Another day, another policy from the Conservatives which will beg the inevitable question - if it's such a good idea now, why didn't you implement it in the time you were in Government? The commitment to reduce the size of the Civil Service (and we all know there were ways of reducing the headcount without sacking a single individual) has been there since 2016 but instead the Service has added an extra 130,000 roles.
There's also an aim of cutting £23 billion from the welfare budget - now, it's true the welfare side is spiralling out of control - from £64 billion now to £100 billion by 2030 though that may be a function of an ageing population. £23 billion is a big amount - apparently to be funded from cutting off claimants with "lower level mental health issues" (apparently).
Curious the party couldn't support the more modest £5 billion cuts proposed by the Government earlier this year.
Probably as Kemi is the most rightwing Conservative leader since Michael Howard, well to the right of Cameron, May and Boris and even right of Sunak and Truss
I wonder how many of us political anoraks decide to give up on the party we've followed since we first got interested in politics? It must be like your football team. Through good times and bad ........
............Well spare a thought for those who met their husbands/wives at the local Tory association hop little knowing that in 2025 they'd find themselves led by the trully dire Kemi Badenoch wanting to seal the deal with political oblivion by leaving the ECHR? Maggie turning in her grave......
......Or those Labour followers from the 70's and 80's who would send Nelson Mandela birthday cards to Robbin Island before attending ANL rallies on Saturday mornings to find in 2025 their Party was now in a lockstep with the most horrendous genocidal apartheid regime of the 21st century?
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
The trouble is there isn't much evidence of this effect in the places young people are trying to buy. Scotland's population is flat, we've increased the housing stock by 20% in the Lothians over the last 10 years, and rents and house prices are through the roof.
I'm sure you'll just say "build more" but you must understand why young people are pretty sceptical that it will change much. I was fighting off cash buying landlords for my place - easiest solution would be to kill that demand at source.
I’m not sure about all of the unlikely to be enacted policies of the Greens but I commend them for the massive amount of lip quivering they’re inducing in righties.
Good morning, everyone.
I rather dislike the '"they're annoying the right sort of people" line of 'thinking' that's becoming ever more popular in political discourse.
An idiot can be right sometimes. The wise can be wrong. And annoying any group of people is not a reason to do anything. It's just throwing more excrement into the cesspit of negativity, of which we already have an overflowing abundance.
I know you're saying this in a lighthearted way, so please don't take it as an attack on yourself. Some people, alas, see it as an end in itself. Such is polarised political division for fundamentalists.
I've taken the 12s on Max Verstappen to win the F1 title this year.
McLaren are going to fuck this up.
I had lunch in a pub in Oxford yesterday, I was dropping my daughter there for her second year (humblebrag) and they had the F1 on a big screen. People were actually shouting stuff at the screen. It was just some funny looking cars driving round and round in circles. It made golf look interesting. Extraordinary.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
I agree. But the same people who own all the property also oppose development, which I guess is rational because why would they want to reduce the yield of their assets? It doesn’t matter if it negatively affects the economy because fuck those entitled lazy youngsters.
I feel that this is an inherent weakness of capitalism. Its benefits are, by human nature, stifled by rent seeking and monopolisation. Ironic really.
Nope - read Adam Smith. This is why you regulation to prevent monopolistic capture of markets etc.
We have constructed a system where you can't build properties at the rate of demand/population growth. In law. Which is enforced.
I go back to my farmer friend, who couldn't get the police out to deal with serious theft, damage to buildings etc. He started putting the roof back on an abandoned outbuilding - to create a secure store (massive stone walls).
The fuzz and the planners were round, before he'd got the building materials off the pallets.
The problem with the housing market, as @BartholomewRoberts will agree, is far too much regulation. The planning system and building regulations work together to restrict the amount of housing, which will of course for any given level of demand result in a higher cost of housing.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
As a former accidental landlord that's nothing compared with disposing of the damage, detritus and bio hazards after they leave.
I was once called in by sitting tenants to deal with a rat problem. It was odd because that property had never had a pest control problem before these people arrived. After setting out discreet poison traps in cupboards I suggested their issue might be eased if they cleared away and disposed of all the half eaten take aways from the kitchen worktop.
I no longer approve of Rachmanesque landlords and the tenants who deserve them.
A verbatim extract from Trump’s speech to the US top military, courtesy of the Guardian:
America is respected again as a country. We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day. Every day, the guy’s falling down stairs. I said: ‘It’s not our president. We can’t have it.’ I’m very careful, you know, when I walk downstairs for – like I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very – I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record, just try not to fall because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. Need to walk nice and easy. You not have – you don’t have to set any record. Be cool, be cool when you walk down, but don’t, don’t bop down the stairs. That’s the one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen – da da da da da da, bop, bop, bop, he’d go down the stairs, wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great, I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen and it only takes once, but he did a lousy job as president.
I read the first two sentences and thought, 'that's the opposite of true'... then I read the rest and thought this guy belongs in a nursing home.
If I didn't know in advance it was Trump, I'd have said it was someone with a stair obsession or mentally ill.
Snake oil meets first contact with reality down in Kent:
"Diane Morton, Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care on Kent county council, told the Financial Times that services in Kent were already “down to the bare bones”.
“We’ve got more demand than ever before and it’s growing,” she said, stressing she did not believe access to those services should be limited. “We just want more money.” "
Guardian Live blog
And ?
We all know the funding model for local govt is broken.
Honestly the obsession with Reform borders on the deranged here.
Politicians say what they need to get elected then ‘find problems’ and blame others.
No different to any other party.
They went into the election denying reality saying Reform DOGE would cut all wasteful spending on green and woke crap ignoring the fact it wasn't true.
And modelled on Real DOGE - which has been an utter disaster. Is anyone keeping track of how many they have had to rehire because it turns out their jobs weren't "crap" but essential?
The last lot I read about ran some kind of central service renting office space for government departments. As they had pretty much all been sacked landlords were creaming the money in as no one was negotiating with them and the government was still occupying the offices.
Gordon Brown's famous gold sale was because he had disbanded the Bank of England gold managing unit. This bought and sold gold for the Bank of England. It had made a small profit for every year of its existence.
So when Gordon sold the gold, he simply announced to the market beforehand, and crashed the price. Then sold. This actually caused moderately serious difficulties for the ANC government in South Africa - who actually asked why they were being attacked.....
Here is a chart showing the gold price. You can see the dip at the end of the 90s where Brown sold the gold but the massive rise came much later.
I’m not sure about all of the unlikely to be enacted policies of the Greens but I commend them for the massive amount of lip quivering they’re inducing in righties.
Good morning, everyone.
I rather dislike the '"they're annoying the right sort of people" line of 'thinking' that's becoming ever more popular in political discourse.
An idiot can be right sometimes. The wise can be wrong. And annoying any group of people is not a reason to do anything. It's just throwing more excrement into the cesspit of negativity, of which we already have an overflowing abundance.
I know you're saying this in a lighthearted way, so please don't take it as an attack on yourself. Some people, alas, see it as an end in itself. Such is polarised political division for fundamentalists.
I've taken the 12s on Max Verstappen to win the F1 title this year.
McLaren are going to fuck this up.
I had lunch in a pub in Oxford yesterday, I was dropping my daughter there for her second year (humblebrag) and they had the F1 on a big screen. People were actually shouting stuff at the screen. It was just some funny looking cars driving round and round in circles. It made golf look interesting. Extraordinary.
Any race that finishes with “God Save The King” played for the winning driver, is a good race.
(It was a pretty boring race, and the TV director had a very bad day at work as half the action that did occur got missed).
So only 7% of Green Party members are environmentalists.
And most of them want to bulldoze over the countryside to build more homes.
Time for a new party.
That's not a fair reading. 81% of members put the Environment as a top priority, more than any other issue and a lot more than the electorate as a whole.
If the Greens concentrate solely on the environment they would be criticised as a single-issue party.
The Conservative Party in 2025 are in the hilarious position of wanting to advocate for a smaller state - but their small remaining voter base are one of the few places you could actually cut from.
“We’re the only ones in touch with fiscal reality” they proclaim. “Um, but we’re not touching the triple lock, or anything else.”
It isn’t Badenoch as much as it is the entire lack of selling point for that party. If you want an anti immigration party, you’ll go for Reform, who give you it without the austerity. If you are dissatisfied with the current government but can’t stomach Farage, the Lib Dems are there. Then there is Labour, who may be preferable for many remaining Tories to Farage (or else they’d be Reform voters already!).
I’m not sure about all of the unlikely to be enacted policies of the Greens but I commend them for the massive amount of lip quivering they’re inducing in righties.
Annoying all the right people?
I may have heard that somewhere else before...
It's annoying the far right people I really enjoy.
Macron is just going to have to appoint a Socialist PM who will raise taxes and not cut spending given Melenchon's Socialist block has most seats. Another election would be pointless with polls giving another hung Assembly with no majority still for Macron's party and their centre right Les Republicains allies
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
Two of my properties are for student accommodation, not sure how the Greens proposals will help.
You’re falling into the trap of believing that you’re doing some sort of civic good rather than simply investing in an unproductive asset.
It produces shelter, every day.
No it doesn’t. The shelter is already there.
Every investment asset has risk associated with it. If you invest in housing you have to accept that it is politically charged. Landlords are not entitled to guaranteed rents and not saying this is you but there is a massive entitlement amongst those who invested in property as a “sure thing”.
Something is badly wrong when it's possible (easy even) to make good, virtually risk-free money by buying residential property simply to rent out. If that era is coming to an end, which I think it is, this is a good thing imo.
Macron is just going to have to appoint a Socialist PM who will raise taxes and not cut spending given Melenchon's Socialist block has most seats. Another election would be pointless with polls giving another hung Assembly with no majority still for Macron's party and their centre right Les Republicains allies
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
The trouble is there isn't much evidence of this effect in the places young people are trying to buy. Scotland's population is flat, we've increased the housing stock by 20% in the Lothians over the last 10 years, and rents and house prices are through the roof.
I'm sure you'll just say "build more" but you must understand why young people are pretty sceptical that it will change much. I was fighting off cash buying landlords for my place - easiest solution would be to kill that demand at source.
Another factor in the housing market is the availability of mortgage finance.
If banks suddenly offered 10x joint salary as a mortgage, house prices would rise accordingly.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
I agree. But the same people who own all the property also oppose development, which I guess is rational because why would they want to reduce the yield of their assets? It doesn’t matter if it negatively affects the economy because fuck those entitled lazy youngsters.
I feel that this is an inherent weakness of capitalism. Its benefits are, by human nature, stifled by rent seeking and monopolisation. Ironic really.
Nope - read Adam Smith. This is why you regulation to prevent monopolistic capture of markets etc.
We have constructed a system where you can't build properties at the rate of demand/population growth. In law. Which is enforced.
I go back to my farmer friend, who couldn't get the police out to deal with serious theft, damage to buildings etc. He started putting the roof back on an abandoned outbuilding - to create a secure store (massive stone walls).
The fuzz and the planners were round, before he'd got the building materials off the pallets.
The problem with the housing market, as @BartholomewRoberts will agree, is far too much regulation. The planning system and building regulations work together to restrict the amount of housing, which will of course for any given level of demand result in a higher cost of housing.
Well it’s irrelevant because there’s no demand amongst the electorate to liberalise the planning system.
A verbatim extract from Trump’s speech to the US top military, courtesy of the Guardian:
America is respected again as a country. We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day. Every day, the guy’s falling down stairs. I said: ‘It’s not our president. We can’t have it.’ I’m very careful, you know, when I walk downstairs for – like I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very – I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record, just try not to fall because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. Need to walk nice and easy. You not have – you don’t have to set any record. Be cool, be cool when you walk down, but don’t, don’t bop down the stairs. That’s the one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen – da da da da da da, bop, bop, bop, he’d go down the stairs, wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great, I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen and it only takes once, but he did a lousy job as president.
I read the first two sentences and thought, 'that's the opposite of true'... then I read the rest and thought this guy belongs in a nursing home.
If I didn't know in advance it was Trump, I'd have said it was someone with a stair obsession or mentally ill.
Trump's preference for escalators might be connected.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Snake oil meets first contact with reality down in Kent:
"Diane Morton, Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care on Kent county council, told the Financial Times that services in Kent were already “down to the bare bones”.
“We’ve got more demand than ever before and it’s growing,” she said, stressing she did not believe access to those services should be limited. “We just want more money.” "
Guardian Live blog
The problem is too many old people. There are no easy solutions. I don't know why politicians can't focus on this problem rather than constantly casting around for some bogeyman - the EU, immigrants etc - to blame for our ills. It's getting so boring.
Well they passed an assisted dying bill and may follow Farage in ending the two child benefit cap.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
I've thought of a further way the Tory Party could conceivably recover back to being one of the two main parties: - Reform wins in 2029 - Reform fails epically in government - The Reform Party collapses - The Tories return I have a suspicion it's this scenario Tories now bank on.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
I agree. But the same people who own all the property also oppose development, which I guess is rational because why would they want to reduce the yield of their assets? It doesn’t matter if it negatively affects the economy because fuck those entitled lazy youngsters.
I feel that this is an inherent weakness of capitalism. Its benefits are, by human nature, stifled by rent seeking and monopolisation. Ironic really.
Nope - read Adam Smith. This is why you regulation to prevent monopolistic capture of markets etc.
We have constructed a system where you can't build properties at the rate of demand/population growth. In law. Which is enforced.
I go back to my farmer friend, who couldn't get the police out to deal with serious theft, damage to buildings etc. He started putting the roof back on an abandoned outbuilding - to create a secure store (massive stone walls).
The fuzz and the planners were round, before he'd got the building materials off the pallets.
The problem with the housing market, as @BartholomewRoberts will agree, is far too much regulation. The planning system and building regulations work together to restrict the amount of housing, which will of course for any given level of demand result in a higher cost of housing.
I'm not so sure about that. The fundamental issue preventing housebuilding is that developments are always vociferously resisted by the existing residents because there is nothing in it for them. If developers were obliged to provide amenities that would improve the quality of the area, then there would be less resistance to development.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
I agree. But the same people who own all the property also oppose development, which I guess is rational because why would they want to reduce the yield of their assets? It doesn’t matter if it negatively affects the economy because fuck those entitled lazy youngsters.
I feel that this is an inherent weakness of capitalism. Its benefits are, by human nature, stifled by rent seeking, regulatory capture and monopolisation. Ironic really.
Which is why nobody has found a model of political economy that beats well-regulated capitalism with market mechanisms in place to prevent competitive monopolies from forming, and social and product protections to prevent a power imbalance between capital, labour and the consumer.
Also why no one ideological approach to political economy works in all contexts, because it’s about maintaining the right equilibrium, with an occasional sharp shove in a new direction needed from policymakers.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
Snake oil meets first contact with reality down in Kent:
"Diane Morton, Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care on Kent county council, told the Financial Times that services in Kent were already “down to the bare bones”.
“We’ve got more demand than ever before and it’s growing,” she said, stressing she did not believe access to those services should be limited. “We just want more money.” "
Guardian Live blog
And ?
We all know the funding model for local govt is broken.
Honestly the obsession with Reform borders on the deranged here.
Politicians say what they need to get elected then ‘find problems’ and blame others.
No different to any other party.
Whatever you may think of KCC, it was my experience they were a well-run county council and the amounts of waste claimed by Reform just didn't exist and this has been proved during Reform's long (and no doubt costly) review of the county council's finances.
The 2025-26 Budget had been passed by the previous administration - the Blue Book containing details of all council expenditure was in the public domain but Reform couldn't or wouldn't go through it before the election and identify areas of potential savings apart from the pensions (which Reform think they can manage better than the LPGS).
I do agree the funding model for local Government is broken - the tax base remains the 1991 revaluation for residential properties which is absurd. Property owners now need to contribute a reasonable sum based on the true value of their properties while somebody (and perhaps Reform can have a go) needs to resolve the funding of social care for vulnerable adults AND children as well as dealing with SEN referrals and the cost of temporary housing accommodation (perhaps once the migrants have gone, we can use the hotels to house our actual homeless).
Once again the issue *isn’t* the valuation. It’s the total tax take. A revaluation just changes who’s paying, it doesn’t fix the issues
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
I agree. But the same people who own all the property also oppose development, which I guess is rational because why would they want to reduce the yield of their assets? It doesn’t matter if it negatively affects the economy because fuck those entitled lazy youngsters.
I feel that this is an inherent weakness of capitalism. Its benefits are, by human nature, stifled by rent seeking and monopolisation. Ironic really.
Nope - read Adam Smith. This is why you regulation to prevent monopolistic capture of markets etc.
We have constructed a system where you can't build properties at the rate of demand/population growth. In law. Which is enforced.
I go back to my farmer friend, who couldn't get the police out to deal with serious theft, damage to buildings etc. He started putting the roof back on an abandoned outbuilding - to create a secure store (massive stone walls).
The fuzz and the planners were round, before he'd got the building materials off the pallets.
The problem with the housing market, as @BartholomewRoberts will agree, is far too much regulation. The planning system and building regulations work together to restrict the amount of housing, which will of course for any given level of demand result in a higher cost of housing.
Well it’s irrelevant because there’s no demand amongst the electorate to liberalise the planning system.
Its not irrelevant as it is the problem, whether the electorate demand it be fixed or not.
To get positive change requires those who realise the problem to campaign relentlessly to get the problem fixed, until someone in office has the cojones to get off their arse and fix the problem.
We're not there yet, but in the last decade the Overton window has moved in our direction, achingly slowly. A decade ago when I was arguing this was a problem and needed fixing most people here still argued that ever-increasing house prices was a good thing as it was "asset" prices going up and that was only a good thing.
Now house prices being too expensive is much more understood and recognised as a problem, which is huge progress even if not enough - the first step to addressing any problem is to recognise what the problem is.
Next is to win the argument that the problem can only be fixed with liberalism. I will keep campaigning for liberalism, whether its popular or not, until the argument is won - because it is the right thing to do and if we win that argument, then politically the right thing happening becomes viable and this country would be a better place.
Many liberalisms have happened over past decades that were once thought impossible. Hopefully one day this will happen, but until it does it remains a problem and it thus remains relevant even if people aren't yet voting for it.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Every government scheme does that, and it’s totally the wrong way around - but it lets the government say they’re “doing something”, and lets a few young people think the government has meaningfully helped them buy their first house.
Over the last couple of days, I've seen three or four different tweets promoted in the 'For you' section saying things like: "why does this cartoon caricature call himself Zack Polanski when his real name is actually David Paulden, yet Tommeh gets criticised for changing his name?"
The reason? Polanski is returning to his family name, denied to him due to anti-Semitism. Tommeh changed his name because he's a criminal.
Dave came up with Zack all by himself
When discussing this yesterday, politicians who use their middle names (James Brown, Al Johnson and Gideon Osborne) were mentioned
Greta should use hers: Tintin Thunberg
Herge presents : Tintin and the 40 year stretch in an Israeli jail.
The IDF shot Snowy and currently five of them are holding Captain Haddock down while a sixth approaches holding a truncheon in a menacing manner.
‘Blistering buggery by a baton!’
In the original version of "Land of Black Gold" Tintin and Captain Haddock are captured by Irgun Zionist terrorists, amongst other misadventures.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
The trouble is there isn't much evidence of this effect in the places young people are trying to buy. Scotland's population is flat, we've increased the housing stock by 20% in the Lothians over the last 10 years, and rents and house prices are through the roof.
I'm sure you'll just say "build more" but you must understand why young people are pretty sceptical that it will change much. I was fighting off cash buying landlords for my place - easiest solution would be to kill that demand at source.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
The trouble is there isn't much evidence of this effect in the places young people are trying to buy. Scotland's population is flat, we've increased the housing stock by 20% in the Lothians over the last 10 years, and rents and house prices are through the roof.
I'm sure you'll just say "build more" but you must understand why young people are pretty sceptical that it will change much. I was fighting off cash buying landlords for my place - easiest solution would be to kill that demand at source.
What you will see, at first, as building increases, demand will *increase*.
This is because of unwind - large numbers of people have been forced into sharing when they don't want to.
The effect of this in London will be massive, when we actually start to deal with this
In 2021, this was 2.4 residents per household (2.4 residents per household in England and 2.3 residents per household in Wales). This is unchanged since 2011
I can't find comparable data from the 1991 census, which is frustrating.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
Downsizing (of a main home, not a BTL) needs to be massively incentivised by the tax system. Stamp duty especially makes the market much stickier than it needs to be, but the rates are now so high that government has become dependent on the revenue it brings in.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
I agree. But the same people who own all the property also oppose development, which I guess is rational because why would they want to reduce the yield of their assets? It doesn’t matter if it negatively affects the economy because fuck those entitled lazy youngsters.
I feel that this is an inherent weakness of capitalism. Its benefits are, by human nature, stifled by rent seeking and monopolisation. Ironic really.
Nope - read Adam Smith. This is why you regulation to prevent monopolistic capture of markets etc.
We have constructed a system where you can't build properties at the rate of demand/population growth. In law. Which is enforced.
I go back to my farmer friend, who couldn't get the police out to deal with serious theft, damage to buildings etc. He started putting the roof back on an abandoned outbuilding - to create a secure store (massive stone walls).
The fuzz and the planners were round, before he'd got the building materials off the pallets.
The problem with the housing market, as @BartholomewRoberts will agree, is far too much regulation. The planning system and building regulations work together to restrict the amount of housing, which will of course for any given level of demand result in a higher cost of housing.
I'm not so sure about that. The fundamental issue preventing housebuilding is that developments are always vociferously resisted by the existing residents because there is nothing in it for them. If developers were obliged to provide amenities that would improve the quality of the area, then there would be less resistance to development.
Indeed, worse than nothing. On the one hand, open countryside and peace around your town. On the other, your childrens' schools overcrowded, your water supply pressure low, your sewerage and mains drainage saturated, your roads that much busier and junctions much more dangerous at rush hour. Even the promise of money later on is to some extent a delusion, given how often developers manage to wriggle out of commitments before and after the fact, and [edit] the way in which amenities and even basic services often only catch up aftyer a considerable delay, if at all. Good - and enforced - planning does help, and has, [edit] as I have seen locally, but the way councils are at the moment ...
In short, and objectively examined, nimbyism can be highly rational. It is in part a protest against enshittification principle as applied to one's very own home.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
The Conservative Party in 2025 are in the hilarious position of wanting to advocate for a smaller state - but their small remaining voter base are one of the few places you could actually cut from.
“We’re the only ones in touch with fiscal reality” they proclaim. “Um, but we’re not touching the triple lock, or anything else.”
It isn’t Badenoch as much as it is the entire lack of selling point for that party. If you want an anti immigration party, you’ll go for Reform, who give you it without the austerity. If you are dissatisfied with the current government but can’t stomach Farage, the Lib Dems are there. Then there is Labour, who may be preferable for many remaining Tories to Farage (or else they’d be Reform voters already!).
Kemi proposed means testing the triple lock at one stage. Reform wants to slash the civil service and axe overseas aid and do a DOGE on local government so is not immune to austerity either.
If I were Badenoch and Stride I would propose the abolition of inheritance tax this week, a policy that would be hugely popular with the Tories current target vote of Middle Class Leavers
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
The trouble is there isn't much evidence of this effect in the places young people are trying to buy. Scotland's population is flat, we've increased the housing stock by 20% in the Lothians over the last 10 years, and rents and house prices are through the roof.
I'm sure you'll just say "build more" but you must understand why young people are pretty sceptical that it will change much. I was fighting off cash buying landlords for my place - easiest solution would be to kill that demand at source.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
The trouble is there isn't much evidence of this effect in the places young people are trying to buy. Scotland's population is flat, we've increased the housing stock by 20% in the Lothians over the last 10 years, and rents and house prices are through the roof.
I'm sure you'll just say "build more" but you must understand why young people are pretty sceptical that it will change much. I was fighting off cash buying landlords for my place - easiest solution would be to kill that demand at source.
What you will see, at first, as building increases, demand will *increase*.
This is because of unwind - large numbers of people have been forced into sharing when they don't want to.
The effect of this in London will be massive, when we actually start to deal with this
Yes, there’s many houses to be built before we start to see meaningful effects on price, because there’s huge pent-up demand in the market that wants to buy but can’t.
In the case of involuntary sharers in London, the new houses built increase the number of households in the first instance.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
In the past decade the long term trends in asset holdings have somewhat flipped.
Total household wealth dropped after the financial crisis, remained in the doldrums for a few years, then started rising and jumped during Covid as savings rates escalated.
At the same time the proportion of household wealth held in property has started to decline a little, and the proportion in financial wealth has increased. Looking at ONS commentary this seems to be a combination of 1. housing market stability, 2. Stock market recovery, 3. Greatly increased saving rates, particularly during and after COVID.
There have been so many smoking-related fires recently, people are banned from smoking indoors. Sadly, Russian oligarchs and their hangers-on are too stupid to go downstairs to smoke outside, so they lean out of the windows...
Macron is just going to have to appoint a Socialist PM who will raise taxes and not cut spending given Melenchon's Socialist block has most seats. Another election would be pointless with polls giving another hung Assembly with no majority still for Macron's party and their centre right Les Republicains allies
Good morning
Maybe the news from France is part of the reason for todays rising bond rates, but nobody, and I mean nobody, has a clue what to do about the economic train wreck careering towards us
Any suggestion of cutting welfare, or the pension triple lock, or any other reduction in spending is shouted down and we even have the absurd proposition that labour are about to remove the 2 child cap
The country simply cannot continue dishing out welfare and benefits and I fear this is not going to end well for the country, or the government in office, when it really goes pear shape
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
We also need to build upwards. A lot of the opposition to new homes relates to land grab, yet vast numbers of properties are single-family homes, unlike most developed countries, and some local planning guidance prevents anything else. Sure, most people prefer it, but if a property is 25-30% cheaper if it's in a block of spacious flats, a proportion will say yes please.
Macron is just going to have to appoint a Socialist PM who will raise taxes and not cut spending given Melenchon's Socialist block has most seats. Another election would be pointless with polls giving another hung Assembly with no majority still for Macron's party and their centre right Les Republicains allies
Good morning
Maybe the news from France is part of the reason for todays rising bond rates, but nobody, and I mean nobody, has a clue what to do about the economic train wreck careering towards us
Any suggestion of cutting welfare, or the pension triple lock, or any other reduction in spending is shouted down and we even have the absurd proposition that labour are about to remove the 2 child cap
The country simply cannot continue dishing out welfare and benefits and I fear this is not going to end well for the country, or the government in office, when it really goes pear shape
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
I've thought of a further way the Tory Party could conceivably recover back to being one of the two main parties: - Reform wins in 2029 - Reform fails epically in government - The Reform Party collapses - The Tories return I have a suspicion it's this scenario Tories now bank on.
Macron is just going to have to appoint a Socialist PM who will raise taxes and not cut spending given Melenchon's Socialist block has most seats. Another election would be pointless with polls giving another hung Assembly with no majority still for Macron's party and their centre right Les Republicains allies
Good morning
Maybe the news from France is part of the reason for todays rising bond rates, but nobody, and I mean nobody, has a clue what to do about the economic train wreck careering towards us
Any suggestion of cutting welfare, or the pension triple lock, or any other reduction in spending is shouted down and we even have the absurd proposition that labour are about to remove the 2 child cap
The country simply cannot continue dishing out welfare and benefits and I fear this is not going to end well for the country, or the government in office, when it really goes pear shape
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
So only 7% of Green Party members are environmentalists.
And most of them want to bulldoze over the countryside to build more homes.
Time for a new party.
That's not a fair reading. 81% of members put the Environment as a top priority, more than any other issue and a lot more than the electorate as a whole.
If the Greens concentrate solely on the environment they would be criticised as a single-issue party.
Focusing on climate change is single issue. Environmentalism covers a broad range of topics.
And if no political party is campaigning on this agenda, it is not present in the political discourse.
An environmentalist party can campaign on what needs to be done. Once that becomes the accepted norm (as we thought was the case with Net Zero), then the other parties of left and right can figure out how to implement it, and pay for it.
Over the last couple of days, I've seen three or four different tweets promoted in the 'For you' section saying things like: "why does this cartoon caricature call himself Zack Polanski when his real name is actually David Paulden, yet Tommeh gets criticised for changing his name?"
The reason? Polanski is returning to his family name, denied to him due to anti-Semitism. Tommeh changed his name because he's a criminal.
Dave came up with Zack all by himself
When discussing this yesterday, politicians who use their middle names (James Brown, Al Johnson and Gideon Osborne) were mentioned
Greta should use hers: Tintin Thunberg
Herge presents : Tintin and the 40 year stretch in an Israeli jail.
The IDF shot Snowy and currently five of them are holding Captain Haddock down while a sixth approaches holding a truncheon in a menacing manner.
‘Blistering buggery by a baton!’
In the original version of "Land of Black Gold" Tintin and Captain Haddock are captured by Irgun Zionist terrorists, amongst other misadventures.
The Conservative Party in 2025 are in the hilarious position of wanting to advocate for a smaller state - but their small remaining voter base are one of the few places you could actually cut from.
“We’re the only ones in touch with fiscal reality” they proclaim. “Um, but we’re not touching the triple lock, or anything else.”
It isn’t Badenoch as much as it is the entire lack of selling point for that party. If you want an anti immigration party, you’ll go for Reform, who give you it without the austerity. If you are dissatisfied with the current government but can’t stomach Farage, the Lib Dems are there. Then there is Labour, who may be preferable for many remaining Tories to Farage (or else they’d be Reform voters already!).
Kemi proposed means testing the triple lock at one stage. Reform wants to slash the civil service and axe overseas aid and do a DOGE on local government so is not immune to austerity either.
If I were Badenoch and Stride I would propose the abolition of inheritance tax this week, a policy that would be hugely popular with the Tories current target vote of Middle Class Leavers
All these magical service cost cuts proposed today that you couldn't implement between 2010 and 2024, are they likely from 2029? If not, how do you square the circle of tax cut upon tax cuts your Party will propose this week?
The one plus point in your favour is no one is questioning the logic of your Party's tax less and talk about spending less position.
The Greens are now under Polanski a socialist, probably Trans, anti Brexit, pro immigration, anti Israel and anti Trump party far more than an action on climate change party. Indeed in wishing to ban landlords they are even left of Corbyn who they want to deal with via his Your Party.
I disagree with the final point from TSE though. Polanski has made clear he sees Farage as his enemy and 99% of Green voters rule out a Coalition with Reform and disapprove of Farage. Over half of Green voters back a coalition with Labour though so on a forced choice in a Labour seat many would cast tactical votes for Labour to beat Reform
Many (most?) Greens would argue that anti-capitalist policies are an essential pre-requisite for action on climate change because it is our capitalist system that has proved so ineffectual at addressing the problem until past the point of no return.
I want to believe they are wrong (because I think their point of view is economically illiterate), but it must be said that our current model of capitalism is rather making their argument for them.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
I've thought of a further way the Tory Party could conceivably recover back to being one of the two main parties: - Reform wins in 2029 - Reform fails epically in government - The Reform Party collapses - The Tories return I have a suspicion it's this scenario Tories now bank on.
Macron is just going to have to appoint a Socialist PM who will raise taxes and not cut spending given Melenchon's Socialist block has most seats. Another election would be pointless with polls giving another hung Assembly with no majority still for Macron's party and their centre right Les Republicains allies
Good morning
Maybe the news from France is part of the reason for todays rising bond rates, but nobody, and I mean nobody, has a clue what to do about the economic train wreck careering towards us
Any suggestion of cutting welfare, or the pension triple lock, or any other reduction in spending is shouted down and we even have the absurd proposition that labour are about to remove the 2 child cap
The country simply cannot continue dishing out welfare and benefits and I fear this is not going to end well for the country, or the government in office, when it really goes pear shape
The Conservative Party in 2025 are in the hilarious position of wanting to advocate for a smaller state - but their small remaining voter base are one of the few places you could actually cut from.
“We’re the only ones in touch with fiscal reality” they proclaim. “Um, but we’re not touching the triple lock, or anything else.”
It isn’t Badenoch as much as it is the entire lack of selling point for that party. If you want an anti immigration party, you’ll go for Reform, who give you it without the austerity. If you are dissatisfied with the current government but can’t stomach Farage, the Lib Dems are there. Then there is Labour, who may be preferable for many remaining Tories to Farage (or else they’d be Reform voters already!).
Kemi proposed means testing the triple lock at one stage. Reform wants to slash the civil service and axe overseas aid and do a DOGE on local government so is not immune to austerity either.
If I were Badenoch and Stride I would propose the abolition of inheritance tax this week, a policy that would be hugely popular with the Tories current target vote of Middle Class Leavers
IHT raises much less than 1% of state expenditure and is the cause of a lucrative industry in avoidance, some of which directly damages UK wealth through flight, and much of which keeps indigent and deserving Lincoln's Inn lawyers, and their accountant friends in business - who would otherwise live in workhouses off benefits.
At the same time the middle is squeezed by over taxation. The answers are either to be better at taxing wealth in the usual ways, including property (which is a scandal) or to apply IHT at a much lower rate, (5-10% max) applying also to capital transfer inter vivos, and without exemptions.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us yet
The Greens are now under Polanski a socialist, probably Trans, anti Brexit, pro immigration, anti Israel and anti Trump party far more than an action on climate change party. Indeed in wishing to ban landlords they are even left of Corbyn who they want to deal with via his Your Party.
I disagree with the final point from TSE though. Polanski has made clear he sees Farage as his enemy and 99% of Green voters rule out a Coalition with Reform and disapprove of Farage. Over half of Green voters back a coalition with Labour though so on a forced choice in a Labour seat many would cast tactical votes for Labour to beat Reform
Many (most?) Greens would argue that anti-capitalist policies are an essential pre-requisite for action on climate change because it is our capitalist system that has proved so ineffectual at addressing the problem until past the point of no return.
I want to believe they are wrong (because I think their point of view is economically illiterate), but it must be said that our current model of capitalism is rather making their argument for them.
They're completely wrong and ignorant if they do.
Technological change and adaptation is required for action on climate change and history shows that our capitalist system is the best at both implementing and developing key technological changes.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
Hideous news about Lewis Moody. Awful. Sympax in the extreme
This is something that actually unites NFL and rugby - they both have major problems with brain damage to players and haven’t found a way to really fix it
There is undoubtedly an issue with concussions and minor concussions in a fair number of sports. Football I think is trying to address it a bit by restricting headers in kids and in training. Rugby is doing its bit too with the efforts to ensure that tackle heights are lowered.
However, while there have been several significant ex players in rugby and football (and I am sure in NFL) that have ended up with MND we cannot be certain that it is related to the sport. A certain subset of people will get MND. We see an ex rugby player get it and we immediately assume its from the rugby, whereas it may not be. As a species we need 'Just So' stories all about why stuff happens and this is definitely an example. When I ended up with leukemia I was obsessed with the metal loop in my knee from a surgery some years before, thinking this was the cause. It almost certainly wasn't, but my head needed a reason.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Over the last couple of days, I've seen three or four different tweets promoted in the 'For you' section saying things like: "why does this cartoon caricature call himself Zack Polanski when his real name is actually David Paulden, yet Tommeh gets criticised for changing his name?"
The reason? Polanski is returning to his family name, denied to him due to anti-Semitism. Tommeh changed his name because he's a criminal.
Maybe, but there is also a disdain for Robinson (real name Yaxley-Lennon) too. Lots of people who are disgusted by him and his antics seem obsessed with his real name.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
I would replace council tax with a proportionate property tax at the same time - this would ensure that about three-quarters of people saw reductions in their annual property tax.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
I agree. But the same people who own all the property also oppose development, which I guess is rational because why would they want to reduce the yield of their assets? It doesn’t matter if it negatively affects the economy because fuck those entitled lazy youngsters.
I feel that this is an inherent weakness of capitalism. Its benefits are, by human nature, stifled by rent seeking and monopolisation. Ironic really.
Nope - read Adam Smith. This is why you regulation to prevent monopolistic capture of markets etc.
We have constructed a system where you can't build properties at the rate of demand/population growth. In law. Which is enforced.
I go back to my farmer friend, who couldn't get the police out to deal with serious theft, damage to buildings etc. He started putting the roof back on an abandoned outbuilding - to create a secure store (massive stone walls).
The fuzz and the planners were round, before he'd got the building materials off the pallets.
The problem with the housing market, as @BartholomewRoberts will agree, is far too much regulation. The planning system and building regulations work together to restrict the amount of housing, which will of course for any given level of demand result in a higher cost of housing.
I'm not so sure about that. The fundamental issue preventing housebuilding is that developments are always vociferously resisted by the existing residents because there is nothing in it for them. If developers were obliged to provide amenities that would improve the quality of the area, then there would be less resistance to development.
Indeed, worse than nothing. On the one hand, open countryside and peace around your town. On the other, your childrens' schools overcrowded, your water supply pressure low, your sewerage and mains drainage saturated, your roads that much busier and junctions much more dangerous at rush hour. Even the promise of money later on is to some extent a delusion, given how often developers manage to wriggle out of commitments before and after the fact, and [edit] the way in which amenities and even basic services often only catch up aftyer a considerable delay, if at all. Good - and enforced - planning does help, and has, [edit] as I have seen locally, but the way councils are at the moment ...
In short, and objectively examined, nimbyism can be highly rational. It is in part a protest against enshittification principle as applied to one's very own home.
Notably, what has nearly completely stopped is organic growth of villages, towns etc. It seems to be either "planned" or not at all.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
We also need to build upwards. A lot of the opposition to new homes relates to land grab, yet vast numbers of properties are single-family homes, unlike most developed countries, and some local planning guidance prevents anything else. Sure, most people prefer it, but if a property is 25-30% cheaper if it's in a block of spacious flats, a proportion will say yes please.
Have you been to Manchester/Salford or Leeds recently? Plenty of upwards going on!
The Greens are now under Polanski a socialist, probably Trans, anti Brexit, pro immigration, anti Israel and anti Trump party far more than an action on climate change party. Indeed in wishing to ban landlords they are even left of Corbyn who they want to deal with via his Your Party.
I disagree with the final point from TSE though. Polanski has made clear he sees Farage as his enemy and 99% of Green voters rule out a Coalition with Reform and disapprove of Farage. Over half of Green voters back a coalition with Labour though so on a forced choice in a Labour seat many would cast tactical votes for Labour to beat Reform
Many (most?) Greens would argue that anti-capitalist policies are an essential pre-requisite for action on climate change because it is our capitalist system that has proved so ineffectual at addressing the problem until past the point of no return.
I want to believe they are wrong (because I think their point of view is economically illiterate), but it must be said that our current model of capitalism is rather making their argument for them.
They're completely wrong and ignorant if they do.
Technological change and adaptation is required for action on climate change and history shows that our capitalist system is the best at both implementing and developing key technological changes.
A capitalist system with the right regulatory incentives and disincentives to force innovation and behavioural change. Otherwise we end up stuck with the technology of the 1800s, complete with biologically dead rivers, toxic air and rampant soil erosion.
And that has to be global. Otherwise you get regulatory arbitrage and the tragedy of the commons.
That’s the problem with both dirigiste socialist and unregulated capitalist systems. They tend to monopoly and stifle innovation.
Over the last couple of days, I've seen three or four different tweets promoted in the 'For you' section saying things like: "why does this cartoon caricature call himself Zack Polanski when his real name is actually David Paulden, yet Tommeh gets criticised for changing his name?"
The reason? Polanski is returning to his family name, denied to him due to anti-Semitism. Tommeh changed his name because he's a criminal.
Dave came up with Zack all by himself
When discussing this yesterday, politicians who use their middle names (James Brown, Al Johnson and Gideon Osborne) were mentioned
Greta should use hers: Tintin Thunberg
Herge presents : Tintin and the 40 year stretch in an Israeli jail.
The IDF shot Snowy and currently five of them are holding Captain Haddock down while a sixth approaches holding a truncheon in a menacing manner.
‘Blistering buggery by a baton!’
In the original version of "Land of Black Gold" Tintin and Captain Haddock are captured by Irgun Zionist terrorists, amongst other misadventures.
Life imitates art.
The original version was written in 1939 I believe, and set in the British Mandate of Palestine
By the time it was published in 1950, things had changed a little on the ground
Apparently the British publishers put pressure on Hergé to relocate it to a fictional Arab state
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
I’m not sure about all of the unlikely to be enacted policies of the Greens but I commend them for the massive amount of lip quivering they’re inducing in righties.
Good morning, everyone.
I rather dislike the '"they're annoying the right sort of people" line of 'thinking' that's becoming ever more popular in political discourse.
An idiot can be right sometimes. The wise can be wrong. And annoying any group of people is not a reason to do anything. It's just throwing more excrement into the cesspit of negativity, of which we already have an overflowing abundance.
I know you're saying this in a lighthearted way, so please don't take it as an attack on yourself. Some people, alas, see it as an end in itself. Such is polarised political division for fundamentalists.
I've taken the 12s on Max Verstappen to win the F1 title this year.
McLaren are going to fuck this up.
Much as it would be to my advantage (I backed Verstappen early, at 4), I don't think this will happen.
Pre-Singapore, Verstappen needed a 10 point advantage every single race weekend to beat Piastri. It's now even more difficult.
Over the last couple of days, I've seen three or four different tweets promoted in the 'For you' section saying things like: "why does this cartoon caricature call himself Zack Polanski when his real name is actually David Paulden, yet Tommeh gets criticised for changing his name?"
The reason? Polanski is returning to his family name, denied to him due to anti-Semitism. Tommeh changed his name because he's a criminal.
Maybe, but there is also a disdain for Robinson (real name Yaxley-Lennon) too. Lots of people who are disgusted by him and his antics seem obsessed with his real name.
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is the name that appears on the court documents and his criminal record. His other six pseudonyms whitewash the artist formerly known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
We also need to build upwards. A lot of the opposition to new homes relates to land grab, yet vast numbers of properties are single-family homes, unlike most developed countries, and some local planning guidance prevents anything else. Sure, most people prefer it, but if a property is 25-30% cheaper if it's in a block of spacious flats, a proportion will say yes please.
Have you been to Manchester/Salford or Leeds recently? Plenty of upwards going on!
We went to York from Colwyn Bay by train recently through Manchester and Leeds and was astonished at how much construction was going on
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
Two of my properties are for student accommodation, not sure how the Greens proposals will help.
Over the last couple of days, I've seen three or four different tweets promoted in the 'For you' section saying things like: "why does this cartoon caricature call himself Zack Polanski when his real name is actually David Paulden, yet Tommeh gets criticised for changing his name?"
The reason? Polanski is returning to his family name, denied to him due to anti-Semitism. Tommeh changed his name because he's a criminal.
Maybe, but there is also a disdain for Robinson (real name Yaxley-Lennon) too. Lots of people who are disgusted by him and his antics seem obsessed with his real name.
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is the name that appears on the court documents and his criminal record. His other six pseudonyms whitewash the artist formerly known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Hardly as you all seem to know his other name! Its a rather pathetic act. The man is odious, but its utterly pathetic to see this every time his name is mentioned.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
I've thought of a further way the Tory Party could conceivably recover back to being one of the two main parties: - Reform wins in 2029 - Reform fails epically in government - The Reform Party collapses - The Tories return I have a suspicion it's this scenario Tories now bank on.
This thought is fairly obvious really. It is one of the options. SFAICS the UK voters as a whole in their collective wisdom have no great desire to shift from the post WWII norm: that there are precisely two parties who can be thought of as being capable of forming a government.
For the moment, and unusually these are Reform and Labour, but the chances of Reform retaining that position over the medium term must be fairly low.
For a new party to get to Reform's position of 'possible governing party' is a staggering achievement, requiring both grotesque incompetence from the place holders, and some luck from circumstances, as well as top quality charisma. The SDP with a million times more credibility failed to do this.
Therefore: Chance of Reform fail is high. Chance of a non-Tory replacement for Reform is low. But replacement would be essential. Therefroe however improbably it may seem Tory recovery remains possible.
Which makes it a good moment for a high flying young risk taker to join.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
I would replace council tax with a proportionate property tax at the same time - this would ensure that about three-quarters of people saw reductions in their annual property tax.
How do the maths work there? Are you describing a national scale of property taxes rather than a local one, which would totally screw London and the South-East?
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
We also need to build upwards. A lot of the opposition to new homes relates to land grab, yet vast numbers of properties are single-family homes, unlike most developed countries, and some local planning guidance prevents anything else. Sure, most people prefer it, but if a property is 25-30% cheaper if it's in a block of spacious flats, a proportion will say yes please.
Have you been to Manchester/Salford or Leeds recently? Plenty of upwards going on!
We went to York from Colwyn Bay by train recently through Manchester and Leeds and was astonished at how much construction was going on
I am sitting in a Manc tower block as we speak. Almost as much high rise construction here as Lewisham town centre.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Snake oil meets first contact with reality down in Kent:
"Diane Morton, Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care on Kent county council, told the Financial Times that services in Kent were already “down to the bare bones”.
“We’ve got more demand than ever before and it’s growing,” she said, stressing she did not believe access to those services should be limited. “We just want more money.” "
Guardian Live blog
And ?
We all know the funding model for local govt is broken.
Honestly the obsession with Reform borders on the deranged here...
There’s a lot to digest from this YouGov polling, the thing that stands out for me is just 54% of Green voters would be willing to go into a coalition with Labour.
The question was MEMBERS, not voters.
We need an exploration of the difference between the categories, if we are to know the impact on voting patterns.
For example, I could vote Green locally (maybe nationally depending) - but I would never be a member until they move on from medievalist economic policies around ant-growth, and recognise that growth is perfectly possible with lower energy intensity per unit of GDP.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
I would replace council tax with a proportionate property tax at the same time - this would ensure that about three-quarters of people saw reductions in their annual property tax.
How do the maths work there? Are you describing a national scale of property taxes rather than a local one, which would totally screw London and the South-East?
A properly operated property or better still land value tax would and should be devolved, alongside other taxes including income tax and corporation tax. That would then sit alongside broader regional transfers managed by central government. It works very well in multiple other countries that are far less over-concentrated in one region than we are.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
I would replace council tax with a proportionate property tax at the same time - this would ensure that about three-quarters of people saw reductions in their annual property tax.
How do the maths work there? Are you describing a national scale of property taxes rather than a local one, which would totally screw London and the South-East?
Yes, it would be a national rate.
I don't accept that asking people with high value property to pay a proportionate tax on the value of that property is equivalent to screwing the areas of the country those properties are concentrated in. I think it would be fairer than the current system, and would provide a modest disincentive to people pouring all their wealth into property, as the more wealth they put into property the more tax they would pay.
There are defects, of course, as with any system, but I think it comes up as a net improvement over council tax.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Like myself BigG. our children and grandchildren will be fine when we shuffle off our mortal coils, particularly if "repeal all inheritance tax laws" HYUFD is in Government.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
It's not even a question mark any longer as to whether she was a Russian asset. Clear now that she's been on their side since the beginning.
Her predecessor had the distinction, I believe, of being the first German Chancellor since Hitler to have then lose the freedom of the city of Hanover (Schroeder refused to resign his position with a Russian firm when the 2022 invasion occurred),
No-one wants to admit to making mistakes, and it's now evident to most people that Merkel's policy in relation to Russia failed. Of course it failed, if it had worked then Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine.
To avoid admitting to this mistake she has to find someone else to blame. So, naturally, her policy was perfect, but its perfection was not realised as it was blocked by the failures of others.
I'm struggling to think of a major political leader willing to admit to making major mistakes in office, and showing evidence of having learned from them.
I love reading landlord forums and seeing how they think they’re doing everyone a favour. Delulu levels off the charts.
You'll miss us when rent controls destroy the market.
We need to destroy this market - it is broken. Part of the reason why our economy is broken is because people pay crazy amounts of their wages in mortgages pr worse still rent. That is money not circulating through the economy which costs more jobs and removes growth.
There's too many people and not enough housing.
What have landlords to do with it?
You could change the proportions of housing tenure without building any additional housing. There is a need for a rental market for students and highly mobile workers, but the vast majority of the 9.3 million households renting do not want to be.
Over the last 10 years we've built about 2 million houses, but the number of households renting has increased by 1.3 million. Just building houses isn't enough - you need to do something about tenure too.
You may not have noticed a small population increase. But reading the papers, some other people have.
Why does that matter for changing proportions of housing tenure? You could build millions more houses but if they are all bought up by private landlords it doesn't help people get onto the housing ladder.
Because if lots of places for rent are available, rents fall to below the cost of buying a property, with a full mortgage.
That is, you can't make a profit from renting a place with large amounts of debt against it.
This has been observed everywhere there is a functional property market (8%+ of properties empty due to lack of demand). This is because prices get set by those who have significant capital in the properties, allowing them to make a return at a lower price.
I agree. But the same people who own all the property also oppose development, which I guess is rational because why would they want to reduce the yield of their assets? It doesn’t matter if it negatively affects the economy because fuck those entitled lazy youngsters.
I feel that this is an inherent weakness of capitalism. Its benefits are, by human nature, stifled by rent seeking and monopolisation. Ironic really.
Nope - read Adam Smith. This is why you regulation to prevent monopolistic capture of markets etc.
We have constructed a system where you can't build properties at the rate of demand/population growth. In law. Which is enforced.
I go back to my farmer friend, who couldn't get the police out to deal with serious theft, damage to buildings etc. He started putting the roof back on an abandoned outbuilding - to create a secure store (massive stone walls).
The fuzz and the planners were round, before he'd got the building materials off the pallets.
The problem with the housing market, as @BartholomewRoberts will agree, is far too much regulation. The planning system and building regulations work together to restrict the amount of housing, which will of course for any given level of demand result in a higher cost of housing.
Well it’s irrelevant because there’s no demand amongst the electorate to liberalise the planning system.
Yes, the demand is to restrict population growth, hence Reform.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
I would replace council tax with a proportionate property tax at the same time - this would ensure that about three-quarters of people saw reductions in their annual property tax.
How do the maths work there? Are you describing a national scale of property taxes rather than a local one, which would totally screw London and the South-East?
Yes, it would be a national rate.
I don't accept that asking people with high value property to pay a proportionate tax on the value of that property is equivalent to screwing the areas of the country those properties are concentrated in. I think it would be fairer than the current system, and would provide a modest disincentive to people pouring all their wealth into property, as the more wealth they put into property the more tax they would pay.
There are defects, of course, as with any system, but I think it comes up as a net improvement over council tax.
Indeed, it would also reduce some of the heat and overpressure of the market in London and the South East by incentivising construction and development in the North where prices and taxes would be lower. Reducing the overpressure in London and the South East would help London and the South East, not harm it, as much as it might be an uncomfortable transition for those currently paying a pittance of tax on a very handsome property holding.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
I would replace council tax with a proportionate property tax at the same time - this would ensure that about three-quarters of people saw reductions in their annual property tax.
How do the maths work there? Are you describing a national scale of property taxes rather than a local one, which would totally screw London and the South-East?
Yes, it would be a national rate.
I don't accept that asking people with high value property to pay a proportionate tax on the value of that property is equivalent to screwing the areas of the country those properties are concentrated in. I think it would be fairer than the current system, and would provide a modest disincentive to people pouring all their wealth into property, as the more wealth they put into property the more tax they would pay.
There are defects, of course, as with any system, but I think it comes up as a net improvement over council tax.
In my mind it breaks the link between local taxes and local services, and all of your losers are concentrated geographically.
Those most hit would be the low paid in London, who would be asked to pay maybe £4k a year for a two-bed apartment. Key services could see mass resignations.
Also how would that interact with the benefits system, would the government pay the £4k for the unemployed, making it even more difficult for them to get back to work? I agree with the concept of merging SDLT into Council Tax or a percentage property tax, but the rates need to be set by the councils not centrally, and initially on a revenue neutral basis.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Like myself BigG. our children and grandchildren will be fine when we shuffle off our mortal coils, particularly if "repeal all inheritance tax laws" HYUFD is in Government.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
That's a ridiculous attitude, when you shuffle off your mortal coils your children and grandchildren could be by then at or approaching pension age themselves. So it would be far too late to be "fine".
I'm in my mid-40s now and still have living grandparents. My parents are pensioners and have living parents. The idea inheritance solves anything is preposterous given that people need houses to live in from either their late teens or early 20s, not from their 60s or 70s when their parents die.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Like myself BigG. our children and grandchildren will be fine when we shuffle off our mortal coils, particularly if "repeal all inheritance tax laws" HYUFD is in Government.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
That's a ridiculous attitude, when you shuffle off your mortal coils your children and great grandchildren could be by then at or approaching pension age themselves.
I'm in my mid-40s now and still have living grandparents. My parents are pensioners and have living parents. The idea inheritance solves anything is preposterous given that people need houses to live in from their 20s, not from their 60s or 70s when their parents die.
Seems shortsighted as well because you never know if care costs, other costs, or tax changes will consume all of that money/capital. A hell of a risk.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
This is the problem. A 22 year old should be able to afford their own home.
They should be able to do so from their own wages, without help from Mum and Dad, or grandparents, or an inheritance from the death of their parents which hopefully would be many decades away.
Comments
............Well spare a thought for those who met their husbands/wives at the local Tory association hop little knowing that in 2025 they'd find themselves led by the trully dire Kemi Badenoch wanting to seal the deal with political oblivion by leaving the ECHR? Maggie turning in her grave......
......Or those Labour followers from the 70's and 80's who would send Nelson Mandela birthday cards to Robbin Island before attending ANL rallies on Saturday mornings to find in 2025 their Party was now in a lockstep with the most horrendous genocidal apartheid regime of the 21st century?
I'm sure you'll just say "build more" but you must understand why young people are pretty sceptical that it will change much. I was fighting off cash buying landlords for my place - easiest solution would be to kill that demand at source.
France's Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has resigned, less than a day after his cabinet was unveiled.
The Elysée palace made the announcement after Lecornu met President Emmanuel Macron for an hour on Monday morning.
The shock move comes only 26 days Lecornu was appointed prime minister following the collapse of the previous government of François Bayrou.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewn9k0w9rxo
I was once called in by sitting tenants to deal with a rat problem. It was odd because that property had never had a pest control problem before these people arrived. After setting out discreet poison traps in cupboards I suggested their issue might be eased if they cleared away and disposed of all the half eaten take aways from the kitchen worktop.
I no longer approve of Rachmanesque landlords and the tenants who deserve them.
If I didn't know in advance it was Trump, I'd have said it was someone with a stair obsession or mentally ill.
https://www.gold.co.uk/gold-price/40year/ounces/GBP/
(It was a pretty boring race, and the TV director had a very bad day at work as half the action that did occur got missed).
If the Greens concentrate solely on the environment they would be criticised as a single-issue party.
“We’re the only ones in touch with fiscal reality” they proclaim. “Um, but we’re not touching the triple lock, or anything else.”
It isn’t Badenoch as much as it is the entire lack of selling point for that party. If you want an anti immigration party, you’ll go for Reform, who give you it without the austerity. If you are dissatisfied with the current government but can’t stomach Farage, the Lib Dems are there. Then there is Labour, who may be preferable for many remaining Tories to Farage (or else they’d be Reform voters already!).
If banks suddenly offered 10x joint salary as a mortgage, house prices would rise accordingly.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu resigns after less than a month
@jorisbinned.bsky.social
Is there anything to be said for bringing back Peter Mandelson?
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
I've thought of a further way the Tory Party could conceivably recover back to being one of the two main parties:
- Reform wins in 2029
- Reform fails epically in government
- The Reform Party collapses
- The Tories return
I have a suspicion it's this scenario Tories now bank on.
https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1974952882077343824
Also why no one ideological approach to political economy works in all contexts, because it’s about maintaining the right equilibrium, with an occasional sharp shove in a new direction needed from policymakers.
...
Leontyev was seen as knowledgeable about the secret wealth of the Kremlin.
https://metro.co.uk/2025/10/06/russian-newspaper-head-mysteriously-falls-70ft-death-a-window-24350070/
To get positive change requires those who realise the problem to campaign relentlessly to get the problem fixed, until someone in office has the cojones to get off their arse and fix the problem.
We're not there yet, but in the last decade the Overton window has moved in our direction, achingly slowly. A decade ago when I was arguing this was a problem and needed fixing most people here still argued that ever-increasing house prices was a good thing as it was "asset" prices going up and that was only a good thing.
Now house prices being too expensive is much more understood and recognised as a problem, which is huge progress even if not enough - the first step to addressing any problem is to recognise what the problem is.
Next is to win the argument that the problem can only be fixed with liberalism. I will keep campaigning for liberalism, whether its popular or not, until the argument is won - because it is the right thing to do and if we win that argument, then politically the right thing happening becomes viable and this country would be a better place.
Many liberalisms have happened over past decades that were once thought impossible. Hopefully one day this will happen, but until it does it remains a problem and it thus remains relevant even if people aren't yet voting for it.
Life imitates art.
This is because of unwind - large numbers of people have been forced into sharing when they don't want to.
The effect of this in London will be massive, when we actually start to deal with this
In short, and objectively examined, nimbyism can be highly rational. It is in part a protest against enshittification principle as applied to one's very own home.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
If I were Badenoch and Stride I would propose the abolition of inheritance tax this week, a policy that would be hugely popular with the Tories current target vote of Middle Class Leavers
In the case of involuntary sharers in London, the new houses built increase the number of households in the first instance.
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Total household wealth dropped after the financial crisis, remained in the doldrums for a few years, then started rising and jumped during Covid as savings rates escalated.
At the same time the proportion of household wealth held in property has started to decline a little, and the proportion in financial wealth has increased. Looking at ONS commentary this seems to be a combination of 1. housing market stability, 2. Stock market recovery, 3. Greatly increased saving rates, particularly during and after COVID.
Those who are aware, like my wife, have abandoned them and are politically homeless.
Maybe the news from France is part of the reason for todays rising bond rates, but nobody, and I mean nobody, has a clue what to do about the economic train wreck careering towards us
Any suggestion of cutting welfare, or the pension triple lock, or any other reduction in spending is shouted down and we even have the absurd proposition that labour are about to remove the 2 child cap
The country simply cannot continue dishing out welfare and benefits and I fear this is not going to end well for the country, or the government in office, when it really goes pear shape
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
And if no political party is campaigning on this agenda, it is not present in the political discourse.
An environmentalist party can campaign on what needs to be done. Once that becomes the accepted norm (as we thought was the case with Net Zero), then the other parties of left and right can figure out how to implement it, and pay for it.
The one plus point in your favour is no one is questioning the logic of your Party's tax less and talk about spending less position.
I want to believe they are wrong (because I think their point of view is economically illiterate), but it must be said that our current model of capitalism is rather making their argument for them.
At the same time the middle is squeezed by over taxation. The answers are either to be better at taxing wealth in the usual ways, including property (which is a scandal) or to apply IHT at a much lower rate, (5-10% max) applying also to capital transfer inter vivos, and without exemptions.
Technological change and adaptation is required for action on climate change and history shows that our capitalist system is the best at both implementing and developing key technological changes.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
However, while there have been several significant ex players in rugby and football (and I am sure in NFL) that have ended up with MND we cannot be certain that it is related to the sport. A certain subset of people will get MND. We see an ex rugby player get it and we immediately assume its from the rugby, whereas it may not be. As a species we need 'Just So' stories all about why stuff happens and this is definitely an example. When I ended up with leukemia I was obsessed with the metal loop in my knee from a surgery some years before, thinking this was the cause. It almost certainly wasn't, but my head needed a reason.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
And that has to be global. Otherwise you get regulatory arbitrage and the tragedy of the commons.
That’s the problem with both dirigiste socialist and unregulated capitalist systems. They tend to monopoly and stifle innovation.
By the time it was published in 1950, things had changed a little on the ground
Apparently the British publishers put pressure on Hergé to relocate it to a fictional Arab state
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
Pre-Singapore, Verstappen needed a 10 point advantage every single race weekend to beat Piastri. It's now even more difficult.
For the moment, and unusually these are Reform and Labour, but the chances of Reform retaining that position over the medium term must be fairly low.
For a new party to get to Reform's position of 'possible governing party' is a staggering achievement, requiring both grotesque incompetence from the place holders, and some luck from circumstances, as well as top quality charisma. The SDP with a million times more credibility failed to do this.
Therefore: Chance of Reform fail is high. Chance of a non-Tory replacement for Reform is low. But replacement would be essential. Therefroe however improbably it may seem Tory recovery remains possible.
Which makes it a good moment for a high flying young risk taker to join.
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
There’s a lot to digest from this YouGov polling, the thing that stands out for me is just 54% of Green voters would be willing to go into a coalition with Labour.
The question was MEMBERS, not voters.
We need an exploration of the difference between the categories, if we are to know the impact on voting patterns.
For example, I could vote Green locally (maybe nationally depending) - but I would never be a member until they move on from medievalist economic policies around ant-growth, and recognise that growth is perfectly possible with lower energy intensity per unit of GDP.
I don't accept that asking people with high value property to pay a proportionate tax on the value of that property is equivalent to screwing the areas of the country those properties are concentrated in. I think it would be fairer than the current system, and would provide a modest disincentive to people pouring all their wealth into property, as the more wealth they put into property the more tax they would pay.
There are defects, of course, as with any system, but I think it comes up as a net improvement over council tax.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
No-one wants to admit to making mistakes, and it's now evident to most people that Merkel's policy in relation to Russia failed. Of course it failed, if it had worked then Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine.
To avoid admitting to this mistake she has to find someone else to blame. So, naturally, her policy was perfect, but its perfection was not realised as it was blocked by the failures of others.
I'm struggling to think of a major political leader willing to admit to making major mistakes in office, and showing evidence of having learned from them.
Those most hit would be the low paid in London, who would be asked to pay maybe £4k a year for a two-bed apartment. Key services could see mass resignations.
Also how would that interact with the benefits system, would the government pay the £4k for the unemployed, making it even more difficult for them to get back to work?
I agree with the concept of merging SDLT into Council Tax or a percentage property tax, but the rates need to be set by the councils not centrally, and initially on a revenue neutral basis.
I'm in my mid-40s now and still have living grandparents. My parents are pensioners and have living parents. The idea inheritance solves anything is preposterous given that people need houses to live in from either their late teens or early 20s, not from their 60s or 70s when their parents die.
I imagine the fire if/when Russia manages to hit one of those is going to be quite something.
They should be able to do so from their own wages, without help from Mum and Dad, or grandparents, or an inheritance from the death of their parents which hopefully would be many decades away.