TTID

The success of the Brexit referendum, the capture of the blue wall and the disillusionment felt with the current government were all founded upon the issue of free movement that was introduced in the Maastricht treaty. The UK declining to call a referendum on the Lisbon treaty only served to inflame already existing tensions. Angela Merkel, aware of this motivation, declared immediately after the 2016 referendum that the UK must accept all of the 'four freedoms' to enjoy the benefits of the single market. She knew that free trade was popular in the UK, but free movement was not. Given the tensions that now exist within the EU, the desire in the UK to trade freely with our neighbours and our aversion to free movement and being subsumed into a remote superstate, an alternative is possible. The UK can establish a new incarnation of the old Common Market, a community of nations trading freely together while retaining their individual sovereignty, without the political ambitions and loss of immigration controls. Many lessons have already been learned by the EU and these could be cherry picked for the new North Atlantic Trade Organisation, or NAT... no, wait... European Traders, or ET, hang on, I'll get there... European Free Trade Area, EFTA. That'll do. Once established, this welcoming body would offer a soft landing to any other disgruntled European nation that wants their sovereignty back, without cutting their throats in the process.

And it's impossible to persuade the plebs to behave when their masters are up to their necks in the cookie jar.

Yes. Those sound like reasonable deductions, properly audited.

0.01% of it, at least.

No portion of this is rent. Apart from maintenance deductions, all of the 'rent' is going towards buying the home.

I'm not proposing that they be openly traded. They could be sold against equity in another home when moving, or inherited on death, or other things that cleverer people than me would think up. We would want to avoid them being regularly converted to beer and fags.

That would be where the word 'regulated' comes in. You couldn't buy microdeeds in anything but your own residence and could not own another home to qualify.

Duh! Apologies. Of course, you are correct. 0.1% would be a Millideed. Not such a catchy name. Cynically, because of the branding, I'd revise it so that deeds worth 0.01% could be bought.

"Commie" would be nationalising all housing. I'm promoting uk homes owned by uk families. Quite different.

As the name suggests, a micro deed would be a deed for 0.1% of the home. Instead of renting a social home, the occupant would pay into a holding account. Maintenance costs would be deducted from this account, then the balance used to buy micro deeds based upon the initial construction and land costs of the home. The sale and transfer of these micro deeds would be subject to a regulated market.

Not for profit corporations. Possibly pension funds, with careful regulation. Mostly, a shift away from renting towards progressive/part purchasing.

HPI is not addressed by adjusting the BOE base rate, because its target is not HPI, but CPI. Solution: Prohibit retail banks from issuing residential mortgages and establish separate residential lending banks. (Consider not-for-profit rules for these) A separate BOE base rate for these banks, which targets HPI to +- 2%YOY. Done.

The problem with the accommodation market in the UK is its intended purpose. Systemically, it is purposed towards profit, and not the provision of accommodation. Shelter is a basic human need and our housing system does not meet that need. The solution is rationing... Below a floor area that is equivalent to an average four bedroom house in the year 2000: 1. Prohibit the ownership of more than two homes by a single family (co-habiting relatives). 2. Prohibit the ownership of any homes by for-profit corporations. 3. Prohibit the ownership any homes by overseas residents. Manage the transition to this system carefully and slowly - it will be profoundly disruptive to prices.

Did you sell them already? Because it's not a profit until you close the trade.

Neverwhere: I agree with all that you have written. I'm not expecting BTL to continue in its existing form. By 'fixed Buy to Let' I meant 'made Buy to Let go away, from the point of view of the priced out.' If LLs prompt the builders to produce poor quality homes for rental purposes, they'll get stung when they try to sell them on into the OO market. These new builds can only be rented out by their first owners. After that, their attractiveness to a LL is no longer an issue.

Sellers of dates? I knew someone who used to get paid for dates.

goldbug9999 and bankstersparadise: Paragraph 4 of the OP, first sentence. Licences are not transferrable. LLs who want to stay LLs have to hold on to their licenced homes. If they sell, they're not licenced homes any more, so other LLs can't buy them. Edit: Arguably paragraph 5.

porca miseria: Accidental landlords would come under the what-ifs that I mentioned, with enough rules to avoid abuse.

How about removing props as well as tackling the consequences of said props...? Edit: I don't seem to be able to quote.

The problem of OOs having to compete with LLs in the housing market, combined with the low rate of building new homes can both be fixed with a very simple measure. All homes (not student or other short term accommodation) in the PRS would be under a licencing system. No new licences would be issued, except for new build homes. Done. Investment funds for residential homes go entirely to fund new build, generating increased build rates. OOs don't have to compete with LLs for non new-build homes, increasing owner occupation, with more reasonable prices. Another result, if LLs want to cash in capital gains, they can't sell to other LLs, as these homes are no longer new build, so the licences expire. This would dampen capital gains, as they would be selling into a more saturated market, thereby cooling the attraction, and therefore the volatility, of the investment side of the housing market. Some tinkering would be needed on the details and what-ifs, but basically... Ta-dah! :-)

The principal problem with this piece is the implied assumption that this unemployed single mother somehow has a right to own a home and it's the taxpayer's responsibility to provide that. In the old days, she would have been a prime candidate for housing benefit in rented accommodation. Life is about to remind the UK about consequences, in a big way. A lesson that is long overdue. She's bleating about a situation that has come about entirely because of a series of her own choices, starting with the choice to increase the distance between her knees. Why am I paying taxes to keep her in a purchased home, while I'm renting? Repossess today, please.

Although I broadly agree with your general sentiments, this is not a good example. The Italians were specialist oil industry construction contractors, working on a brown field installation, not maintenance workers, stealing jobs from local tradesmen. North Lincolnshire has no standing pool of experienced or qualified oil bears, who could provide the services required for this project. This is just the same as when we go to Qatar and Kazakhstan to build new oil and gas installations that the locals lack the specialist expertise to achieve. I laughed at the local guys at Lindsey Oil talking about protecting the future for the young men seeking work. This was a construction project that was due to finish within twelve months. It was for that reason that it was being carried out by an engineering firm from Holland, drawing expertise from wherever in the world they could find the best fit. Some of that was UK expertise, because we have a good history of that, but none of it was based in the local area. These things never are. Those Italians will travel to their next foreign location, to construct their next project. Specialists, carrying out a temporary task that the local economy cannot afford to skill up for. Imagine training a couple of thousand local techs, for a two year build, then paying them all off, as is customary at the end of the project. Future secured, son, on Sakhalin island, however. Bye bye. I'm in that industry and cannot complain about foreign workers coming here to build oil plants, when I have done the same in India, Nigeria and Holland, for exactly the same reasons. The global market can only sustain a certain amount of plant construction resource, and when it has finished a project in one location, it moves on.

This is an illusion. The functioning of the economic system requires the almost universal belief in this illusion, but it is an illusion. Money has no fundamental value, in itself. £10 is an idea. It works because it's an idea that is commonly shared. It's not real. Me having £10 doesn't mean anything other than that for a short while I can get away with swapping that £10 for whatever someone else is fool enough to give me for it. Money is not wealth. Money is a tool, a lubricant, in the production and exchange of wealth. Of course, wealth generation requries land, but it requires human time much more. The land existed for millions of years before human time realised wealth from it. Consider the comparitive potential of a factory, with many people and a small surface area, and a farm, with a large surface area and few people. Each can start with some raw materials and convert them into profits. The factory's ability to uprate the raw materials into valuable items is far greater than the farms. Humans need the land to produce wealth, and the land needs humans to gather wealth, but human time is the renewable resource that drives the economy and is much overlooked in the question of monetarism. Agreed that the creation of money without the creation of wealth to match it is a vice. However, it is necessary to create money in order to purchase the human time required to produce the wealth that can later be sold to realise funds that can be used for further activity. This is money as a lubricant. The trick lies in getting the balance right of creating the right amount, so that none of the people who are agreeing to exchange their time for money see that the emperor has no clothes and that the stuff vouchers don't have enough stuff behind them to justify their existence. That would be hyperinflation.

The fundamental nature of money is in its capacity to be exchanged for stuff. If there is more money, but no more stuff, that's inflation. If there's more stuff, but no more money, that's deflation. The above argument is founded on the assumption that stuff is a constant, so any gain on one part must imply a loss on another. This ignores the existence of a constantly renewing supply of stuff - human time. Human time is the fountain from which wealth flows. I first learned of this in the writings of Taichi Ohno, one of the founders of the Toyota Production System. In this, he observed that mining produces wealth one time only, in the recovery of resources, agriculture produces wealth once per harvest, but manufacturing produces wealth as often as you can produce an item. Industry converts human time and raw materials into wealth. More money is required to represent that wealth, in order to avoid deflation. The trick is to balance one against the other. The valid creation of more money, to represent this increased wealth, allows for one party to derive profit, without implying a loss on another part. Human time. We are what it's all about.

We've been renting a lovely house for three years, now. We clear all of our plans with the landlord in writing, via the letting agents. So far, we have dug out an ornate fish pond from the garden, for our children's safety, demolished an extensive rabbit hutch from behind the garage and installed wrought iron hooks to support tapestries that we use instead of curtains. He thought that the last one was a particularly tasteful idea. We have authorisation to further: decorate, as we see fit, so long as there are no garish colours (he's seen our taste in furnishings, so I think that he's hoping that we'll decorate the place for him) and dig up half of the lawn to plant a vegetable patch for the kids. In February, he had double glazing installed throughout the house. We're good tenants and a source of dependable rent. If it's in their interest, and you're not going to ruin the place, there is every chance that they'll agree to a reasonable request. Edit: spelling