[Malcolm Armsteen]

They want to abolish the mayor and GLA.

[Andy McDandy]

Oborne's book sums up the role of mayor under Johnson as basically a PR guy and cheerleader in chief. Public face of UK PLC.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Have we had this one yet?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Oh man,

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/mayor/s ... 32686.html

Revealed: Tory candidate Shaun Bailey’s battle bus breaches London’s toxic air rules
Conservatives pay £300 a day toxic air levy to drive 20-year-old double decker in London

[Bones McCoy]

Oborne's book sums up the role of mayor under Johnson as basically a PR guy and cheerleader in chief. Public face of UK PLC.

I thought we were paying Brenda and her #2 son for that..

[Bones McCoy]

Oh man,

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/mayor/s ... 32686.html

Revealed: Tory candidate Shaun Bailey’s battle bus breaches London’s toxic air rules
Conservatives pay £300 a day toxic air levy to drive 20-year-old double decker in London

£300 / day will be small change to whatever Oligarch is picking up this tab.

Maybe time for a new slogan through:

Poisoning your lungs; and the debate.

[Tubby Isaacs]

From 8 days ago. Bailey apparently still going with "100,000 homes for £100,000 each".

Stiil Nick Stovold is impressed. Despite his name he's not a Gloucestershire cricketer, but the Bethnal Green and Bow 2019 Tory candidate. In which role, he fought a brave rearguard to keep the Labour majority down to 37,524.

[Andy McDandy]

Good luck with the homes thing. I thought that artificial controls on the housing market were a "Mugabe-style land grab". Or maybe only when Labour people suggest it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ha ha, I'd forgotten that.

It's a Boris Johnson style lie. Not much to be had for less than £200,000 even in Thamesmead.

[Boiler]

I thought "affordable" meant "cheap for my BTL portfolio".

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I thought "affordable" meant "cheap for my BTL portfolio".

So true that doesn't even register as funny. Another example (see Tory landlords dropping clad-leaseholders into bankruptcy to further their own profits) of Tory 'privilege' and self-interest at all levels. And class war.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Worth reading on Bailey's utter, er, "optimism" about these £100k homes (and other bollocks). I think this was the interview where he made headlines with the idea homeless families could save for a deposit.

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight ... ndon-69057

But what of his promise that the homes would be available to ‘buy’ for £100,000? Inside Housing points out that purchasing an apartment worth £450,000 would leave the buyer with rent of £800 per month to pay in addition to their mortgage, plus service charges.

“I don’t accept your figure for first off,” Mr Bailey replies. “£450,000, that’s above the average. I’m talking about flats. I calculate it at £420,000. But the point is this: where these homes are largely built, they are below the cost because places like Westminster and Kensington skew the cost. So most of these homes are significantly below it. Around the £300,000 range is what I’m talking about here.”

This seems optimistic. Only one London borough has an average price anywhere near this level – Barking and Dagenham – and the average price in outer London is £438,671. Indeed, on the shared ownership portal for London, there are only 60 properties available with an open market value of £300,000 or less – almost all of them in Croydon.

[Tubby Isaacs]

How is he going to afford all of these additional homes with a £4bn pot?

Mr Bailey says he would in fact have £6bn to play with as Mr Khan has spent “less than half the £4.8bn” he was originally given for the period from 2016 to 2021.


Once more this is not quite right – as at September 2020, Mr Khan had allocated £4.24bn of the £4.77bn available to him, leaving a £533m shortfall. It is true that only £1.63bn of the allocated funding has been actually spent, but the remainder is contractually committed and would not be available to the next mayor to reallocate to new schemes (as a percentage of grant is paid on completion).

Contract Law genius from Shaun there.

[Nigredo]

I thought "affordable" meant "cheap for my BTL portfolio".

Quite, my initial reaction to Bailey's Braneztorm was "Surely that just makes it even easier for foreign investors to gobble up properties that they'll leave empty for tax evasion/money laundering purposes?"

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I thought "affordable" meant "cheap for my BTL portfolio".

Quite, my initial reaction to Bailey's Braneztorm was "Surely that just makes it even easier for foreign investors to gobble up properties that they'll leave empty for tax evasion/money laundering purposes?"

Correct.

[Bones McCoy]

Something they could do, now that we're free of their "Hated EU", is some sort of local homes for local people policy.

Despite it sounding extremely Tory, they won't.
Because it's the wrong sort of people, and foreign investors are a useful whipping boy, but generous party donors.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is all very predictable. The Greens didn't get much less than that in 2016- you'd expect maybe more of a shift to them in London. Perhaps there's some Bailey effect in keeping them with Khan?

Goldsmith got 43% in the run off, which was considered very bad. Bailey, even if he gets all the "others" (he won't) and 2/3 of the Lib Dems (he won't). he'd struggle to match Goldsmith.

Then again, I reckon Johnson can live with doing very badly with fake people in London.

[Tubby Isaacs]

If the Greens get 7% (compared with the 5.8% they got under Jez), I wonder if that could be a good sign longer term for Labour?

I can see why Greens might pick up voters from Labour compared with Corbyn, for whom these voters were a bigger priority than they have been for Starmer now. But if it comes to keeping out somebody like Shaun Bailey/ Johnson/ Gove, maybe Green voting becomes less attractive?

I dunno.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yougov (who are polling Labour low at the moment) put Bailey a bit higher, but only up to 41% on second round.

[Bones McCoy]

Bloody Twiterists!!

Loser isn't spelled with two Zs.