William Clouston SDP @WilliamClouston · 1h I wish Rupert well. He’s a courageous, old-fashioned patriot and a force for good in the nation.
It’s been an honour to serve as a member of Restore Britain’s Advisory Board and I look forward to future cooperation between Restore Britain and the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
William Clouston SDP @WilliamClouston · 1h I wish Rupert well. He’s a courageous, old-fashioned patriot and a force for good in the nation.
It’s been an honour to serve as a member of Restore Britain’s Advisory Board and I look forward to future cooperation between Restore Britain and the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
This is fantastic news. If actually holds out for more than one week
Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10 · 1h Important news. The first opinion poll conducted since I announced yesterday that Restore Britain would become a national political party has us on 10%.
Is this another one of those nonsense polled 28 people, 3 of which were Ruptert Lowe, his wife and one of his kids? I find it hard to believe anybody has any idea who Restore Britain is.
If he'd linked to the poll we might be able to find out...
Q1: How likely would you be to consider voting for a political party led by Rupert Lowe MP?
Q2: Yesterday, Rupert Lowe MP launched a political party named Restore Britain. If there were a General Election tomorrow, how would you vote in that election?
I suppose it's not exactly a leading set of questions. It doesn't say "Yesterday, Patriot and National Benefactor Rupert Lowe MP launched a political party named Restore Britain..."
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
If you want cheap housing, someone needs to pay for it.
Government spending other people’s money, by regulation, is one of the reasons that house building collapsed in London. So we have a Labour government and Mayor taking about eliminating the requirement to include x% of affordable flats in developments.
Regulations should be simple, direct. And enforced. They are replacing cladding, right now, with.. possibly unsafe cladding.
If the government wants to create cheap housing, it needs to do one of
- Subsidies rents - Building housing itself and charge below the market rate - Create a regulatory environment where replacing a window doesn’t consist of 4K for the window and spending 12k on the consultants to do the paperwork. The actual window being made in Poland, and never actually inspected to see if it matches anything in the £12k of paperwork. Could be made of balsa impregnated with napalm for that anyone knows.
Slicker regulation (you) plus a reboot of the social housing sector (me) then. Between us we'll sort things.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
If you want cheap housing, someone needs to pay for it.
Government spending other people’s money, by regulation, is one of the reasons that house building collapsed in London. So we have a Labour government and Mayor taking about eliminating the requirement to include x% of affordable flats in developments.
Regulations should be simple, direct. And enforced. They are replacing cladding, right now, with.. possibly unsafe cladding.
If the government wants to create cheap housing, it needs to do one of
- Subsidies rents - Building housing itself and charge below the market rate - Create a regulatory environment where replacing a window doesn’t consist of 4K for the window and spending 12k on the consultants to do the paperwork. The actual window being made in Poland, and never actually inspected to see if it matches anything in the £12k of paperwork. Could be made of balsa impregnated with napalm for that anyone knows.
Slicker regulation (you) plus a reboot of the social housing sector (me) then. Between us we'll sort things.
Among other things, the fucked up regulations apply to the Government as well.
See the planning enquires that cost hundreds of millions and last decades for everything.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
I see the posh lads lost to some Scottish posh lads.
Meanwhile the lads wearing the Saudi kit won at the ground where Jewish fans aren't welcome.
I've not been watching folk pratting about in the snow, so can't comment on those activities.
Finn Russell isnae posh!
He is not exactly from the streets total outsider to international sport. His whole family have been international sportsmen and women and his dad was high up in Scottish rugby administration.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
If you want cheap housing, someone needs to pay for it.
Government spending other people’s money, by regulation, is one of the reasons that house building collapsed in London. So we have a Labour government and Mayor taking about eliminating the requirement to include x% of affordable flats in developments.
Regulations should be simple, direct. And enforced. They are replacing cladding, right now, with.. possibly unsafe cladding.
If the government wants to create cheap housing, it needs to do one of
- Subsidies rents - Building housing itself and charge below the market rate - Create a regulatory environment where replacing a window doesn’t consist of 4K for the window and spending 12k on the consultants to do the paperwork. The actual window being made in Poland, and never actually inspected to see if it matches anything in the £12k of paperwork. Could be made of balsa impregnated with napalm for that anyone knows.
One of the problems with things like housing policy is that people start suffering from the "silver bullet fallacy". I.e., if this one thing doesn't solve all the issues, then it isn't worth doing.
The reality is that if you want to make sure more housing is built, and therefore housing is more affordable, then you need to put in place a raft of measures, each of which might only have a small impact on its own, but which together get you where you want to be.
Here's an entirely non-exhaustive list from me:
1. Repace stamp duty with a small annual land value levy 2. Make getting planning permission (and land use change) a lot easier to get 2a. Have a presumption of 'yes' - a council needs to demonstrate why a development (from an individual home to a block of flats to an estate) should not happen, rather than the other way around 3. Relax some of the rules around 'net zero' in construction - yes we should be building more energy efficient homes... but not at the expense of building too few homes
These attack the problem from multiple angles: they encourage more efficient use of existing housing stock, make the market clear more easily, make it easier to get permission to build, and then make it cheaper to build once you have permission.
And you know what: if there are lots of properties available for rent, then suddenly it is tenants that have power, rather than landlords. They're the ones competing to get you in rather than the other way around.
1 okay 2 not helpful 2a already the case 3 short term and dumb at a societal and environmental level. Fuel poverty destroys family life. We need to avoid climate catastrophe.
4 allow councils to levy a 10% council tax on unbuilt permissions in land banks. This would put either1.4million homes back into the build phase or drive land value down. Making home building more profitable.
3 would be dumb if we still lived in a world where energy was produced by burning fossil fuels. But over the next decade -and irrespective of anything governments do- energy production is going to go almost entirely renewable, because the price of solar and batteries is collapsing.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
If you want cheap housing, someone needs to pay for it.
Government spending other people’s money, by regulation, is one of the reasons that house building collapsed in London. So we have a Labour government and Mayor taking about eliminating the requirement to include x% of affordable flats in developments.
Regulations should be simple, direct. And enforced. They are replacing cladding, right now, with.. possibly unsafe cladding.
If the government wants to create cheap housing, it needs to do one of
- Subsidies rents - Building housing itself and charge below the market rate - Create a regulatory environment where replacing a window doesn’t consist of 4K for the window and spending 12k on the consultants to do the paperwork. The actual window being made in Poland, and never actually inspected to see if it matches anything in the £12k of paperwork. Could be made of balsa impregnated with napalm for that anyone knows.
One of the problems with things like housing policy is that people start suffering from the "silver bullet fallacy". I.e., if this one thing doesn't solve all the issues, then it isn't worth doing.
The reality is that if you want to make sure more housing is built, and therefore housing is more affordable, then you need to put in place a raft of measures, each of which might only have a small impact on its own, but which together get you where you want to be.
Here's an entirely non-exhaustive list from me:
1. Repace stamp duty with a small annual land value levy 2. Make getting planning permission (and land use change) a lot easier to get 2a. Have a presumption of 'yes' - a council needs to demonstrate why a development (from an individual home to a block of flats to an estate) should not happen, rather than the other way around 3. Relax some of the rules around 'net zero' in construction - yes we should be building more energy efficient homes... but not at the expense of building too few homes
These attack the problem from multiple angles: they encourage more efficient use of existing housing stock, make the market clear more easily, make it easier to get permission to build, and then make it cheaper to build once you have permission.
And you know what: if there are lots of properties available for rent, then suddenly it is tenants that have power, rather than landlords. They're the ones competing to get you in rather than the other way around.
1 okay 2 not helpful 2a already the case 3 short term and dumb at a societal and environmental level. Fuel poverty destroys family life. We need to avoid climate catastrophe.
4 allow councils to levy a 10% council tax on unbuilt permissions in land banks. This would put either1.4million homes back into the build phase or drive land value down. Making home building more profitable.
3 would be dumb if we still lived in a world where energy was produced by burning fossil fuels. But over the next decade -and irrespective of anything governments do- energy production is going to go almost entirely renewable, because the price of solar and batteries is collapsing.
On 3 in other parts of the world you need air conditioning to cool space down at the time when the sun is throwing energy at you but that isn't the case in the Uk where we need energy to heat space up at times when the sun isn't really around.
So while I agree it's going to be less of a problem than it might have been it's still best to investment the money up front and reduce the amount of energy required,
This is fantastic news. If actually holds out for more than one week
Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10 · 1h Important news. The first opinion poll conducted since I announced yesterday that Restore Britain would become a national political party has us on 10%.
Is this another one of those nonsense polled 28 people, 3 of which were Ruptert Lowe, his wife and one of his kids? I find it hard to believe anybody has any idea who Restore Britain is.
If he'd linked to the poll we might be able to find out...
Q1: How likely would you be to consider voting for a political party led by Rupert Lowe MP?
Q2: Yesterday, Rupert Lowe MP launched a political party named Restore Britain. If there were a General Election tomorrow, how would you vote in that election?
I suppose it's not exactly a leading set of questions. It doesn't say "Yesterday, Patriot and National Benefactor Rupert Lowe MP launched a political party named Restore Britain..."
So, I suggest it’s NOTA voters liking the name, although there will be a few percent who do know of Lowe and have been following his project.
This is a bit peculiar. I'm watching the wimen's freeski big air. It's being led by an American woman called Eileen Gu who is competing for China, who have apparently spent $6m dollars on her and another American. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Gu
She was the second highest earning sportswoman last year apparently. Might be helped by the fact she’s one of the most beautiful women in the world but that would be a very cynical take.
This is fantastic news. If actually holds out for more than one week
Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10 · 1h Important news. The first opinion poll conducted since I announced yesterday that Restore Britain would become a national political party has us on 10%.
Is this another one of those nonsense polled 28 people, 3 of which were Ruptert Lowe, his wife and one of his kids? I find it hard to believe anybody has any idea who Restore Britain is.
"Note this is not a standard Westminster VI. Restore Britain are prompted and turnout and squeeze adjustments are not applied for the purposes of this poll."
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
save a fortune not paying private rents for the millions of slackers
I see the posh lads lost to some Scottish South African / Australian / New Zealand / English rejected posh lads.
Meanwhile the lads wearing the Saudi kit won at the ground where Jewish fans aren't welcome.
I've not been watching folk pratting about in the snow, so can't comment on those activities.
Fixed for you..
good losers as ever
Humourless as ever....
hmmmm, you think whining about losing fair and square is a bundle of laughs
Scotland were much the better team. England were totally out played. But Scotland have played the changes in eligibility rules to their advantage such that something like half the squad is foreign now. The RFU on the other hand are morons, they could form another First 15 from the players in France that would easily be as good as the current team.
Everyone knows that standard correct practice is that the Voting Intention question is the first question asked, without any prompting or leading questions asked beforehand.
I don't believe for one minute that anywhere near 10% of people have even heard of "Restore Britain".
I see the posh lads lost to some Scottish South African / Australian / New Zealand / English rejected posh lads.
Meanwhile the lads wearing the Saudi kit won at the ground where Jewish fans aren't welcome.
I've not been watching folk pratting about in the snow, so can't comment on those activities.
Fixed for you..
good losers as ever
Humourless as ever....
hmmmm, you think whining about losing fair and square is a bundle of laughs
Scotland were much the better team. England were totally out played. But Scotland have played the changes in eligibility rules to their advantage such that something like half the squad is foreign now. The RFU on the other hand are morons, they could form another First 15 from the players in France that would easily be as good as the current team.
yes I do agree the rules are a bit off but are the rules
I'm starting a new political party. It's called Deport the Immigrants and Bring Back Hanging. When prompted in initial polling, my party is already on 15%.
I'm starting a new political party. It's called Deport the Immigrants and Bring Back Hanging. When prompted in initial polling, my party is already on 15%.
I’m starting a new party. It’s called…
Please Click Here to Show You Are Paying Attention to the Survey
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
Housing is too important to be viewed in pure market terms like that. It's not just a consumer good or a personal or commercial investment, it's an essential utility. A decent place to live is a basic need for everybody. The goal of social housing isn't for the government to make similar returns to a property developer. It's to help fulfill that basic need for the population it exists to serve. And in doing so the spend would be more £££ productive than some other things I could think of where it currently goes.
The moves toward Labour victory in the betting, the 'rush of people to join Labour', and perhaps even the Labour stabilisation in the polls (though that seems to be gone now), can all be attributed to one thing. The imminent departure of Sir Working Class Hero.
The only working class hero born in the sixties who wasn’t brought up in social housing
The principled vegetarian who eats meat when he’s peckish
The multi millionaire whose brother died in poverty
What a guy
Random question, you for isam, as I knew back in the day you used to vote Labour and left when Ed didn't fully get on board with Glasman. Would you still consider for voting a genuine 'Blue Labour' government/party? And if so, what would they need to do policy wise - and what kind of leader would they need to have - that the current government isn't doing? I'm genuinely curious, as I think McSweeney tried - and very much failed - to get voters like you back onside. For one if the Blue Labour strategy isn't viable, maybe they should just go for some kind 'National Popular Front' strategy (i.e. try to cannabilise the Greens and max out the left liberal vote as much as possible).
You know me well. I would vote for any party that I agreed with at the time really, it's not that I would vote for X but not Y out of loyalty.
If McSweeney wanted to get Leave voters onboard, he couldn't have made a worse choice as leader than Sir Keir - Mr Remain, who did everything he could to prevent the winning side from enacting their victory, a Human Rights lawyer too scared to say that transwoman are men, and constantly breaking pledges and promises etc
I will vote for a party that holds no truck with trans nonsense at schools, is strict on immigration, has no time for identity politics, and isn't afraid of upsetting people by saying what they think and sticking to it. I am too tired to write a manifesto! Keep the two child cap and abolish the triple lock. Make work pay and give youngsters a chance. I think at the moment Badenoch's Conservatives align most with my thinking. Reform have lost me a bit by being too boorish and USA/Dubai influenced, despite me probably agreeing with them on most things. it does come down to image a bit. Obviously it is a matter of taste, but I find almost all Labour politicians really unlikeable, they are such whiners. Takes one to know one I suppose.
I see the posh lads lost to some Scottish South African / Australian / New Zealand / English rejected posh lads.
Meanwhile the lads wearing the Saudi kit won at the ground where Jewish fans aren't welcome.
I've not been watching folk pratting about in the snow, so can't comment on those activities.
Fixed for you..
good losers as ever
Humourless as ever....
hmmmm, you think whining about losing fair and square is a bundle of laughs
Scotland were much the better team. England were totally out played. But Scotland have played the changes in eligibility rules to their advantage such that something like half the squad is foreign now. The RFU on the other hand are morons, they could form another First 15 from the players in France that would easily be as good as the current team.
yes I do agree the rules are a bit off but are the rules
England used to be the ones playing the eligbility rules to the max, but now they would rather cut off their nose to spite their face by not even picking English born players who move to France (or who have said they will move to France).
I am surprised that one of the French based players hasn't taken some sort of legal action on the basis of restriction of trade. The RFU are costing them £100k's a year by discriminating against them.
Via Find Out Now Fieldwork: 14 February Size: 1,000
*Note this is not a standard Westminster VI. Restore Britain are prompted and turnout and squeeze adjustments are not applied for the purposes of this poll
Via Find Out Now Fieldwork: 14 February Size: 1,000
*Note this is not a standard Westminster VI. Restore Britain are prompted and turnout and squeeze adjustments are not applied for the purposes of this poll
The policy differences between Reform and Restore are smaller than the policy differences between different wings of the Labour Party… or Conservative Party… or Greens…
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
There's a stat that (big) % of sold off council houses are now rented out privately with (big) % of the rent funded by HB. That's not a great outcome.
It certainly would be terrible if we end up with umpteen far right parties led by big egos fighting like rats in a sack for 20% of the vote. FPTP would have a good old giggle at that - but those voters wouldn't.
Via Find Out Now Fieldwork: 14 February Size: 1,000
*Note this is not a standard Westminster VI. Restore Britain are prompted and turnout and squeeze adjustments are not applied for the purposes of this poll
That is an extremely good poll for Lowe and Restore Britain, from a standing start to be tied with the LDs is pretty significant. If he gets money from Musk for advertising and enough candidates they could be a force and even hold the balance of power in a hung parliament if they win seats
Suella clearly no longer a Thatcherite but a supporter of Faragite protectionist nationalism then
People shift 'deeply held' positions if they think it will be popular. When Reform and the Tories merge together in about 3-4 years you will have to pick a direction, and I bet it won't be Thatcherite.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
There's a stat that (big) % of sold off council houses are now rented out privately with (big) % of the rent funded by HB. That's not a great outcome.
If you assume that a fair number of council house inhabitants are feckless then it's not surprising that they buy the house and then for various reasons it ends up in the hands of others.
Who will be buying the house to rent out (as it's not in the part of town they want to live in) and equally because of the area is not the best the tenants that take it are on housing benefit..
So yep all Right To Buy has done over the past 30+ years is privatise a lot of council housing so the Government now pays rentseekers more to house people in the same houses.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
If you want cheap housing, someone needs to pay for it.
Government spending other people’s money, by regulation, is one of the reasons that house building collapsed in London. So we have a Labour government and Mayor taking about eliminating the requirement to include x% of affordable flats in developments.
Regulations should be simple, direct. And enforced. They are replacing cladding, right now, with.. possibly unsafe cladding.
If the government wants to create cheap housing, it needs to do one of
- Subsidies rents - Building housing itself and charge below the market rate - Create a regulatory environment where replacing a window doesn’t consist of 4K for the window and spending 12k on the consultants to do the paperwork. The actual window being made in Poland, and never actually inspected to see if it matches anything in the £12k of paperwork. Could be made of balsa impregnated with napalm for that anyone knows.
One of the problems with things like housing policy is that people start suffering from the "silver bullet fallacy". I.e., if this one thing doesn't solve all the issues, then it isn't worth doing.
The reality is that if you want to make sure more housing is built, and therefore housing is more affordable, then you need to put in place a raft of measures, each of which might only have a small impact on its own, but which together get you where you want to be.
Here's an entirely non-exhaustive list from me:
1. Repace stamp duty with a small annual land value levy 2. Make getting planning permission (and land use change) a lot easier to get 2a. Have a presumption of 'yes' - a council needs to demonstrate why a development (from an individual home to a block of flats to an estate) should not happen, rather than the other way around 3. Relax some of the rules around 'net zero' in construction - yes we should be building more energy efficient homes... but not at the expense of building too few homes
These attack the problem from multiple angles: they encourage more efficient use of existing housing stock, make the market clear more easily, make it easier to get permission to build, and then make it cheaper to build once you have permission.
And you know what: if there are lots of properties available for rent, then suddenly it is tenants that have power, rather than landlords. They're the ones competing to get you in rather than the other way around.
1 okay 2 not helpful 2a already the case 3 short term and dumb at a societal and environmental level. Fuel poverty destroys family life. We need to avoid climate catastrophe.
4 allow councils to levy a 10% council tax on unbuilt permissions in land banks. This would put either1.4million homes back into the build phase or drive land value down. Making home building more profitable.
3 would be dumb if we still lived in a world where energy was produced by burning fossil fuels. But over the next decade -and irrespective of anything governments do- energy production is going to go almost entirely renewable, because the price of solar and batteries is collapsing.
On 3 in other parts of the world you need air conditioning to cool space down at the time when the sun is throwing energy at you but that isn't the case in the Uk where we need energy to heat space up at times when the sun isn't really around.
So while I agree it's going to be less of a problem than it might have been it's still best to investment the money up front and reduce the amount of energy required,
When temperatures go past 25c, natural ventilation becomes ineffective.
This is increasingly common in the U.K.
Air-air heat pumps (aka reversible air-conditioning) deal with this brilliantly.
To the point I don’t have radiators in my loft conversion.
It certainly would be terrible if we end up with umpteen far right parties led by big egos fighting like rats in a sack for 20% of the vote. FPTP would have a good old giggle at that - but those voters wouldn't.
After all the decades of jokes about fringe left wing factions fighting it out over whether Lenin preferred his tea with one sugar or two (or whatever it is Trotskyites argue with Stalinists about), it is a refreshing change of pace to see an overflow of right wing parties for once.
Via Find Out Now Fieldwork: 14 February Size: 1,000
*Note this is not a standard Westminster VI. Restore Britain are prompted and turnout and squeeze adjustments are not applied for the purposes of this poll
That is an extremely good poll for Lowe and Restore Britain, from a standing start to be tied with the LDs is pretty significant. If he gets money from Musk for advertising and enough candidates they could be a force and even hold the balance of power in a hung parliament if they win seats
An outrage there is not a prompt for Your Party - and I thought they were such a serious outfit, too.
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I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
There's a stat that (big) % of sold off council houses are now rented out privately with (big) % of the rent funded by HB. That's not a great outcome.
If you assume that a fair number of council house inhabitants are feckless then it's not surprising that they buy the house and then for various reasons it ends up in the hands of others.
Who will be buying the house to rent out (as it's not in the part of town they want to live in) and equally because of the area is not the best the tenants that take it are on housing benefit..
So yep all Right To Buy has done over the past 30+ years is privatise a lot of council housing so the Government now pays rentseekers more to house people in the same houses.
Many council property tenants, bought, then flipped the property to go and live somewhere nicer.
A lot of people bought their flat in Churchill Gardens, Pimlico and the sold it to a buy a house in the sticks, for example.
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It certainly would be terrible if we end up with umpteen far right parties led by big egos fighting like rats in a sack for 20% of the vote. FPTP would have a good old giggle at that - but those voters wouldn't.
After all the decades of jokes about fringe left wing factions fighting it out over whether Lenin preferred his tea with one sugar or two (or whatever it is Trotskyites argue with Stalinists about), it is a refreshing change of pace to see an overflow of right wing parties for once.
Komrade, Komrade, the number of sugars in Lenin's tea is A State Secret. As such I have to report you to the Committee For State Security.
Suella clearly no longer a Thatcherite but a supporter of Faragite protectionist nationalism then
People shift 'deeply held' positions if they think it will be popular. When Reform and the Tories merge together in about 3-4 years you will have to pick a direction, and I bet it won't be Thatcherite.
There is a case for state control of some key industry to ensure we control of it even if you still back most Thatcherite privatisations but even so it is still moving in a more statist direction
What's Musk's beef with Farage? His knowledge of politics appears to be pretty limited in general, outside of how it might affect his businesses which is fair enough, and would Farage care to interfere with that?
Suella clearly no longer a Thatcherite but a supporter of Faragite protectionist nationalism then
People shift 'deeply held' positions if they think it will be popular. When Reform and the Tories merge together in about 3-4 years you will have to pick a direction, and I bet it won't be Thatcherite.
There is a case for state control of some key industry to ensure we control of it even if you still back most Thatcherite privatisations but even so it is still moving in a more statist direction
I'm sure some legacy party officials will be able to come up with a policy document bridging the gap.
Via Find Out Now Fieldwork: 14 February Size: 1,000
*Note this is not a standard Westminster VI. Restore Britain are prompted and turnout and squeeze adjustments are not applied for the purposes of this poll
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
Only if you've some magic way of making it cheaper to build council houses than it is for the private sector to build them.
Otherwise, the private sector would already be building those houses, in seach of those rents, which in turn would drive prices down.
Housing benefit is a particularly stupid benefit, implemented badly, but the fix for it is not going to be building loads of council houses.
Suella clearly no longer a Thatcherite but a supporter of Faragite protectionist nationalism then
Thatcher was also a trenchant guardian of the national interest. She would have considered it completely unconscionable to allow the capacity to make virgin steel to leave the country. That's the position we now find ourselves in.
What's Musk's beef with Farage? His knowledge of politics appears to be pretty limited in general, outside of how it might affect his businesses which is fair enough, and would Farage care to interfere with that?
He views Farage as a wet liberal, I think. Musk is agitating for neo nazis in Germany, remember. Farage is milky tea compared to that. Least one hopes so given his non-trivial chances of becoming PM in a couple of years.
Suella clearly no longer a Thatcherite but a supporter of Faragite protectionist nationalism then
Thatcher was also a trenchant guardian of the national interest. She would have considered it completely unconscionable to allow the capacity to make virgin steel to leave the country. That's the position we now find ourselves in.
I don't even know what politicians mean when they talk about being Thatcherite (as praise or criticism). It was all so long ago, and when used as a positive I assume they use it to mean 'do things better' in a pretty broad way, since most politicians of this day and age will in any case have picked up only second hand ideas of Thatcher rather than lived it in their political careers at least.
That's not even a criticism of them for doing so, just that political labels adjust over time, and one's named after a particular individual need not bear much relation to what that person even stood for, just what people think they stood for. What's even a Blairite now?
What's Musk's beef with Farage? His knowledge of politics appears to be pretty limited in general, outside of how it might affect his businesses which is fair enough, and would Farage care to interfere with that?
He views Farage as a wet liberal, I think. Musk is agitating for neo nazis in Germany, remember. Farage is milky tea compared to that. Least one hopes so given his non-trivial chances of becoming PM in a couple of years.
Possibly he expects all politics to be like the USA, and Farage occasionally reins it in compared to that viciousness?
It certainly would be terrible if we end up with umpteen far right parties led by big egos fighting like rats in a sack for 20% of the vote. FPTP would have a good old giggle at that - but those voters wouldn't.
After all the decades of jokes about fringe left wing factions fighting it out over whether Lenin preferred his tea with one sugar or two (or whatever it is Trotskyites argue with Stalinists about), it is a refreshing change of pace to see an overflow of right wing parties for once.
Lol, yes. Here on the right we will perhaps see impassioned internecine debate about what % of native blood is enough to pass muster for full citizenship rights.
That's funny, the Radio 4 midnight news on Saturday night / Sunday morning used to be about 30 minutes long but today it was 15 minutes. I wonder when they changed it?
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
There's a stat that (big) % of sold off council houses are now rented out privately with (big) % of the rent funded by HB. That's not a great outcome.
If you assume that a fair number of council house inhabitants are feckless then it's not surprising that they buy the house and then for various reasons it ends up in the hands of others.
Who will be buying the house to rent out (as it's not in the part of town they want to live in) and equally because of the area is not the best the tenants that take it are on housing benefit..
So yep all Right To Buy has done over the past 30+ years is privatise a lot of council housing so the Government now pays rentseekers more to house people in the same houses.
I'm prepared to accept that wasn't the intention but it does seem to be the result. Ideology trumps pragmatism - the opposite of what the Conservative Party is supposed (in their own eyes) to be about.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
Housing is too important to be viewed in pure market terms like that. It's not just a consumer good or a personal or commercial investment, it's an essential utility. A decent place to live is a basic need for everybody. The goal of social housing isn't for the government to make similar returns to a property developer. It's to help fulfill that basic need for the population it exists to serve. And in doing so the spend would be more £££ productive than some other things I could think of where it currently goes.
You can use all the emotive language you like, it doesn't change the reality, which is we have insufficient housing because of a combination of planning restrictions, regulatory costs, and loads of extra people.
The only viable solutions involve either changing on or more of these constraints or the government spunking loads of money it hasn't got on another problem it won't be able to solve.
The easiest solutions are (as usual) the simplest, and better still don't cost the government any money. Gut planning, gut all the stupid stuff that's been added to building regs over the last 25 years, stop importing people and ideally encourage some of the most recent arrivals to go away again (eg by not giving the Boriswave ILR status).
Yes @MarqueeMark, I have "watched" Pluribus. If watching the recaps and scene extracts on YouTube counts as "watching", which basically it does. I feel I should get John Cena to explain this more fluently.
The moves toward Labour victory in the betting, the 'rush of people to join Labour', and perhaps even the Labour stabilisation in the polls (though that seems to be gone now), can all be attributed to one thing. The imminent departure of Sir Working Class Hero.
The only working class hero born in the sixties who wasn’t brought up in social housing
The principled vegetarian who eats meat when he’s peckish
The multi millionaire whose brother died in poverty
What a guy
Random question, you for isam, as I knew back in the day you used to vote Labour and left when Ed didn't fully get on board with Glasman. Would you still consider for voting a genuine 'Blue Labour' government/party? And if so, what would they need to do policy wise - and what kind of leader would they need to have - that the current government isn't doing? I'm genuinely curious, as I think McSweeney tried - and very much failed - to get voters like you back onside. For one if the Blue Labour strategy isn't viable, maybe they should just go for some kind 'National Popular Front' strategy (i.e. try to cannabilise the Greens and max out the left liberal vote as much as possible).
You know me well. I would vote for any party that I agreed with at the time really, it's not that I would vote for X but not Y out of loyalty.
If McSweeney wanted to get Leave voters onboard, he couldn't have made a worse choice as leader than Sir Keir - Mr Remain, who did everything he could to prevent the winning side from enacting their victory, a Human Rights lawyer too scared to say that transwoman are men, and constantly breaking pledges and promises etc
I will vote for a party that holds no truck with trans nonsense at schools, is strict on immigration, has no time for identity politics, and isn't afraid of upsetting people by saying what they think and sticking to it. I am too tired to write a manifesto! Keep the two child cap and abolish the triple lock. Make work pay and give youngsters a chance. I think at the moment Badenoch's Conservatives align most with my thinking. Reform have lost me a bit by being too boorish and USA/Dubai influenced, despite me probably agreeing with them on most things. it does come down to image a bit. Obviously it is a matter of taste, but I find almost all Labour politicians really unlikeable, they are such whiners. Takes one to know one I suppose.
The funny thing is, I think Nandy (not that I think she'd be a brilliant Labour leader) was the more Blue Labour-like *anti-Corbynite* candidate in the 2020 leadership election than Starmer was. But Starmer was a trojan horse, who McSweeney probably believed would have a better chance of beating RLB in that contest because he could more easily convince Labour members who'd previously backed Corbyn he was on their side and would continue much of Corbyn's policies. Obviously we saw how that turned out... Part of the issue is, I do think Labour is at heart a liberal party. While Blue Labour probably has some things mainstream Labour politicians can take away from it, Glasman's project is probably ultimately misconceived. Some of its greatest achievements in government, such as the abolition of the death penalty, legalisation of abortion etc. were rooted in the party's liberalism. Is the Labour party a viable party, for instance, if everyone on Bluesky ends up despising it? Glasman thinks it can be, but I'm not so sure at all.
Suella clearly no longer a Thatcherite but a supporter of Faragite protectionist nationalism then
Thatcher was also a trenchant guardian of the national interest. She would have considered it completely unconscionable to allow the capacity to make virgin steel to leave the country. That's the position we now find ourselves in.
I think it was Thatcher's government that invented the "golden share", a legal device that prevented businesses being relocated outside the UK.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
There's a stat that (big) % of sold off council houses are now rented out privately with (big) % of the rent funded by HB. That's not a great outcome.
If you assume that a fair number of council house inhabitants are feckless then it's not surprising that they buy the house and then for various reasons it ends up in the hands of others.
Who will be buying the house to rent out (as it's not in the part of town they want to live in) and equally because of the area is not the best the tenants that take it are on housing benefit..
So yep all Right To Buy has done over the past 30+ years is privatise a lot of council housing so the Government now pays rentseekers more to house people in the same houses.
I'm prepared to accept that wasn't the intention but it does seem to be the result. Ideology trumps pragmatism - the opposite of what the Conservative Party is supposed (in their own eyes) to be about.
It also made a lot of working class people homeowners who would never otherwise have been, even if the profits could have been reinvested in new social homes
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
Only if you've some magic way of making it cheaper to build council houses than it is for the private sector to build them.
Otherwise, the private sector would already be building those houses, in seach of those rents, which in turn would drive prices down.
Housing benefit is a particularly stupid benefit, implemented badly, but the fix for it is not going to be building loads of council houses.
Private sector borrows to build houses at 8%+, govt borrows at <4%.
F1: interesting that Ted Kravitz currently puts Ferrari top of the teams. Still another test to go and more upgrades to come. But interesting nonetheless. He correctly called Aston Martin as best of the rest a few years ago, when Alonso got around 8 or 9 podium finishes.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
There's a stat that (big) % of sold off council houses are now rented out privately with (big) % of the rent funded by HB. That's not a great outcome.
If you assume that a fair number of council house inhabitants are feckless then it's not surprising that they buy the house and then for various reasons it ends up in the hands of others.
Who will be buying the house to rent out (as it's not in the part of town they want to live in) and equally because of the area is not the best the tenants that take it are on housing benefit..
So yep all Right To Buy has done over the past 30+ years is privatise a lot of council housing so the Government now pays rentseekers more to house people in the same houses.
Many council property tenants, bought, then flipped the property to go and live somewhere nicer.
A lot of people bought their flat in Churchill Gardens, Pimlico and the sold it to a buy a house in the sticks, for example.
Given the demographics, probably a lot more of the early buyers are now six feet under.
Healey has shortened significantly in last few hours.
Now 13 on Betfair, was approx 26 a few hours ago.
He's now 4th favourite.
Young cardinals backing old popes? Healey is 66 years old. I've mentioned him before as a possible caretaker but can't see him as the next Prime Minister. Most bookmakers do not pay out on temporary or caretaker leaders.
Healey has shortened significantly in last few hours.
Now 13 on Betfair, was approx 26 a few hours ago.
He's now 4th favourite.
Young cardinals backing old popes? Healey is 66 years old. I've mentioned him before as a possible caretaker but can't see him as the next Prime Minister. Most bookmakers do not pay out on temporary or caretaker leaders.
Despite having a landslide majority, with polling as it is Labour MPs may also fear they won't win the next election. So if you want to be PM and Starmer goes, it's very risky not going for it.
It is not clear if this is a new (or revised) drop or just a reannouncement of what had already been released. The embedded video suggests new, but then that is not dated.
Healey has shortened significantly in last few hours.
Now 13 on Betfair, was approx 26 a few hours ago.
He's now 4th favourite.
Young cardinals backing old popes? Healey is 66 years old. I've mentioned him before as a possible caretaker but can't see him as the next Prime Minister. Most bookmakers do not pay out on temporary or caretaker leaders.
I was surprised by odds on Next Labour leader vs Next Prime Minister.
Healey is 29 and 14. Lammy is 95 and 32.
Why the huge differences for some candidates?
(I've cashed out of this market and taken my profit, though I'm still in SKS exit date.)
It is not clear if this is a new (or revised) drop or just a reannouncement of what had already been released. The embedded video suggests new, but then that is not dated.
Healey has shortened significantly in last few hours.
Now 13 on Betfair, was approx 26 a few hours ago.
He's now 4th favourite.
Young cardinals backing old popes? Healey is 66 years old. I've mentioned him before as a possible caretaker but can't see him as the next Prime Minister. Most bookmakers do not pay out on temporary or caretaker leaders.
I was surprised by odds on Next Labour leader vs Next Prime Minister.
Healey is 29 and 14. Lammy is 95 and 32.
Why the huge differences for some candidates?
(I've cashed out of this market and taken my profit, though I'm still in SKS exit date.)
Healey's odds are moving fast based on article in today's Telegraph.
Assuming you are looking at Betfair the 29 has now gone and he is now 19.5 for leader (still 14 for PM).
Telegraph is not suggesting Healey as a caretaker - report says he is seen as the only candidate who can unite the left and right of the party and be highly credible as PM.
He is obviously very strong on defence and will have stature dealing with world leaders. But he is also attractive to the soft left as he used to be in the Tribune group.
If Labour MPs want to win the next GE they should absolutely go for him.
Healey has shortened significantly in last few hours.
Now 13 on Betfair, was approx 26 a few hours ago.
He's now 4th favourite.
Young cardinals backing old popes? Healey is 66 years old. I've mentioned him before as a possible caretaker but can't see him as the next Prime Minister. Most bookmakers do not pay out on temporary or caretaker leaders.
I was surprised by odds on Next Labour leader vs Next Prime Minister.
Healey is 29 and 14. Lammy is 95 and 32.
Why the huge differences for some candidates?
(I've cashed out of this market and taken my profit, though I'm still in SKS exit date.)
Healey's odds are moving fast based on article in today's Telegraph.
Assuming you are looking at Betfair the 29 has now gone and he is now 19.5 for leader (still 14 for PM).
Telegraph is not suggesting Healey as a caretaker - report says he is seen as the only candidate who can unite the left and right of the party and be highly credible as PM.
He is obviously very strong on defence and will have stature dealing with world leaders. But he is also attractive to the soft left as he used to be in the Tribune group.
If Labour MPs want to win the next GE they should absolutely go for him.
Healey has shortened significantly in last few hours.
Now 13 on Betfair, was approx 26 a few hours ago.
He's now 4th favourite.
Young cardinals backing old popes? Healey is 66 years old. I've mentioned him before as a possible caretaker but can't see him as the next Prime Minister. Most bookmakers do not pay out on temporary or caretaker leaders.
I was surprised by odds on Next Labour leader vs Next Prime Minister.
Healey is 29 and 14. Lammy is 95 and 32.
Why the huge differences for some candidates?
(I've cashed out of this market and taken my profit, though I'm still in SKS exit date.)
Healey's odds are moving fast based on article in today's Telegraph.
Assuming you are looking at Betfair the 29 has now gone and he is now 19.5.
Telegraph is not suggesting Healey as a caretaker - report says he is seen as the only candidate who can unite the left and right of the party and be highly credible as PM.
He is obviously very strong on defence and will have stature dealing with world leaders. But he is also attractive to the soft left as he used to be in the Tribune group.
If Labour MPs want to win the next GE they should absolutely go for him.
I'm looking on BFX.
I was considering a lay/back pair across the two on Lammy a couple of days ago in the expectation they could align - but I decided I don't know enough and it's not a type of sideways stretch I have done before. I could quite possibly get it backwards by mistake .
In more exciting news, I bought a lapis bracelet last night from a jeweller on sisowath quay. Where they have posh pop ups on weekends
It looked suspiciously real so I thought why not. $28 for real lapis? Turns out it’s not only real lapis it’s the top quality stuff from Afghanistan. There’s a known trading route which extends from the prehistoric Afghan mines to Indochina - to dealers in Bangkok and PP - a remnant of the Silk Road!
Healey has shortened significantly in last few hours.
Now 13 on Betfair, was approx 26 a few hours ago.
He's now 4th favourite.
Young cardinals backing old popes? Healey is 66 years old. I've mentioned him before as a possible caretaker but can't see him as the next Prime Minister. Most bookmakers do not pay out on temporary or caretaker leaders.
I was surprised by odds on Next Labour leader vs Next Prime Minister.
Healey is 29 and 14. Lammy is 95 and 32.
Why the huge differences for some candidates?
(I've cashed out of this market and taken my profit, though I'm still in SKS exit date.)
Healey's odds are moving fast based on article in today's Telegraph.
Assuming you are looking at Betfair the 29 has now gone and he is now 19.5 for leader (still 14 for PM).
Telegraph is not suggesting Healey as a caretaker - report says he is seen as the only candidate who can unite the left and right of the party and be highly credible as PM.
He is obviously very strong on defence and will have stature dealing with world leaders. But he is also attractive to the soft left as he used to be in the Tribune group.
If Labour MPs want to win the next GE they should absolutely go for him.
That could also be the Telegraph shit-stirring.
It has been known.
SHITHOUSERY INDEX of the Right Wing Print Media
1 - Daily Mail (0% believeable) - emergency bog paper 2 - Daily Express (3% believable) 3 - Telegraph (5% believable) 4 - Times (33% believable) 5 - Independent / I (50% believable) Unclassified - The Sun
----
Healey is a highly effective well respected operator who has done exceptionally well in role and like majority of Labour ministers outclasses their Shadows.
No way a long term Leader, ideal able and effective lieutenant ceiling is possibly Foreign Secretary.
It is not clear if this is a new (or revised) drop or just a reannouncement of what had already been released. The embedded video suggests new, but then that is not dated.
I think it was CNN that posted an analysis that said we have seen something like 300GB of files so far. There are 15TB...
The moves toward Labour victory in the betting, the 'rush of people to join Labour', and perhaps even the Labour stabilisation in the polls (though that seems to be gone now), can all be attributed to one thing. The imminent departure of Sir Working Class Hero.
The only working class hero born in the sixties who wasn’t brought up in social housing
The principled vegetarian who eats meat when he’s peckish
The multi millionaire whose brother died in poverty
What a guy
Random question, you for isam, as I knew back in the day you used to vote Labour and left when Ed didn't fully get on board with Glasman. Would you still consider for voting a genuine 'Blue Labour' government/party? And if so, what would they need to do policy wise - and what kind of leader would they need to have - that the current government isn't doing? I'm genuinely curious, as I think McSweeney tried - and very much failed - to get voters like you back onside. For one if the Blue Labour strategy isn't viable, maybe they should just go for some kind 'National Popular Front' strategy (i.e. try to cannabilise the Greens and max out the left liberal vote as much as possible).
You know me well. I would vote for any party that I agreed with at the time really, it's not that I would vote for X but not Y out of loyalty.
If McSweeney wanted to get Leave voters onboard, he couldn't have made a worse choice as leader than Sir Keir - Mr Remain, who did everything he could to prevent the winning side from enacting their victory, a Human Rights lawyer too scared to say that transwoman are men, and constantly breaking pledges and promises etc
I will vote for a party that holds no truck with trans nonsense at schools, is strict on immigration, has no time for identity politics, and isn't afraid of upsetting people by saying what they think and sticking to it. I am too tired to write a manifesto! Keep the two child cap and abolish the triple lock. Make work pay and give youngsters a chance. I think at the moment Badenoch's Conservatives align most with my thinking. Reform have lost me a bit by being too boorish and USA/Dubai influenced, despite me probably agreeing with them on most things. it does come down to image a bit. Obviously it is a matter of taste, but I find almost all Labour politicians really unlikeable, they are such whiners. Takes one to know one I suppose.
The funny thing is, I think Nandy (not that I think she'd be a brilliant Labour leader) was the more Blue Labour-like *anti-Corbynite* candidate in the 2020 leadership election than Starmer was. But Starmer was a trojan horse, who McSweeney probably believed would have a better chance of beating RLB in that contest because he could more easily convince Labour members who'd previously backed Corbyn he was on their side and would continue much of Corbyn's policies. Obviously we saw how that turned out... Part of the issue is, I do think Labour is at heart a liberal party. While Blue Labour probably has some things mainstream Labour politicians can take away from it, Glasman's project is probably ultimately misconceived. Some of its greatest achievements in government, such as the abolition of the death penalty, legalisation of abortion etc. were rooted in the party's liberalism. Is the Labour party a viable party, for instance, if everyone on Bluesky ends up despising it? Glasman thinks it can be, but I'm not so sure at all.
"We're all middle class now", as John Prescott said nearly thirty years ago. Not completely true, but a decent approximation then, and more true now.
The sort of mass working class Glasman claims to want to improve the lives of had their lives improved, largely by not being the mass working class any more. And, whatever some sociologists might argue, there's not much interest in going back to the old ways. For example, nearly everyone aspires for their (grand)children to go to university, even if they think that there are too many students overall.
There are some votes in Blue Labour, sure, but not enough to win. And the votes it loses go well beyond Bluesky... as we're seeing.
An interesting pair of Munich speeches from Merz and Starmer.
Merz slapping the Cowardly Lion on the nose, and Starmer talking about the importance of moving forward without completely defenestrating existing arrangements. Both 30 m,inutes ish.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
There's a stat that (big) % of sold off council houses are now rented out privately with (big) % of the rent funded by HB. That's not a great outcome.
If you assume that a fair number of council house inhabitants are feckless then it's not surprising that they buy the house and then for various reasons it ends up in the hands of others.
Who will be buying the house to rent out (as it's not in the part of town they want to live in) and equally because of the area is not the best the tenants that take it are on housing benefit..
So yep all Right To Buy has done over the past 30+ years is privatise a lot of council housing so the Government now pays rentseekers more to house people in the same houses.
Many council property tenants, bought, then flipped the property to go and live somewhere nicer.
A lot of people bought their flat in Churchill Gardens, Pimlico and the sold it to a buy a house in the sticks, for example.
I think "rent controls have never worked whenever and wherever they've been tried" has just become a thing that gets said whenever and wherever rent controls are mooted.
Prices are information.
If prices are rising, it is telling you there is a shortage of something. Those rising prices create an incentive for people to produce more of said thing: say food or houses or whatever
Listen to the prices, don't try and drown them out.
That is indeed a core economic truth that one is a fool to ignore. But it doesn't mean rent controls are always in practice a no-no. They are quite common across Europe, I believe?
The problem with most systems of rent control is that they favour insiders, at the expense of outsiders. Rents are usually kept below market levels, and are combined with security of tenure, which makes it hard to remove poor tenants.
That can be great for existing tenants, but terrible for new tenants. No landlord is going to offer property for letting, if he has to charge below market rents, and is stuck with a perpetual tenant. New properties for letting will however, be offered by the kind of landlord who sends men with baseball bats round to collect the rent and evict tenants.
Where limited rent control, with limited security of tenure works, is in the commercial sector. Courts can determine an open market rent, and if a landlord wants possession from a good tenant, they must pay compensation.
But, it is very easy to evict a bad commercial tenant, often by just locking them out. Whereas, with residential tenancies, it can take a year to evict a tenant who has stopped paying rent.
Ok so that is to highlight potential problems with it. Almost everything causes potential problems. The question is are the potential problems caused worse than the actual problems potentially mitigated. I submit, given our cost of living crisis and malfunctioning approach to residential property, that it's worth looking at and certainly shouldn't be dismissed out of hand with the mass parroting of "never worked wherever it's been tried".
The problem with rent controls is that usually it's intended to shaft landlords, to the benefit of tenants.
What actually happens is it shafts future tenants, because there is nowhere to rent, because it's not worth being a landlord, and definitely not worth building more houses to rent out.
If you don't believe this, look at the council house system. That's got artificially low rents, with the result that councils can't afford to build more. Guess what - council houses turn out to be amazing deals for tenants, but it's virtually impossible to get one, with waiting lists of years, even if you're poor.
Rent controls aren't a substitute for increasing supply, this is clearly true. But neither are they something that universal experience the whole world over tells us are bound to be counterproductive.
A reboot of our social housing sector - with controlled rents - is imo one of the best things we could do. A great use of resource with benefits on many levels.
A version of the same problem you highlight btw applies in the private sector too where rents are free market. Houses aren't built unless profit margins are high enough, which in turn bakes in ever higher prices.
The great thing about you lefties is the amazing way you invert reality.
Rents are expensive because housing is expensive.
Housing is expensive because we've made permission to build houses very difficult to obtain and insisted on loads of expensive regulations about how houses are built, whilst at the same time importing millions more people all of whom need somewhere to live.
Any solution which doesn't involve making housing cheaper to build, or reducing the number of people chasing it is just pointless tinkering round the edges if you're lucky, or actively making matters worse if you're not.
It's a both ways relationship between rents and prices. Each is a function of the other for a given yield (which depends on interest rates).
Yes that's right that regulation and increased population drives rents and prices higher. But so do other factors - eg the long period of ultra low interest rates, the explosion of btl and other mortgage products, and the lack of social housing.
No silver bullets (to echo rcs) but I do think this last point is important and it's one that's amenable to government action.
"Lack of social housing" is basically a complaint that there is insufficient government subsidy. If you could make money by building houses and letting them out at council house rates, people would already be on the case.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
The Govt currently pays a lot of money in housing benefits to private landlords. Building council housing and then putting people up in that instead could pay for itself because of that.
There's a stat that (big) % of sold off council houses are now rented out privately with (big) % of the rent funded by HB. That's not a great outcome.
If you assume that a fair number of council house inhabitants are feckless then it's not surprising that they buy the house and then for various reasons it ends up in the hands of others.
Who will be buying the house to rent out (as it's not in the part of town they want to live in) and equally because of the area is not the best the tenants that take it are on housing benefit..
So yep all Right To Buy has done over the past 30+ years is privatise a lot of council housing so the Government now pays rentseekers more to house people in the same houses.
Many council property tenants, bought, then flipped the property to go and live somewhere nicer.
A lot of people bought their flat in Churchill Gardens, Pimlico and the sold it to a buy a house in the sticks, for example.
It is not clear if this is a new (or revised) drop or just a reannouncement of what had already been released. The embedded video suggests new, but then that is not dated.
I think it was CNN that posted an analysis that said we have seen something like 300GB of files so far. There are 15TB...
It was free money for many people and for feckless ones they would sell and in many cases blow it. Was one of the main causes we are in the crap nowadays.
Comments
William Clouston SDP
@WilliamClouston
·
1h
I wish Rupert well. He’s a courageous, old-fashioned patriot and a force for good in the nation.
It’s been an honour to serve as a member of Restore Britain’s Advisory Board and I look forward to future cooperation between Restore Britain and the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
https://x.com/WilliamClouston/status/2022783405021159753
https://findoutnow.co.uk/blog/polling-for-restore-britain-5/
Q1: How likely would you be to consider voting for a political party led by Rupert Lowe MP?
Q2: Yesterday, Rupert Lowe MP launched a political party named Restore Britain.
If there were a General Election tomorrow, how would you vote in that election?
I suppose it's not exactly a leading set of questions. It doesn't say "Yesterday, Patriot and National Benefactor Rupert Lowe MP launched a political party named Restore Britain..."
See the planning enquires that cost hundreds of millions and last decades for everything.
Given the government is already broke, and borrowing about £1 in £10 of its spending, how exactly would you propose to pay for more subsidised housing?
Obviously, housing subsidies don't actually make housing any cheaper - they just alter who pays for it.
Subsidies can make housing more expensive, if you design them badly enough - housing benefit does this, as it just introduces more money chasing the same insufficient pool of housing which obviously drives prices up. And because housing benefit is set based on average rents, it then increases to reflect the price increases it has caused, which drives prices up even higher, thus triggering further increases in housing benefit...
So while I agree it's going to be less of a problem than it might have been it's still best to investment the money up front and reduce the amount of energy required,
https://x.com/i/status/2022785696876933558
So it's bollocks then?
I don't believe for one minute that anywhere near 10% of people have even heard of "Restore Britain".
When prompted in initial polling, my party is already on 15%.
Please Click Here to Show You Are Paying Attention to the Survey
It’s already polling at 65%.
If McSweeney wanted to get Leave voters onboard, he couldn't have made a worse choice as leader than Sir Keir - Mr Remain, who did everything he could to prevent the winning side from enacting their victory, a Human Rights lawyer too scared to say that transwoman are men, and constantly breaking pledges and promises etc
I will vote for a party that holds no truck with trans nonsense at schools, is strict on immigration, has no time for identity politics, and isn't afraid of upsetting people by saying what they think and sticking to it. I am too tired to write a manifesto! Keep the two child cap and abolish the triple lock. Make work pay and give youngsters a chance. I think at the moment Badenoch's Conservatives align most with my thinking. Reform have lost me a bit by being too boorish and USA/Dubai influenced, despite me probably agreeing with them on most things. it does come down to image a bit. Obviously it is a matter of taste, but I find almost all Labour politicians really unlikeable, they are such whiners. Takes one to know one I suppose.
I am surprised that one of the French based players hasn't taken some sort of legal action on the basis of restriction of trade. The RFU are costing them £100k's a year by discriminating against them.
Westminster Voting Intention:
Reform: 25%
Greens: 20%
Labour: 15%
Conservatives: 13%
Restore Britain: 10%
Lib Dems: 10%
Via Find Out Now
Fieldwork: 14 February
Size: 1,000
*Note this is not a standard Westminster VI. Restore Britain are prompted and turnout and squeeze adjustments are not applied for the purposes of this poll
Who will be buying the house to rent out (as it's not in the part of town they want to live in) and equally because of the area is not the best the tenants that take it are on housing benefit..
So yep all Right To Buy has done over the past 30+ years is privatise a lot of council housing so the Government now pays rentseekers more to house people in the same houses.
This is increasingly common in the U.K.
Air-air heat pumps (aka reversible air-conditioning) deal with this brilliantly.
To the point I don’t have radiators in my loft conversion.
Defence Secretary could draw support from Right and Left as ‘unity candidate’ to take on PM
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/02/14/rebel-mps-healey-challenge-starmer/
Join Rupert Lowe in Restore Britain, because he is the only one who will actually do it!'
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2022557973265158441?s=20
A lot of people bought their flat in Churchill Gardens, Pimlico and the sold it to a buy a house in the sticks, for example.
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Otherwise, the private sector would already be building those houses, in seach of those rents, which in turn would drive prices down.
Housing benefit is a particularly stupid benefit, implemented badly, but the fix for it is not going to be building loads of council houses.
That's not even a criticism of them for doing so, just that political labels adjust over time, and one's named after a particular individual need not bear much relation to what that person even stood for, just what people think they stood for. What's even a Blairite now?
The only viable solutions involve either changing on or more of these constraints or the government spunking loads of money it hasn't got on another problem it won't be able to solve.
The easiest solutions are (as usual) the simplest, and better still don't cost the government any money.
Gut planning, gut all the stupid stuff that's been added to building regs over the last 25 years, stop importing people and ideally encourage some of the most recent arrivals to go away again (eg by not giving the Boriswave ILR status).
Do all that, and it's probably problem solved.
Part of the issue is, I do think Labour is at heart a liberal party. While Blue Labour probably has some things mainstream Labour politicians can take away from it, Glasman's project is probably ultimately misconceived. Some of its greatest achievements in government, such as the abolition of the death penalty, legalisation of abortion etc. were rooted in the party's liberalism. Is the Labour party a viable party, for instance, if everyone on Bluesky ends up despising it? Glasman thinks it can be, but I'm not so sure at all.
"Books
11 February 2026
The dark side of the Enlightenment
Capitalism is far from the only extractive force in human history
By John Gray"
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2026/02/the-dark-side-of-the-enlightenment
Now 13 on Betfair, was approx 26 a few hours ago.
He's now 4th favourite.
Pronounced like Harriet Harman silencing a classroom.
"You know who else brought a party back?"
This is probably why for second game in succession, we have opted for a lightweight 'second 5/8' at centre instead of a big blocking lump.
France by +20 will probably be a good result for us.
F1: interesting that Ted Kravitz currently puts Ferrari top of the teams. Still another test to go and more upgrades to come. But interesting nonetheless. He correctly called Aston Martin as best of the rest a few years ago, when Alonso got around 8 or 9 podium finishes.
Attorney general says no records were withheld 'on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity'
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ag-pam-bondi-announces-all-epstein-files-released-listing-high-profile-names
It is not clear if this is a new (or revised) drop or just a reannouncement of what had already been released. The embedded video suggests new, but then that is not dated.
Healey is 29 and 14.
Lammy is 95 and 32.
Why the huge differences for some candidates?
(I've cashed out of this market and taken my profit, though I'm still in SKS exit date.)
Assuming you are looking at Betfair the 29 has now gone and he is now 19.5 for leader (still 14 for PM).
Telegraph is not suggesting Healey as a caretaker - report says he is seen as the only candidate who can unite the left and right of the party and be highly credible as PM.
He is obviously very strong on defence and will have stature dealing with world leaders. But he is also attractive to the soft left as he used to be in the Tribune group.
If Labour MPs want to win the next GE they should absolutely go for him.
It has been known.
I was considering a lay/back pair across the two on Lammy a couple of days ago in the expectation they could align - but I decided I don't know enough and it's not a type of sideways stretch I have done before. I could quite possibly get it backwards by mistake
Air punch!
France are now clear favourites for the slam. Can’t see anyone stopping them. Certainly not England in Paris
It looked suspiciously real so I thought why not. $28 for real lapis? Turns out it’s not only real lapis it’s the top quality stuff from Afghanistan. There’s a known trading route which extends from the prehistoric Afghan mines to Indochina - to dealers in Bangkok and PP - a remnant of the Silk Road!
1 - Daily Mail (0% believeable) - emergency bog paper
2 - Daily Express (3% believable)
3 - Telegraph (5% believable)
4 - Times (33% believable)
5 - Independent / I (50% believable)
Unclassified - The Sun
----
Healey is a highly effective well respected operator who has done exceptionally well in role and like majority of Labour ministers outclasses their Shadows.
No way a long term Leader, ideal able and effective lieutenant ceiling is possibly Foreign Secretary.
Since everyone else has lost.
Submarine industry tells MPs that RN needs more submarines !!
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/uk-should-have-more-submarines-mps-told/
The sort of mass working class Glasman claims to want to improve the lives of had their lives improved, largely by not being the mass working class any more. And, whatever some sociologists might argue, there's not much interest in going back to the old ways. For example, nearly everyone aspires for their (grand)children to go to university, even if they think that there are too many students overall.
There are some votes in Blue Labour, sure, but not enough to win. And the votes it loses go well beyond Bluesky... as we're seeing.
Merz slapping the Cowardly Lion on the nose, and Starmer talking about the importance of moving forward without completely defenestrating existing arrangements. Both 30 m,inutes ish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8H0uXPdsec (Merz - translation)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8fVK2ykQAg (Starmer)