Kill The Hpi Harpy

[Mugwump Boy]

Seems to me that Krusty + Cameron = worrying proof that Tories aren't interested in ending HPI

(I wonder what the ratio of BTL is among Tory MPs compared to Labour ones...?)

Guardian

A bundle of voguish signifiers have set the tone already, brimming with an upmarket (and almost comically white) yearning for the past: Cath Kidston fabrics, the Camerons' beloved Boden casual wear, the Dangerous Book for Boys. It won't take much imagination to portray such stuff as the perfect backdrop to Tory rhetoric: the veneration of marriage, promises of the return of "discipline", plans to turn decommissioned soldiers into teachers. And, should plans for a vote to end the fox-hunting ban come to fruition, you'll have your watershed cultural moment: New Labour's sole act of class warfare avenged.

To understand all this in an instant, consider Kirstie Allsopp, TV presenter, friend of the Camerons and apparently zealous Tory: the daughter of the sixth Baron Hindlip, employed as an adviser to the Conservatives on housing policy, and lately tipped for a seat in the House of Lords. In her role as the co-host of Channel 4's Location, Location, Location, she has long represented the property fetishism that often comes with a thinly veiled kind of class prejudice, as evidenced by the annual Location spin-off in which the likes of Hackney, Merthyr Tydfil and Middlesbrough have been sensitively honoured as Britain's "worst places to live".

But by far the best window on her soul was the series Kirstie's Homemade Home, in which she tried to tap into the cultural aftershocks of the financial crisis by doing up a run-down rural pile on a budget. Her pad was just this side of palatial, and the script was streaked with such priceless lines as: "I want to create a really warm, fireside feel with a table that seats about 12 people comfortably."

Last year on the Today programme she angrily took issue with the idea that certain areas should use planning laws to clamp down on second homes, so as to ensure that villages didn't turn into hollowed-out weekend retreats. The patrician mask of modern Conservatism slipped, and out came a Thatcheresque gospel of self-help. "Communities have to save themselves," this unabashed second-homer claimed, though what that might actually mean remained unclear.

For all their PR brilliance, such a tension may prove to be the Cameroons' undoing.

[stuckmojo]

Seems to me that Krusty + Cameron = worrying proof that Tories aren't interested in ending HPI

(I wonder what the ratio of BTL is among Tory MPs compared to Labour ones...?)

Guardian

Despite the usual, pathetic, Grauniad's view of the world, there is something worth noticinig in here: Would I really support or even vote reluctantly a party which has someone like Kristy in their ranks? I would not be so angry if she was appointed to some remote and irrelevant areas but housing? That's the most important thing on the map! We are in the shit because of housing and the behaviour of those whom followed this shallow woman's mantra!

[tahoma]

Tasty comments there. Check out NewAnglican:

What an incoherent and snotty article.

Incoherence: Giving the media to Rupert Murdoch is not giving the media to someone who is "equal parts Arcadian nostalgia and polite snobbery" or who puts "upper-class values to the fore." It's giving the media to a vulgar jerk who likes money and celebrity, the newer the better. It's giving the media to English equivalents of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, not to Prince Charles and the National Trust.

Snotty: It's the column of a prosperous young Londoner sneering at anyone who lives outside the city and who dares to thinks that England before 1970 contained human beings. The giveaway is the phrase "comically white." Which means "evil." The only whites who are not evil, according to this mindset, are those who stalk about attacking things as white, comically white, hideously white, etc.. In other words the only way to escape individual self-censure for being white is to engage in collective self-censure for the country's largely being white, to walk about advertising that one can't help being white but would really rather not be and that one supports measures to minimize the possibility that Britain will in the future contain the same sorts of people as in the past. (The brilliant thinking is that we can't have regressive Anglican types preaching self-restraint and love of country and all that fascist stuff, so let's get in some good, progressive Islamists who no doubt have great taste in music and novels and wine and will reliably hate people outside London too. We'll get along famously.)

The tragedy is that in all sorts of ways, Tory policies stink, but so many people are so fed up with the John Harris types who sneer at them that they're desperate for a change. Harris is just a younger version of New Labour. The sole significant difference between John Harris and Tony Blair is that only Blair has had enough power to show how bankrupt his ideas really are.

Send that soul an honorary HPC membership, presuming they don't have one already.

[Mugwump Boy]

Despite the usual, pathetic, Grauniad's view of the world, there is something worth noticinig in here: Would I really support or even vote reluctantly a party which has someone like Kristy in their ranks? I would not be so angry if she was appointed to some remote and irrelevant areas but housing? That's the most important thing on the map! We are in the shit because of housing and the behaviour of those whom followed this shallow woman's mantra!

Spot on. I emailed Tory HQ when she was spouting off about second homes and rural communities only having themselves to blame. I got a really, really snooty email back from them telling me she was the bees' knees. Too many people on HPC think the Tories will save them. They won't. They're a post-Blair party now, only interested in government and unwilling to cement any firm policies or ideology for fear of losing votes.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Tories keep QE going until it all goes POP - whatever happens (and whenever it happens) they have a get out of jail free card thanks to Brown's chancellor/PM stint and "no more boom and bust" promise. It'll all be Labour's fault.

[Mugwump Boy]

Fair enough bashing Harris - he's a New Lab cheerleader who's now trying to jump ship. But his comments on the Tories getting into bed with the Tories are spot on IMO.

I mean, Lady Allsop in 2010? Puh-lease... Even taking out the HPC relevance, it's the same kind of fickle celebrity worship that Blair started. Cameron is simply Blair-lite, an old Etonian Bullingdon toff who wants to be in government for the sake of being in government. I don't think he has the first clue how to rescue the UK from 12 years of Labour misrule.

[scepticus]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Tories keep QE going until it all goes POP - whatever happens (and whenever it happens) they have a get out of jail free card thanks to Brown's chancellor/PM stint and "no more boom and bust" promise. It'll all be Labour's fault.

The tories will definitely keep QE going if deflation threatens again. If they allow a serious depression to take hold in britain they'll be out after one term, probably never to return.

The only difference ebwteen tory and labour policies is that the latter is the same as the former, but with less jobs.

[the end is a bit nigher]

Its the likes of Allsopp that could stop the Tories gaining power next year. I wouldn't vote for them with her having anything to do with actual policy. I'm sure BTLers would be getting further subsidisation if she had her way.

[spivT]

The tories will definitely keep QE going if deflation threatens again. If they allow a serious depression to take hold in britain they'll be out after one term, probably never to return.

The only difference ebwteen tory and labour policies is that the latter is the same as the former, but with less jobs.

so have ALL those countries which haven't adopted QE specifically fallen into depression ?

your not prone to hyperbole much, are you ?

[scepticus]

so have ALL those countries which haven't adopted QE specifically fallen into depression ?

your not prone to hyperbole much, are you ?

All those countries threatened with deflation which have not been able to print or have not printed have done so.

Ireland is deflating. The hard nosed swiss saw their CPI go negative and QE'd like mad.

Give me one example of a country slipping into price deflation which has been able to QE and not done so.

[Harry Sacks]

What's their justification for employing the ape?

[Concrete Jungle]

Krusty is a big fat reason not to vote Tory imho.

[stuckmojo]

Krusty is a big fat reason not to vote Tory imho.

Exactly. There is NO choice in politics in 2010. Every party is absolute shit.

[spivT]

All those countries threatened with deflation which have not been able to print or have not printed have done so.

Ireland is deflating. The hard nosed swiss saw their CPI go negative and QE'd like mad.

Give me one example of a country slipping into price deflation which has been able to QE and not done so.

while i wouldn't take the wikipedia entry as the definitive by any stretch, this is the definition of depression.

In economics, a depression is a sustained, long-term downturn in economic activity in one or more economies. It is a more severe downturn than a recession, which is seen as part of a normal business cycle.

Considered a rare and extreme form of recession, a depression is characterized by its length, and by abnormal increases in unemployment, falls in the availability of credit, shrinking output and investment, numerous bankruptcies, reduced amounts of trade and commerce, as well as highly volatile relative currency value fluctuations, mostly devaluations.

you have no evidence that QE itself has averted the above. by all accounts we are still experiencing many of those symptoms of an 'extreme recession'.

perhaps you should attach a caveat to your drum banging for QE. Something like WARNING: Leading the world in QE will not necessarily avert a quarter of negative economic growth.

Edited October 27, 2009 by spivtastic

[Wimbledon88]

Please write to your Con candidate if you live in a Labour-held or other constituency, saying that the prospect of Krustie as housing minister has made you decide to vote UKIP instead. I have already written.

[Dorkins]

All those countries threatened with deflation which have not been able to print or have not printed have done so.

Ireland is deflating. The hard nosed swiss saw their CPI go negative and QE'd like mad.

Give me one example of a country slipping into price deflation which has been able to QE and not done so.

Yes, it would be absolutely brutal for prices in general to fall a few % a year for a few years so that you could buy more food/housing/energy for an hourly wage. Imagine that! Deflation in consumer electronics has been the death of that industry. I have no idea how people survived in 1995 when you could buy a lot more stuff with the average wage, it must have been hell although strangely I don't remember it as such.

Deflation strikes me as a pretty strange sort of bogeyman. Yes it normally happens when times are bad and things are generally going down, but that doesn't mean it causes bad times. It's a total confusion of symptoms and causes.

Deflation, were it ever allowed to happen, seems like the economy's way of trying to rebalance itself after years of overspending and overinflation.

[sharpe]

Guardian

"Communities have to save themselves,"

In Corsica second homes are blown up (while empty) by local people. It happens ALWAYS. If a French man buys a house as a holiday home he knows it will get blown up.

It has done wonders for the house prices and only local people use them.

This should be done in Devon and Cornwall.

People in the Cotswolds built those awful wooden dumps around the water parks that prats from the city put their bonuses into - this was also a good idea and saved many decent villages

[tomwatkins]

Exactly. There is NO choice in politics in 2010. Every party is absolute shit.

What a simplistic statement but 100% correct. Now that's worrying don't ya think??

[right_freds_dead]

Despite the usual, pathetic, Grauniad's view of the world, there is something worth noticinig in here: Would I really support or even vote reluctantly a party which has someone like Kristy in their ranks? I would not be so angry if she was appointed to some remote and irrelevant areas but housing? That's the most important thing on the map! We are in the shit because of housing and the behaviour of those whom followed this shallow woman's mantra!

but it started in america and stuff..........

funny how no one in government is associating the financial collapse with the failure of overpriced MORTGAGES.

no, its everything but overpriced housing. total denial, which is why we will get a double dip.

they are so ignorant the mistakes going to return again and again.

i wasnt that interested in the tories, but this allslop business has really cemented my distaste for them.

id never vote for them now.

[scepticus]

you have no evidence that QE itself has averted the above. by all accounts we are still experiencing many of those symptoms of an 'extreme recession'.

perhaps you should attach a caveat to your drum banging for QE. Something like WARNING: Leading the world in QE will not necessarily avert a quarter of negative economic growth.

I quite agree. I have only asserted three things:

QE is not theft

QE can ease or delay deflation/depression

QE can be reversed if/when appropriate

Let me be quite clear. QE is not the solution. QE is buys some time while we figure out what the f*ck to do. Likewise, raising rates is not the solution, since it will result in general bankruptcy of the national private sector.

[I want a house!]

Seems to me that Krusty + Cameron = worrying proof that Tories aren't interested in ending HPI

(I wonder what the ratio of BTL is among Tory MPs compared to Labour ones...?)

Guardian

The answer is very simple. Think of, who was the party to liberalise the financial institutes, in order to encourage competition? And in turn no longer wanted to have a maximum proportion that can be borrowed by someone. That's right, the Tories... They are Labour... Both evil.

[stuckmojo]

What a simplistic statement but 100% correct. Now that's worrying don't ya think??

Very worrying.

I wouldn't utter such a rethoric-sounding statement if it weren't true to my eyes.

I wanted to like the Tories, but with Kristy and Osborne they really are showing they are not any better than Labour. And Labour are criminally bad. Not since the time of the Christian Democrats and the Socialists in Italy in the 80's/90's has any country been governed by such poorly-equipped career politicians. (shows my age and background, that).

What's left? The Lib-Dems, with a cat-in-hell's chance to get elected? I know we all like Vince Cable, but they don't really matter.

BNP? Now that's an un-funny joke.

UKIP? Perhaps, but they are even more irrelevant than the Lib-Dems.

So, we'll get Cameron, Osborne, Kristy and all they'll do is to blame Labour and try to inflate another housing bubble.

[Dorkins]

QE is not the solution. QE is buys some time while we figure out what the f*ck to do. Likewise, raising rates is not the solution, since it will result in general bankruptcy of the national private sector.

Raising rates and stopping QE and bailouts is exactly the solution as it forces everyone to confront reality and stop making bad investment decisions based on false economic signals. The sooner we liquidate the bad debts, reprice assets and clear out the nonsense from our economy, the better. The longer we leave it, the more bad investments there will be to liquidate and more losses to be realised.

[Executive Sadman]

Give me one example of a country slipping into price deflation which has been able to QE and not done so.

Japan didnt start QE until 2001, so they had well and truly 'slipped' into deflation for a number of years and could have engaged QE long before 2001.

[scepticus]

Raising rates and stopping QE and bailouts is exactly the solution as it forces everyone to confront reality and stop making bad investment decisions based on false economic signals. The sooner we liquidate the bad debts, reprice assets and clear out the nonsense from our economy, the better. The longer we leave it, the more bad investments there will be to liquidate and more losses to be realised.

Liquidating all the debt is essentially hyperinflation. Defaults create high powered money in the same way monetisation does.

High interest rates when there is declining demand for credit and no economic growth is by definition a false price signal. If the government were to set high rates now it would not in any case get passed on to savers since it would causes massive losses on existing bank loans, so banks will simply have to increase the spread between deposits and loans to cover.

Why can't you understand that rates are low because there is insufficient demand for new loans?

[scepticus]

Japan didnt start QE until 2001, so they had well and truly 'slipped' into deflation for a number of years and could have engaged QE long before 2001.

Good point. Why is why since then no country has made the same mistake.