| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! 08:18 - Oct 8 with 3386 views | PlanetHonneywood |
Sincerely hope those behind this traversity, get a dose of the pox!
Subjecting this poor old woman to such dreadful treatment, quite probably leading to her passing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/artic |  |
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| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 12:21 - Oct 9 with 535 views | kensalriser |
I'd just observe that Lblock's sentence here is almost certainly cribbed:
"Rapid population growth without matching public infrastructure investment has driven up housing costs and strained urban services in major metros like Madrid and Barcelona."
Indigenous Ealingites don't use American expressions like 'major metros'. |  |
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| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 12:33 - Oct 9 with 514 views | ed_83 |
| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 18:45 - Oct 8 by stevec |
Appreciate your reasoned response, and it’s fair comment. Be nice if NW5 tried this approach rather than lobbing the standard go to grenades into the argument.
Take your point regards social housing, definitely true. Seems to me that if the houses to people ratio has remained relatively unmoved the problem is largely down to building the wrong types of houses/flats. When I train into London it’s hard to imagine any of those high rise flats around the river are in anyway affordable. Think it’s about time government secured those empty flats and put British people who require social housing into them at the developers cost. Not a perfect solution but it might concentrate the minds of wealthy developers.
Only thing I’d call into question, whilst London may only hold 1m more people since the 1950’s (its population did drop considerably in the 70/80’s and only recovered this century) but the population overall had increased by around 12 million in the last 30 years, and creating houses for that surplus 11 million outside London would be no mean feat even if they had built the right type of housing.
Take your points though. |
Right, I think when you get down to it most people disagree less on this stuff than we're led to believe.
In terms of those 11 million people: there are enough homes across the UK for them, the issue is with how those homes are being built, and who's building them. You've obviously noticed the empty flats in London! I believe there's currently something like 30,000 new build properties in the capital sitting empty, having been completed but never sold.
The housing market's contracted since those projects started, but developers price in a profit margin at the beginning, which means they now can't drop prices to what people can actually afford. Forcible renationalisation of housing stock would be a pretty extreme response, but I guess my point is: this is not fundamentally an issue with supply, nor one we can fix simply by building more homes or slowing population growth.
The rental market's the same: we have enough homes, we just don't have enough *affordable* homes, because we've spent 40 years transforming housing from a public good into an investment asset. The number of people in social housing has roughly halved since the 80s, the number paying rent to a private landlord has roughly doubled: *that's* why rents have skyrocketed, not (primarily) because of immigration.
So when you see people like LBlock (whether consciously or not) alluding to the sort of explanations that emanate ultimately from the far right, I'm not surprised people react negatively. Even if - like I say - 99% of us have far more in common around these issues than we realise. [Post edited 9 Oct 12:38]
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| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 12:51 - Oct 9 with 461 views | plasmahoop |
| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 12:33 - Oct 9 by ed_83 |
Right, I think when you get down to it most people disagree less on this stuff than we're led to believe.
In terms of those 11 million people: there are enough homes across the UK for them, the issue is with how those homes are being built, and who's building them. You've obviously noticed the empty flats in London! I believe there's currently something like 30,000 new build properties in the capital sitting empty, having been completed but never sold.
The housing market's contracted since those projects started, but developers price in a profit margin at the beginning, which means they now can't drop prices to what people can actually afford. Forcible renationalisation of housing stock would be a pretty extreme response, but I guess my point is: this is not fundamentally an issue with supply, nor one we can fix simply by building more homes or slowing population growth.
The rental market's the same: we have enough homes, we just don't have enough *affordable* homes, because we've spent 40 years transforming housing from a public good into an investment asset. The number of people in social housing has roughly halved since the 80s, the number paying rent to a private landlord has roughly doubled: *that's* why rents have skyrocketed, not (primarily) because of immigration.
So when you see people like LBlock (whether consciously or not) alluding to the sort of explanations that emanate ultimately from the far right, I'm not surprised people react negatively. Even if - like I say - 99% of us have far more in common around these issues than we realise. [Post edited 9 Oct 12:38]
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Also though the demand around the country is not equal. Certain parts of the country need a bit more going on to encourage people to go there. I went to Newtown in Wales last year, property and rents are dirt cheap. Beer was too, but there's no work. We need to reindustrialize but are losing more industrial jobs currently, 4000 in hull last week. | | | |
| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 13:28 - Oct 9 with 389 views | PlanetHonneywood |
| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 17:12 - Oct 8 by NorrisGreen |
Those are selected facts - what are the FULL facts?
Maybe she has not paid any rent for years? Maybe she has massive rent arrears? Maybe she has been offered dozens of alternative places to live? Maybe there has been a long and drawn out legal battle that she's lost at every stage and has ignored every verdict handed out?
Frankly I haven't got a clue what's gone on but I don't trust the news media to give me a full impartial report and I'm not going to fill in the gaps to suit my own world view either. |
Well, if you're so full of doubt but not prepared to do your own research to serve up a fact-based rebuttal, perhaps you should just keep out of it. | |
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| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 15:46 - Oct 9 with 278 views | numptydumpty |
Not in anyway being the naysayer here
Yes awful scenario that has happened in Spain It does though happen here, all the time, we just dont hear about it.
But, was going to say when discussions have got political on here with very differing views, well when i have raised an issue on here, I have been clamped down on, and been told we dont do politics on here, as it can get a little heated both ways. I think the reasoning being Clive as the admin of the site could get into trouble if unsubstantiated views are misrepresented.
Am guessing at times, the site may be checked. Think this idea was mooted when all sorts of stuff was posted about covid.
Could be wrong but think in 58 pages time, this thread could start to get a little personal.
Just an observation.
Anyhow c'mon u rrr's. Great game ahead of us this evening.... |  |
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| Everything that is wrong in the world is in this! on 17:32 - Oct 9 with 195 views | LazyFan |
It's simple: fewer homes being built, prices go up, and then big business takes advantage at scale (because now it's worth it to them).
Why wouldn't big business make massive profits on the housing crisis when they can?
So, of course they do.
The answer is to build very cheap council housing (affordable is a joke), as we did after WW2. We built roughly 1 million homes in 5 years. The myth is that these were pre-fab; no, only 10% were, and only temporarily. Most of these were replaced by the existing 1 million permanent homes.
And here is the key bit: roughly 80% to 85% of all permanent homes built under Clement Attlee’s Labour government (1945–1951) were built by local authorities (councils) rather than private developers. In this time we were GREAT, as in Great Britain. We did it, despite the economy being broken, and we were bankrupt, in debt to trillions to the Yanks.
So, let's be clear: private big-business markets (you know, the people who throw old ladies into the gutter) have had their way since Thatcher, and it's been a massive failure. 4 decades of complete and utter failure, compared to that WW2 Labour govt that only had one term. One single parliment!
The evidence is clear: if we want efficiency, we need the govt to do it.
This is where people make snide comments like, "You're having a laugh, I work for the council, and they are terrible". Well, get this: the evidence shows the markets are worse. So, you can have your little quips with no evidence, and we are still without the homes, 80 years after that govt. If you love your country, then demand that the councils get the right to build homes.
So, what's stopping the councils from doing this now?
Well, we need to reverse some of those Thatcher policies (we warned you what she was really up to, so please no immigrant crying on the right, as this is all your fault).
What Needs to Change:
1) Councils are heavily indebted and face massive day-to-day budget shortfalls (like adult social care). The government would need to provide guaranteed, multi-year direct funding grants specifically for council housebuilding (meaning it cannot be used for anything else), rather than forcing councils to borrow on commercial markets or bid against each other for small national plots. As we know, this means the savings come from avoiding putting families up in terrible temporary accommodation, supplied by money-grabbing landlords. But to get a return, one must invest. There is no free ROI; we have to invest.
2) Under current UK law, if a council tries to buy land, it must pay "hope value", the inflated price the land might be worth if granted planning permission for private luxury housing. To build cheaply, the UK would need to reverse compulsory purchase laws so councils could acquire land at its actual value, removing developer speculation (the market's word for fantasy and making stuff up).
3) Decades of outsourcing (Thatcher and Blair's market mindset) mean most councils no longer have the internal staff to run major construction projects. Reverting to the old model would require rebuilding local authority development departments from scratch (giving people jobs), rather than relying on external private developers to build a small percentage of "affordable" (which never are) units on private estates. This would also, of course, create real British jobs for locals, and they'd spend their money and taxes right back in those local areas. Need to reinvigorate Clacton-on-Sea? This is how.
4) Councils currently lose homes almost as fast as they can build them because of discount purchases. Rebuilding the old system would require the local council to keep 100% of the sale proceeds to fund an immediate 1-for-1 replacement home. I would put 100% of the proceeds back into a fund that the council can only spend on homes in that local area. Here someone will say, "But that's Thatcher's idea". Nope, she said right to buy, but not right to own, or have your kids own theirs when they move into their own council homes. The owning was all for her rich landlord friends and the Banks. This keeps it sustainable, unlike Thatcher's failure (which we warned you about at the time and decades after, so no crying excuses).
5) Local planning committees frequently block high-density housing developments. Reverting to mass council building would require streamlined planning rules, such as mandatory top-down housing targets or flexible zoning codes (we can zone out floodplains), giving councils an automatic presumption in favour of building social housing on viable sites. No more land banking by developers (makes it harder to corrupt officials as well), and no more building in flood areas that councils then have to literally bail people out of and pay for with our taxes (funny how no one on the right ever rages again and again at those greedy developers for building on floodplains, so much for the hard right; more like a bench of sell-outs). You will see lots of people on the right complain that this is unfair for compo, but we are building homes for our people, its not about markets, its about people being homed. And it saves the taxpayer money. So, boo hoo, poor greedy developers, right-whinging snowflakes.
This would just be the start and shows how it could be done. But this requires something even more difficult for people to get their nut around .... Socialism.
Oh no, looney lefties!
The markets have failed again and again for decades. So the only loons here are the people who think markets will somehow save you, or that some version of capitalism will work if we keep "tweaking" it. Well, we have been tweaking here for 80+ years; people have been born, paid taxes and died in all that "tweaking" time.
No more lamo right-wing snowflake whinging and distractions, no more excuses for the markets or capital; we have done all the so-called tweaks; now it's time to go back to what we did to make Britain Great, and that's to build homes the Clement Attlee way, as it's proven, because we, this great nation, did it once before and we can do it again. But the only way it will happen, the only way, is with Socialism. And that is the only way. |  |
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