I have said that the chancellor is economically illiterate.



And I'd add that social housing can include affordable housing to buy too.

Smug people (like the person who sits beside me at work) are happy to say that the only people who want affordable housing are scumbags, Where do you start?

*shrugs* When I see tabloid cliches repeated I must admit I tend to assume that the source was information from the tabloids. Were you aware that their exists a web site whose sole purpose is to debunk all the urban myths and downright lies told about the EU by the UK press over the years?


I think that all countries within the EU fight their own corner as best they can, and understandably so. It's meant to be a democratic organisation after all. And I've been critical of both the tendency to ignore certain rules and the current undemocratic direction of the EU. My problem was more with the nonsense about the UK spending it's whole time kissing up to Europe and blindly adopting every single directive put forward. That simply isn't the case, and even modest research at any point over the last 30 years or so would demonstrate that fact.

A smack in the chops sounds like a worthwhile opening gambit.

To be honest, I don't think I'd know where to start with that one!

Maybe using a hand to insouciantly sketch something passing over their head, accompanied by a loud 'whooshing' noise?

I'd agree with that too and as I have said several times before, a couple of years ago when we were looking at new build houses (200icon_cool.gif there was a mini-boom in new developments because most of the new estates had only been granted planning permissions with a pre-set percentage of "affordable" housing included, generally this meant properties that were on the then Governments "HomeBuild" scheme (part share housing) - literally every site we visited had already had their Homebuild dwellings built, sold and paid for long before they moved onto the rest of the site.

The demand for those houses was/is immense but requires funding and an element of social conscience from Government.

2012 will tell what flavour of politician we have right now, everyone I speak to in business is talking down their prospects for next year and no-one sees any sort of stimulus to their sector of the economy at all, the only boom that I can see is in employment agencies who rent out employees on an hourly basis, its desperation work and it certainly won't get you a mortgage and probably not even a reference for a rental agency.

Just to add to this:

Weird. In today's claim of UK economic growth in the 3rd quarter being revised to 0.6%, it said:
"Growth was driven by strong performance in the service sector and construction."
WTF are they building? Bunkers, 'appen?

If the slight increase in growth is attributed to housing construction then The Cabinet will be holding their heads in their collective hands after yesterdays announcement on the tightening up of the mortgage rules, "Shot our bloody selves in the foot again haven't we" will be the refrain.

The Olypmic site and just about every railway station in London for a start.

Olympic sites, Crossrail, airport expansions, etc, etc.
ONE BILLION POUNDS ON ONE UNDERGROUND STATION - Tottenham Court Road.

Titter all you like, that is a complete disgrace.

I think Boris should be humoured and we should build another huge airport near London.

There is a need for social/inexpensive housing - as I see it there are some serious obstacles:
Cost/availability of land, unlike most countries in Europe this is very compact country - either we want housing or green belt
Lack of capital - where is the money going to come from?
Long term nature of the ROI especially if the properties are to rented
Would you want to invest in this type of housing if all you were going to do was create another Gipton, Bransholme or Easterhouse inner city slums where a large chunk of residents will simply trash the properties.
If we want encourage manufacturing then you cannot convert brownfield sites into housing.

If this type of housing delivered a reasonable return there would be builders supplying this market - the fact there isn't on any scale suggests the returns are small and long term if at all. This type of project is exactly what Keynes envisaged in his economic theory a stimulus with more than one benefit. Something needs to be done to stimulate the housing market, more time first buyers need access to the funds to buy houses. Most are paying rent that is more costly than their mortgage would be.

To answer your questions one at a time ...

There is no shortage of land to build upon, there are plenty of brownfield sites which by complete coincidence are often exactly where the housing is required, ie inner city or in already populated areas served by community facilities (public transport, shops etc), take a look at Middleton in Leeds to find a huge mixed use private/social housing development by five different developers, this is being built on a mix of brownfield and ex-greenfield land. We are also not just speaking of new builds, some fantastic work has been done on refurbing perfectly good dwellings whether that be on traditional "estates" or in high rise buildings (or "apartments" are they are preferred to be known these days) - there is a massive stock of housing just begging for refurbishment which is often far more effective than demolishing and rebuilding.

There is capital available, the government Homebuyer scheme was an example of public/private funding from which someone somewhere is getting a return big enough to justify its involvement, this current government is re-introducing that scheme under a different banner I believe. Furthermore we missed a golden opportunity to continually invest in social housing when councils had the proceeds of their social housing stock stripped from them - any money earned from sales of existing council stock should automatically be ring fenced for further housing investment, be that newbuild or refurb.

For ROI, see above, it was extremely popular three years ago with buyers and investors alike.

As for "dumping" the socially inadequate, shared ownership can often focus the mind and the process of applying for shared ownership involves a degree of taking on a responsibility that just isn't there when you sign up for a rent book - there will always be dumping grounds for the socially inadequate but the fix is not to just dump them and leave them, but to invest.

Manufacturing businesses strangely enough don't want to be located on inner city brownfield sites any more, they want modern industrial units, custom designed for manufacturing, with excellent IT provisions, and with good access to motorway links.

As McLF has pointed out, there are thousands of suitable hectares of land available, much of which is already owned by local authorities. There are also around 1 million homes standing empty that would require a damn sight less money to bring them in to use than any new build.

I provided a solution to land banking previously. If we introduced an annual land value tax, based on the theoretical maximum developed potential of the land, we'd soon see plenty of it appear on the market.

The ROI argument is spurious, once again all we have to do is look to our continental neighbours to see that they are prepared to take a long-term view when it comes to housing. Local authority land could be leased long-term to developers at a peppercorn rent, providing the low land rent was reflected in the rents charged to tenants.

An added benefit to affordable housing could also come from reductions in land/property prices that may then encourage those amateurs (and there are thousands), who got into the buy-to-rent market, to get the hell out and place their properties on the open market.

It really isn't that difficult a concept to grasp, once you accept that a home is primarily somewhere to live and not an appreciating asset.

A few thousand hectares are not going to sort this issue - it is significantly bigger than that.

As I pointed out ROI isn't spurious its real - the culture of business banking in this country is a ROI of 24 months to 60 months max we are not in Germany where banks/companies take a more pragmatic view sadly.

Introducing a land tax is would simply see a crash in the property market through a simple supply and demand curve.

The term an Englishman's home is his castle comes to mind - we are not in Europe our culture/aspiration is to own our own property. The ability to borrow is often secured on the back of home ownership etc. We want to pass something on to our offspring a house is a tangible reflection of our existence.

Your ideas are very credible but they are not realistic given the current status quo.

They were very realistic 30 years ago and there is absolutely nothing to prevent a return to that realism, apart from the stupidity of viewing a house as an investment. The land it sits upon may be an investment, the house itself is a depreciating asset.

Why would there be a housing market crash if suddenly houses and land were to appear on the market? If anything, it should see a housing stimulus rather than a crash. There may be a crash in values but that would be little different to a crash in stock markets. Anyone who invests in markets are warned that they may go down as well as up. Anyone investing in a house should get a similar warning.

One thing is certain, the status quo cannot continue, with ever increasing numbers being priced out of the housing market, something has got to give.

why not not ? I saw them in concert last february and they still looked good though Rick Parfitts' voice was a little strained !

The idea had we continued to run a surplus it would have put us in a better position to cope is another myth. It is yet another simplification of government economics to that of credit card or personal loan type scenario. What happened was way beyond the normal economic cycle.



No government in history has started to run a surplus because it felt there was about to be a financial crisis of any kind. They have their economic policies and their spending is tied to those. What Labour did deficit-wise was nothing out of the ordinary. It is only hindsight that lets you say what you do.



But the "boom" did not end in the sense we went through a dip in the economic cycle. We had a banking crisis not a simple downturn in the economic cycle which is a vastly different thing.

No government, Labour or Tory, could have anticipated that and taken preventative measures beforehand.

Your first paragraph is inaccurate - property is not a depreciating asset - it cannot be viewed as a piece of machinery or a car that becomes obsolete as new technology overtakes it. It will always have a value and given the supply is exceeded by demand its value will increase. In a set of accounts you would typical depreciate a building over 50 years but you then have it revalued every 5 years the gain is then stuck in a revaluation reserve in the balance sheet. More often than not the increases in the reserve account are greater than the accumulated depreciation.

As standards of living/material desire increase people's aspirations also grow, owning your own home is an aspiration to millions these days - you cannot simply turn the clock back 30 years because society isn't the same as it was 30 years ago. There is no logic in renting if you can buy a property - especially as the costs of doing so are only going to go one way and as a % of your income it will remain at a fairly constant level. If you buy a property you feel some pain years 1-5 which gradually eases as inflation takes over by year 20 the mortgage is significantly smaller % of your income.

I never said there would be a housing crash what I said was there would be a property crash if you implemented your land tax. If as you hoped your tax would force people to sell one thing would happen - prices would fall. As a result assets values would be significantly reduced much of which will be used to secure borrowed working capital in the form of loans and overdrafts. The banks would then start asking for their monies back and companies would go bust.

An aspiration that is getting more remote for an increasing number of our society. How do you propose to address that fact? You have already stated your objections to people receiving sufficient remuneration to enable them to start on even the lowest rung of the property ladder.

For the totally unrealistic aspiration of 100% home ownership to happen, one of two things must happen first: either wages of the lower paid increase to the level where they can then afford to buy a home or prices of property drop to levels sufficient to enabled the lower paid to obtain a mortgage on their current meagre income.

Or do you have some other magic solution?

Cameron approval rating now at 48%

Clegg 33%

Ed M 32%

Source: The Guardian

Does the Labour Party really care at the moment??.....I mean, who would seriously want to be in power at the moment - Leave it to the useless coalition to screw it up and then when the smoke has settled on this economic mess in 5 or 6 years, get a decent leader installed and get voted back in.

Most sensible Labour supporters realise young Milliband is out of his depth, but similar to when Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard were incompetent Opposition leaders, on a hiding to nothing, against a strong PM, he will be allowed a few more years before things are rectified.

Cameron is simply the best of a very bad bunch of leaders at the moment.

You see, the less fookwitted thing to do is to read what the polls are saying, well actually, the less fookwitted thing to do is to disregard anything that any poll says, but if you really must excite yourself over a poll then you should read what the poll is saying.

In this case the first point is that its a poll conducted by The Guardian of Guardian readers, that is, its not representative of the whole of the population eligible to vote in an election.

The second point is that the question asked of those Guardian readers was "Is Cameron doing a good job ?" and 48% said "Yes" which is where your headline "Approval" rating came from - now even the most simplistic of analysis would not instil a warm feeling of wellbeing into me if I were David Cameron and less than half of the Guardian readers polled thought I was doing a good job when by my own admission I haven't even led the country through the worst bit of the elected term-length financial woes that we're facing - if I were Cameron going into 2012, potentially the test year in financial history, and only 48% of polled Guardian readers thought I was a fine chap, then I'd be watching my back for long knives.

Thirdly, another question asked of The Guardian readers was "Is the coalition doing a good job ?" of which 47% replied "No" and 39% replied "Yes", if this coalition breaks down then the game is up for Cameron for he could not lead his own party through a full term on his slender majority, not the way that the Libdems are so prepared to mock him even while in Coalition.

Ultimately the only polls that matter are the ones the public go to en masse and the one thing that sways the majority of votes in those circumstances is how each one of those voters feels at the time, how better they feel about employment, the cost of living (just plain living, petrol, food, housing), and how smarmy the leaders of those party's come across on TV, going to the polls now would be a disaster for the Tory party.

save the pound

Get banks to start lending again especially to first time buyers - once that starts then you would see more rented property becoming available to buy. You would also builders start building new houses again as they would have a chance of selling them.

I have never stated what people should should not earn - most people could afford a mortgage - their rent will be as big as a mortgage repayments. What i have said is firms can only spend on wages what they can afford. Yes there are many instances where directors pay themselves huge bonuses and staff don't get an increase - the firm I work for is one such company. Life is not fair and we all have choices. I will be leaving this company in Feb.