[Politics] Tory meltdown finally arrived [was: incoming]...

[Beach Hut]

I'm not sure there will be disorder because opposition in any form is so fractured these days and mainly single issue.

I don't think it needs an opposition just Boris and the current unfavourable economic cocktail is enough to cause huge civil unrest.

 

[lawros left foot]

Back to giving Johnson a well deserved kicking.


His latest wheeze is to flog off housing association stock to ‘poor people’.

Isn’t this the main reason we have a severe lack of affordable housing because Thatcher sold it all off in the 80s and it has now ended up in the hands of buy to let landlords?

How about making it harder through taxation to own buy to let housing, which is mainly the cheapest end of the market. This would allow poorer people onto the first step of the ladder, and lead to lower prices all round.

 

[Hugo Rune]

How about making it harder through taxation to own buy to let housing, which is mainly the cheapest end of the market. This would allow poorer people onto the first step of the ladder, and lead to lower prices all round.

This is a fantastic idea but one a Tory government would never do. At their core, they are there to make the rich richer and always have been, this goes completely against the grain.

 

[lawros left foot]

This is a fantastic idea but one a Tory government would never do. At their core, they are there to make the rich richer and always have been, this goes completely against the grain.

I don’t think the present Labour Party would be too keen on it either.
I realise it’s a forlorn hope, aren’t something like 70% of Tory MPs landlords?

 

[mikeyjh]

Back to giving Johnson a well deserved kicking.


His latest wheeze is to flog off housing association stock to ‘poor people’.

Isn’t this the main reason we have a severe lack of affordable housing because Thatcher sold it all off in the 80s and it has now ended up in the hands of buy to let landlords?

How about making it harder through taxation to own buy to let housing, which is mainly the cheapest end of the market. This would allow poorer people onto the first step of the ladder, and lead to lower prices all round.

Is there evidence that de-incentivising BTL leads to a lowering in house prices? The removal of tax relief for interest on BTL mortgages has been in place for several years but, obviously, house prices continue to rise. I realise that this is entirely unscientific, just saying. There is a large demand for rental properties at all price point so 'affordable' housing should include those affordable rental properties that, as you rightly point out, Thatcher sold off.

 

[The Fits]

What a wheeze. The only solution to the housing crisis is to build genuinely affordable housing and social housing and putting a cap on rentals.
Who does he think this latest load of nonsense is going to appeal to?

 

[Titanic]

Back to giving Johnson a well deserved kicking.


His latest wheeze is to flog off housing association stock to ‘poor people’.

Isn’t this the main reason we have a severe lack of affordable housing because Thatcher sold it all off in the 80s and it has now ended up in the hands of buy to let landlords?

How about making it harder through taxation to own buy to let housing, which is mainly the cheapest end of the market. This would allow poorer people onto the first step of the ladder, and lead to lower prices all round.

This is a fantastic idea but one a Tory government would never do. At their core, they are there to make the rich richer and always have been, this goes completely against the grain.

Didn't they do just that with increased SDLT rates for additional residential properties and non-residents?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...urchases-of-additional-residential-properties

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-o...sdlt-which-apply-to-non-resident-transactions

 

[Westdene Seagull]

How about making it harder through taxation to own buy to let housing, which is mainly the cheapest end of the market. This would allow poorer people onto the first step of the ladder, and lead to lower prices all round.

I think you're slightly over simplifying the problem and the solution. And here's why I think that :

About 15 years ago I had a few BTL flats which I needed to sell to fund a divorce. Put them all on the market and not a single first time buyer viewed them - only BTL landlords. I am currently selling three flats as part of my parents estate - two have had not a single first time buyer viewing so I've accepted offers from BTL landlords. The last one had a single first time buyers viewer who I have accepted an offer from. While BTL has doubtless pushed up prices a little I think the challenge of saving a ridiculous deposit and the tight rules around mortgages has more of an effect on the market then BTL.

Equally, house prices across the range have risen - my house value has more doubled in ten years - and it's because to many house owners see their home as an asset and inflate the selling price to get more 'profit' - not helped by estate agents over valuing.

Back to your solution - a few landlords might leave the market if tax went up but most will just increase the rent of their tenants.

The answer is to build surplus housing stock and reserve some for first time buyers.

 

[Is it PotG?]

The answer is to build surplus housing stock and reserve some for first time buyers.

Where were you thinking?

Around here, nearly every spare inch of green field has been 'utilised'.

On the ones popping up, I believe 30% are 'affordable'.

 

[Machiavelli]

I am not sure about your inferences. So let's 'model' it to see what 'feels' fair.

Imagine we have 11 constituencies, two parties (A and B), and eleven voters in each constituency.

At one end of extreme outcomes, Party A wins every seat by 6 votes to 5. So they end up 66 votes to party B's 55, but obtain 11 MPs, with party B obtaining none. Change the system to PR and party A would end up with 6 MPs and party B 5. Fair?

At the othere end of the extreme, party A win 5 seats by a margin of 11 votes to 0. They lose the other 6 by a vote of 5 votes to 6. They lose the general election by 5 seats to 6. However change the system to PR, with 85 votes to party B's 36, they win the election by a landslide (9 seasts to 3). Fair?

My preference is to base the outcome on who wins the seat. It may not always 'feel' fair but the alternative is to give disproportionate reward to monocultures. Thus, imagine one constituency where all the voters favour one party (A). Such as Harrogate. Then imagine somewhere else where the the same party is favoured by 45% of the electorate and other party (B) is favoured by 55% of the electorate. You have three boroughs with a 'B' majority, but the net electoral outcome for the four boroughs would be a win for party A. I don't think that's fair.

You could of course make it more complicated, but I thought the idea was to maximize voter turn out, not abandon the franchise to triganomatrists.

I'm not sure there will be disorder because opposition in any form is so fractured these days and mainly single issue.

However I generally agree. The last few years have felt very much like the 80s / early 90s.

Where they differ from Thatcher is that she knew the way the wind was blowing at times and change path.

This lot just harden their core vote. They haven't learnt the lessons of the past and if they continue will be out of power for a decade.

Johnson could potentially survive a general election if he rids the cabinet of the likes of Truss, Pritel, Raab, Mogg and Dorries.

The very divisive politicians who are hated because they are nasty and liked because they are nasty too. But he won't.

I disagree quite fundamentally with your assessment of both PMs. Thatcher was a conviction politician that transformed the UK according to an ideological vision, and she ploughed on with that -- "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning". She was deposed precisely for bulldozing through her convictions, and it was those in the cabinet that knew which way the wind was blowing. Johnson, by contrast, has no principles beyond the great men of history view which, bizarrely, he thinks includes him. But he's a master at understanding and leading the public in certain directions. As much as I loathe him, his Cabinet, and their nationalistic/identitarian approach, you have to acknowledge that there have been certain policy decisions taken especially around the economy that jars with his party -- furlough, extra money for the NHS, recent fuel payment -- hence the current crescendo amongst his parliamentarians about tax cuts.

 

[beorhthelm]

What a wheeze. The only solution to the housing crisis is to build genuinely affordable housing and social housing and putting a cap on rentals.
Who does he think this latest load of nonsense is going to appeal to?

no one. those in housing associations these days are unlikely to get much in the way of mortgages. though heard they want to fix this somehow, as if sub-prime crisis never happened. i expect the HA to legally challenge policy anyway, the properties arent government to sell, many have covenants to provide affordable housing, operate not for profit. its a non-deliverable policy that "speaks" to some misguided Thaterites, ignoring HA themselves are Thaterite (HA are private provision of social housing), and this doesnt solve any housing problems, which is from lack of building enough to meet demand.

meanwhile they already bottled out on actual reform of planning to force through or accelerate granting permission.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Where were you thinking?

Around here, nearly every spare inch of green field has been 'utilised'.

On the ones popping up, I believe 30% are 'affordable'.

Off the top of my head :

Toads Hole Valley ( now passed for 880 homes )
Benfield Valley
The area around the Hove bus station. Been talked about for years about it being redeveloped for housing
Kemp Town - ex-gas works
Old Court Farm
EDF site on Portland Road - EDF have been moving functions to Crawley for years. Get them to complete the move and use the huge site for housing.

For too many years people have been far too sensitive about infill south of the bypass. Even when an ideal site like the old Harwoods garage on the OSR became available - what did they build ? Housing ? No - Yellow Box Storage.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I disagree quite fundamentally with your assessment of both PMs. Thatcher was a conviction politician that transformed the UK according to an ideological vision, and she ploughed on with that -- "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning". She was deposed precisely for bulldozing through her convictions, and it was those in the cabinet that knew which way the wind was blowing. Johnson, by contrast, has no principles beyond the great men of history view which, bizarrely, he thinks includes him. But he's a master at understanding and leading the public in certain directions. As much as I loathe him, his Cabinet, and their nationalistic/identitarian approach, you have to acknowledge that there have been certain policy decisions taken especially around the economy that jars with his party -- furlough, extra money for the NHS, recent fuel payment -- hence the current crescendo amongst his parliamentarians about tax cuts.

Not sure why you pasted in my witterings about PR - lol! I have since been persuaded that the single transferable vote (I think it's called, where you list your second preference, and counting is a reiterative process where, if no candidate has 50% or more of the vote, the bottom candidate is eliminated and their supporter's second preference votes are transferred to their second preference candidate, and so on till one candidate crosses a 50% rubicon, with the proviso that the transferred votes can only be tansferred once (i.e., the monster raving loony pary supporter's second preference votes may go mostly to the scientology candidate, but when the scientology candidate is eliminated only the second preference of those whose first preference was scientology are transferred)) seems like a good idea.

Not sure what this has to do with Maggie Thatch, who was deposed as an electoral liability rather than because her policies jarred with conventional tory thinking. Certainly she was no compromiser, but the tories will by and large back a winner and shoot a loser in the head.

As for Johnson, I agree entirely. Like a work colleague who has lied to me countless times, there is so much psychopathic charm there that it is almost impossible to dislike them. Well, not charm so much as shameless chutzpah, perhaps. Like another bloke I know who plagiarised one of my articles. When I met him next he greeted me warmly and said "M***, it was too good to change!". And I laughed. I mean, WTF? It will be extremely hard for the tories to ditch Johnson. You won't catch him grizzling like Thatcher, knowing the game is up. The game will never be up for Johnson unless he is deposed in a coup, and recent events show the tory MPs have been taken in. The day after the vote, one MP who voted against him said 'time to move on and back Boris'. Extraordinary.

 

[lawros left foot]

Apart from punitive taxation on BTL, another way to help the housing crisis would be to bring back online the nearly 300,000 residential properties in the UK that, for various reasons are empty.

It’s cheaper and more environmentally friendly to repair and renovate, than new build.

 

[Pevenseagull]

Maybe I'm being cynical here

IF this housing thing happens I reckon it will be in the form of barely legal housing units. e.g. 37m[SUP]2[/SUP] for a one bed. With one window, absolute minimum build quality, developed by for-profit 'housing associations'*
Or shipping container homes stacked up on old industrial sites.
All priced at the maximum local housing benefit allowance levels.

*these are a growing part of the market. Private Eye did a bit on a couple of them a while back. Can't find the article but from memory they mentioned some with only a couple of hundred properties with directors receiving 100Kpa.

 

[Is it PotG?]

Off the top of my head :

Toads Hole Valley ( now passed for 880 homes )
Benfield Valley
The area around the Hove bus station. Been talked about for years about it being redeveloped for housing
Kemp Town - ex-gas works
Old Court Farm
EDF site on Portland Road - EDF have been moving functions to Crawley for years. Get them to complete the move and use the huge site for housing.

For too many years people have been far too sensitive about infill south of the bypass. Even when an ideal site like the old Harwoods garage on the OSR became available - what did they build ? Housing ? No - Yellow Box Storage.

Again, I do not know the answer but could the infrastructure cope (schools/hospitals/GPs etc)?

 

[Audax]

You might find this report helpful!

https://citizen-network.org/library/global-ranking-of-electoral-systems.html

Interesting article, if a little over-simplified. For example, Australia uses two systems, as follows:

House of Representatives
Otherwise known as the "Lower House". MPs are elected using AV, and this is the house where Government is formed. 151 seats available, so 76 are needed to win.

Senate
Otherwise known as the "Upper House". MPs for this house are elected using the STV version of PR. There are 76 members of this house: 12 from each full state, and 2 each in the major Territories (ACT and NT). At each election, half of the senate seats are contested (with the exception of the 4 seats in the Territories, they are contested every time). The other exception is in the case of a "Double Dissolution" election (more on that below). Roughly equivalent to the House of Lords here.

For new laws to be passed onto the statute books, they must pass *both* houses. The Government has not held a majority in the Senate since 2007. The Senate has significant power, in that in can outright block legislation from passing. So even if the Government commands a big majority in the Lower House, they will (unless they have a majority in the Senate as well) still need to negotiate with other parties to get their policies through. This generally helps to moderate against extremism.

If the Senate blocks the same piece of legislation twice (the rules around this are little more complicated, as there's timings involved), this can trigger what is called a double dissolution election where the entire Senate will be up for election. This last happened in 2016, but is actually very rare.

While the ALP have won the recent Australian election (claiming 77 seats), they do not control the senate where the make up will be as follows (note: counting still under way, so not 100% confirmed, but any changes to the below would be a big surprise):

Coalition: 31 - right
ALP: 26 - left
Greens: 12 - lefter
One Nation: 2 - far right
Lambie Network: 2 - right
Pocock: 1 - hybrid

And then there's 1 more seat in doubt - it will go to either the Coalition or the United Australia Party (right).

So for the ALP to push forward with their policy framework while in government, they will need the support of the Greens and at least 1 other Senator. One Nation are far-right, so they will vote against. Lambie is also right wing (the founder, Jacqui Lambie, is ex-Liberal and ex-Palmer United Party, both being right wing, and has previously expressed anti-foreign sentiment). United Australia is also right wing, so whether they win or not we're left with 38 left-wing (ALP + Green) and 37 right-wing (Coalition + One Nation + Lambie + the seat in doubt). That puts the power in the hands of that solitary 'independent': former Australian Rugby Union player David Pocock. While not officially aligned with them, he's from a similar political ideology as the "Teal Independents" in the Lower House - strong pro-integrity, pro-climate action, but right-of-centre fiscal policy. He beat a Coalition candidate to get his seat.

It's going to be interesting to see how the ALP approaches governing, as my view is they face a hostile Senate. They're going to be forced into a stronger pro-climate action policy framework by the Greens and Pocock.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Back to giving Johnson a well deserved kicking.


His latest wheeze is to flog off housing association stock to ‘poor people’.

Isn’t this the main reason we have a severe lack of affordable housing because Thatcher sold it all off in the 80s and it has now ended up in the hands of buy to let landlords?

How about making it harder through taxation to own buy to let housing, which is mainly the cheapest end of the market. This would allow poorer people onto the first step of the ladder, and lead to lower prices all round.

[tweet]1534806498399989761[/tweet]

Another wheeze is to announce that working people on Universal Credit can get mortgages, but omitting the fact that people need a deposit and savings over £6K on a sliding scale up to £16K means Universal Credit is lowered. Sounds good, but unworkable.

Always jam tomorrow, and blame others when jam is unavailable. Permanently campaigning without producing any results.

 

[Audax]

Off the top of my head :

Toads Hole Valley ( now passed for 880 homes )
Benfield Valley
The area around the Hove bus station. Been talked about for years about it being redeveloped for housing
Kemp Town - ex-gas works
Old Court Farm
EDF site on Portland Road - EDF have been moving functions to Crawley for years. Get them to complete the move and use the huge site for housing.

For too many years people have been far too sensitive about infill south of the bypass. Even when an ideal site like the old Harwoods garage on the OSR became available - what did they build ? Housing ? No - Yellow Box Storage.

Head a bit further out from Brighton and you've got a lot of new housing going in around Ringmer, Uckfield, etc. The Uckfield builds are a right PITA thanks to all the roadworks initiated by needing to extend utilities etc to the new estates.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Just reading the housing posts. Here in Faversham the first stage of a massive expansion is underway. Houses are filling the fields surrounding the town. So far there is no sign of any infrastructure uppage. This means the traffic here is getting absurd. The A2 is often clogged. All through town there is a 20 mph speed limit now (which I like, but which is rountinely ingored by the 40 mph wankers). Often I have had to do a U turn and cross town via an unvonventional route owing to a half mile queue in the middle of town.

No new schools built, and the only two non housing additions are a Lidl and a Holiday Inn on the Ashford road.

The new houses themselves are big, with tiny windows and gardens, plus small runs of 'affordable' (and rather shitty looking) terrace runs, or flats. The locations mean that folk must drive into town to shop, and most likely drive and park to use the station for work (most new owners are escapees from London); the Lycra option is a non-starter as our London trains will not allow bikes on at rush hour, apart from fold-ups, and there is only so much room for them in the door wells.

Madness. Some extra roads, some road widening, some better parking, some new focal points . . . . not rocket science but it would cut the profits... absolutely no notice taken of Prince Charles' vanity model village project.