The Populist Party U-Turns - A Complete List Of 8 Months Incompetence

[dugsbody]

12 hours ago, MarkG said:

Populists get elected by promising to do what people want done.

I think my explanation fits better.

[winkie]

Those with few opportunities, feel a sense of resentment, have felt ignored, will always vote for those that say they will fix it, what have we got if not hope?.

By the way, how many countries that were one democracies have become dictatorships in the past?😉

[ticket2ride]

Putting a KGB officer in the House Of Lords.

This country is screwed.

Give me the blue pill.

[byron78]

4 hours ago, Unmoderated said:

I'm an 80's child so I didn't live though things as you did, but I do recall my mum having to work in the local shop through evenings for a period when interest rates went mental. 

There's the supply issue which at the time of right to buy wasn't an issue, and in fact many of those sold off were probably in a very sorry state anyway being built in a rush. 

The neoliberalism and financialisation of housing could be arguably rooted back to 'Big Bang' in the city but that really broke the cartels. I guess though the willingness of banks to lend (and you to borrow) is really what stoked the market. 

The changes Maggie effected had to be made imho (this is something I studied closely during my economics degree). The UK was stuck in decline and that was manifested by a population at zero growth at that time. Even so, we were still building many houses (I grant it's not only supply of housing but supply of cheap and easy credit too).

Pre war over 90% of people rented, post war it almost inverted. 

I'm with you on the proles being shunted while the man got cheap and easy labour. That alone probably gave the Brexit campaign half of its votes!

Yes, the banks being free to lend indeed stoked it (again, deregulation we were pushing for under Major long before Bliar).

That's only half of it, in that it allowed the proles to borrow to pay for homes to live in and jump on the BTL bandwagon we'd all been enjoying for nearly a decade (many proles went invested early with us, but were unable to weather the 90s recession as the boom imploded).

It's what we would have called "creative destruction" in the 80s. It took a full decade to kick in really, as there wasn't population pressure or as much multiple home ownership/private renting etc.The social consequences to dumping so much social housing onto the private market - both long and short term - weren't considered at all. It was purely financial. And, of course, we've hindsight now! The rise of 1 person households, higher divorce rates, and the fact house building in the UK has been 50K a year lower since 1987/88* (when the state stopped building) have all contributed. Would we have done differently had we known this? Nope. Creative destruction. Sorry proles.

(*Number of homes isn't really a great indicator of all that happened anyway.Our entire economy changed and became Londoncentric in the 80s (and it has been ever since). We could have 3M houses being built in Blackburn every year but they'd be in the wrong place.)

What I think EVERY government since has failed to address is the fallout from our "creative destruction". Economically, London does indeed boom. But we haven't built enough property (or infrastructure) in the south to properly support this. And we've now had over 3 decades to address it...

[byron78]

1 hour ago, ticket2ride said:

Putting a KGB officer in the House Of Lords.

This country is screwed.

Give me the blue pill.

Oh yes.

Us Tories are several hundred years old.

This idealogy is 40 years old (ish), and has probably been failing the majority who didn't benefit from the initial "boom" (because they were either too young or too poor to hold any inflating assets), for at least the past 20 years.

[winkie]

Not addressed because there is no reason to address anything beyond five years ......sell it and spend it today. 😉

[Unmoderated]

9 minutes ago, byron78 said:

Yes, the banks being free to lend indeed stoked it (again, deregulation we were pushing for under Major long before Bliar).

That's only half of it, in that it allowed the proles to borrow to pay for homes to live in and jump on the BTL bandwagon we'd all been enjoying for nearly a decade (many proles went invested early with us, but were unable to weather the 90s recession as the boom imploded).

It's what we would have called "creative destruction" in the 80s. It took a full decade to kick in really, as there wasn't population pressure or as much multiple home ownership/private renting etc.The social consequences to dumping so much social housing onto the private market - both long and short term - weren't considered at all. It was purely financial. And, of course, we've hindsight now! The rise of 1 person households, higher divorce rates, and the fact house building in the UK has been 50K a year lower since 1987/88* (when the state stopped building) have all contributed. Would we have done differently had we known this? Nope. Creative destruction. Sorry proles.

(*Number of homes isn't really a great indicator of all that happened anyway.Our entire economy changed and became Londoncentric in the 80s (and it has been ever since). We could have 3M houses being built in Blackburn every year but they'd be in the wrong place.)

What I think EVERY government since has failed to address is the fallout from our "creative destruction". Economically, London does indeed boom. But we haven't built enough property (or infrastructure) in the south to properly support this. And we've now had over 3 decades to address it...

Nice post. 

Agree on creative destruction and the fact that capital remains in the hands of people not best placed to use it when the government steps in to prevent the correction.

Yes with the housing and the location of it but the Adam Smith Institute has some good stuff on this. Apparently if planning rules were relaxed and 10% of the 'green belt' around London was opened up it would reduce the cost by 35%. I think they are trying to reduce the Londoncentric nature of the UK with HS2 and talk of the Northern Powerhouse. Certainly it is more likely now than before with Boris getting a lot of votes from the old Labour heartlands. Will be interesting to see how that unfolds. 

Ultimately the prices of the house is almost the same wherever it is erected, it is the land it sits on. In Accounting the land and building are split out. Land is not depreciated but the property is. Then they changed the rules and you can revalue your land and buildings.... this expands the balance sheet and allows you to borrow. 

[winkie]

Nobody should desire urban sprawl, London, home counties and the south east have a high density of people as it is a green belt is a green belt for a reason ........there are plenty of places where homes can and are being built, in really nice open areas, people move there.....it is the people that make a place.😉

[ticket2ride]

5 hours ago, byron78 said:

Oh yes.

Us Tories are several hundred years old.

This idealogy is 40 years old (ish), and has probably been failing the majority who didn't benefit from the initial "boom" (because they were either too young or too poor to hold any inflating assets), for at least the past 20 years.

When the Duke of Westminster was asked what advice he would give to a young entrepreneur wanting to succeed he supposedly said: “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror.”

You could now add, or be favoured by Mr Putin.

[Locke]

On 21/08/2020 at 12:53, dugsbody said:

Look, you've made up your mind so there is no point trying to debate it

Yes, my mind is made up that assaulting innocent people is always wrong, even if you do sexy dressup in a cop costume while doing it.

You won't change that, in the same way you will never convince me that rape is ever anything other than despicable evil.

On 21/08/2020 at 12:53, dugsbody said:

You're happy for liars to be in control because they align with your anti-EU views.

I'm not happy for anyone to be in control. I accept that politics is all about violently imposing your opinion on other people and will therefore not only attract the worst people, but also they are far more successful at politics.

On 21/08/2020 at 12:53, dugsbody said:

your actions are those of a typical conservative authoritarian

You have no idea how I live my life lol. Do you mean my words?

[Riedquat]

On 22/08/2020 at 15:14, Unmoderated said:

Yes with the housing and the location of it but the Adam Smith Institute has some good stuff on this. Apparently if planning rules were relaxed and 10% of the 'green belt' around London was opened up it would reduce the cost by 35%. I think they are trying to reduce the Londoncentric nature of the UK with HS2 and talk of the Northern Powerhouse. Certainly it is more likely now than before with Boris getting a lot of votes from the old Labour heartlands. Will be interesting to see how that unfolds.

In other words make more places more like London. No thanks. Londoncentric is largely a bad thing but it has had the upside of concentrating crappy obnoxious development more there.

As for your 10% greenbelt, that's still a lot of damage and still irrelevant unless the demand doesn't keep going up indefinitely, otherwise it needs to be another chunk, then another, then another... Any such plan must be regarded at best a necessary evil that absolutely has to go hand-in-hand with stopping the constant upwards pressure. Hint - it's not the greenbelt that needs to go...

[Unmoderated]

5 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

In other words make more places more like London. No thanks. Londoncentric is largely a bad thing but it has had the upside of concentrating crappy obnoxious development more there.

As for your 10% greenbelt, that's still a lot of damage and still irrelevant unless the demand doesn't keep going up indefinitely, otherwise it needs to be another chunk, then another, then another... Any such plan must be regarded at best a necessary evil that absolutely has to go hand-in-hand with stopping the constant upwards pressure. Hint - it's not the greenbelt that needs to go...

the development is crappy in your opinion, presumably enough people think its good enough to make it viable. Besides, I take it you have seen other cities in the UK and they're all supposedly free of that type of wrong development?

It's not my 10% of the greenbelt, it's being proposed by the Adam Smith institute as a solution to high housing costs. It is surely better to concentrate future development right next to existing infrastructure rather than building garden cities and levelling many more acres for transports access?

They aren't saying make everywhere like London, There are 69 cities in the UK and if they were all 'London' (what exactly are we defining as London is another problem) that's enough to house Europe. What they are advocating is the German model of regional and diverse economic and social pulls. Berlin is the largest city in Germany and has a population of 3m for example. 

12.4% of the UK is designated greenbelt so 1.2% being built on doesn't seem a catastrophe. I agree you need to look at the issue of population but then you get right into demographics. I used to work with an old boomer who was a full on first class nimby from Winchester. he Pi$$ed and moaned about them building fertile fields etc. Went quiet when I asked him what his house was built on and there in lies the issue. The other issue is how you get a constant column of demographic under those retired/unable to work to pay for the whole show. 

"Hint - it's not the greenbelt that needs to go..." - you proposing to start deporting people? Would you lead by example?

[Riedquat]

2 hours ago, Unmoderated said:

the development is crappy in your opinion, presumably enough people think its good enough to make it viable. Besides, I take it you have seen other cities in the UK and they're all supposedly free of that type of wrong development?

Of course other places aren't free of it, that's lurching in to one extreme or the other territory. Doesn't make further spread of it negative-free though.

Plenty of things have been proven to be "viable" and contributed towards a generally more unpleasant world to live in. When you say "enough people" it's generally only a rather small subset of people whose opinion actually matters one way or the other.

Quote

It's not my 10% of the greenbelt, it's being proposed by the Adam Smith institute as a solution to high housing costs. It is surely better to concentrate future development right next to existing infrastructure rather than building garden cities and levelling many more acres for transports access?

And then another 10%, then another 10%...

Quote

They aren't saying make everywhere like London, There are 69 cities in the UK and if they were all 'London' (what exactly are we defining as London is another problem) that's enough to house Europe. What they are advocating is the German model of regional and diverse economic and social pulls. Berlin is the largest city in Germany and has a population of 3m for example. 

More like London - or more accurately more like the lifeless sprawl for many miles around London. A land of motorways, industrial sheds and distribution centres (plenty of them further afield to be fair), lifeless dormitory estates. Efficient existence but nothing to live for.

Quote

12.4% of the UK is designated greenbelt so 1.2% being built on doesn't seem a catastrophe. I agree you need to look at the issue of population but then you get right into demographics. I used to work with an old boomer who was a full on first class nimby from Winchester. he Pi$$ed and moaned about them building fertile fields etc. Went quiet when I asked him what his house was built on and there in lies the issue. The other issue is how you get a constant column of demographic under those retired/unable to work to pay for the whole show. 

In isolation, no, although any such damage is something to be appalled by, but the problem is looking at it in isolation. It's not the immediate damage caused (as unpalatable as that is), it's the fact that it all gets repeated a few years later, ad infinitum. It's not "just" 1.2%.

The "what was your house built on?" line, a few problems with that. One is not differentiating between being part of something you had no choice over (no-one chose to be born) versus actively contributing to the downward spiral, another is treating everything the same to the point where you end up trying to equate building an Iron Age hut with building a skyscraper.

The demographic issue is one that'll kick you in the **** sooner or later no matter how long you try to kick the can down the road, but the more you kick the can the bigger the final problems and the more mess made along the way. No answer that doesn't involve a stable population is a viable one, saying we need more younger people to balance that (who then go on to become older people) is burying your head in the sand.

Quote

"Hint - it's not the greenbelt that needs to go..." - you proposing to start deporting people? Would you lead by example?

I'm leading by example by not having children. And as much as it attracts the usual suspects who like to turn up and cry "wacists mentioning it on every thread!" irresponsible immigration is a big part of the problem. More single-occupancy homes are too, but I can't think of an acceptable solution to that one.

All of this might only seem to be building a place worth living in if you're too busy keeping yourself distracted to actually live, and it's creating more of what brought that condition about. Have a chance to lift your head up and look around and all you'll see is it going to sh1t no matter what, with only a bit of a choice of what particular flavour of crap - and no willingness at all to escape that.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Riedquat

[nothernsoul]

A bureaucrat has just resigned and carried the can for A levels fiasco which isnt on. Government wanted grades adjusted(which is a reasonable position in itself to take) so they should have either defended the position or the appropriate minister should have taken responsibility, not an official. 

Consistent failure of Ministers to resign (see Jenrick) under this government destroys a convention that protects democracy. This isnt a party political point. I seem to remember decades ago thatchers transport minister Paul Channon resigned over a gate failure at a railway crossing that led to a tragedy. Nothing he could have done about it but he took responsibility for his department. 

[msi]

13 minutes ago, nothernsoul said:

A bureaucrat has just resigned and carried the can for A levels fiasco which isnt on. Government wanted grades adjusted(which is a reasonable position in itself to take) so they should have either defended the position or the appropriate minister should have taken responsibility, not an official. 

Consistent failure of Ministers to resign (see Jenrick) under this government destroys a convention that protects democracy. This isnt a party political point. I seem to remember decades ago thatchers transport minister Paul Channon resigned over a gate failure at a railway crossing that led to a tragedy. Nothing he could have done about it but he took responsibility for his department. 

What else do you expect from this lot, they drew the 'line' under Cummings so no one is going to take the can.

[MonsieurCopperCrutch]

U-turn on masks in schools to be announced. As I predicted above.

[MonsieurCopperCrutch]

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