Tuesday, Jun 19, 2007
Victorian England here we come
Firstrung: Rural housing shortage turning countryside into "theme park for the rich"
England's countryside will become a "themepark for the rich" unless the Government, local councils and other public bodies raise their game on tackling the rural housing shortage, the National Housing Federation has warned...
Posted by converted lurker @ 10:27 AM (132 views) Add Comment
13 Comments
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1. royston said...
The solution is simple - one home per family. Tax the cr@p out of second / third / etc. homes and BTL investments. Most people in this country don't have more than one home - even in the over-50s age group. If politicians believed there were enough votes in it, they would sacrifice the multi-property minority in an eye-blink!
2. tyrellcorporation said...
Trouble is that Gordon has realised he's fu**** the pensions system for millions of 'normal' people and his only way out is to let people pile into property instead. The comedy will be that as more people are sucked into 'property-as-investments' he'll just wade in with a punitive tax and paint them all as money-grabbing capitalists who need to be punished (much like 4x4 owners - not that you really need a 4x4 unless you pull cows and pig-nuts around in a trailer).
3. wage slave said...
I'd be happy to see second homes / holiday homes / BTL heavily taxed. And it wouldn't surprise me if GB is weighing this one up at the moment.
The problem is he can't rock the housing market boat or his 'miracle' economy will collapse.
Didn't Nigel Lawson have a 'miracle' economy too ?
4. cyril said...
Yes I remember Nigel Lawson's miracle economy. The miracle was that he got away with it for so long - and the same goes for GB.
5. mrmickey said...
I agree tyrell, people are trying to provide for their future rather than relying on the state to look after them which is perfectly natural. Obviously once the housing market goes t*ts up the middle class will be blown out of the water and will have to go cap in hand to the government to look after them. Once your reliant on the state for your income you've lost you independence and have to do what your told if you want your weekly bread and circuses.
6. sovietuk said...
This has been New Liebour's plan all along. If you destroy the middle class and make them dependent on the governnent then they are not going to vote for a party that is not going to look after them (ie. the Tories). What you end up with is a system not too dissimilar to a typical backward communist state with the corrupt New Liebour elite perpetually in power enjoying a life of decadence at the expense of the proles who are totally dependent on the state and who can in reality be treated just like sh*t.
The good news is the plan will be de-railed. This is because it's becoming more and more difficult to hide the world outside of the UK. People are quickly realising what a poor deal they are getting here and how badly they have been betrayed by their politicians - TRAITORS.
7. doomwatch said...
Yet again the "nice simple folk" landed gentry in the country are bleating about new develepments ruining their views. If they sold off all their BTLs in London, maybe people wouldn't have to move out. Simple case of you reap what you sow eh, "simple folk".
8. Wario said...
Quite so, doomwatch. My city was carpetbombed by HMO in the wake of the Lawson boom, turning what was once solid petit-bourgeouis housing stock into a vast feral slum. All of them "2nd. homes" etc. to chubby rural types who'd turn up with some barnardo's furniture in the horse-box and let them out to transients. This had the effect of multiplying the local population by I'd guess, four. And our taxes are shooting up to cope, because hardly any of them are eligible for council tax, and neither are their landlords. Nice.
Thank god my kids will never, in a lifetime of working, be able to afford a flat like the one they're growing up in. Luckily they seem quite taken by the way one of their uncles lives. In Vermont.
9. harold said...
sovietuk, you've just described America very well.
10. Ticktock said...
Soviet,
Really? Which 'backward communist' state has such voting tricks? Surely communist states are not democracies by definition and therefore have little need for such tactics.
What you have described (and you may well be right) is a Fascist state, not a communist one. (As Harold mentioned)
11. fahrenheit451 said...
Not sure anyone will like this "alternative" view.
But round us all the villages have been killed off by the local government and planners. No buses for elderly people or mothers with prams, because you can't physically get on them and prams are banned anyway because the buggies block the ailes, even if they are folded up. ! A farmer wanted to build some more housing on the edge of the village (and make an absolute packet) but it was stopped by the planners because it was too far from the nearest hospital and secondary schools (we have a primary school and various nurseries, but that's all).
Basically the countryside has been killed off by the Planning Department.
They only want to build flats in the town centres, so much for social housing. It's all talk and no action.
12. nearly30 said...
The village where I grew up is a very much different place now. The young have all but moved away - and if you want to live there the cheapest house is £200K (1 bed cottage). The highest is £1 million ono - the ave around £350K. Is shame - because I would still live there if I could.
What new building there is are for 'luxury' 4 beds around the £400K mark. Oh - and we have the odd 'celeb' in our neighbourhood too - recently move in - says a lot really.
A couple of the local farming families have packed up and sold off their land - auction. Oh well - the price of progress.
13. dohousescrashinthewoods said...
Ticktock, interesting that the UK is verging on "not democratic by definition", so perhaps we are a fascist state?
A nation where the government do as they please, with their fingers in their ears, while the people are busy voting on big brother does not strike me as democratic. If the good ald US-of-A, the leading land of the free can't even have a free and fair election, it's next stop Zimbabwe.
I think the rhetoric of "Democratic western values of freedom and choice" is equivalent to the rhetoric that "sub-prime lending brings true opportunity and wealth-creation to traditionally marginalised sections of society". Prime BS.
Have we ever had a government so preoccupied with spin, book-cooking and covering up gross corruption? At least Zimbabwean officials don't bother hiding the fact that they are bankrupting the place.