North-South house price divide 'to narrow'

[winkie]

9 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

Out of all the many, many things I dislike I think this is the one that's going to impact everyone else the most. I'm quite an unsociable loner by most standards but even I don't want the degree of being cut off that we seem to be heading to. Not forcibly cut off, true, but there are huge numbers of people who'll never leave their house if they don't have to.

If able their choice......there is lots going on out there if like others, got the energy and inclination..... loneliness is a huge mental health issue, lonely even if have hundreds of friends......being alone is nice sometimes.?

[Riedquat]

14 minutes ago, winkie said:

If able their choice......there is lots going on out there if like others, got the energy and inclination..... loneliness is a huge mental health issue, lonely even if have hundreds of friends......being alone is nice sometimes.?

Sure, it's their choice but you don't have to look far to see just how many people will invariably chose the quickest, easiest, cheapest, laziest, most "convenient" option every time no matter the wider consequences. It's human nature to, since we evolved in an environment where energy was scarce, but those instincts aren't a good fit to the world we've created and thus failing to resist them too often can now do us a lot more harm than good.

[winkie]

I don't agree that generally people will always choose the easiest, quickest, cheapest most convenient way.....they often choose the most selfish way though.?

[Riedquat]

18 minutes ago, winkie said:

I don't agree that generally people will always choose the easiest, quickest, cheapest most convenient way.....they often choose the most selfish way though.?

I wouldn't go as far as "always" (although you didn't say that anyway) but "generally" - 'fraid so. Just look at how much they embrace every trivial little convenience as if it's the best thing since sliced bread. You used to get people saying they're glad they don't live in Victorian times (wouldn't mind that if I was rich, but certainly wouldn't want to be, say, a factory worker then) but I've heard people act relieved that they don't have to cope with the hardships of the 80s and 90s FFS!

[winkie]

Spoilt......a spoilt lot really.....they think they know what they want, but what they want is not always good for them.?

[Wayward]

1 hour ago, Riedquat said:

I wouldn't go as far as "always" (although you didn't say that anyway) but "generally" - 'fraid so. Just look at how much they embrace every trivial little convenience as if it's the best thing since sliced bread. You used to get people saying they're glad they don't live in Victorian times (wouldn't mind that if I was rich, but certainly wouldn't want to be, say, a factory worker then) but I've heard people act relieved that they don't have to cope with the hardships of the 80s and 90s FFS!

Yes the hardships of buying a nice family house for three times the average salary...and joining the company final salary pension scheme etc...

I would be quite interested to learn what the hardships of the 80s and 90s were...?  Unemployment would be the key issue...but if you had a job and most did.....

Maybe cars weren't as reliable in cold weather... stupid pub opening hours

[durhamborn]

10 minutes ago, Wayward said:

Yes the hardships of buying a nice family house for three times the average salary...and joining the company final salary pension scheme etc...

I would be quite interested to learn what the hardships of the 80s and 90s were...?  Unemployment would be the key issue...but if you had a job and most did.....

Maybe cars weren't as reliable in cold weather... stupid pub opening hours

The early 80s were worse than the Great Depression in the north.Unemployment went over 50% in a lot of towns as factory after factory closed.

[Riedquat]

2 minutes ago, Wayward said:

Yes the hardships of buying a nice family house for three times the average salary...and joining the company final salary pension scheme etc...

I would be quite interested to learn what the hardships of the 80s and 90s were...?  Unemployment would be the key issue...but if you had a job and most did.....

Maybe cars weren't as reliable in cold weather... stupid pub opening hours

I couldn't see it either, but it seemed to be not having some technological gimmicks like mobile phones, and some social attitudes that have improved a bit since then, not that they were particularly bad by the 80s and 90s either (the people I heard said that appeared to think that being a woman in the 80s wasn't much better than the worst time in history simply because there was still a bit of discrimination).

[Riedquat]

17 minutes ago, durhamborn said:

The early 80s were worse than the Great Depression in the north.Unemployment went over 50% in a lot of towns as factory after factory closed.

I regard specific circumstances like that as a somewhat separate issues to the general standards of living and attitudes of a time (and that particular example more as the last gasp of the 70s than a part of the 80s).

[dougless]

22 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

I regard specific circumstances like that as a somewhat separate issues to the general standards of living and attitudes of a time (and that particular example more as the last gasp of the 70s than a part of the 80s).

Don't underestimate how bad the 80's recession was and how the collapse of manufacturing impacted areas outside the South East; it was brutal.  Just as Cameron's legacy will probably end up as being the collapse of the UK because of the Brexit fiasco, Thatcher's is rightly the destruction of manufacturing in the UK.  I sometimes think that Tories hate Britain and its population.

Edited November 6, 2018 by dougless

[Riedquat]

3 minutes ago, dougless said:

Don't underestimate how bad the 80's recession was and how the collapse of manufacturing impacted areas outside the South East; it was brutal.  Just as Cameron's legacy will probably end up as being the collapse of the UK because of the Brexit fiasco, Thatcher's is rightly the destruction of manufacturing in the UK.  I sometimes think that Tories hate Britain and its population.

I was a child at the time, living in Derbyshire. Usually when I grumble about the situation at a time or argue for aspects of a different time I'm generally talking about what was available to the general population as a whole, averaging out the effects of economic peaks and troughs. I don't mean to dismiss the impact those troughs had on people, and the effects of the destruction of manufacturing are still being felt. If it was a mathematical model it would be one variable in the equation of happiness, standard of living another.

[crouch]

I'm 73 and generally the further I go back the better it seems but I would say that wouldn't I?

I think things are far more difficult today and not just because of the difficulty of buying property at anything approach a reasonable income. Things generally are on the slide and many are having to resort to huge debt in order to live a faux lifestyle and I think this is a secular trend which won't reverse any time soon.

Jobs are much more insecure and automation/AI is moving up the food chain and we already seem to live in a society with 99% drones and 1% spivs. Also when I was young it seemed social mobility was better; if you were bright you could move up via education (I received a grant for university and came out better off than I went in); this is much more difficult these days.

I don't envy the young; I think it was much easier back in the day as they say.

[dougless]

54 minutes ago, crouch said:

I'm 73 and generally the further I go back the better it seems but I would say that wouldn't I?

I think things are far more difficult today and not just because of the difficulty of buying property at anything approach a reasonable income. Things generally are on the slide and many are having to resort to huge debt in order to live a faux lifestyle and I think this is a secular trend which won't reverse any time soon.

Jobs are much more insecure and automation/AI is moving up the food chain and we already seem to live in a society with 99% drones and 1% spivs. Also when I was young it seemed social mobility was better; if you were bright you could move up via education (I received a grant for university and came out better off than I went in); this is much more difficult these days.

I don't envy the young; I think it was much easier back in the day as they say.

I was born a decade after you and I would concur with your view.   Some things are clearly better but insecurity and general pressure on the working population seems far greater than it was in the 60's or 70's. Fortunately when you are young you really don't know any better which tends to mask the woeful decisions your elders have made.  I feel saddened but what our leaders have done to this country in our name and I suspect our general deference to a ruling elite will probably be our downfall.

[Riedquat]

18 minutes ago, dougless said:

I was born a decade after you and I would concur with your view.   Some things are clearly better but insecurity and general pressure on the working population seems far greater than it was in the 60's or 70's. Fortunately when you are young you really don't know any better which tends to mask the woeful decisions your elders have made.  I feel saddened but what our leaders have done to this country in our name and I suspect our general deference to a ruling elite will probably be our downfall.

Aside from the economic ups and downs mentioned above I'm generally of the view that social attitudes have improved a lot in my lifetime (and in the decade or two before). Not in every aspect true, but the overall trend there is positive.

[winkie]

I think life 40 to 50 years ago was simpler, kids played together in the streets, rode on busses, Saturday morning pictures, swimming lidos, kids could take risks, rope swing over brooks, built dams, went camping, lots of youth clubs and activities, discos, football clubs......lots organised to do during the school breaks, practical skills taught at schools, lots of sports and exercise, better food, home cooked......hardly any overweight children, given milk at school, excellent school meals, given cod liver oil and vitamins, make do and mend, all in it together, nobody to impress.....fewer of the global  megga corporations and entities with money making interests looking after their own interests rather than society at large....fobt as an example....money talks, people follow the money not always for the right reasons.

Edit to say, yes in those days there was a bobby who walked the beat and you knew the names of many of the neighbours, everyone looked out for everyone, great feeling of safety and security.

?

?

Edited November 6, 2018 by winkie

[Fromage Frais]

1 minute ago, winkie said:

I think life 40 to 50 years ago was simpler, kids played together in the streets, rode on busses, Saturday morning pictures, swimming lidos, kids could take risks, rope swing over brooks, built dams, went camping, lots of youth clubs and activities, discos, football clubs......lots organised to do during the school breaks, practical skills taught at schools, lots of sports and exercise, better food, home cooked......hardly any overweight children, given milk at school, excellent school meals, given cod liver oil and vitamins, make do and mend, all in it together, nobody to impress.....fewer of the global  megga corporations and entities with money making interests looking after their own interests rather than society at large....fobt as an example....money talks, people follow the money not always for the right reasons.?

The computer and the robot looked like they would give us more free time and luxury....

To me at this stage they have enabled the management structure to be flattened to such an extent fewer people can monitor and manage more lower paid highly tracked/watched people over larger distances.

At the bottom of Kings Street in Norwich the Colmans Factory used to have a management floor where tea ladies used to bring tea and cakes and the men used to smoke cigars in wing back chairs etc.  I am talking middle not just the directors.

Then when they went home they did not get emails, skypes, whats apped, facebooked, texted, hangouted or called on their mobiles 24/7.

The social clubs and facilities have gone also etc etc

https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/leisure-sites/30545-pinebanks-sports-leisure-club.html#.W-HB33r7TUY

 

 

[winkie]

I agree with the permanent monitoring in so called 'own time'......our parents did not up check on us, they trusted us to be home at a set time for tea.....any problems could easily reverse the charges at the red telephone boxes that are no longer telephone boxes......those pics of the old leisure centre are so sad, I could show many pics like that, the places where we as kids used to hang out that have been destroyed or turned into expensive places only the wealthy can afford to buy or frequent.?

[Riedquat]

52 minutes ago, Fromage Frais said:

The computer and the robot looked like they would give us more free time and luxury....

They could've done. However how many businesses want to produce less than they're capable of producing? Make more and you can sell more, and like most machines they've enabled businesses to make more. So given the choice between producing the same, paying the same, but putting fewer demands on staff, and producing more, the latter wins out. Any company that tried to take the other path would go bust pretty quickly, outcompeted. That's good when it's serving a society that previously was only just managing to scrape by with the minimum.

 

[winkie]

35 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

They could've done. However how many businesses want to produce less than they're capable of producing? Make more and you can sell more, and like most machines they've enabled businesses to make more. So given the choice between producing the same, paying the same, but putting fewer demands on staff, and producing more, the latter wins out. Any company that tried to take the other path would go bust pretty quickly, outcompeted. That's good when it's serving a society that previously was only just managing to scrape by with the minimum.

 

Since when was making more means will sell more??

[Wayward]

5 hours ago, durhamborn said:

The early 80s were worse than the Great Depression in the north.Unemployment went over 50% in a lot of towns as factory after factory closed.

Thanks... I was 11 in the early 1980s when the family moved south from Teesside. 

[Riedquat]

1 hour ago, winkie said:

Since when was making more means will sell more??

How many companies say "Nah, we won't expand, no-one will buy anything anyway"? A few very high-end luxury ones, maybe. A "growing economy" is largely a measure of "makes more crap."

[monkeyman1974]

On ‎02‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 11:25, Si1 said:

I look forward to seeing Saville's modelling methodology published on a peer reviewed economics journal, with due respect to appropriate separation of calibration and validation data, naturally.

Not holding my breath.

Not least as 9.3% on London price v 19% on Wales, would actually see a widening of the margin, given the relativity of the starting numbers

[winkie]

13 hours ago, Riedquat said:

How many companies say "Nah, we won't expand, no-one will buy anything anyway"? A few very high-end luxury ones, maybe. A "growing economy" is largely a measure of "makes more crap."

Over expansion is one good sure reason why businesses do fail.....?

[Pindar]

Oh goody, price gouging in the north too. 

Northerners had housing that reflects local wages. Can't have any of that now can we?

 

[Riedquat]

37 minutes ago, winkie said:

Over expansion is one good sure reason why businesses do fail.....?

Sure, chucking too much money at it too quickly. Nothing is ever certain, anything can blow up, but the trend is very definitely ever bigger - as I said it's all about that nonsense of economic growth.