Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Although she did joke in China that more efficient railways were being stymied by newts and bats, which is a blatant rehash of a Johnson line.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2025 7:41 pm Johnson used to do all that “world-beating” boosterism crap ...

The BBC is still ball-deep in it with their "in-tha-wahld" nonsense. The World Service is a case in point when their sports presenters tell the planet how superior Wimbledon, Aintree, and the FA Cup are.

A country and its institutions which are incapable of being comfortable in their own skin. It's just embarrassing.

kreuzberger wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2025 11:16 pm

Abernathy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2025 7:41 pm Johnson used to do all that “world-beating” boosterism crap ...

The BBC is still ball-deep in it with their "in-tha-wahld" nonsense. The World Service is a case in point when their sports presenters tell the planet how superior Wimbledon, Aintree, and the FA Cup are.

A country and its institutions which are incapable of being comfortable in their own skin. It's just embarrassing.

Pet theory time, but there's a link, of sorts, to the new obsession of determining something as the 'greatest ever'.

Short memories. I think it was after the 2015 election that one of the papers said it was tradition for losing party leaders to immediately resign.

Tradition? As recently as 2005 Michael Howard hung on for the best part of a year afterwards.

We can do without world leading and the like, but virtually everyone apart from the Government are trying to talk the economy into a slump, with bullshit about fleeing millionaires. I'm happy to cut the Government some slack.

Samanfur wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2025 9:16 pm Although she did joke in China that more efficient railways were being stymied by newts and bats, which is a blatant rehash of a Johnson line.

The seriously expensive HS2 bat tunnel seems to have been real though. I think they both had a point, even Bozo.

I worry that conservation has been co-opted into the house price preservation movement. Which is one thing when it's objecting to a some houses being built, but not when you're talking about building electric mass transport. Making train lines very hard to build is a disaster for, well, nature.

The problem with all this is that it's upsetting another group of voters who Labour would need to squeeze if it came to a straight fight between Labour and Farage, which is a not unlikely scenario.

I know I'm banging on here, but

Yet Reeves undermined the seriousness with which the government was pursuing net zero by cancelling railway upgrade projects, and saying last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos that airport expansion in the south-east was high on her agenda.

The rail projects had no budget, so they weren't happening anyway, barring the odd restored stub running into a nearby town. These are nice to have, but the tunneling for HS2 to Euston is a more significant thing. Hopefully extension to Crewe will follow at some point if she gets more confident.

George Monbiot. Labour's housing plans will fail because reasons.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... s#comments

Build baby, build. That’s about the intellectual limit of the government’s housing strategy. Millions are under-housed, so let’s “bulldoze” the planning system and build more homes. But it’s not nearly so simple.

As soon as anyone challenges the policy, the government brands them a nimby – another of the crude truncations that pass for debate on this issue: nimbys versus yimbys. So before I go further, let me state that I want to see lots of new social and genuinely affordable housing built as part of a massive programme to solve the worst housing crisis of any wealthy country. I’ve been making similar calls for years, not least in the report I co-authored for the Labour party in 2019: Land for the Many. I oppose Labour’s current approach for a different reason. It will fail.

The plan to build 1.5m homes over five years now depends on just six volume housebuilders. No other mechanism is proposed at scale: Labour’s extension of the home building fund to incentivise small and medium housebuilders will deliver only 12,000 homes. But volume builders have an incentive to limit construction to the “market absorption rate”: in other words, they won’t dent their profits by building enough homes to reduce the selling price. They also minimise the release of affordable homes: they tend to promise them, then pare down their promises as development proceeds. Unaffordable homes are more profitable. The government has proposed no measures sufficient to change these incentives.

Oh and there's this at the end of the article.

Had it set out to destroy people’s faith in democracy and hand the next election to the far right, it could scarcely be doing a better job.

All the decent builders were told to fuck off, and Labour's red lines are for them to remain fucked off.

And the next generation of Poles is too rich.

Labour's immigration paper is due later this year, apparently. I reckon that building visas might be more liberal than they are now. The problem with FoM, which they're right to worry about, is that it was impossible to control. Visas might be a cumbersome alternative but they do give you control. I think the only promise is to get it down from the Sunak levels which were driven by exceptional events, and were almost certainly coming down anyway.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 6:40 pm George Monbiot. Labour's housing plans will fail because reasons.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... s#comments

Build baby, build. That’s about the intellectual limit of the government’s housing strategy. Millions are under-housed, so let’s “bulldoze” the planning system and build more homes. But it’s not nearly so simple.

As soon as anyone challenges the policy, the government brands them a nimby – another of the crude truncations that pass for debate on this issue: nimbys versus yimbys. So before I go further, let me state that I want to see lots of new social and genuinely affordable housing built as part of a massive programme to solve the worst housing crisis of any wealthy country. I’ve been making similar calls for years, not least in the report I co-authored for the Labour party in 2019: Land for the Many. I oppose Labour’s current approach for a different reason. It will fail.

The plan to build 1.5m homes over five years now depends on just six volume housebuilders. No other mechanism is proposed at scale: Labour’s extension of the home building fund to incentivise small and medium housebuilders will deliver only 12,000 homes. But volume builders have an incentive to limit construction to the “market absorption rate”: in other words, they won’t dent their profits by building enough homes to reduce the selling price. They also minimise the release of affordable homes: they tend to promise them, then pare down their promises as development proceeds. Unaffordable homes are more profitable. The government has proposed no measures sufficient to change these incentives.

He's a sneery twat in this mode, isn't he? Look at him, the intellectual, with his ignorance of supply and demand.

If you make.a lot of money building 100 homes, you can make more by building 101 or 200 or 300. If he's got evidence of homebuilders getting together to rig it, perhaps he can let he Competition and Markets Authority know.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 7:28 pm And the next generation of Poles is too rich.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 7:28 pm The problem with FoM, which they're right to worry about, is that it was impossible to control. Visas might be a cumbersome alternative but they do give you control.

One, either, or neither of these might be true. Possibly. What is indisputable is that, under FoM within the Single Market, one needs to be either demonstrably self-sufficient or in gainful employment within three months, or you're out on your arse. That's Kontrolle, contrôle, however you want to skin it.

And, no, English-speaking young Poles might be making hay, but the brick-laying over 40s are still way behind the curve. They are also not the only workforce on the UK's doorstep which knows how to wield a trowel in anger.

Nobody (well not here) said the FoM folk weren't working. The issue was overall numbers. The big numbers are "another Bristol" or whatever. That would really bite Labour on the arse when they were (by necessity) treading on toes to build houses.

I have heard from an insider that Labour's next campaign slogan will be 'Just Fucking Grow Up'.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 7:36 pm

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 6:40 pm George Monbiot. Labour's housing plans will fail because reasons.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... s#comments

Build baby, build. That’s about the intellectual limit of the government’s housing strategy. Millions are under-housed, so let’s “bulldoze” the planning system and build more homes. But it’s not nearly so simple.

As soon as anyone challenges the policy, the government brands them a nimby – another of the crude truncations that pass for debate on this issue: nimbys versus yimbys. So before I go further, let me state that I want to see lots of new social and genuinely affordable housing built as part of a massive programme to solve the worst housing crisis of any wealthy country. I’ve been making similar calls for years, not least in the report I co-authored for the Labour party in 2019: Land for the Many. I oppose Labour’s current approach for a different reason. It will fail.

The plan to build 1.5m homes over five years now depends on just six volume housebuilders. No other mechanism is proposed at scale: Labour’s extension of the home building fund to incentivise small and medium housebuilders will deliver only 12,000 homes. But volume builders have an incentive to limit construction to the “market absorption rate”: in other words, they won’t dent their profits by building enough homes to reduce the selling price. They also minimise the release of affordable homes: they tend to promise them, then pare down their promises as development proceeds. Unaffordable homes are more profitable. The government has proposed no measures sufficient to change these incentives.

He's a sneery twat in this mode, isn't he? Look at him, the intellectual, with his ignorance of supply and demand.

If you make.a lot of money building 100 homes, you can make more by building 101 or 200 or 300. If he's got evidence of homebuilders getting together to rig it, perhaps he can let he Competition and Markets Authority know.

Aren't they under the control of Amazon? I do think a problem with the likes of George Monbiot is that they see council housing as the only solution to the housing crisis and they see regulation as the answer to problems, so any form of deregulation is seen as a bad thing or worse neo-liberalism.

Yeah, I think that's it.

It's certainly deregulatory in terms of where building can take place, but central government is also playing a strong role in mandating numbers. That to me isn't "neoliberalism", whatever that is. It's more like (what I've been told) happens in South East Asia, very free market in terms of delivery, but with the government driving it.

Monbiot thinks a 10% fall in house prices isn't much. I think it's pretty substantial, and there are the economic benefits of people living near where they want to live and most likely a bigger fall in rents, which respond to the extra supply first.

You get also sorts of stuff just flung at the subject by people who don't understand supply and demand. Empty homes is one. You need some or else it's far more difficult to move. And though the number sounds high, it's lower than other countries, and lots of them are in places not many people are in a rush to move to. I think Rhondda Cynon Taf has the most in Wales. If there were a breakdown, I'd expect these empty homes would be in relatively inaccessible places, rather than next to Pontypridd Station (with its very good commuter service to Cardiff).

The other one that's increasingly raised is under occupation, and it seems very easy to say that all these old couples whose kids have left home should downsize. But what if they don't want to? What if they like having their kids and families to stay? What if they like their friends and neighbours, and don't want to chuck that away to start all over again? The spare rooms could be taxed, but I think that would be hugely unpopular, and quite possibly unfair.

The umpteen attempts to reinvent public housing post-Thatcher without mentioning council housing don't appear to be as successful as the post war council house building boom.
And the quality of new build in the private and public sector has left a lot to be desired.

Surprised Monbiot didn't mention Scotland's New Build Heat Standard (NBHS) legislation which becomes law in April. It requires all new buildings to install climate-friendly heating systems instead of oil and gas boilers. https://www.gov.scot/publications/new-b ... factsheet/

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2025 2:43 pm lots of them are in places not many people are in a rush to move to. I think Rhondda Cynon Taf has the most in Wales. If there were a breakdown, I'd expect these empty homes would be in relatively inaccessible places, rather than next to Pontypridd Station (with its very good commuter service to Cardiff).

One of the main aims of the South Wales Metro project is to expand Cardiff commuterland further up the valleys. Where once somewhere like Ponty or Caerffili was the limit of comfortable and convenient travel, the aim is to reach the likes of Merthyr, Aberdâr and Treorchy.

Killer Whale wrote: ↑Tue Jan 28, 2025 9:49 am
One of the main aims of the South Wales Metro project is to expand Cardiff commuterland further up the valleys. Where once somewhere like Ponty or Caerffili was the limit of comfortable and convenient travel, the aim is to reach the likes of Merthyr, Aberdâr and Treorchy.

It's an excellent project. It'll help places like Mountain Ash, which I would think have some empty houses. But more remote bits will still be not particularly attractive places to live. I don't know RCT very well, but in Neath Port Talbot, there are places like Seven Sisters and Cymmer that are not well connected and presumably have some empty homes.

The Guardian have another Brant I've not heard of. Ella Baron.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... an-cartoon

The Ox-Cam arc is almost all private investment. It's got nothing to do with projects that were punted by Bozo-Sunak with no funding being "cancelled" (which were by no means all in the North anyway).

I can't stand the phrase Silicon Valley of Europe. But I note the actual Silicon Valley is in rich California, not struggling Arkansas.

In other news, the paper that employs Ella Baron isn't in the North.