Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Of course it's an asset. If you own, you can sell and rent if you have to - or even move in with someone else.
The reason there's no CGT on principal properties is politics, not some law of nature - never mind a law of law. There's nothing special about 'necessary costs'; those are just definitions dreamt up by politicians and lawyers. Now, there might be good reasons for both the definition and the rule but it doesn't fundamentally affect the nature of what is, or isn't, an asset.
Its only an asset in the same way as a car is an asset, and cars are quite rightly included in CPI. Because they're a cost of living, just as housing is. People need to have a roof over their head, which makes it an essential cost.
There's no good reason why house prices shouldn't be included directly within the basket of goods for inflation, and if they were then inflation would have been measured much higher than it has been for the past two decades, meaning interest rates would have been higher, meaning [house] prices would have risen less - which is the entire point of measuring inflation in the first place: to control price rises.
The best reason not to include house prices, which is that house prices are not, of themselves, usually the determining factor of affordability; mortgage repayments are (so hence you include mortgage payments / rents).
I'm not entirely sold on the idea. With housing so unaffordable, and inheritances playing a larger role in the flow of money - particularly in relation to the housing market itself - there is a case for including them, with an appropriately down-weighted share of the index.
So why include car prices, rather than car finance prices?
Why include the price of goods and services, rather than credit card finance rates?
Finance shouldn't be part of the basket, the price of the goods and services should be, which should include houses and cars. Then if the bank raises or lowers rates, then that doesn't self-reinforce the data like including mortgage payments going up or down does, it only changes the data if prices actually start going further up or down - which is precisely what inflation is supposed to measure, the cost of prices not the cost of finance.
And if you accept it should be included, which it should, then why should it be down-weighted? Just weight it appropriately, don't fiddle the data.
My workings clearly show it wouldn't have made much difference overall since about 2004 though !
It doesn't get much attention but there was SIGNIFICANT asset deflation in the Northern Ireland market for years post 2008.
I don't agree, even going off your chart your workings clearly show it would have made a difference.
The red line clearly diverges sooner from the other line, in both 2006 and late 2020, which should have set off alarm bells both times that there's a problem which disregarding a key component of inflation meant it was ignored until the problem became worse.
Alarm bells going off in 2006 when there was a real bubble emerging and overheating might have brought the heat out of the economy sooner and calmed prices rather than waiting until the bubble burst two years later.
Similarly in 2020 there should have been alarm bells going off that inflation was becoming a real problem, instead of ignoring it until it spread to other goods and services.
The differential between the blue and red lines you've drawn is significant in both 2007 and 2021, but the problem was swept under the carpet both times until it became a bigger problem.
You never got back to me regarding the 17% fatality rate for pedestrians at 40mph. Mind sending the link across at some point?
I gave you a link a couple of weeks ago, which was based on modern UK data.
Can't find that link now but from a quick Google here's one based on modern US data and it puts it at 15.7%
The problem is most claims in this are myths based on either old data [typically dating back to the 1970s] or people quoting what others are quoting in a self-reinforced circle with no actual source data analysis. If you can find any different figures, using modern data and with a source like this has to modern data, then I'd be all ears.
Interestingly I checked the source (4) on that data, which was a study in the 00s which covered pedestrians too, and then checked that study and it sourced its data from a study in 1976.
What is it with taking data from the 1970s and refreshing it to pretend its modern data?
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
The betting doesn't (as yet) reflect a Con recovery. Lab Maj still about 1.5.
Getting nervous Kina? Only the highly partisan, such as yourself, don't realise that the best outcome for the country is Labour with no overall majority. Starmer is dull enough to make a good leader of a coalition, and Ed Davey would make a goodish deputy PM.
I'm highly partisan and I also agree that the best outcome for the country is Labour with no overall majority for the reasons you give. That would be a terrific outcome.
Unfortunately a non-partisan analysis (to the extent that is possible) indicates a Labour overall majority and most punters agree as can be seen on Betfair. I don't think the majority will be as great as my earlier wind-up post indicated! But I would take 100/1 on the Labour majority being greater than 100.
I can't wait for the seats markets to open.
For what values of N, where N is a natural number less than 612, would you take N/1 on there being a Labour majority > N?
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Of course it's an asset. If you own, you can sell and rent if you have to - or even move in with someone else.
The reason there's no CGT on principal properties is politics, not some law of nature - never mind a law of law. There's nothing special about 'necessary costs'; those are just definitions dreamt up by politicians and lawyers. Now, there might be good reasons for both the definition and the rule but it doesn't fundamentally affect the nature of what is, or isn't, an asset.
Its only an asset in the same way as a car is an asset, and cars are quite rightly included in CPI. Because they're a cost of living, just as housing is. People need to have a roof over their head, which makes it an essential cost.
There's no good reason why house prices shouldn't be included directly within the basket of goods for inflation, and if they were then inflation would have been measured much higher than it has been for the past two decades, meaning interest rates would have been higher, meaning [house] prices would have risen less - which is the entire point of measuring inflation in the first place: to control price rises.
The best reason not to include house prices, which is that house prices are not, of themselves, usually the determining factor of affordability; mortgage repayments are (so hence you include mortgage payments / rents).
I'm not entirely sold on the idea. With housing so unaffordable, and inheritances playing a larger role in the flow of money - particularly in relation to the housing market itself - there is a case for including them, with an appropriately down-weighted share of the index.
So why include car prices, rather than car finance prices?
Why include the price of goods and services, rather than credit card finance rates?
Finance shouldn't be part of the basket, the price of the goods and services should be, which should include houses and cars. Then if the bank raises or lowers rates, then that doesn't self-reinforce the data like including mortgage payments going up or down does, it only changes the data if prices actually start going further up or down - which is precisely what inflation is supposed to measure, the cost of prices not the cost of finance.
And if you accept it should be included, which it should, then why should it be down-weighted? Just weight it appropriately, don't fiddle the data.
My workings clearly show it wouldn't have made much difference overall since about 2004 though !
It doesn't get much attention but there was SIGNIFICANT asset deflation in the Northern Ireland market for years post 2008.
I don't agree, even going off your chart your workings clearly show it would have made a difference.
The red line clearly diverges sooner from the other line, in both 2006 and late 2020, which should have set off alarm bells both times that there's a problem which disregarding a key component of inflation meant it was ignored until the problem became worse.
Alarm bells going off in 2006 when there was a real bubble emerging and overheating might have brought the heat out of the economy sooner and calmed prices rather than waiting until the bubble burst two years later.
Similarly in 2020 there should have been alarm bells going off that inflation was becoming a real problem, instead of ignoring it until it spread to other goods and services.
The differential between the blue and red lines you've drawn is significant in both 2007 and 2021, but the problem was swept under the carpet both times until it became a bigger problem.
You never got back to me regarding the 17% fatality rate for pedestrians at 40mph. Mind sending the link across at some point?
I gave you a link a couple of weeks ago, which was based on modern UK data.
Can't find that link now but from a quick Google here's one based on modern US data and it puts it at 15.7%
The problem is most claims in this are myths based on either old data [typically dating back to the 1970s] or people quoting what others are quoting in a self-reinforced circle with no actual source data analysis. If you can find any different figures, using modern data and with a source like this has to modern data, then I'd be all ears.
Interestingly I checked the source (4) on that data, which was a study in the 00s which covered pedestrians too, and then checked that study and it sourced its data from a study in 1976.
What is it with taking data from the 1970s and refreshing it to pretend its modern data?
I just think you confused car drivers with pedestrians, that's all.
Your own link suggests that lower speeds reduce road collision injuries and fatalities. Which is a good thing, right?
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
Why are you using CPI - it's a measure that specifically excludes owner occupier housing costs. I think CPIH is more appropriate if you want a measure of inflation that attempts to capture some element of house prices.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Of course it's an asset. If you own, you can sell and rent if you have to - or even move in with someone else.
The reason there's no CGT on principal properties is politics, not some law of nature - never mind a law of law. There's nothing special about 'necessary costs'; those are just definitions dreamt up by politicians and lawyers. Now, there might be good reasons for both the definition and the rule but it doesn't fundamentally affect the nature of what is, or isn't, an asset.
Its only an asset in the same way as a car is an asset, and cars are quite rightly included in CPI. Because they're a cost of living, just as housing is. People need to have a roof over their head, which makes it an essential cost.
There's no good reason why house prices shouldn't be included directly within the basket of goods for inflation, and if they were then inflation would have been measured much higher than it has been for the past two decades, meaning interest rates would have been higher, meaning [house] prices would have risen less - which is the entire point of measuring inflation in the first place: to control price rises.
You want the running cost of housing yourself not the cost of a house. The rental equivalent.
Why?
You want the cost people are paying, which if you're purchasing is the cost of the house.
And you can't complain about a problem where the cost is positively correlated with interest rates, like it is with mortgages, if you include the actual cost. Indeed the cost should be negatively correlated with interest rates, which is the entire point of raising or lowering interest rates.
In a 'cost of living' context the most appropriate amount to include is your ongoing regular overhead for the roof over your head. What you're forking out in rent. If you are renting that is the rent. If you own it's the equivalent, being your mortgage interest servicing cost plus the opportunity cost of your equity, ie the income foregone on having that money tied up in a house rather than on deposit. You need a formula that does something like this, using current prices and yields. You can do it your way if you like - it's not 'wrong' as such - but I'd have to record my dissenting view.
But one of the the main cost of living barriers to people getting on the property ladder is securing a deposit. Deposits are based on actual house prices, not mortgage rates.
And of course house price changes aren't self-reinforcing like measuring mortgage payments when rates go up or down is.
House prices being over £40k higher today on average in real terms over what they were in 2003 means that people need over £4k more saved up on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway, in order to secure a 10% deposit.
In places like London where house prices are double the national average, then that £43k average increase in real terms doubled equates to about £9k extra for a deposit someone has to save, on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway.
So yes, inflation in house prices matters, as a cost of living issue, for the actual cost.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
Because the effects of negative equity on both the individual and the country is massively more disruptive than rises. You only have to look to the 90s to see that.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain [rejoin]
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
Hmmm. Assuming "X" as a noncommittal option, that would make me...
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
Why are you using CPI - it's a measure that specifically excludes owner occupier housing costs. I think CPIH is more appropriate if you want a measure of inflation that attempts to capture some element of house prices.
You said "in real terms", so I used the Bank of England's own "in real terms" calculator.
But if you use CPIH it doesn't change the result. Indeed since CPIH is so dodgy, it doesn't even include house prices in the calculation, the calculation ends up even worse.
CPIH index in June 2003 76.7 CPIH index in June 2023 129.0
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
So you want to stand by claim its same in real terms?
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain [rejoin]
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
Hmmm. Assuming "X" as a noncommittal option, that would make me...
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain [rejoin]
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
Hmmm. Assuming "X" as a noncommittal option, that would make me...
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
Because the effects of negative equity on both the individual and the country is massively more disruptive than rises. You only have to look to the 90s to see that.
Categorically and objectively wrong.
In the 90s home ownership rates went up, not down.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
Why are you using CPI - it's a measure that specifically excludes owner occupier housing costs. I think CPIH is more appropriate if you want a measure of inflation that attempts to capture some element of house prices.
You said "in real terms", so I used the Bank of England's own "in real terms" calculator.
But if you use CPIH it doesn't change the result. Indeed since CPIH is so dodgy, it doesn't even include house prices in the calculation, the calculation ends up even worse.
CPIH index in June 2003 76.7 CPIH index in June 2023 129.0
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
So you want to stand by claim its same in real terms?
The calculator uses Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data from the Office for National Statistics from 1988 onward. Monthly calculations of the current year are based on the latest CPI level, whereas previous years use their calendar year averages. CPI estimates before 1988 are modelled based on data collected for the Retail Price Index (RPI).
The calculator uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as this is the measure used by the Government to set the Bank of England’s target for inflation. An alternative credible measure, which is the ONS’s lead measure of inflation, is the Consumer Price Index including Owner Occupiers’ Housing Costs (CPIH).
Please note: the estimates in the calculator from 1949 onwards have been updated with revised CPI estimates from the ONS published in May 2022.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
Because the effects of negative equity on both the individual and the country is massively more disruptive than rises. You only have to look to the 90s to see that.
Categorically and objectively wrong.
In the 90s home ownership rates went up, not down.
Hides a mixture, surely. Ok for some who got cheaper houses, awful for many who were stuck in negative eq.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
Why are you using CPI - it's a measure that specifically excludes owner occupier housing costs. I think CPIH is more appropriate if you want a measure of inflation that attempts to capture some element of house prices.
You said "in real terms", so I used the Bank of England's own "in real terms" calculator.
But if you use CPIH it doesn't change the result. Indeed since CPIH is so dodgy, it doesn't even include house prices in the calculation, the calculation ends up even worse.
CPIH index in June 2003 76.7 CPIH index in June 2023 129.0
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
So you want to stand by claim its same in real terms?
The calculator uses Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data from the Office for National Statistics from 1988 onwardOpens in a new window. Monthly calculations of the current year are based on the latest CPI level, whereas previous years use their calendar year averages. CPI estimates before 1988Opens in a new window are modelled based on data collected for the Retail Price Index (RPI).
The calculator uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as this is the measure used by the Government to set the Bank of England’s target for inflation. An alternative credible measure, which is the ONS’s lead measure of inflation, is the Consumer Price Index including Owner Occupiers’ Housing Costs (CPIH).
Please note: the estimates in the calculator from 1949 onwards have been updated with revised CPI estimates from the ONS published in May 2022.
Yes, and I redid the calculation using CPIH. CPIH failed your test of them being the same in real terms too.
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Not convinced, though I get the idea (rigid application of a policy with unexpected bad consequences is bad). To give a counter-example, I prefer the relative precision of the ECHR to a general assurance that the authorities will respect my rights in a sensible manner, and I prefer a speed limit sign to a general rule that my driving should be reasonable. It's better to know where you are with these things than rely on someone's goodwill.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain [rejoin]
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
Hmmm. Assuming "X" as a noncommittal option, that would make me...
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
Because the effects of negative equity on both the individual and the country is massively more disruptive than rises. You only have to look to the 90s to see that.
Categorically and objectively wrong.
In the 90s home ownership rates went up, not down.
Hides a mixture, surely. Ok for some who got cheaper houses, awful for many who were stuck in negative eq.
Indeed, but overall you can look at the average and overall more people had their own home by the end of the 90s than the start of it. So overall, the 90s were better.
Whereas recent decades have seen the opposite and people trapped renting is no worse than people trapped in negative equity. The overall objective measure is how many people can afford their own home, and it was more people over the 90s.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
How would you do it? Simply add the house price to the CPI basket? With what kind of weight? Or would you go down the rental equivalence approach used in the US CPI and our own CPIH measure?
Yes, I would have the house price itself in the CPI basket, just as car prices are in the CPI basket even though cars are often bought on finance. The cost of the good or service, in this case the car or house, should be in CPI, not the cost of the finance or mortgage/car loan.
As for what weight to give it, that should be weighted based on the proportion of expenditure that goes to pay for it typically.
On my back of the envelope calculation that would suggest about a 13% weight on house prices in the CPI, suggesting interest rates in 2002 would have been 9% instead of 4%. Is that the kind of thing you have in mind?
Yes. That kind of thing.
Of course as you say that's just a back of the envelope calculation and the reality is that if interest rates were so high then prices would have fallen/not risen as much (which is precisely the point of raising interest rates) so inflation would have been lower than that ultimately.
But if real inflation is that high, and it has been which is why young people have been impoverished by the cost of housing, then interest rates should be high to bring inflation down. That is the point.
At higher interest rates you would have lower house prices but also fewer jobs and much higher interest payments so I'm not sure young housebuyers would be thanking you. Also a stronger GBP and so less competitive export sector. I don't think it would be wise to tie interest rates to a volatile asset price, personally, I think it would make for a much more volatile economy.
Someone needs to stick him in an envelope and post him far away. Economics from Dummies every time from Bart.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
Why are you using CPI - it's a measure that specifically excludes owner occupier housing costs. I think CPIH is more appropriate if you want a measure of inflation that attempts to capture some element of house prices.
You said "in real terms", so I used the Bank of England's own "in real terms" calculator.
But if you use CPIH it doesn't change the result. Indeed since CPIH is so dodgy, it doesn't even include house prices in the calculation, the calculation ends up even worse.
CPIH index in June 2003 76.7 CPIH index in June 2023 129.0
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
So you want to stand by claim its same in real terms?
The calculator uses Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data from the Office for National Statistics from 1988 onwardOpens in a new window. Monthly calculations of the current year are based on the latest CPI level, whereas previous years use their calendar year averages. CPI estimates before 1988Opens in a new window are modelled based on data collected for the Retail Price Index (RPI).
The calculator uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as this is the measure used by the Government to set the Bank of England’s target for inflation. An alternative credible measure, which is the ONS’s lead measure of inflation, is the Consumer Price Index including Owner Occupiers’ Housing Costs (CPIH).
Please note: the estimates in the calculator from 1949 onwards have been updated with revised CPI estimates from the ONS published in May 2022.
Yes, and I redid the calculation using CPIH. CPIH failed your test of them being the same in real terms too.
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
Or do you think £261,995 = £210,880?
Nationwide uses RPI, which I agree isn't as good as CPI-H. I found houses had gone up a couple of thousand in real terms since July 2004.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
Why are you using CPI - it's a measure that specifically excludes owner occupier housing costs. I think CPIH is more appropriate if you want a measure of inflation that attempts to capture some element of house prices.
You said "in real terms", so I used the Bank of England's own "in real terms" calculator.
But if you use CPIH it doesn't change the result. Indeed since CPIH is so dodgy, it doesn't even include house prices in the calculation, the calculation ends up even worse.
CPIH index in June 2003 76.7 CPIH index in June 2023 129.0
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
So you want to stand by claim its same in real terms?
The calculator uses Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data from the Office for National Statistics from 1988 onwardOpens in a new window. Monthly calculations of the current year are based on the latest CPI level, whereas previous years use their calendar year averages. CPI estimates before 1988Opens in a new window are modelled based on data collected for the Retail Price Index (RPI).
The calculator uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as this is the measure used by the Government to set the Bank of England’s target for inflation. An alternative credible measure, which is the ONS’s lead measure of inflation, is the Consumer Price Index including Owner Occupiers’ Housing Costs (CPIH).
Please note: the estimates in the calculator from 1949 onwards have been updated with revised CPI estimates from the ONS published in May 2022.
Yes, and I redid the calculation using CPIH. CPIH failed your test of them being the same in real terms too.
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
Or do you think £261,995 = £210,880?
Nationwide uses RPI, which I agree isn't as good as CPI-H. I found houses had gone up a couple of thousand in real terms since July 2004.
I used the actual Nationwide average prices, so not RPI.
Why are you picking July 2004 as a start date? That is not 2 decades ago, and is well into the price rises of the 00s.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Not convinced, though I get the idea (rigid application of a policy with unexpected bad consequences is bad). To give a counter-example, I prefer the relative precision of the ECHR to a general assurance that the authorities will respect my rights in a sensible manner, and I prefer a speed limit sign to a general rule that my driving should be reasonable. It's better to know where you are with these things than rely on someone's goodwill.
The love of uniforms, parades, dogma (political and religious) are well known signs of this tendency.
The ECHR is a system of laws, complete with courts trying to interpret them. Rather than an inflexible dictat.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
Why are you using CPI - it's a measure that specifically excludes owner occupier housing costs. I think CPIH is more appropriate if you want a measure of inflation that attempts to capture some element of house prices.
You said "in real terms", so I used the Bank of England's own "in real terms" calculator.
But if you use CPIH it doesn't change the result. Indeed since CPIH is so dodgy, it doesn't even include house prices in the calculation, the calculation ends up even worse.
CPIH index in June 2003 76.7 CPIH index in June 2023 129.0
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
So you want to stand by claim its same in real terms?
The calculator uses Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data from the Office for National Statistics from 1988 onwardOpens in a new window. Monthly calculations of the current year are based on the latest CPI level, whereas previous years use their calendar year averages. CPI estimates before 1988Opens in a new window are modelled based on data collected for the Retail Price Index (RPI).
The calculator uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as this is the measure used by the Government to set the Bank of England’s target for inflation. An alternative credible measure, which is the ONS’s lead measure of inflation, is the Consumer Price Index including Owner Occupiers’ Housing Costs (CPIH).
Please note: the estimates in the calculator from 1949 onwards have been updated with revised CPI estimates from the ONS published in May 2022.
Yes, and I redid the calculation using CPIH. CPIH failed your test of them being the same in real terms too.
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
Or do you think £261,995 = £210,880?
Nationwide uses RPI, which I agree isn't as good as CPI-H. I found houses had gone up a couple of thousand in real terms since July 2004.
I used the actual Nationwide average prices, so not RPI.
Why are you picking July 2004 as a start date? That is not 2 decades ago, and is well into the price rises of the 00s.
.🫣
It's as arbitrary as choosing July 2003. House prices rose £26,048 from July 2003 to 2004. They're up £3,600 in real terms since then.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Not convinced, though I get the idea (rigid application of a policy with unexpected bad consequences is bad). To give a counter-example, I prefer the relative precision of the ECHR to a general assurance that the authorities will respect my rights in a sensible manner, and I prefer a speed limit sign to a general rule that my driving should be reasonable. It's better to know where you are with these things than rely on someone's goodwill.
The issues around the ECHR are not based on precision though. We see endless cases where parts of the media will whip up a frenzy about a case that seems absurd, and blames in on the ECHR. We then have the counter which is that the case is more complicated than that and so on it goes. Human rights are not precise.
On radio 5 this morning there was a debate about the Letby case and her not appearing at the sentencing. One caller suggested a certain amount of solitary confinement should be added as a result, at which the legal representative (not sure of what) suggested that this could be against her human rights. When pressed for the legislation about this she couldn't point to anything, and changed the subject.
I think you can draw up a set of basic human rights, but the ECHR will inevitably see drift. What about the right to family life? What about the right to have sexual relations for prisoners? And on and on.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Of course it's an asset. If you own, you can sell and rent if you have to - or even move in with someone else.
The reason there's no CGT on principal properties is politics, not some law of nature - never mind a law of law. There's nothing special about 'necessary costs'; those are just definitions dreamt up by politicians and lawyers. Now, there might be good reasons for both the definition and the rule but it doesn't fundamentally affect the nature of what is, or isn't, an asset.
Its only an asset in the same way as a car is an asset, and cars are quite rightly included in CPI. Because they're a cost of living, just as housing is. People need to have a roof over their head, which makes it an essential cost.
There's no good reason why house prices shouldn't be included directly within the basket of goods for inflation, and if they were then inflation would have been measured much higher than it has been for the past two decades, meaning interest rates would have been higher, meaning [house] prices would have risen less - which is the entire point of measuring inflation in the first place: to control price rises.
The best reason not to include house prices, which is that house prices are not, of themselves, usually the determining factor of affordability; mortgage repayments are (so hence you include mortgage payments / rents).
I'm not entirely sold on the idea. With housing so unaffordable, and inheritances playing a larger role in the flow of money - particularly in relation to the housing market itself - there is a case for including them, with an appropriately down-weighted share of the index.
So why include car prices, rather than car finance prices?
Why include the price of goods and services, rather than credit card finance rates?
Finance shouldn't be part of the basket, the price of the goods and services should be, which should include houses and cars. Then if the bank raises or lowers rates, then that doesn't self-reinforce the data like including mortgage payments going up or down does, it only changes the data if prices actually start going further up or down - which is precisely what inflation is supposed to measure, the cost of prices not the cost of finance.
And if you accept it should be included, which it should, then why should it be down-weighted? Just weight it appropriately, don't fiddle the data.
The main difference between houses and other items is that houses are not bought outright whereas almost everything else is (though increasingly not cars, where there's a strong case to mainly use lease hiring costs on the same basis).
We're probably talking about the same thing re weighting. I was meaning that the weighting for housing needs to account for rents, mortgage repayments and sales, in their respective weights on spending / income.
In terms of self-reinforcing effects, that depends on what you see the purpose of the stats as being - which is, of course, why we have several series, for different purposes. In terms of reporting cost-of-living changes or price growth, that should be on the broadest basis. Figures for policy-setting purposes will need to be different.
The fundamental problem behind a lot of scandals is that no-one really thinks about or pays regard to the human beings involved.
Today's example is the Criminal Cases Review Commission whose behaviour in the Andy Malkinson case is under question. So it announces an inquiry but does not have the wit or decency to consult Andy Malkinson about its terms or even to tell him of the announcement before it goes to the press.
A small example maybe but so telling of an attitude of mind which refuses to understand that these bodies and services are meant to be there to serve people.
What would it have cost them to inform him in advance? What would it have cost them to listen to his views?
Was there nobody in such an organisation to remember that this review is being undertaken because of the harm done to a human being? Was there nobody to think of how he might be feeling being treated once again as an irrelevance?
My dear Cyclefree, you know as well as I do that the point of these inquiries is to delay, defer, obfuscate and report only when the heat has gone out of the issue and people have lost interest in the subject.
It is just possible that it may be different with Letby, because it is such an egregious case, but I wouldn't bank on it. It clearly is not going to be the case with Malkinson, as evidenced by the dismissive attitude towards him.
Will things be different under a different Government? Maybe, maybe not. Worth a try perhaps, but again I wouldn't bank on it.
I do know this. Of course I do.
It's just that there is a small part of me that hopes that one day things will be different.
"It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand."
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Of course it's an asset. If you own, you can sell and rent if you have to - or even move in with someone else.
The reason there's no CGT on principal properties is politics, not some law of nature - never mind a law of law. There's nothing special about 'necessary costs'; those are just definitions dreamt up by politicians and lawyers. Now, there might be good reasons for both the definition and the rule but it doesn't fundamentally affect the nature of what is, or isn't, an asset.
Its only an asset in the same way as a car is an asset, and cars are quite rightly included in CPI. Because they're a cost of living, just as housing is. People need to have a roof over their head, which makes it an essential cost.
There's no good reason why house prices shouldn't be included directly within the basket of goods for inflation, and if they were then inflation would have been measured much higher than it has been for the past two decades, meaning interest rates would have been higher, meaning [house] prices would have risen less - which is the entire point of measuring inflation in the first place: to control price rises.
You want the running cost of housing yourself not the cost of a house. The rental equivalent.
Why?
You want the cost people are paying, which if you're purchasing is the cost of the house.
And you can't complain about a problem where the cost is positively correlated with interest rates, like it is with mortgages, if you include the actual cost. Indeed the cost should be negatively correlated with interest rates, which is the entire point of raising or lowering interest rates.
In a 'cost of living' context the most appropriate amount to include is your ongoing regular overhead for the roof over your head. What you're forking out in rent. If you are renting that is the rent. If you own it's the equivalent, being your mortgage interest servicing cost plus the opportunity cost of your equity, ie the income foregone on having that money tied up in a house rather than on deposit. You need a formula that does something like this, using current prices and yields. You can do it your way if you like - it's not 'wrong' as such - but I'd have to record my dissenting view.
But one of the the main cost of living barriers to people getting on the property ladder is securing a deposit. Deposits are based on actual house prices, not mortgage rates.
And of course house price changes aren't self-reinforcing like measuring mortgage payments when rates go up or down is.
House prices being over £40k higher today on average in real terms over what they were in 2003 means that people need over £4k more saved up on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway, in order to secure a 10% deposit.
In places like London where house prices are double the national average, then that £43k average increase in real terms doubled equates to about £9k extra for a deposit someone has to save, on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway.
So yes, inflation in house prices matters, as a cost of living issue, for the actual cost.
My method captures it nicely. As houses increase in value so does equity and hence the housing cost - via the term in the formula that calculates the opportunity cost of having this amount tied up in a house rather than on deposit. Add on mortgage interest to get the rental equivalent of owning. Then bring in the average actual rents for actual rentals and voila, Bob's your Uncle, the best 'housing element of inflation' you could possibly imagine.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
Why are you using CPI - it's a measure that specifically excludes owner occupier housing costs. I think CPIH is more appropriate if you want a measure of inflation that attempts to capture some element of house prices.
You said "in real terms", so I used the Bank of England's own "in real terms" calculator.
But if you use CPIH it doesn't change the result. Indeed since CPIH is so dodgy, it doesn't even include house prices in the calculation, the calculation ends up even worse.
CPIH index in June 2003 76.7 CPIH index in June 2023 129.0
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
So you want to stand by claim its same in real terms?
The calculator uses Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data from the Office for National Statistics from 1988 onwardOpens in a new window. Monthly calculations of the current year are based on the latest CPI level, whereas previous years use their calendar year averages. CPI estimates before 1988Opens in a new window are modelled based on data collected for the Retail Price Index (RPI).
The calculator uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as this is the measure used by the Government to set the Bank of England’s target for inflation. An alternative credible measure, which is the ONS’s lead measure of inflation, is the Consumer Price Index including Owner Occupiers’ Housing Costs (CPIH).
Please note: the estimates in the calculator from 1949 onwards have been updated with revised CPI estimates from the ONS published in May 2022.
Yes, and I redid the calculation using CPIH. CPIH failed your test of them being the same in real terms too.
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880 Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
Or do you think £261,995 = £210,880?
Nationwide uses RPI, which I agree isn't as good as CPI-H. I found houses had gone up a couple of thousand in real terms since July 2004.
I used the actual Nationwide average prices, so not RPI.
Why are you picking July 2004 as a start date? That is not 2 decades ago, and is well into the price rises of the 00s.
.🫣
It's as arbitrary as choosing July 2003. House prices rose £26,048 from July 2003 to 2004. They're up £3,600 in real terms since then.
The claim was two decades ago, two decades ago is July 2003. That's not arbitrary, its a matter of fact.
Yes house prices got out of control in the 00s. From 2000 to 2008 house price to earnings ratios rapidly rose, well above historic norms, and they've stayed high since. I don't think anyone, certainly not myself, disputes that most of the harm happened in the 00s. Hence how this conversation started, had inflation been measured honestly, including house prices, then inflation would have been measured as much higher in the 00s, but by pretending that house prices aren't a cost they got out of control and have stayed high since which is why people can't afford homes as well as they could when prices were much better like in the 90s.
And house prices themselves should be considered the cost, not mortgage rates, since it is house prices that are the barrier to people getting on the ladder, that's where the deposit needs to come in, as a percentage of that price. If people have a deposit, then affording a mortgage is often cheaper than affording rent, but getting the deposit is not easy if prices are ever-escalating.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Of course it's an asset. If you own, you can sell and rent if you have to - or even move in with someone else.
The reason there's no CGT on principal properties is politics, not some law of nature - never mind a law of law. There's nothing special about 'necessary costs'; those are just definitions dreamt up by politicians and lawyers. Now, there might be good reasons for both the definition and the rule but it doesn't fundamentally affect the nature of what is, or isn't, an asset.
Its only an asset in the same way as a car is an asset, and cars are quite rightly included in CPI. Because they're a cost of living, just as housing is. People need to have a roof over their head, which makes it an essential cost.
There's no good reason why house prices shouldn't be included directly within the basket of goods for inflation, and if they were then inflation would have been measured much higher than it has been for the past two decades, meaning interest rates would have been higher, meaning [house] prices would have risen less - which is the entire point of measuring inflation in the first place: to control price rises.
You want the running cost of housing yourself not the cost of a house. The rental equivalent.
Why?
You want the cost people are paying, which if you're purchasing is the cost of the house.
And you can't complain about a problem where the cost is positively correlated with interest rates, like it is with mortgages, if you include the actual cost. Indeed the cost should be negatively correlated with interest rates, which is the entire point of raising or lowering interest rates.
In a 'cost of living' context the most appropriate amount to include is your ongoing regular overhead for the roof over your head. What you're forking out in rent. If you are renting that is the rent. If you own it's the equivalent, being your mortgage interest servicing cost plus the opportunity cost of your equity, ie the income foregone on having that money tied up in a house rather than on deposit. You need a formula that does something like this, using current prices and yields. You can do it your way if you like - it's not 'wrong' as such - but I'd have to record my dissenting view.
But one of the the main cost of living barriers to people getting on the property ladder is securing a deposit. Deposits are based on actual house prices, not mortgage rates.
And of course house price changes aren't self-reinforcing like measuring mortgage payments when rates go up or down is.
House prices being over £40k higher today on average in real terms over what they were in 2003 means that people need over £4k more saved up on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway, in order to secure a 10% deposit.
In places like London where house prices are double the national average, then that £43k average increase in real terms doubled equates to about £9k extra for a deposit someone has to save, on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway.
So yes, inflation in house prices matters, as a cost of living issue, for the actual cost.
My method captures it nicely. As houses increase in value so does equity and hence the housing cost - via the term in the formula that calculates the opportunity cost of having this amount tied up in a house rather than on deposit. Add on mortgage interest to get the rental equivalent of owning. Then bring in the average actual rents for actual rentals and voila, Bob's your Uncle, the best 'housing element of inflation' you could possibly imagine.
How is the cost of getting a deposit for a house measured in your method? Mortgage cost has f all to do with that.
The fundamental problem behind a lot of scandals is that no-one really thinks about or pays regard to the human beings involved.
Today's example is the Criminal Cases Review Commission whose behaviour in the Andy Malkinson case is under question. So it announces an inquiry but does not have the wit or decency to consult Andy Malkinson about its terms or even to tell him of the announcement before it goes to the press.
A small example maybe but so telling of an attitude of mind which refuses to understand that these bodies and services are meant to be there to serve people.
What would it have cost them to inform him in advance? What would it have cost them to listen to his views?
Was there nobody in such an organisation to remember that this review is being undertaken because of the harm done to a human being? Was there nobody to think of how he might be feeling being treated once again as an irrelevance?
My dear Cyclefree, you know as well as I do that the point of these inquiries is to delay, defer, obfuscate and report only when the heat has gone out of the issue and people have lost interest in the subject.
It is just possible that it may be different with Letby, because it is such an egregious case, but I wouldn't bank on it. It clearly is not going to be the case with Malkinson, as evidenced by the dismissive attitude towards him.
Will things be different under a different Government? Maybe, maybe not. Worth a try perhaps, but again I wouldn't bank on it.
I do know this. Of course I do.
It's just that there is a small part of me that hopes that one day things will be different.
"It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand."
Will you let me go for Christ's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Not convinced, though I get the idea (rigid application of a policy with unexpected bad consequences is bad). To give a counter-example, I prefer the relative precision of the ECHR to a general assurance that the authorities will respect my rights in a sensible manner, and I prefer a speed limit sign to a general rule that my driving should be reasonable. It's better to know where you are with these things than rely on someone's goodwill.
The point of the article is that bureaucracies become concerned about their own self-preservation and forget what and above all the people they are there for. See, for instance, my comment upthread about the CCRC and the Malkinson case.
This is a better quote from it:
"Events at the Countess of Chester speak to a new layer of bureaucratic authority that has no guiding ethic beyond maintaining its own machinery of influence. To a professional managerial elite well-versed in stiff boardroom jargon but bereft of the human instinct to recognise wrong from right. To a new feudal-like section of the establishment that ticks all the boxes, dots every ‘i’, crosses every ‘t’ and holds every correct opinion, but which lacks the heart or plain old curiosity to wonder why a terrible thing seems to be happening. To a managerial stratum so detached from the everyday – from both the cries of experts and the concerns of ‘ordinary’ people – that even the possibility of mass murder within its own ranks cannot rouse it from its myopic concern with self-preservation."
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Of course it's an asset. If you own, you can sell and rent if you have to - or even move in with someone else.
The reason there's no CGT on principal properties is politics, not some law of nature - never mind a law of law. There's nothing special about 'necessary costs'; those are just definitions dreamt up by politicians and lawyers. Now, there might be good reasons for both the definition and the rule but it doesn't fundamentally affect the nature of what is, or isn't, an asset.
Its only an asset in the same way as a car is an asset, and cars are quite rightly included in CPI. Because they're a cost of living, just as housing is. People need to have a roof over their head, which makes it an essential cost.
There's no good reason why house prices shouldn't be included directly within the basket of goods for inflation, and if they were then inflation would have been measured much higher than it has been for the past two decades, meaning interest rates would have been higher, meaning [house] prices would have risen less - which is the entire point of measuring inflation in the first place: to control price rises.
You want the running cost of housing yourself not the cost of a house. The rental equivalent.
Why?
You want the cost people are paying, which if you're purchasing is the cost of the house.
And you can't complain about a problem where the cost is positively correlated with interest rates, like it is with mortgages, if you include the actual cost. Indeed the cost should be negatively correlated with interest rates, which is the entire point of raising or lowering interest rates.
In a 'cost of living' context the most appropriate amount to include is your ongoing regular overhead for the roof over your head. What you're forking out in rent. If you are renting that is the rent. If you own it's the equivalent, being your mortgage interest servicing cost plus the opportunity cost of your equity, ie the income foregone on having that money tied up in a house rather than on deposit. You need a formula that does something like this, using current prices and yields. You can do it your way if you like - it's not 'wrong' as such - but I'd have to record my dissenting view.
But one of the the main cost of living barriers to people getting on the property ladder is securing a deposit. Deposits are based on actual house prices, not mortgage rates.
And of course house price changes aren't self-reinforcing like measuring mortgage payments when rates go up or down is.
House prices being over £40k higher today on average in real terms over what they were in 2003 means that people need over £4k more saved up on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway, in order to secure a 10% deposit.
In places like London where house prices are double the national average, then that £43k average increase in real terms doubled equates to about £9k extra for a deposit someone has to save, on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway.
So yes, inflation in house prices matters, as a cost of living issue, for the actual cost.
My method captures it nicely. As houses increase in value so does equity and hence the housing cost - via the term in the formula that calculates the opportunity cost of having this amount tied up in a house rather than on deposit. Add on mortgage interest to get the rental equivalent of owning. Then bring in the average actual rents for actual rentals and voila, Bob's your Uncle, the best 'housing element of inflation' you could possibly imagine.
How is the cost of getting a deposit for a house measured in your method? Mortgage cost has f all to do with that.
Because it's a function of house prices and that's covered. Just as with your (not wrong but not as good) method.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
There were affordability problems for housing 20 years ago, so even if the real-terms price increase has been relatively modest since then that doesn't help anyone.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
Labour didn't keep inflation down, they just pretended that a house you live in is an asset for the purposes of inflation and so isn't a cost.
Include housing in inflation properly, and inflation never went away. Which is why people couldn't afford to live, even before this cost of living crisis extended inflation back to others.
The myth that house prices represents assets needs to be completely binned. There's a reason that there's no CGT on a house you live in - because its a necessary cost not an asset.
Of course it's an asset. If you own, you can sell and rent if you have to - or even move in with someone else.
The reason there's no CGT on principal properties is politics, not some law of nature - never mind a law of law. There's nothing special about 'necessary costs'; those are just definitions dreamt up by politicians and lawyers. Now, there might be good reasons for both the definition and the rule but it doesn't fundamentally affect the nature of what is, or isn't, an asset.
Its only an asset in the same way as a car is an asset, and cars are quite rightly included in CPI. Because they're a cost of living, just as housing is. People need to have a roof over their head, which makes it an essential cost.
There's no good reason why house prices shouldn't be included directly within the basket of goods for inflation, and if they were then inflation would have been measured much higher than it has been for the past two decades, meaning interest rates would have been higher, meaning [house] prices would have risen less - which is the entire point of measuring inflation in the first place: to control price rises.
The best reason not to include house prices, which is that house prices are not, of themselves, usually the determining factor of affordability; mortgage repayments are (so hence you include mortgage payments / rents).
I'm not entirely sold on the idea. With housing so unaffordable, and inheritances playing a larger role in the flow of money - particularly in relation to the housing market itself - there is a case for including them, with an appropriately down-weighted share of the index.
So why include car prices, rather than car finance prices?
Why include the price of goods and services, rather than credit card finance rates?
Finance shouldn't be part of the basket, the price of the goods and services should be, which should include houses and cars. Then if the bank raises or lowers rates, then that doesn't self-reinforce the data like including mortgage payments going up or down does, it only changes the data if prices actually start going further up or down - which is precisely what inflation is supposed to measure, the cost of prices not the cost of finance.
And if you accept it should be included, which it should, then why should it be down-weighted? Just weight it appropriately, don't fiddle the data.
The main difference between houses and other items is that houses are not bought outright whereas almost everything else is (though increasingly not cars, where there's a strong case to mainly use lease hiring costs on the same basis).
We're probably talking about the same thing re weighting. I was meaning that the weighting for housing needs to account for rents, mortgage repayments and sales, in their respective weights on spending / income.
In terms of self-reinforcing effects, that depends on what you see the purpose of the stats as being - which is, of course, why we have several series, for different purposes. In terms of reporting cost-of-living changes or price growth, that should be on the broadest basis. Figures for policy-setting purposes will need to be different.
Except that to buy a property means you need to pay a proportion of the actual house price outright. If you're asked to put down a 10% deposit on a £120k house, or a £240k house, or a £300k house, or a £600k house, then that 10% deposit is based on the house price - not the interest rate.
Which is precisely why house prices matter. If you're already on the ladder then you don't need to worry about this, sure, but if you're not and house prices are rising by 10% annually then if you're trying to save for 10% of £260k today, then 10% of £286k this time next year, then that can for too many people be like running on a hamster wheel with no way to actually move forwards.
Staying on the property ladder once you're on it is much easier than getting on it in the first place, which is why squeals about negative equity don't match the objective facts on home ownership rates which went up not down in the 90s.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
Because the effects of negative equity on both the individual and the country is massively more disruptive than rises. You only have to look to the 90s to see that.
Categorically and objectively wrong.
In the 90s home ownership rates went up, not down.
I was referring to the negative equity crisis at the start of the 90s.
Which was one of the reasons house ownership then went up as we recovered from that throughout the 90s.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Not convinced, though I get the idea (rigid application of a policy with unexpected bad consequences is bad). To give a counter-example, I prefer the relative precision of the ECHR to a general assurance that the authorities will respect my rights in a sensible manner, and I prefer a speed limit sign to a general rule that my driving should be reasonable. It's better to know where you are with these things than rely on someone's goodwill.
The point of the article is that bureaucracies become concerned about their own self-preservation and forget what and above all the people they are there for. See, for instance, my comment upthread about the CCRC and the Malkinson case.
This is a better quote from it:
"Events at the Countess of Chester speak to a new layer of bureaucratic authority that has no guiding ethic beyond maintaining its own machinery of influence. To a professional managerial elite well-versed in stiff boardroom jargon but bereft of the human instinct to recognise wrong from right. To a new feudal-like section of the establishment that ticks all the boxes, dots every ‘i’, crosses every ‘t’ and holds every correct opinion, but which lacks the heart or plain old curiosity to wonder why a terrible thing seems to be happening. To a managerial stratum so detached from the everyday – from both the cries of experts and the concerns of ‘ordinary’ people – that even the possibility of mass murder within its own ranks cannot rouse it from its myopic concern with self-preservation."
I am reminded of the Baby P case where the person in charge of childcare protested that her paperwork was top notch, so how could she be said to have failed?
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
I don't think I agree with this. I don't know about the NKVD, but the Nazi's bureaucracy was famously inefficient, with many rival organisations with overlapping responsibilities. However, this was a secret of its effectiveness, because rival agencies sought to outdo each other.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
Because the effects of negative equity on both the individual and the country is massively more disruptive than rises. You only have to look to the 90s to see that.
Categorically and objectively wrong.
In the 90s home ownership rates went up, not down.
I was referring to the negative equity crisis at the start of the 90s.
Which was one of the reasons house ownership then went up as we recovered from that throughout the 90s.
So objectively, in your eyes, how much did home ownership rates fall between the start of the negative equity "crisis" and the end of the 1990s?
Your "crisis" led to a record high in home ownership rates, not a fall. The fall in home ownership rates happened when prices went up, not down.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
There were affordability problems for housing 20 years ago, so even if the real-terms price increase has been relatively modest since then that doesn't help anyone.
The big increase in prices was before 2003.
UK average house price Q2 1996 = £53,032 UK average house price Q2 2003 £125,382 Inflation only increase would have taken 1996 price to £58,198 So the actual price was +115% in real terms over just seven years.
That's where the affordability problems came from since then. And in twenty years of knowing it was a problem it has still got worse! Even if at a much slower rate.
Queen Elizabeth was horrified by police conduct at the Battle of Orgreave and described footage of mounted officers charging into picketing miners as “awful”.
Her reaction to the incident during the miners’ strike was disclosed by Julian Haviland, former political editor, of The Times in an interview with Times Radio this summer before his death this month. It will be broadcast this morning, just after 11am.
Haviland, who worked for The Times between 1981 and 1986, also said that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, would drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the Queen, saying she was “the only person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened”.
In the interview, Haviland said he confirmed the story about the Queen’s horror at the events at Orgreave, but it was dropped as incrimination of the sources was likely.
“It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it,” Haviland said. “She had said it — I got that absolutely confirmed.”
Well it was awful. The policing of the miners strike was horrific, pure class war stuff. HMQ understood that she was Queen of the whole nation, while Thatcher viewed her fellow countrymen as the 'enemy within' and threw all the resources of state violence at them in pursuit of her war on the working class. This, incidentally, is why I have always been a supporter of the Royal family despite being on the left.
I grew in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, even as a kid I was on the side of the government. I just didn't like Arthur Scargill.
Her war on the working class allowed the working class to buy their own homes.
And now there are no affordable homes left, just as she intended.
Thanks to the Labour government, want me to post the chart showing when house prices exploded in the last 50 years?
Because Labour kept inflation down (how's your boy doing with that BTW) so interest rates fell and asset prices increased. Why don't you post a chart showing the amount of social housing available?
“We had unprecedented inflation because we had low inflation.” You could give Orwell a run for his money.
There was some PJ O'Rourke quote about how the world is full of ironies for the stupid.
Low consumer price inflation and low interest rates tend to go together, and low interest rates and high asset prices also tend to go together. Let us know if you want us to explain why that is.
If we had enforced a policy of "Last years population growth, *build* a bedroom per head", all those years, then asset inflation wouldn't have ended up in housing.
Hang on...
The US *did* build properties to match population growth, and still ended up with house price inflation.
The Spaniards and Portuguese massively outbuilt population growth, and likewise ended up with house price inflation.
While lack of housebuilding is the biggest issue, it is by no means the only one.
The mechanism behind US house price inflation was interesting - it seemed like a lot of money guys from New York failed to realise that in Florida, when they have a shortage of housing, they just build on more swamp.
It's also about cheap money looking for a home, of course. But the house price inflation only matches the UK thing in the areas where house building is as limited as here - see the SF insanity.
It's also worth saying that UK housing inflation hasn't been evenly spread - down South prices have gone insane, up north there are areas where houses are still priced at the same price they were in 2004.
Prices have gone insane up North too, even if they're even further insane down South.
House price to income ratios used to be 3x in the North West, they're now 6.2x - that's more than doubled and is very insane.
House prices in the North East have gone up by 17% since 2008. In the same period house prices in the North West, Yorkshire and Humber and Wales have gone up by around 45% and in Scotland by 30%.
Not exactly what I would call insane.
Insane or not, massive regional variation is not exactly helpful when trying to devise a national measure of inflation. Part 94 in the series All Economic Statistics are Rubbish.
See also the sequel "...But Some Of Them Are Useful" (2023), ISBN 1-789-123-1234,
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
Though spiked saying that anyone telling them what to do is inherently evil isn't that surprising.
There is a kind of evil that is facilitated by bureaucracy, and in some ways it's worse than evil driven by passion or need. It's why the film Conspiracy was so chilling.
Trump won’t be attending the Republican debate tomorrow (nor seemingly any of the Republican debates), but has an interview with Tucker Carlson scheduled against it, live on Twitter.
Trump won’t be attending the Republican debate tomorrow (nor seemingly any of the Republican debates), but has an interview with Tucker Carlson scheduled against it, live on Twitter.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
Though spiked saying that anyone telling them what to do is inherently evil isn't that surprising.
There is a kind of evil that is facilitated by bureaucracy, and in some ways it's worse than evil driven by passion or need. It's why the film Conspiracy was so chilling.
Very much the functionalist side of the functionalist v intentionalist debate in Holocaust Studies
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
Though spiked saying that anyone telling them what to do is inherently evil isn't that surprising.
There is a kind of evil that is facilitated by bureaucracy, and in some ways it's worse than evil driven by passion or need. It's why the film Conspiracy was so chilling.
The Aberfan disaster aftermath was fascinating in the way that those running the NCB behaved exactly as the old mine owners would have done.
Despite being explicitly drawn from the miners unions and their political representatives and being supposed to act in the interests of the miners and their families.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
I don't think I agree with this. I don't know about the NKVD, but the Nazi's bureaucracy was famously inefficient, with many rival organisations with overlapping responsibilities. However, this was a secret of its effectiveness, because rival agencies sought to outdo each other.
Well, we can argue about the interaction of efficiency vs effectiveness, or of the efficiencies of individual agencies vs the system overall (or indeed about whether that was a political vs bureaucracy question) but in terms of knowing what was what and where, and - once the politics was decided - what to do and when, and then doing it, I'd argue the Nazi state functioned tragically efficiently.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
Though spiked saying that anyone telling them what to do is inherently evil isn't that surprising.
There is a kind of evil that is facilitated by bureaucracy, and in some ways it's worse than evil driven by passion or need. It's why the film Conspiracy was so chilling.
Wasn't it at the Eichmann trial that Hannah Arendt coined the phrase 'the banality of evil?'
The betting doesn't (as yet) reflect a Con recovery. Lab Maj still about 1.5.
Getting nervous Kina? Only the highly partisan, such as yourself, don't realise that the best outcome for the country is Labour with no overall majority. Starmer is dull enough to make a good leader of a coalition, and Ed Davey would make a goodish deputy PM.
I'm highly partisan and I also agree that the best outcome for the country is Labour with no overall majority for the reasons you give. That would be a terrific outcome.
Unfortunately a non-partisan analysis (to the extent that is possible) indicates a Labour overall majority and most punters agree as can be seen on Betfair. I don't think the majority will be as great as my earlier wind-up post indicated! But I would take 100/1 on the Labour majority being greater than 100.
I can't wait for the seats markets to open.
For what values of N, where N is a natural number less than 612, would you take N/1 on there being a Labour majority > N?
Great question!
I think I would take a bet of N/1 of a Labour majority of >N for values of N between 2 and 200. But I'm not offering.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain [rejoin]
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
Hmmm. Assuming "X" as a noncommittal option, that would make me...
SWXXHX
This is not as helpful as I thought...
SAPYHR
I'm SAPYHR too. That surprises me brother. Don't know why.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
I suspect I will be saying this again and again, but this is your perennial reminder that the alert was raised successfully, not by managers, but by an epidemiological unit based in Oxford. This one[1]. It is people such as they, and not fucking [redacteds] trust fund [redacteds] like "Spiked" who will solve this problem, and they get paid a shit-ton less. Bureaucratic mind my fucking arse.
That article does not exists and I'm really glad you didn't post a link to it
Do we think Labour would have increased its majority if that election had happened?
I genuinely don't know. I suspect not. My all-time head canon is that John McDonnell would have won in 2017, but the problem with alternate universes is that you can't pop over to check.
Trump won’t be attending the Republican debate tomorrow (nor seemingly any of the Republican debates), but has an interview with Tucker Carlson scheduled against it, live on Twitter.
The fun bit was in Tucker’s contract with Fox, which says he’s not allowed to work for any other network, that Youtube and Rumble accounts also belong to the network - but that his Twitter account is his own.
Fox never thought that Twitter would become a place for long-form video, and Carlson and Musk are taking advantage.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
I don't think I agree with this. I don't know about the NKVD, but the Nazi's bureaucracy was famously inefficient, with many rival organisations with overlapping responsibilities. However, this was a secret of its effectiveness, because rival agencies sought to outdo each other.
Well, we can argue about the interaction of efficiency vs effectiveness, or of the efficiencies of individual agencies vs the system overall (or indeed about whether that was a political vs bureaucracy question) but in terms of knowing what was what and where, and - once the politics was decided - what to do and when, and then doing it, I'd argue the Nazi state functioned tragically efficiently.
The pile of competing bureaucracies in the Nazi and Soviet states certainly seemed to operate on the basis of bureaucracy for its own sake.
The Nazis explicitly modelled their system on Social Darwinism and Working Towards The Leader. The accounts of the infighting in the Soviet space program is also worth looking at.
The betting doesn't (as yet) reflect a Con recovery. Lab Maj still about 1.5.
Getting nervous Kina? Only the highly partisan, such as yourself, don't realise that the best outcome for the country is Labour with no overall majority. Starmer is dull enough to make a good leader of a coalition, and Ed Davey would make a goodish deputy PM.
I'm highly partisan and I also agree that the best outcome for the country is Labour with no overall majority for the reasons you give. That would be a terrific outcome.
Unfortunately a non-partisan analysis (to the extent that is possible) indicates a Labour overall majority and most punters agree as can be seen on Betfair. I don't think the majority will be as great as my earlier wind-up post indicated! But I would take 100/1 on the Labour majority being greater than 100.
I can't wait for the seats markets to open.
For what values of N, where N is a natural number less than 612, would you take N/1 on there being a Labour majority > N?
Great question!
I think I would take a bet of N/1 of a Labour majority of >N for values of N between 2 and 200. But I'm not offering.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain [rejoin]
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
Hmmm. Assuming "X" as a noncommittal option, that would make me...
SWXXHX
This is not as helpful as I thought...
SAPYHR
I'm SAPYHR too. That surprises me brother. Don't know why.
SWEYHR, but I dislike some of the forced choices! Well, mainly the first one as I could just as easily have gone for M. So I guess I'm pretty close to TimS.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
I suspect I will be saying this again and again, but this is your perennial reminder that the alert was raised successfully, not by managers, but by an epidemiological unit based in Oxford. This one[1]. It is people such as they, and not fucking [redacteds] trust fund [redacteds] like "Spiked" who will solve this problem, and they get paid a shit-ton less. Bureaucratic mind my fucking arse.
The bureaucratic mindset was indeed evident - they wanted to preserve themselves, then their organisation. The staff came next - sort of, as long as they went along with the company line. The patients seemed to be somewhere between last and nowhere.
The people who uncovered the problem were interested primarily in facts rather than organisational preservation.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
I don't think I agree with this. I don't know about the NKVD, but the Nazi's bureaucracy was famously inefficient, with many rival organisations with overlapping responsibilities. However, this was a secret of its effectiveness, because rival agencies sought to outdo each other.
Well, we can argue about the interaction of efficiency vs effectiveness, or of the efficiencies of individual agencies vs the system overall (or indeed about whether that was a political vs bureaucracy question) but in terms of knowing what was what and where, and - once the politics was decided - what to do and when, and then doing it, I'd argue the Nazi state functioned tragically efficiently.
The pile of competing bureaucracies in the Nazi and Soviet states certainly seemed to operate on the basis of bureaucracy for its own sake.
The Nazis explicitly modelled their system on Social Darwinism and Working Towards The Leader. The accounts of the infighting in the Soviet space program is also worth looking at.
Here's a thought. Maybe an effective bureaucracy can't be an efficient one, in that it *needs* internal competition and the fear of failure in order to work? You can't have a person or unit or division acting as institutional blockers because you go round them and they find themselves redundant. But internal competition inevitably means duplication and overheads.
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
There were affordability problems for housing 20 years ago, so even if the real-terms price increase has been relatively modest since then that doesn't help anyone.
The big increase in prices was before 2003.
UK average house price Q2 1996 = £53,032 UK average house price Q2 2003 £125,382 Inflation only increase would have taken 1996 price to £58,198 So the actual price was +115% in real terms over just seven years.
That's where the affordability problems came from since then. And in twenty years of knowing it was a problem it has still got worse! Even if at a much slower rate.
We moved up from a 2-bed to a 4-bed in 1999. Paid £125k. Sold the house 3 years later (due to relocation) for £220k. If we hadn't made the step up when we did, we would have been stuffed.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
Trump won’t be attending the Republican debate tomorrow (nor seemingly any of the Republican debates), but has an interview with Tucker Carlson scheduled against it, live on Twitter.
The fun bit was in Tucker’s contract with Fox, which says he’s not allowed to work for any other network, that Youtube and Rumble accounts also belong to the network - but that his Twitter account is his own.
Fox never thought that Twitter would become a place for long-form video, and Carlson and Musk are taking advantage.
Looking at his viewing figures, I doubt Fox cares.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
There were affordability problems for housing 20 years ago, so even if the real-terms price increase has been relatively modest since then that doesn't help anyone.
The big increase in prices was before 2003.
UK average house price Q2 1996 = £53,032 UK average house price Q2 2003 £125,382 Inflation only increase would have taken 1996 price to £58,198 So the actual price was +115% in real terms over just seven years.
That's where the affordability problems came from since then. And in twenty years of knowing it was a problem it has still got worse! Even if at a much slower rate.
People seem to be looking at real term house prices rise however in isolation.
Real term house prices have gone up over the last 2 decades
at the same time
Real term wages have gone down. For example even though my wages have risen by 16.6 percent since brexit I am still 36% what they would have been in real terms since 2002 when adjusted for inflation.
So if in real terms house prices have risen 20% but my wages have fallen behind by 30% its where we get the increase in wage multiples
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
Rheinmetall is having to reverse engineer production processes for the Gepard ammunition. I wonder what other production lines have been run down to that extent ?
https://twitter.com/Bjoern__M/status/1690071824875270145 Neues Rheinmetall Konzern-Magazin mit Details zur Mun Produktion #Flugabwehrpanzer #Gepard Die alte Munition nachbauen, ging nicht wegen fehlendem Werkzeug. Deshalb: Reverse Engineering u. Anpassungsenwicklung auf Basis 35mm-Mun Schützenpanzer ..
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
Spot on. Ditto Harrogate.
Yes in order of poshest constituencies it is now:
1. Tory v LD marginals. 2. Tory safe seats. 3. Labour safe seats. 4. Tory v Labour marginals (non redwall). 5. SNP v Labour marginals. 6. SNP safe seats. 7. Redwall seats.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
Volatile? In the past two decades the prices have risen, and risen, and risen, and risen, and risen ... pretty much without break for 20 years in a row.
UK wide, houses are the same price in real terms that they were 20 years ago.
No they're not.
According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2003 was £125,382 According to Nationwide the UK average house price at end of Q2 2023 was £261,995
According to the Bank of England £125,382 in 2003 pounds = £218,269.72 in Jun 2023 prices.
So over 20 years what would in real terms have cost £218,270 now costs £261,995, which is a bit over a 20% increase in real terms.
And that's disregarding the fact that the surge in house prices was already underway in Q2 2003 and a fall in prices (and rise in CPI) over the past year has seen a narrowing of these figures, there's still been a massive rise despite that.
20% in real terms is in no way 'massive'.
Yes it would be great to see house prices stop rising but your exaggerations do nothing to further the debate.
Said with the ease of someone who isn't struggling to pay those prices, or get a deposit for a home at those prices.
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
There were affordability problems for housing 20 years ago, so even if the real-terms price increase has been relatively modest since then that doesn't help anyone.
The big increase in prices was before 2003.
UK average house price Q2 1996 = £53,032 UK average house price Q2 2003 £125,382 Inflation only increase would have taken 1996 price to £58,198 So the actual price was +115% in real terms over just seven years.
That's where the affordability problems came from since then. And in twenty years of knowing it was a problem it has still got worse! Even if at a much slower rate.
People seem to be looking at real term house prices rise however in isolation.
Real term house prices have gone up over the last 2 decades
at the same time
Real term wages have gone down. For example even though my wages have risen by 16.6 percent since brexit I am still 36% what they would have been in real terms since 2002 when adjusted for inflation.
So if in real terms house prices have risen 20% but my wages have fallen behind by 30% its where we get the increase in wage multiples
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
Its BS?
With all due respect to the incumbent MP, I would be surprised if he holds on versus Labour.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
I suspect I will be saying this again and again, but this is your perennial reminder that the alert was raised successfully, not by managers, but by an epidemiological unit based in Oxford. This one[1]. It is people such as they, and not fucking [redacteds] trust fund [redacteds] like "Spiked" who will solve this problem, and they get paid a shit-ton less. Bureaucratic mind my fucking arse.
The comment I would make on this situation is that the decision of the jury could well have gone the other way (they were deliberating for a hundred hours?) in which case the situation would now look completely different, there would be different heroes and villains in the news stories that follow.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Not convinced, though I get the idea (rigid application of a policy with unexpected bad consequences is bad). To give a counter-example, I prefer the relative precision of the ECHR to a general assurance that the authorities will respect my rights in a sensible manner, and I prefer a speed limit sign to a general rule that my driving should be reasonable. It's better to know where you are with these things than rely on someone's goodwill.
The issues around the ECHR are not based on precision though. We see endless cases where parts of the media will whip up a frenzy about a case that seems absurd, and blames in on the ECHR. We then have the counter which is that the case is more complicated than that and so on it goes. Human rights are not precise.
On radio 5 this morning there was a debate about the Letby case and her not appearing at the sentencing. One caller suggested a certain amount of solitary confinement should be added as a result, at which the legal representative (not sure of what) suggested that this could be against her human rights. When pressed for the legislation about this she couldn't point to anything, and changed the subject.
I think you can draw up a set of basic human rights, but the ECHR will inevitably see drift. What about the right to family life? What about the right to have sexual relations for prisoners? And on and on.
True - as I wrote, I realised the ECHR wasn't really a good example of precise guidance.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
The explanation is finger trouble by me editing the list. Sorry. It's a Labour gain. Well spotted.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
Its BS?
With all due respect to the incumbent MP, I would be surprised if he holds on versus Labour.
This does not look like a Lib Dem gain.
Given the current MP is an exPBer I hope he does hold his seat.
I worked in that constituency up to the end of last year and never saw a liberal democrat ever. Its a Lab\Con fight
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
Its BS?
With all due respect to the incumbent MP, I would be surprised if he holds on versus Labour.
This does not look like a Lib Dem gain.
The new boundaries include Madeley - which is pretty solidly conservative - and the seat has been trending Tory for a long while.
It isn't a gimme by any means, but I would certainly not be surprised at a Tory hold.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
Spot on. Ditto Harrogate.
Yes in order of poshest constituencies it is now:
1. Tory v LD marginals. 2. Tory safe seats. 3. Labour safe seats. 4. Tory v Labour marginals (non redwall). 5. SNP v Labour marginals. 6. SNP safe seats. 7. Redwall seats.
You forgot some very pleasant SNP-LD marginals.
There is a danger the Lib Dems become seen as only a party of the South. They have a couple of Northern redoubts still, which helps them with the perception. That's where council seats will continue to be important.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
My guess is that the seat should be Newton Abbot in Devon. It's the next English constituency alphabetically after Newcastle-under-Lyme which, as has been pointed out, cannot possibly be correct.
Newton Aycliffe also cannot possibly be correct - I think there are a couple of obvious errors in that part of the list.
That article does not exists and I'm really glad you didn't post a link to it
Do we think Labour would have increased its majority if that election had happened?
No, Labour would have seen its majority fall, and Brown would have been a lame duck Prime Minister, cursed by his own side for calling an unnecessary election.
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
Because Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were well-known for their memos.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
I don't think I agree with this. I don't know about the NKVD, but the Nazi's bureaucracy was famously inefficient, with many rival organisations with overlapping responsibilities. However, this was a secret of its effectiveness, because rival agencies sought to outdo each other.
Well, we can argue about the interaction of efficiency vs effectiveness, or of the efficiencies of individual agencies vs the system overall (or indeed about whether that was a political vs bureaucracy question) but in terms of knowing what was what and where, and - once the politics was decided - what to do and when, and then doing it, I'd argue the Nazi state functioned tragically efficiently.
The pile of competing bureaucracies in the Nazi and Soviet states certainly seemed to operate on the basis of bureaucracy for its own sake.
The Nazis explicitly modelled their system on Social Darwinism and Working Towards The Leader. The accounts of the infighting in the Soviet space program is also worth looking at.
Here's a thought. Maybe an effective bureaucracy can't be an efficient one, in that it *needs* internal competition and the fear of failure in order to work? You can't have a person or unit or division acting as institutional blockers because you go round them and they find themselves redundant. But internal competition inevitably means duplication and overheads.
Well, the classic Big State Socialist analysis, is that if we get rid of all the useless competition and Just Provide Good Services, it will be better.
It is worth noting, that in things they really cared about, the Soviets had savage, savage competition. They may not have had butter, but they had guns.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
Its BS?
With all due respect to the incumbent MP, I would be surprised if he holds on versus Labour.
This does not look like a Lib Dem gain.
Given the current MP is an exPBer I hope he does hold his seat.
I worked in that constituency up to the end of last year and never saw a liberal democrat ever. Its a Lab\Con fight
You are absolutely right Alan, it is an error, but I am confused by your statement that you never saw a LD ever. How would you know? We don't all wear sandals and have beards. I don't.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
Spot on. Ditto Harrogate.
Yes in order of poshest constituencies it is now:
1. Tory v LD marginals. 2. Tory safe seats. 3. Labour safe seats. 4. Tory v Labour marginals (non redwall). 5. SNP v Labour marginals. 6. SNP safe seats. 7. Redwall seats.
You forgot some very pleasant SNP-LD marginals.
There is a danger the Lib Dems become seen as only a party of the South. They have a couple of Northern redoubts still, which helps them with the perception. That's where council seats will continue to be important.
My joy if the Liberal Democrats retake Inverness Skye and West Ross-shire will be tempered somewhat at the thought Blackford won't be there to get his thoroughly earned desserts.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
Though university seats are tending more Labour than Lib Dem these days (Cambridge, Portsmouth S etc). I suspect that cities with cathedrals but not really universities (Winchester, whatever Ely is calling itself this time) are a better steer for Lib Dem target seats now.
It would be interesting to know where the parties see themselves targetting. Presumably that ought to be becoming clearer from weight of thinly-disguised campaign literature. A heatmap of people buying larger recycling bins?
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
I suspect I will be saying this again and again, but this is your perennial reminder that the alert was raised successfully, not by managers, but by an epidemiological unit based in Oxford. This one[1]. It is people such as they, and not fucking [redacteds] trust fund [redacteds] like "Spiked" who will solve this problem, and they get paid a shit-ton less. Bureaucratic mind my fucking arse.
The comment I would make on this situation is that the decision of the jury could well have gone the other way (they were deliberating for a hundred hours?) in which case the situation would now look completely different, there would be different heroes and villains in the news stories that follow.
Could it ?
Remember they were considering a large number of separate charges - for some of which they did not in the end decide there was sufficient evidence to convict.
It seems more likely that what took the time was the charges for which the evidence was not as clear cut. And it's pretty (very ?) unlikely they would have returned not guilty verdicts verdicts for all the charges.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
Though university seats are tending more Labour than Lib Dem these days (Cambridge, Portsmouth S etc). I suspect that cities with cathedrals but not really universities (Winchester, whatever Ely is calling itself this time) are a better steer for Lib Dem target seats now.
By that logic, Gloucester is a LibDem target. As is Carlisle. Or Derby.
You shouldn't judge everywhere by the likes of Ely, Winchester and Oxford.
NEW: David Shafer, one of the 19 defendants charged with Trump in GA, has posted a transcript of the Dec. 14, 2020 meeting of the false GOP electors as part of a court action.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
Though university seats are tending more Labour than Lib Dem these days (Cambridge, Portsmouth S etc). I suspect that cities with cathedrals but not really universities (Winchester, whatever Ely is calling itself this time) are a better steer for Lib Dem target seats now.
By that logic, Gloucester is a LibDem target. As is Carlisle. Or Derby.
You shouldn't judge everywhere by the likes of Ely, Winchester and Oxford.
That's a sly dig. I'll have you know Winchester has a pretty well-regarded university.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
Though university seats are tending more Labour than Lib Dem these days (Cambridge, Portsmouth S etc). I suspect that cities with cathedrals but not really universities (Winchester, whatever Ely is calling itself this time) are a better steer for Lib Dem target seats now.
It would be interesting to know where the parties see themselves targetting. Presumably that ought to be becoming clearer from weight of thinly-disguised campaign literature. A heatmap of people buying larger recycling bins?
A more precise metric would be pet shop sales of budgie and parrot cage linings, or reduction thereof.
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
My guess is that the seat should be Newton Abbot in Devon. It's the next English constituency alphabetically after Newcastle-under-Lyme which, as has been pointed out, cannot possibly be correct.
Newton Aycliffe also cannot possibly be correct - I think there are a couple of obvious errors in that part of the list.
Here is the corrected list. Apologies for the mistype.
Caithness Sutherland and Easter Ross Cambridgeshire South Carshalton and Wallington Cheadle Cheltenham Chesham and Amersham Chippenham Cornwall North Devon North Dorset West Eastbourne Eastleigh Esher and Walton Fife North East Frome and East Somerset Glastonbury and Somerton Guildford Harrogate and Knaresborough Hazel Grove Lewes Melksham and Devizes Mid Dunbartonshire Newbury Norfolk North St Ives Sutton and Cheam Thornbury and Yate Wells and Mendip Hills Westmorland and Lonsdale Wimbledon Winchester Yeovil
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
On topic, I see plenty of experienced punters warning about August polls, indeed any poll this far out from a GE.
Intuitively I feel the air will be thick with chickens coming home to roost as the fateful day approaches, but I wouldn't be betting it, not yet at least. I wouldn't be surprised by any result giving the Tories anything from 100 to 250 seats. Outside that very broad band I would be surprised, but even if I'm right that is such a wide spectrum it is virtually useless for betting purposes.
I'll sharpen up nearer the date. Promise.
Yes. it is very much up in the air. A Labour majority is much more likely than not. Labour largest party can only be stopped by A Very Black Swan.
If I were betting (I'm not) I might have a dabble on LD seats. The standard projections are based on vote shares but in practice we know the Yellow Peril are good at targeting, so I'm guessing they could get up to around 40 seats.
Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing though, even if correct.
The typical LD general election target seat is now largely upper middle class, wealthy, highly educated, with well above average house price but which also voted Remain, found most often in the Home Counties. Also similar seats elsewhere like Cheltenham or Hazel Grove.
Basically seats which dislike Brexit but are still too posh to vote Labour. That is where they could make significant progress if targeted heavily
These are the 33 seats that Electoral Calculus is suggesting could be LibDem gains, plus existing LibDem seats makes 40+. Many in the West Country.
Of those existing LD target seats then I make more in the Home Counties than the entire North of England and Midlands and Wales combined.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
The one surprise in that list of possible LD seats is Newcastle under Lyme. Does anyone have an explanation of this?
It is a university seat.
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
Though university seats are tending more Labour than Lib Dem these days (Cambridge, Portsmouth S etc). I suspect that cities with cathedrals but not really universities (Winchester, whatever Ely is calling itself this time) are a better steer for Lib Dem target seats now.
It would be interesting to know where the parties see themselves targetting. Presumably that ought to be becoming clearer from weight of thinly-disguised campaign literature. A heatmap of people buying larger recycling bins?
A more precise metric would be pet shop sales of budgie and parrot cage linings, or reduction thereof.
NEW: David Shafer, one of the 19 defendants charged with Trump in GA, has posted a transcript of the Dec. 14, 2020 meeting of the false GOP electors as part of a court action.
A conspiracy meeting to steal the Georgia election for the loser. Yet the PB Trump apologists keep insisting not only no conspiracy but that the only action was Jan 6th...
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
I suspect I will be saying this again and again, but this is your perennial reminder that the alert was raised successfully, not by managers, but by an epidemiological unit based in Oxford. This one[1]. It is people such as they, and not fucking [redacteds] trust fund [redacteds] like "Spiked" who will solve this problem, and they get paid a shit-ton less. Bureaucratic mind my fucking arse.
The comment I would make on this situation is that the decision of the jury could well have gone the other way (they were deliberating for a hundred hours?) in which case the situation would now look completely different, there would be different heroes and villains in the news stories that follow.
Could it ?
Remember they were considering a large number of separate charges - for some of which they did not in the end decide there was sufficient evidence to convict.
It seems more likely that what took the time was the charges for which the evidence was not as clear cut. And it's pretty (very ?) unlikely they would have returned not guilty verdicts verdicts for all the charges.
I’d also add the jury system is the antithesis of the bureaucratic mindset. Its value is precisely in its “unprofessional” and “disorganised” humanity.
Trump won’t be attending the Republican debate tomorrow (nor seemingly any of the Republican debates), but has an interview with Tucker Carlson scheduled against it, live on Twitter.
The fun bit was in Tucker’s contract with Fox, which says he’s not allowed to work for any other network, that Youtube and Rumble accounts also belong to the network - but that his Twitter account is his own.
Fox never thought that Twitter would become a place for long-form video, and Carlson and Musk are taking advantage.
Carlson and Musk are indeed taking advantage . . . of every opportunity for demonstrating that they've got their tongues, minds and (what passes for) souls firmly wedged between Trump's ass-cheeks.
Comments
What is it with taking data from the 1970s and refreshing it to pretend its modern data?
That's £43,725 extra in modern currency to the average house price compared to what it would have been. Yes that is pretty massive, especially when he claimed they are the same in real terms.
I'm pretty certain a 20% fall would be classed as a massive fall. A 10% fall could legitimately be classed as prices being decimated.
Your own link suggests that lower speeds reduce road collision injuries and fatalities. Which is a good thing, right?
And of course house price changes aren't self-reinforcing like measuring mortgage payments when rates go up or down is.
House prices being over £40k higher today on average in real terms over what they were in 2003 means that people need over £4k more saved up on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway, in order to secure a 10% deposit.
In places like London where house prices are double the national average, then that £43k average increase in real terms doubled equates to about £9k extra for a deposit someone has to save, on top of what they'd have to have saved up anyway.
So yes, inflation in house prices matters, as a cost of living issue, for the actual cost.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/21/the-natural-affinity-between-evil-and-bureaucracy/
Evil has a ‘natural affinity with the bureaucratic mind’, wrote Eagleton. ‘Flaws, loose ends and rough approximations are what evil cannot endure’, he wrote. ‘Goodness, by contrast, is in love with the dappled, unfinished nature of things.’ This, I believe, is what we saw in Chester: an association, however unwitting, however regretted, between the bureaucratic mind and the evil mind, with goodness silenced.
But if you use CPIH it doesn't change the result. Indeed since CPIH is so dodgy, it doesn't even include house prices in the calculation, the calculation ends up even worse.
CPIH index in June 2003 76.7
CPIH index in June 2023 129.0
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880
Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
So you want to stand by claim its same in real terms?
In the 90s home ownership rates went up, not down.
The calculator uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as this is the measure used by the Government to set the Bank of England’s target for inflation. An alternative credible measure, which is the ONS’s lead measure of inflation, is the Consumer Price Index including Owner Occupiers’ Housing Costs (CPIH).
Please note: the estimates in the calculator from 1949 onwards have been updated with revised CPI estimates from the ONS published in May 2022.
Nationwide price of £125,382 in 2003, uprated to 2023 via CPIH = £210,880
Actual Nationwide price in June 2023 is £261,995
So CPIH underestimates the change in House Prices by over £50k.
Or do you think £261,995 = £210,880?
Whereas recent decades have seen the opposite and people trapped renting is no worse than people trapped in negative equity. The overall objective measure is how many people can afford their own home, and it was more people over the 90s.
Jul-2004 £154,299 77.7
Jul-2023 £260,828 129
Why are you picking July 2004 as a start date? That is not 2 decades ago, and is well into the price rises of the 00s.
The ECHR is a system of laws, complete with courts trying to interpret them. Rather than an inflexible dictat.
It's as arbitrary as choosing July 2003. House prices rose £26,048 from July 2003 to 2004. They're up £3,600 in real terms since then.
On radio 5 this morning there was a debate about the Letby case and her not appearing at the sentencing. One caller suggested a certain amount of solitary confinement should be added as a result, at which the legal representative (not sure of what) suggested that this could be against her human rights. When pressed for the legislation about this she couldn't point to anything, and changed the subject.
I think you can draw up a set of basic human rights, but the ECHR will inevitably see drift. What about the right to family life? What about the right to have sexual relations for prisoners? And on and on.
We're probably talking about the same thing re weighting. I was meaning that the weighting for housing needs to account for rents, mortgage repayments and sales, in their respective weights on spending / income.
In terms of self-reinforcing effects, that depends on what you see the purpose of the stats as being - which is, of course, why we have several series, for different purposes. In terms of reporting cost-of-living changes or price growth, that should be on the broadest basis. Figures for policy-setting purposes will need to be different.
It's just that there is a small part of me that hopes that one day things will be different.
"It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand."
Yes house prices got out of control in the 00s. From 2000 to 2008 house price to earnings ratios rapidly rose, well above historic norms, and they've stayed high since. I don't think anyone, certainly not myself, disputes that most of the harm happened in the 00s. Hence how this conversation started, had inflation been measured honestly, including house prices, then inflation would have been measured as much higher in the 00s, but by pretending that house prices aren't a cost they got out of control and have stayed high since which is why people can't afford homes as well as they could when prices were much better like in the 90s.
And house prices themselves should be considered the cost, not mortgage rates, since it is house prices that are the barrier to people getting on the ladder, that's where the deposit needs to come in, as a percentage of that price. If people have a deposit, then affording a mortgage is often cheaper than affording rent, but getting the deposit is not easy if prices are ever-escalating.
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman.
Just to counter Clockwise...
This is a better quote from it:
"Events at the Countess of Chester speak to a new layer of bureaucratic authority that has no guiding ethic beyond maintaining its own machinery of influence. To a professional managerial elite well-versed in stiff boardroom jargon but bereft of the human instinct to recognise wrong from right. To a new feudal-like section of the establishment that ticks all the boxes, dots every ‘i’, crosses every ‘t’ and holds every correct opinion, but which lacks the heart or plain old curiosity to wonder why a terrible thing seems to be happening. To a managerial stratum so detached from the everyday – from both the cries of experts and the concerns of ‘ordinary’ people – that even the possibility of mass murder within its own ranks cannot rouse it from its myopic concern with self-preservation."
The big increase in prices was before 2003.
Bureaucracy is value-neutral. Indeed, it's efficiency-neutral - you can have effective bureaucracies and hopeless ones.
But on the main point, while an efficient bureaucracy will make evil intent more effective - see the Nazis and the NKVD for obvious example - an efficient bureaucracy will also make a benevolent state more effective too, with justice administered, services delivered responsively and a leadership in touch with the people.
Presumably the original quote re 'the bureaucratic mind' is one that simply processes; where the process is an end in itself; where it is stripped of humanity and judgement and where people and their refusal to conform with systems and policies (or even predictions) get in the way of 'delivering outcomes'. Certainly, evil can make great use of such mindsets but I disagree with the inference that that's the essence of bureaucracy.
Which is precisely why house prices matter. If you're already on the ladder then you don't need to worry about this, sure, but if you're not and house prices are rising by 10% annually then if you're trying to save for 10% of £260k today, then 10% of £286k this time next year, then that can for too many people be like running on a hamster wheel with no way to actually move forwards.
Staying on the property ladder once you're on it is much easier than getting on it in the first place, which is why squeals about negative equity don't match the objective facts on home ownership rates which went up not down in the 90s.
Which was one of the reasons house ownership then went up as we recovered from that throughout the 90s.
Your "crisis" led to a record high in home ownership rates, not a fall. The fall in home ownership rates happened when prices went up, not down.
UK average house price Q2 2003 £125,382
Inflation only increase would have taken 1996 price to £58,198
So the actual price was +115% in real terms over just seven years.
That's where the affordability problems came from since then. And in twenty years of knowing it was a problem it has still got worse! Even if at a much slower rate.
There is a kind of evil that is facilitated by bureaucracy, and in some ways it's worse than evil driven by passion or need. It's why the film Conspiracy was so chilling.
Despite being explicitly drawn from the miners unions and their political representatives and being supposed to act in the interests of the miners and their families.
I think I would take a bet of N/1 of a Labour majority of >N for values of N between 2 and 200. But I'm not offering. I'm SAPYHR too. That surprises me brother. Don't know why.
[1] https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/mbrrace-uk
Fox never thought that Twitter would become a place for long-form video, and Carlson and Musk are taking advantage.
The Nazis explicitly modelled their system on Social Darwinism and Working Towards The Leader. The accounts of the infighting in the Soviet space program is also worth looking at.
The people who uncovered the problem were interested primarily in facts rather than organisational preservation.
Plus as you say some of the traditionally LD seats in the South West the LDs lost in 2015
Real term house prices have gone up over the last 2 decades
at the same time
Real term wages have gone down. For example even though my wages have risen by 16.6 percent since brexit I am still 36% what they would have been in real terms since 2002 when adjusted for inflation.
So if in real terms house prices have risen 20% but my wages have fallen behind by 30% its where we get the increase in wage multiples
I wonder what other production lines have been run down to that extent ?
https://twitter.com/Bjoern__M/status/1690071824875270145
Neues Rheinmetall Konzern-Magazin mit Details zur Mun Produktion #Flugabwehrpanzer #Gepard
Die alte Munition nachbauen, ging nicht wegen fehlendem Werkzeug. Deshalb: Reverse Engineering u. Anpassungsenwicklung auf Basis 35mm-Mun Schützenpanzer ..
1. Tory v LD marginals.
2. Tory safe seats.
3. Labour safe seats.
4. Tory v Labour marginals (non redwall).
5. SNP v Labour marginals.
6. SNP safe seats.
7. Redwall seats.
AWE: Whole Economy Level (£): Seasonally Adjusted Regular Pay Excluding Arrears
Will be checking that against CPIH and CPI to see if 'real terms wages' have gone down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle-under-Lyme_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
But even allowing for that, I think it's a typing error. The last time the Liberal Democrats even got over 20% of the vote there was in 1992.
With all due respect to the incumbent MP, I would be surprised if he holds on versus Labour.
This does not look like a Lib Dem gain.
I worked in that constituency up to the end of last year and never saw a liberal democrat ever. Its a Lab\Con fight
It isn't a gimme by any means, but I would certainly not be surprised at a Tory hold.
There is a danger the Lib Dems become seen as only a party of the South. They have a couple of Northern redoubts still, which helps them with the perception. That's where council seats will continue to be important.
Newton Aycliffe also cannot possibly be correct - I think there are a couple of obvious errors in that part of the list.
It is worth noting, that in things they really cared about, the Soviets had savage, savage competition. They may not have had butter, but they had guns.
It would be interesting to know where the parties see themselves targetting. Presumably that ought to be becoming clearer from weight of thinly-disguised campaign literature. A heatmap of people buying larger recycling bins?
Remember they were considering a large number of separate charges - for some of which they did not in the end decide there was sufficient evidence to convict.
It seems more likely that what took the time was the charges for which the evidence was not as clear cut. And it's pretty (very ?) unlikely they would have returned not guilty verdicts verdicts for all the charges.
You shouldn't judge everywhere by the likes of Ely, Winchester and Oxford.
NEW: David Shafer, one of the 19 defendants charged with Trump in GA, has posted a transcript of the Dec. 14, 2020 meeting of the false GOP electors as part of a court action.
It shows Trump campaign attorney Ray Smith's advice to the group...
https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1693978614335783308
‘I Could Use a Little More Self-Flagellation’
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/22/chris-christie-donald-trump-critic-00112106
Apologies for the mistype.
Caithness Sutherland and Easter Ross
Cambridgeshire South
Carshalton and Wallington
Cheadle
Cheltenham
Chesham and Amersham
Chippenham
Cornwall North
Devon North
Dorset West
Eastbourne
Eastleigh
Esher and Walton
Fife North East
Frome and East Somerset
Glastonbury and Somerton
Guildford
Harrogate and Knaresborough
Hazel Grove
Lewes
Melksham and Devizes
Mid Dunbartonshire
Newbury
Norfolk North
St Ives
Sutton and Cheam
Thornbury and Yate
Wells and Mendip Hills
Westmorland and Lonsdale
Wimbledon
Winchester
Yeovil
As has been recognised for millennia.
For present fun and (they hope) future profit.
What is the result?