhaps underdiscussed element of housing supply - the Barrett building site I drive past each morning, it well.. hasn't exactly looked chock full of builders recently. I have no idea how long a site should take to complete though.
If our planning system wasn't such a mess, then the likes of Barrett wouldn't be able to own the rights to build and have no competition. Anyone who wants to build should be able to, and then if Barrett don't then someone else will and will beat them to the market. Let the invisible hand deal with it.
Though I have to say in my area houses are flying up, on greenfield land, which is fantastic to see. It helps that there are about a dozen or more developments all competing with each other, rather than just one solitary developer. Barrett are down the road, I went with someone else, and there's about eight other developers also putting up their own developments all within walking distance of here.
That's the way it needs to be in far more places. Not pissing about at the edges with a solitary developer, but a whole suite of developments all competing with each other. Competition works.
There's plenty of building going on near me - I calculated if it was repeated nationwide we'd have an extra 10 million houses going up. But there doesn't seem to be happening much recently on the Barrett site so I'm unsure as to whether it's a deliberate go slow.
Interesting assessment from the Institute for the Study of War of the effect of the flooding on Russian defences on the east bank of the Dnipro.
If the Russians did blow the dam, the lack of coordination on their part is astonishing. But could it have been the Ukrainians after all?
The destruction of the KHPP dam is affecting Russian military positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. The flooding has destroyed many Russian first line field fortifications that the Russian military intended to use to defend against Ukrainian attacks. Rapid flooding has likely forced Russian personnel and military equipment in Russian main concentration points in Oleshky and Hola Prystan to withdraw. Russian forces had previously used these positions to shell Kherson City and other settlements on the west (right bank) of Kherson. Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces relocated their personnel and military equipment from five to 15 kilometers from the flood zone, which places Russian forces out of artillery range of some settlements on the west (right bank) of the Dnipro River they had been attacking.[6] The flood also destroyed Russian minefields along the coast, with footage showing mines exploding in the flood water.[7] Kherson Oblast Occupation Head Vladimir Saldo, however, claimed that the destruction of the KHPP is beneficial to the Russian defenses because it will complicate Ukrainian advances across the river.[8] Saldo’s assessment of the situation ignores the loss of Russia’s first line of prepared fortifications. The amount of Russian heavy equipment lost in the first 24 hours of flooding is also unclear. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-7-2023
Why would the Ukrainians do that? It makes zero strategic sense.
It was Russian incompetence and/or willingness to sacrifice assets so it didn’t look like it was them
Yes, it makes no sense for the Ukranians to have done it and what is perhaps more releant, they lack the means. It isn't easy to destroy a modern dam.
The Russians on the ther hand possessed the means and the motive. On the other hand, I wouldn't rule out sheer incompetent mismanagement. We've seen plenty of that in this war.
Plus, of course, the Russians had been keeping the sluice gates closed for the last several weeks with the effect that the reservoir was at its maximum and coming over the top of the dam in places. That looks to me like a deliberate policy to maximise the damage that was going to be caused when they blew it.
I suspect that their timing was off and what they wanted to do was to catch the Ukrainian attack on the ground that was going to be flooded, taking out many of these fancy, new, western tanks. They presumably thought that the attack was under way.
They thought the tanks were about to cross the river? Difficult to believe.
The BBC is floating an alternative possibility - that the dam had already been damaged last year, and the Russians deliberately raised to water level in the hope that it would fail. At least that would account for their apparently not knowing exactly when it would happen.
They didn't tell their soldiers that they were being sent to invade Ukraine in February last year. Do we need an explanation for their units on the left bank not knowing the dam was going to be blown?
The Russian government puts a different value on human life vs the West. We find it difficult to compute how they would not look to reposition their troops ahead of that. But the reality is they still have the Tsarist mindset of infantry being pawns that can be expended without a second thought.
This is not to say it was a deliberate decision to sacrifice them so as not to tip off anyone to their plans (which were known in advance anyway). It’s just they didn’t even think about them.
Comments
There was a time (I think, I seem to remember...) when the conspiracist loons were mostly found on the left, now there's some serious competition.
ETA: @Taz - given you're not a loon (on posts I've seen, at least) I'm genuinely interested in what you think are the 'fair points' to be pulled from this
As for tactical voting campaigns. There’s nothing new original in it. We get them every election.
Prohibitively high death taxes are blocking British expats from returning home
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/inheritance/expat-communist-china-inheritance-tax/
Telegraph increasingly unhinged
"His estate, divided across property, stocks, and shares, will certainly incur a hefty inheritance tax bill.
“We have three properties in Beijing, one in England, and one in Portugal,” he says.
“I’ve put as much of it in my wife’s name as possible but my worry is that because I am male and older, I will die before she does.”
Mr Mosely says Xiaomo will likely move to Britain if she is widowed. He says: “By the time she dies, she could have been living in the UK for 15 years, and then she’ll be subject to inheritance tax.”
In the meantime, Mr Mosely says he is miserable. Beijing has lost its appeal now that he is retired – and he wants to live out the rest of his years in Kent, where he and his wife own a house."
So, give it away and stop whining.
As for pensions funds, why should they be used like this ? Why is it people seem to see, more and more, pension funds as a pot of money to dip into to found whatever they want funding. We need to make it more attractive to invest here not compel pensions funds to invest to plug investment gaps.
This isn't we are going to force them to invest money here - more we(I) know pension funds want to invest more money in this area how can we help them do so...
However, he has jut sold it to a first time buyer, not the tenant or for another buy to let
I think the combination of higher interest rates, the threat of rent freezes, and the requirement for rental homes to meet category C energy efficiency (which by the way I think is not realised by many) will see a very serious outbreak of landlords selling and the only solution is to build more houses, but frankly the number required will not be reached for a very long time
It is an ongoing housing crisis that seems destined to get worse each year and I do not see labour (or any government) being able to offer a short term fix
Indeed most all of our problems require long term planning and the electoral cycle is not inducive to it
I would have no objection to a landlord being able to say they will not renew the contract and giving a decent, lengthy, notice period as a result.
And I have no objection to tenants who are at fault being dealt with via the court system - that is what the courts are there for.
But to turf out existing tenants, with an existing contract, who have committed no fault via Section 21 in order to circumvent the court system is not how things should be operating.
If the court system is broken for those who are at fault then fix the court system. Allowing those who aren't at fault to be thrown out of their home for no fault of their own, even if they have a contract, is not a solution. Its like saying we should allow employers to sack anyone for any reason, which they then use to sack people rather than pay out redundancy, because the disciplinary process is too complex and time consuming otherwise.
A retired couple who own their own home, or a widower who owns their own home don't live on their own because they are owner-occupiers.
And a couple with primary school aged kids who rent aren't going to throw their kids out of their home if they buy a property.
Here is a worked example to demonstrate
2,500,000 renters in 1 million homes
sell up half
you now have 1,250,000 displaced renters of which 1,200,000 will be soaked up by now being owner occupiers leaving 50,000 renters extra fighting for the diminished rental pool.
Sorry I dont see age is relevant to this....you have 2.5 renters per home regardless of age and only 2.4 for owner occupied. Owners will also have kids so your point is void. The higher occupancy for rental is more down to HMO's and young adults house sharing than families
Based on what I've seen of Rishi Sunak under pressure, there's got to be a good chance that he does some daft things in a GE campaign which hurt rather than help the Tories. They seem less united than ever (look at all the contradictory reasons they think they lost seats last month) and it seems many people have a reason for voting the Tories out, often totally at odds e.g. anti-Brexit, not happy with this Brexit, immigration on both sides, public spending/debt on both sides. I'm not quite sure what the Tories can do to win many of the 'time for a change' voters back.
So all the wishful blue thinking about Starmer cracking under pressure, especially when his policy platform comes under attack, looks wishful indeed. The Tories haven't found anything that really lands on him - lying about Jimmy Saville seems to be their most successful attack line so far. And, sadly as with much from team blue, it is an outright lie. They will need to find something better for the GE - or it's not impossible that the MRP may be on the right lines after all.
He could go and live in somewhere like Somalia, if he wants to experience a no-tax society,
Legal and General were certainly involved in making homes for rental as well as shared ownership. They featured in a documentary a couple of years ago about property development in Manchester. So it is happening.
They were also involved in making modular homes. However that business is ceasing as it lost a fortune.
When we asked in March, Britons opposed a knighthood for Stanley Johnson by 52% to 4%
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1666736661361721345
You are looking at correlation not causation.
Sell half a million homes, have half a million households who were renting buy them, and the net change is zero.
The higher occupancy for rental is due to families. The age-profile of renters covers those with dependent children more than the age-profile of owner occupiers, so correlation is not causation like you are thinking.
Households with dependent children account for over one third (36%) of
private rented households, almost 1.6 million households. A higher proportion
of private rented (36%) and social rented (34%) households contain
dependent children than do owner occupied households (25%), Annex Table
1.6.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1000052/EHS_19-20_PRS_report.pdf
So three weeks to go before the final details are known.
Parties have been selecting candidates based on the new boundaries, but this was on the draft proposals from last year. So there may be changes in the final report.
So a common ploy to build student accommodation in a way that allows it to be cheaply converted later.
See also nimbys and the ability to get suitable sites...
So no, age is not irrelevant. Your statistic on people living per home is completely irrelevant, because that statistics is a correlation to ownership not caused by it. It has causative link to age profile, which correlates to ownership, so ownership correlates to people per home.
Correlation is not causation.
The abiding feeling I am picking up is that people are just ready to get this completely clapped-out set of chancers out of government and consigned to the dustbin. No, people aren’t particularly sold on Starmer, but he’s a new broom and there is always a honeymoon period for a new government where they can re-energise things and make some meaningful and generally well-supported change.
It’s worth a change of government now even if just for that.
Still think we’re looking at small Lab majority given the swings needed and the fact that the Tories will run a “stick to nurse” dirty campaign, but the government is done.
In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.
A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.
PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
We need more of everything until there is a sustained surplus of housing in all categories.
Demand goes up by more than supply and prices go up. That's basic economics, not rocket science.
Build more houses.
If landlords sell up and tenants buy the houses, then the former tenant who now has their own home is greatly improved by that situation.
The tenants who still rent aren't helped, but they're not hurt either, since there's fewer homes available to rent, but fewer people seeking to rent too, so no net change.
Build more houses and the supply will go up and prices will go down. Anything else is just fiddling at the edges.
Back to 2006 prices in real terms according to Nationwide. Even some recent nominal falls
Which means that the mortgage company will look at child care costs and instantly calculate that you can afford only £700 say on mortgage repayments even though it's clear from the same bank statement that you spending £1200 a month on rent.
Result - the family can't afford enough to buy a house and are trapped in rental properties.
True fin-de-siecle stuff.
Florence Nightingale they ain't.
Coming on a Labour poster soon.
https://twitter.com/derjamesjackson/status/1666734530143694849
I rent I would buy if I could, my landlord selling up wouldn't suddenly make it possible for me to buy. Most renters are in that position.
It is utterly irrational that a landlord can charge enough rent to cover a buy to let mortgage including capital repayments. If a tenant can afford to make a landlord's mortgage, they ought to be able to afford their own.
I think a referendum would be lost. It will be called confusing, expensive, leading to constant coalitions and undermines local connection. Enough Labour voters will object, especially after a big win.
Like Trudeau many PR supporters are only supporters in the abstract, before they win.
If its a household who were renting, then it takes a competitor seeking to rent out of the equation, demand for rental properties go down accordingly, no net change in supply and demand.
If its an alternative landlord, then they are going to want to let out the property, so no net change in supply and demand.
The house isn't suddenly going to vanish into the ether. It will still be there.
Building more houses raises overall supply. Whether a particular household owns or rents their property does not.
That's not very profound and of course a new broom can be a crap one, but things need a shake up, any shake up.
But you are missing a secondary issue (from 2016 onwards) where mortgage interest relief (for personally owned property) covers only basic rate tax. So once you earn £50,000 or more you are paying tax on some of the interest payments.
Most recent calcuations are based on moving your BTL business into a limited company (for which there be dragons isn't an adequate warning for future changes) or by minimizing the amount borrowed. The days of borrowing as much as possible at zero real cost disappeared years ago.
Now if stats had shown falling house prices since Osbornes reforms you might have a point. Stats dont show this so your premise is false.
Basically a couple of things. The civil service openly being hostile to respective Home Secretaries policies, the targetting of farming also the banning of certain products.
As to whether or not institutions have been ‘captured’ by the likes of Stonewall remains to be seen however they are certainly influential.
I think the flaw with this article and line of thinking is to take a couple of controversial issues and extrapolate that into something rather sinister which I think it isn’t.
as you say, the rest of it is conspiracy theorist nonsense. WEF, 15 minute cities, GB News presenters and so on.
What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
Nothing I have ever said suggests Osborne's reforms should have triggered a house price fall. They shouldn't, the lack of building is behind prices, as I've said all along.
The number of second homes in this country is excessively tiny. It is inconsequential and there needs to be more building, not messing at the edges.
Most renters can't buy due to issues at the present, those issues can be addressed by constructing more. If landlords sell up, then they will be selling primarily to either alternative landlords (so no net change) or to former tenants (so tenants now on housing ladder, which is a positive, and no net change to number of tenants looking to rent relative to landlords letting).
You seem to have this bizarre notion in your head that a landlord selling mystically changes supply and demand. It doesn't. You can't trump supply and demand. Building is the only way to change it.
I have no idea how long a site should take to complete though.
So please explain how renters who can't afford to buy (most of them) are suddenly going to magically able to buy when landlords sell up if as you just admitted it won't cause house prices to drop?
I wouldn’t be surprised if your other apoplexy triggerer, Sinn Féinn, do as well, but since they don’t take their seats in Westminster the concept of benefit doesn’t really apply.
The biggest driver of the house price boom was would-be owner-occupiers bidding for an insufficient number of properties to cope with the level of immigration.
The net result was that people with higher and higher incomes ended up competing for properties lower and lower down the scale of desirability, leaving more and more people frozen out completely.
Though I have to say in my area houses are flying up, on greenfield land, which is fantastic to see. It helps that there are about a dozen or more developments all competing with each other, rather than just one solitary developer. Barrett are down the road, I went with someone else, and there's about eight other developers also putting up their own developments all within walking distance of here, more in driving distance.
That's the way it needs to be in far more places. Not pissing about at the edges with a solitary developer, but a whole suite of developments all competing with each other. Competition works.
I am not saying this is wrong per se, just that the idea that PR would negate the threat of extremists is not borne out by experience.
But some will, and they will be better off.
If a landlord sells to a tenant then the net effects are.
The landlord has lost a way to make money from renting out.
The tenant is better off.
Other tenants are no different, since there's one fewer home on the market, but one fewer household seeking to rent too, so no change.
This is why the State needs to be a major housebuilder, and/or it needs to be much easier for individuals to buy a plot of land with planning permission and pay a builder to build a single house on it.
The big housebuilders are never going to increase supply of houses in a market where prices are falling. Just as SeanF said in relation to parties and voting systems, why would they act against their own interests to do that?
The rate of increase is slowing, its not the same as house prices falling
source
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/housepriceindex/march2023
If you prize "stability" in a system, defined here as a clear winner (be it a single party or a pre-formed coalition), then the approach used in many countries is to directly elect the executive. I think that's neater than a majority bonus system in some ways, but the problem with directly electing the executive is that usually means electing a president and there are downsides to presidential systems.
Here's the development with all the flashy cgi https://www.barratthomes.co.uk/worksop
My guess is they'll probably want to start selling after the earlier/further developed https://gleesonhomes.co.uk/developments/firbeck-fields/ is sold out.
This is not to say it was a deliberate decision to sacrifice them so as not to tip off anyone to their plans (which were known in advance anyway). It’s just they didn’t even think about them.