24gray24
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Posts posted by 24gray24
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1 hour ago, ftb_fml said:
One would assume the usual spivs and cronyism that seems to accompany any publicly-funded / privately run enterprise..
I'm sure that as usual nobody will be held to account.Public sector contracts have become euphemisms for doubling costs and longing out the work.
And the reason is very simple. The english government expects contractors to work without bonuses for getting the work done on time. So they long it out which doubles the costs.
The civil service doesn't know how to build anything. They just penny pinch and think they're doing a great job, without realising that time is money.
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2 hours ago, Smith said:
Several times in this and other threads I've asked this simple question to those who believe population must continue to grow for society to work:
What is the end game for a system which requires ever increasing population? How do think this will end?
No one has so far attempted to answer this question, which might be telling.
This is an economic model, not a demographic one.
The end game is the economic model changes to a declining population mode.
I don't think many countries have increasing birth rates these days, growth is just better health care increasing the population by keeping people alive.
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17 hours ago, anonguest said:
credit is due to Gordon Brown staying on as a relatively humble backbencher, much like Ted Heath.
No one else would pay them.
Who would see any value in a man who said no more boom and bust and then gave a bust?
And who would pay money to someone who sold the commonwealth down the river ?
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On 17/10/2023 at 21:41, Si1 said:
https://tomforth.co.uk/stillnottrying/
But even in Manchester the failures outweigh the successes. Manchester remains the largest city in Europe without a metro system. Substantial investments in its railway have been wasted by the cancellation of two extra platforms at Piccadilly station, a pinch point on the national rail network that currently causes delays as far away as Edinburgh, Norwich, and Cardiff. The bottleneck keeps much of the North disconnected from the region’s most important airport in South Manchester. The resulting network is costly to run and slow, uncomfortable, and unreliable to use.
Investments in North England have been cancelled and curtailed. The argument is almost always that they are too expensive.
And yet investments with worse value for money have continued in South East England.
London’s Overground railway network has expanded rapidly. Its last remaining mainline diesel railway has been electrified. Huge investments in its tube network capacity have completed and are ongoing. One cross-city railway, Thameslink, has been hugely improved. Another, The Elizabeth Line, has been built from scratch. Both reach well beyond London. The operating profits from much of the national rail network feeding into them is retained by the city. HS2, now cancelled North of Birmingham, will be completed into central London, freeing up huge capacity on railways in the North of the region. East-West rail, England’s first new railway since HS1 connected London to the Channel Tunnel, will open its first stage in 2025.
None of these huge investments have been made because they offered better value for money than investments in North English cities that were cancelled. They were made because London is where the people who make and influence decisions in the UK live and work and those people are biased towards themselves. It is polite to dress up that accusation in euphemism. In the interest of clarity I have avoided that dishonesty.
The results of these decisions are apparent in the data. In total since 2010, less than £3000 per person has been invested in transport infrastructure in North England. The equivalent figure for the Greater South East is over £5000. In London it is over £8000.
Capital spending (investment) in transport infrastructure has been much lower in North England than South East England.
Just looking at rail and local public transport, the investment that North England’s cities most desperately need to grow their economies, the difference is even more extreme.
In total since 2010, £1500 per person has been invested in North England. In the Greater South East, the figure is £3000 per person. In London it is £6000.
Capital spending (investment) in rail and local public transport infrastructure has been much lower in North England than South East England.
I do not necessarily argue that less should have been spent on transport in and around London. As a country we could and should have spent even more in North England than we did in the Greater South East.
We should have done it not because it was the right thing to do, or the fair thing to do, but because consistently our analysis showed it to be the better option for generating growth and prosperity for the whole of the UK.
But if we had a limited amount to spend, and we had to choose, we should not have chosen to spend so much in London and so little in North England. To label this as “levelling down London” or “talking down our Capital” as many do is moronic.
Closing our regional economic divides isn’t just about transport. In my piece a decade ago I also argued for a better allocation of R&D funding by the state, and the dispersal of both government and national institutions from London to other great cities of Britain. How have we done on that?
Follow the money
The pattern is clear. For nearly 15 years the UK government has talked about reducing regional inequality in the UK. And in that period it has continued to spend much more in London and South East England on the major areas of spending that can affect economic growth rates.
We could only have reasonably expected significant convergence in the UK’s regional economies if more money had been invested in growth in the regions with weaker economies. Instead we did precisely the opposite and invested the most in the places with the strongest economies. Since this investment was poor value for money by our best objective measures this not only deepened our regional inequality but also made us poorer overall than we would have been had we invested for best value. Our current economic situation and our widening regional inequalities are exactly the result we should expect from our actions.
Cancelling HS2 is just the latest action as part of this pattern. There is absolutely no sign that the UK government will change course. Given past performance, a repeat of previous promises should be discounted. While talking about levelling up this government is actively investing in deepening Britain’s economic inequality.
The cost of failure
The outcome of deepening regional economic inequality is exactly what we would expect too. The most obvious outcome of the UK’s low investment in North England is the poor economic performance of its cities, places that more heavily rely on public investment to function.
The UK's large cities (except for London) are among the least productive among comparators in Europe and North America.
North English cities have the lowest productivity and among the weakest economies in the OECD countries of North America and Europe. The Netherlands and The North Rhine Westphalia region of Germany which have similar populations and densities to North England have economies that are 60% and 40% stronger respectively.
As our economy stagnates, North England has become ever more reliant on fiscal transfer from the Greater South East to fund basic public services. Two decades ago our economy needed support. Today it is more dependent on that support than ever before.
The UK's widening regional economic inequality means that fiscal transfers needed to run basic public services at a distance from London have increased enormously in the past two decades.
This is in stark contrast to other countries in Europe where weaker regions have been supported to invest in growth.
You seem to be arguing for more government borrowing.
I don't think there's going to be much, no matter which party is elected.
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Once you realise that the tories have been letting in 1m a year, and that neither party are going to stop doing it, you realise that the real trajectory is...
The return of teeming slums, complete with slumlords, and achieving growth that way.
We can all see the tales they tell us to the contrary are just impossible lies, so that only leaves us with the above.
The only thing we don't know is what colourful lies they will tell us to get us to swallow it. If we don't believe the first lot, they'll come up with some more. And none of them are intended to change the real trajectory. They're only intended to get us to swallow it.
The only thing they're really worried about is losing control. (And they've got the police, newly ivented laws, and if necessary the army to deal with that. )
So they'll just smile politely, tell you a few more lies you want to hear, and know you can't do anything to stop them.
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We're all stuck on previous downturns, and guess a number based on that.
But this downturn is off the scale, historic, the greater depression.
The main uncertainty is inflation. If we get roaring inflation, there could be only modest falls in nominal terms.
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35 minutes ago, Aidan Ap Word said:
Gazumping was a thing.
Gazundering is a thing.
In England it's not a contract until contract exchange.
If people don't like this they should work to get the law (or, in the case of SSTC - the lack of law) changed.
If it takes 4 months to get ready, and prices are falling, it's inevitable that it's marked down somewhere along the way.
The only alternative is for 10 possible buyers to have 9 of them waste money on surveys etc and then 9 not get it.
So I doubt things will change.
I suppose the seller could pay for surveys etc to cut the time down to a month, but they won't want to do that. They'd have to be forced. (And then could you trust the survey?)
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4 hours ago, Stewy said:
They will be if they don't start cutting rates shortly. Hopefully they've improved their forecasting models.
Cutting interest rates makes inflation go up further and faster.
The BOE is doing the opposite.
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Isn't she one of those inherited wealth types, talking down to the working man?
She looks Norman.
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The old always disapprove of the young.
But strangely, they forget how they viewed their own parents when they were young.
If you jog their memories, turns out their parents had values which wouldn't work at all a generation later, and they wrote them off for it. . And they were old and tired, which the young aren't.
So let the young have their fun. They'll be old and tired themselves soon enough. And out of date with what works and what doesn't.
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Stewy isn't all bad.
People who are going to food banks are willing to make a full time job of getting something for nothing. The country is full of them.
This is definitely the take off of inflation- look at oil climbing and everything costs oil, even bananas need to be transported.
So we've inflation entrenched and rising. A government that is living beyond its means, and increasing the debt to paper over it, and a population looking at 30% increases in their food budget and mortgages.
So the government keeps printing money, inflation goes to 20%, and lo and behold, house prices at these levels seem quite affordable in a few years time.
Isn't that the stewy argument?
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It changes with age.
I wouldn't underestimate the future local economy either, that's probably the biggest factor.
Eg manufacturing towns or pit towns in late 1970's? They sank to zero when the economy disappeared.
And vica versa. Off M25 areas boomed with 80's big bang banking and globalisation London.
So.. what's going to boom over next 30 years?
Manufacturing towns I'd guess, near a big port. Possibly.
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Trading standards notices illegal activity after it's being going on for 20 years. And then says it can't stop it.
?
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38 minutes ago, Smith said:
Estate agent told me this morning that she was supposed to be at the group viewing for an auction property but no one wanted to view. Looking at the property it looks perfectly nice, three bed detached in good location, but the "guide price" is every penny of what you'd expect to pay for it in a conventional sale.
That's probably because the seller has set the reserve price at top prices. That has stopped the auctioneer putting a lowish guide price on to attract bidders.
Seller wants a quick sale with no risk.
They'll find that it's not a quick sale if it doesnt sell at all.
(Then it's relisted with a conventional estate agent for peak prices. Because it has to be the formats fault, not the price)
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15 minutes ago, 70PC said:
Doubtless interested parties said 'house prices always go up' at some point. That was the magic bullet for two decades to induce people to get in deeper than they should.
And between 1970 and 2023 that was true, because the government kept devaluing the currency by printing money (if for no other reason).
Since they will keep going, it's accelerated recently, nominal prices may never fall.
So we could be looking at a 75% fall in real terms and continuing house price rises in nominal pounds.
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On 22/09/2023 at 09:18, scottbeard said:
Indeed. As is demonstrated if it increases in value and you get to keep 100% of the profit (or vice versa for the loss).
It's a popular oddity on HPC for people to use phrases like "homeowner" (in inverted commas to imply they don't own it) or 'renting from the bank' etc but it really is not the case at all.
Conversely, anyone who has money deposited in a bank legally does NOT own that money any more. Instead, they are a creditor of the bank. Ironic in a way.
"Homeowner" means you own all the risks, but you don't own the house until the last penny is paid.
Leaseholder means you paid 100 years' rent in advance, so you're still renting.
You soon find out it gets taken off you when you don't pay in both cases.
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13 hours ago, Timm said:
I dunno - I've never worked in auctions.
But I see a lot of properties being reduced a lot prior to auction.
And then thay have no bids in the 24 hours prior to sale.
What happens to them?
That's not an auction.
That's an estate agent pretending it's an auction.
At a real auction, you only bid on the day.
(At a pretend auction, you bid, estate agent says there's a higher bid, bids you up with an invented buyer, until you hit the target price. If no one does, it's withdrawn)
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Greasy had no values except keeping the plates spinning for the benefit of bankers.
That's why he always looks so wooden when he is pretending to believe in ordinary issues, such as not banning diesel motors.
He's literally had to memorise the principle he's pretending to believe in.
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I don't buy that.
Lots get withdrawn when they sell privately before the auction.
They don't get withdrawn because the guide price is too high.
If the reserve is too high, they don't sell. But there's always a chance someone will stick his hand up without reading the paperwork.
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Yes, oil going up, inflation going up too.
Everything is costed in oil.
So if rates don't go up, the pound goes down and that makes inflation go up as well. Bailey either raises rates or beds in inflation.
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Stewy is the voice of the average home owner. Its the voice of the 99%.
People on this forum are the outliers.
We should realise that.
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My conclusion from this thread is that Dr Doom's point that interest rates must keep rising to prevent inflation rising is less controversial than the font size of the reporter.
And that the bank of england is going to keep rates level to get inflation really going.
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Schiff said oil prices rising again, so inflation will go higher.
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The US is absolutely fiddling their inflation figures, and unemployment figures. Multiple changes over the years to get figures politicians want.
I'd be amazed if the UK's ways of counting inflation etc hadn't been similarly fiddled.
Eg house prices aren't included in something they should be, like inflation. (I forget).
Argentines are saying goodbye to their Central Bank
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Silver?