Is this one reason there is a permanent UK housing crisis...

[SteamyTea]

@Stones

You going to close this one as it is similar?

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Us this about the gobby ex copper.

 

 

Yes.  I don't agree with the content of his tweets, but it's interesting that the court took the view that the police had acted unlawfully.  The notable point seems to be that this judgement makes it clear that expressing a personal opinion, even if it is controversial, should not be considered to be an offence on its own. 

[newhome]

5 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

@Stones

You going to close this one as it is similar?

 

Housing politics is ok on here. There is even a sub forum for it which is where this thread lives. 

[Ferdinand]

I hope we keep this one open and take the police culture conversation somewhere else if we have it ...  I have found this a very useful thread and still have a couple of substantive things to add, espially a reply to ST wrt bedroom statistics that I am still digging in to.

 

F

Edited February 16, 2020 by Ferdinand

[epsilonGreedy]

2 hours ago, Ed Davies said:

What are you talking about? I.e., which judge and what was the decree?

 

 

The number one news story in the United Kingdom on Friday/Saturday.

[Stones]

Some very interesting points coming out in this thread, and of course some drift.  Can I ask everyone to steer this back to the topic and focus the discussion on that please?

[Ed Davies]

2 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

The number one news story in the United Kingdom on Friday/Saturday.

 

Bye all.

[Delicatedave]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/16/housing-crisis-is-a-legacy-of-thatchers-right-to-buy

[Delicatedave]

23 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

 

 

I'm convinced that the reason we ended up with BJ as PM had little to do with either him, or the policies of the Conservative party, but had everything to do with Corbyn being unelectable. Idealism makes for grand sound bites, but as you rightly say, extreme socialism is inextricably bound to authoritarianism, as the majority will never willingly vote for the restraint on personal freedom that Marxism implies.  If anyone doubts this, and doubts the inequality that Marxist socialism always delivers, then they only need to look at states like China. 

 

The shame of it is that one might have hoped that the Labour party would have learned this lesson from their disastrous spell with Michael Foot as leader, but no, the Marxist nutters in what used to be called Militant, which re-branded itself as Momentum, still fervently believed that they could bully members of the Labour party, and cause democratically elected Labour candidates to be deselected, in order to try and grab power.  Thankfully, the British electorate had the common sense to see through this tactic, and return the worst result for Labour since 1935.

 

The shame of it is that their insane actions have helped to destroy any meaningful opposition, and our form of government always seems to work best when there are checks and balances applied to the power of the ruling party by Her Majesty's Opposition.  I reckon the stupidity of the Corbinysta faction may have set the Labour party back by ten years or more.  Last time we saw a similar extreme left Labour leadership we had over 10 years of Conservative government, followed by another 13 years of what amounted to a right of centre Labour government that, for at least 10 years, was little different to the government of Thatcher.

It's difficult to argue that people were brainwashed with the very people who were brainwashed so I don't bother.

History will out just has it has done with Thatcher.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, Delicatedave said:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/16/housing-crisis-is-a-legacy-of-thatchers-right-to-buy

You can't keep blaming Mrs T. How come the labour governments after her did not stop right to buy and did not build more council houses?

[Jeremy Harris]

41 minutes ago, ProDave said:

You can't keep blaming Mrs T. How come the labour governments after her did not stop right to buy and did not build more council houses?

 

 

The reality is that there were more council houses sold during the 13 years of the Blair/Brown government than there were under Thatcher.  Much as I detest Thatcher, it's very clear that the following Labour government under Blair, in particular, endorsed some of her policies, including the sale of council housing stock and, more importantly, the fiscal controls that limited the building of more social housing.  Labour, under Blair, continued to support the idea that social housing should be provided by housing associations, rather than government.

[Jeremy Harris]

2 hours ago, Delicatedave said:

It's difficult to argue that people were brainwashed with the very people who were brainwashed so I don't bother.

History will out just has it has done with Thatcher.

 

How on earth can I have been "brainwashed", and who exactly was responsible for doing this?

 

I was prohibited from membership of, or supporting, any political party for 35 years.  I've remained staunchly apolitical.  IIRC I'm still prohibited from any political activity until later this year, 10 years after my retirement date, although I've no intention of ever being associated with any political party, anyway.   Just like anyone else, I have opinions, largely based on experience of working within government for most of my working life, but frankly I don't have much time for politicians of any flavour.  In my view they are all pretty much as self-centred and bad as each other.  I've only known one politician in my life who was a decent, caring, human being, who genuinely cared about his constituents, and that was David Penhaligon.

 

 

[Ferdinand]

My take on Council Housing is different. I do not believe that Councils should run *any* housing. Too many conflicts of interest.

 

I think that local politicians having potential control over particularly allocation of housing is an open door to corruption, and I think evidence shows that this happens, and that the honesty of local politicians faced with such temptations is put at risk. Where the same organisation is responsible for allocating such huge individual benefits, and also needs the votes of those people, the conflict of interest is just too great.

 

Some may think that is an insult to Councillors. I say Councillors are human beings with feet of clay, just like the rest of us, and one key to honest administration is to prevent dishonest administration offering benefits.

 

5 days ago a member of the Royal Borough of Greenwich Housing Scrutiny Committee was found guilty of defrauding the Council of £67,000 by obtaining a Council House through Fraud by False  Representation. That is a 4 year Councillor, and there is always a constant stream of such stories. The Councillor concerned owns 3 other (at least one substandard with vermin) houses rented out privately. An example of  my second previous point. 

 

I think that creating monolithic estates of tenure is partly an exercise in trying to build voting blocks, beholden to particular political tendencies. Now, both of those points sound perhaps one sided - however remember that Lady Shirley Porter and the "Homes for Votes" episode, which was also about gerrymandering from the other side.

 

The opportunity for this to happen should not exist. For these reasons I am also highly suspicious of attempts to frame a debate as Private Rental vs Council Housing, entirely ignoring Registered Social Providers. That feels like an attempt to being to reintroduce the type of gerrymandering I have excoriated above. Why should these people want to create conflicts of interest in Councils?

 

I am a fan of the Right to Buy, as it gave 2 million households a potential escape from dependence, micro-control by politicians, and poverty, which is worth its weight in gold. It also started the process of breaking up all those monolithic blocks of tenure; also valuable.

 

I think the failure was failing to replace stock, and also of tackling abuses - which could have been done; but I have some sympathy with Mrs Thatcher's failure to do so via local Councils, as throughout the 1980s (iirc) there were a lot of somewhat (!) rogue Councils out there imo.

 

I think the people who failed to grasp the nettle were particularly Mr Major and then Mr Blair.

 

My take  is that:

 

1 - Social housing should be built and managed away from polticians, by law.

2 - Councils have a proper input on policy, but their input on individual decisions should be questioned. I can tell some horror stories about unlawful actions wrt private rentals by Councils, where unlawful actions have been taken because they can with virtual impunity, reckless as to the interest of the tenant concerned.

3 - Councils have a role as customer for new housing, and scrutineer for those running the,. Direct Labour organisations should remain part of history.

4 - If they are run by Registered Providers, then small estates are OK. I am undecided about RTB for Housing Associations.

5 - But the current practise of putting small numbers of social houses in other estates where suitable is probably better, as is the practise of Housing Associations buying individual houses on the open market. Other BHers disagree with this view, and we have argued it before.

 

One other issue is rich people staying in Council Houses, when policy for at least 20 years (and I think a lot longer) has been needs-based allocation. Should people in the top 5% (say) of incomes be able to keep a Council House when they can afford their own and someone is in a B&B waiting? The usual argument is "Council Houses are for everyone for life", but that has not been policy for decades. I am not entirely clear in my view about this, but it is partially also a supply issue - back to Major and Blair.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Ferdinand

[Carrerahill]

On 14/02/2020 at 08:54, ProDave said:

I remember scrimping and saving and driving a knackered old banger etc, could not afford a telephone line until nearly a year after I bought the first house etc.  Never bought anything new and food was a basic necessity.  But folks don't want to do that these days. They must have the latest phone, drive a new car on a rental plan, and don't want to buy a tiny starter home, they want to go straight to a "family home"

My thinking and what I believe.