[cheeznbreed]

Control, on 14 March 2012 - 08:45 PM, said:

I agree completely, I didn't mean to sound as if I was engaging in Thatcher-bashing. I wasn't a fan but I recognize she had limited options in terms of dealing with the Unions. Especially the NUM under Scargill.

I didn't read it like that at all, just wrote what I thought. Interesting stuff indeed, cheers.

[fluffy666]

Control, on 14 March 2012 - 08:45 PM, said:

I agree completely, I didn't mean to sound as if I was engaging in Thatcher-bashing. I wasn't a fan but I recognize she had limited options in terms of dealing with the Unions. Especially the NUM under Scargill. My comparison with Brown wasn't a good one.

She had little choice whereas Brown was just clueless.

My impression with Brown is the 'Recent Convert' fallacy. Basically, old school tories might have talked about deregulating the city, but at least they knew the kind of chancers who worked there, having been to school with them. Whereas Brown and other new labourites seemed to actually believe that they'd regulate themselves (a la Alan Greenspan)

[Game_Over]

Control, on 14 March 2012 - 07:40 PM, said:

The private sector has played a huge part in driving up the benefit bill via the mechanism of privatizing the housing supply. This led to run away housing costs, and that in turn, amongst many other things, led to a large increase in housing benefit.

The truth as you describe it is being revealed, an almost unregulated free market in housing finance has driven up the cost of one of the key needs in life, shelter. That has had a massive knock on effect on wages, and contributed to the need for the recent bank bailouts.

As for the state providing people with free housing, that is completely wrong. Social housing was never free, there's the small matter of rent. Which amazingly in the world of state "unreality" eventually amortized the cost of building the housing stock. Social housing was also reserved for workers, which is the key point. Until the ideologues got their hands on it that is.

It was the Labour party that created the mass ghettos of the unemployable by changing the housing act so that various definitions of "neediness" became the priority criteria for housing. Before this change to the housing act you had to have some non-benefits means of paying the rent. i.e. work. You also had to be a good tenant. After the change it was simple for the Conservatives to flog it off cheap. Both parties engaged in the exact opposite of what was needed.

There are also good examples that basically prove that social housing works if it is protected from the sweaty hands of the political and economic manipulators. The Peabody and Guiness Trusts. Same model as council housing but protected from being used as a political football. They still function in the same way that State social housing used to.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Peabody_Trust

http://en.wikipedia..../Guinness_Trust

I know that I seem to be contradicting myself by citing essentially private examples, my point is that Guinness and Peabody were free of political opportunism and ideological manipulation. It wasn't the state model that failed but the politicians that used it for their own ends that caused the failure.

The model could easily be adjusted to protect it from politics while using the economies of scale that a the state can supply. The housing act worked, and can work again but needs to be rebalanced towards supporting the productive part of the economy. Working people. And changes to the act could then be protected by something like a Parliamentary super-majority to stop a repeat of the same abuses for political expediency and/or dogma.

Low rents give people a chance to save a deposit to buy their own place while at the same time covering the cost of construction over the lifetime of the building and acting as a balance to private sector rents.

You say that the private sector has driven up the benefit bill by privatising housing supply but then surely this begs the question as to how anyone could afford to rent a home prior to the first council houses being built around 1900.

The irony is that the main factor driving up rents in the private sector is housing benefit itself.

This has resulted in the situation where only people getting housing benefit can afford to live in central London and people who work there have to commute in because they cannot afford to live there.

You have also ignored the effect of demand for housing pushing up rents and this is due to historically unprecedented levels of immigration which occurred under New Labour.

On the supply side - if planning laws were relaxed the price of land would fall and the private sector would build millions of homes that people could afford and would want to buy.

At the end of the day, Billions of humans over millions of years managed to provide a home for themselves before social housing was invented.

[Game_Over]

fluffy666, on 14 March 2012 - 09:12 PM, said:

My impression with Brown is the 'Recent Convert' fallacy. Basically, old school tories might have talked about deregulating the city, but at least they knew the kind of chancers who worked there, having been to school with them. Whereas Brown and other new labourites seemed to actually believe that they'd regulate themselves (a la Alan Greenspan)

Do you genuinely believe that they didn't know what they were doing?

You need money to buy votes and they didn't care where it came from or if the cost of their 13 year spending spree took the next 40 years to pay back.

[shindigger]

Maitliss just made a complete **** of Ed Balls on NN.
Kept drawing him in then, nuking him. He didnt learn.
Didnt see the next IED in the Maitliss road.
What a total muppet.
Completely unstitched on live TV.

About ten minutes in on tomorrows iPlayer.
Worth a watch.

[bobthebuilder]

Control, on 14 March 2012 - 05:36 PM, said:

Pithy, but it wasn't a bankrupt state that did the asset stripping. It was one group of ideologues who thought they knew better and decided to impose policies that are as fundamentally Utopian and flawed as anything the socialists have to offer. The state bashers never seem to grasp the fact that a plural state works NOT because it's the best solution to organizing people but because it's the least worst solution. Someone (can't remember who) said you don't judge the Monarchy by the power they have but by the power they deny to others. Modern states can be described in the same terms. Their strength comes from the power they deny to single groups. A lesson every government has willfully ignored for the past thirty years.

Instead of rational government we've had thirty years of deluded numpties foisting half backed Chicago school economics on everyone by force. Laissez-fair was a disaster in the 19th century and because a lot of very well educated stupid people thought they knew better we've had to learn all over again that dog-sh1t tastes bad. And now the faithful are desperately trying to rewrite history to put the blame on the state. Witness Iraq, the current and ongoing experiment Chicago School economics.

People have far too many conflicting perceived needs for any one system of ideology ever to be applicable in a practical manner. So the least worst approach is a system that minimizes the damage that such an ocean of conflicting wants and desires and perceived needs can create if it's left unchecked. The State is imperfect and that is exactly what we need. It goes wrong when it gets hijacked by ideologues and utopian thinkers who are utterly convinced their new holy writ is the single best answer and set about imposing it come what may. Extremists come in many forms and are to be avoided at all costs.

one of the best posts ive read on here.

[Sour Mash]

Control, on 14 March 2012 - 04:06 PM, said:

Rubbish. Everyone who bought a council house knew that the money was not going back to rebuild new houses. That was made clear from the start of the policy. So every purchaser could quite realistically "capitalise on [a good hand]" but it was obvious at the time from the opposition to the policy that plenty of people understood the damage that was being inflicted. People had to ignore the other side of the debate and bravely soldier on capitalising on their good luck. The whole policy was flawed, not just where the money went.

It was beggar thy neighbor writ large.

It had nothing to do with "extending home ownership." Effectively people in social housing already had the option to become owners, low rents enabling saving a deposit. If they wanted it badly enough. The policy was in fact the biggest political bribe in history. And millions of short sighted council tenants were tripping over themselves to "take advantage" of their good luck. The funny thing is many of them are now the same Daily Mail readers who moan about the state of the country while simultaneously trying to justify their own part in creating the problems we are now in. Like you just did.

Your logic is the justification looters use during rioting. Who ate all the pies? Turns out it was mainly the boomers.

Aaah - so it just comes down to 'blaming the boomers'. Should have guessed.

ANYONE when given a windfall like being able to buy the house they had been renting for years at a knock down price is going to take it, they'd be a fool not to. Even the supposedly virtuous 'post boomer' generation.

Get it into your head - you have not been disenfranchised by a uniquely greedy and amoral generation of 'boomers'. Human nature ran it's course resulting in a boom (one of many throughout history) which benefited people who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately for you and a lot of other people you weren't. That's what's known as 'bad luck', not some sort of organised disenfranchisement by the previous generation.