Landlord epc min c scrapped

[joe90]

22 minutes ago, Dave Jones said:

all the green stuff needs to be put on hold until china, asia and africa come down to what we are today. our 0.01% global contribution is just dog whistling for the luvvies.

I disagree, it was the west that started the pollution, (Industrial Revolution) so we need to lead with becoming clean.

[Square Feet]

On 21/09/2023 at 12:20, ProDave said:

with no financial help to do so,

Although you are in Scotland you seem a wee bit unaware of some of the support (and legislation) up here. I am currently getting a Scottish rental property insulated and fitted with new double glazed windows and the bill is being footed by the Scottish Govt. It's a loan, not a grant, but at £65 a month for 8 years interest-free, I can cope fine with that. There's lots of financial help available for green initiatives in Scotland. 

You also mentioned the possibility of landlords evicting their tenants over this - again this doesn't apply to Scotland as there are a lot of tenant protection measures in place that make this impossible. 

I hope I am a responsible landlord, so I am happy to do this. I did live in this property myself for a bit and it was fecking miserable - cold and draughty and completely depressing. I wouldn't inflict that on a tenant, so it needs done.

It also means I am getting most of the walls in the property skimmed 'for free' so it's a win-win for me. 

[SteamyTea]

[Mattg4321]

It will make no difference whether we lead or not if it doesn’t make economic sense to go green. We really don’t have that much, if any, influence over China, India and the US. 
 

We should be doing everything we can that makes sense and passes a cost benefit analysis. A lot of which we are not currently doing, instead virtue signalling or making policy that is profitable for big business. 
 

We need to go big on nuclear and renewables so we can shut down fossil fuels without causing the less well off to freeze to death. Along with insulating older buildings and drastically improving standards of new builds. 

[Square Feet]

On 21/09/2023 at 17:18, ProDave said:

Certainly I find it sad that all new build developer houses are not being built to close to passive house standards, that is criminal.

 

I agree, but my understanding is that from 2024 they will have to (in Scotland anyway) or did this come unstuck somehow?

https://passivehouseplus.co.uk/news/government/scotland-to-mandate-passive-house-for-new-homes

[SteamyTea]

6 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

go big on nuclear

How do you square that with

 

7 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

We should be doing everything we can that makes sense and passes a cost benefit analysis

 

Nuclear, which has a 60 + year history, is the most expensive form of low carbon generation, by a factor of 4.

[Mattg4321]

4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

How do you square that with

 

 

Nuclear, which has a 60 + year history, is the most expensive form of low carbon generation, by a factor of 4.

Renewables are no good by themselves as often in the winter it can be cold, cloudy, dark and still for weeks on end. So it’s gas, coal or nuclear. Batteries is pie in the sky for decades yet. Hydro doesn’t seem to be viable on a large scale, I’ll admit I’m not sure why. 
 

You just posted a map showing France as an outlier in Western Europe with lower carbon emissions, almost certainly down to the amount of nuclear power they have. 

[FuerteStu]

11 hours ago, ProDave said:

 

There has been a general trend over the last few years to hurt landlords and charge them more just about everywhere they can.  And then they act all surprised when LL's sell up and there are fewer properties to let and rents go up.

 

To my eyes this is deliberate.. 

 

Over the last 20 years there has been a huge increase in the working class getting second homes and buy-to-let mortgages (thanks to low interest rates) have been encouraging this. 

 

The top end of the spectrum (with no mortgage costs because they buy outright) are not affected by the recent changes, in fact, excess capital is allowing them to snap up the additional properties the small scale landlords are forced to sell. 

 

I might be labelled a tory basher for saying that, but the fact is, the last dozen years has only widened the rich poor divide and the political situation has been steered to encourage it. 

Edited September 22, 2023 by FuerteStu

[DamonHD]

14 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

Renewables are no good by themselves as often in the winter it can be cold, cloudy, dark and still for weeks on end. So it’s gas, coal or nuclear. Batteries is pie in the sky for decades yet. Hydro doesn’t seem to be viable on a large scale, I’ll admit I’m not sure why. 
 

You just posted a map showing France as an outlier in Western Europe with lower carbon emissions, almost certainly down to the amount of nuclear power they have. 

"Weeks" is really pushing it, especially for the UK.

 

"It was found that almost all periods tagged as Dunkelflaute events (with a length of more than 24 h) are in November, December, and January for these countries. On average, there are 50–100 h of such events happening in each of these three months per year."

 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355173603_A_Brief_Climatology_of_Dunkelflaute_Events_over_and_Surrounding_the_North_and_Baltic_Sea_Areas

 

DECC used to worry about 5 day events; I believe that the German concern is ~6d.

 

Rgds

 

Damon

[FuerteStu]

13 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

Renewables are no good by themselves as often in the winter it can be cold, cloudy, dark and still for weeks on end. So it’s gas, coal or nuclear. Batteries is pie in the sky for decades yet. Hydro doesn’t seem to be viable on a large scale, I’ll admit I’m not sure why. 
 

You just posted a map showing France as an outlier in Western Europe with lower carbon emissions, almost certainly down to the amount of nuclear power they have. 

Renewables ARE the solution, but not limited to one aspect for it. 

 

We should be incorporating hydro powered reservoirs all over the country, charged (pumped up) By excess solar or wind.. 

 

It's going to take investment for long term viability, but no more than the investment that's our into oil/gas prospecting and refining.. 

 

The end product will be cheaper and more sustainable electricity. 

[SteamyTea]

19 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

Renewables are no good by themselves as often in the winter it can be cold, cloudy, dark and still for weeks on end

The national grid data has never shown that.

It is a bit of a myth that the whole of the UK gets hit by a winter high pressure and windturbines just stop generating.

Just a matter of scaling the system up.

We really do not need nuclear these days, we can manage without it, we almost are as it is.

[Mattg4321]

https://grid.iamkate.com

 

Looks like over 20% nuclear currently, when you take into account France supplying a good chunk of our power requirements. 
 

Around a third is fossil fuel and around a third is renewables. We can certainly manage without nuclear, but only if we keep using fossil fuels. At least for a few decades. 

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

Looks like over 20% nuclear currently

17% as I type this.

Wind is 26%

Gas 32%

French Interconnect 8%

 

You cannot compare installed capacity of renewables and traditional generation.

If you really want to compare them, you have to take the capacity factor into account.

[Mattg4321]

6 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

17% as I type this.

Wind is 26%

Gas 32%

French Interconnect 8%

 

You cannot compare installed capacity of renewables and traditional generation.

If you really want to compare them, you have to take the capacity factor into account.

French power grid currently over 95% nuclear, meaning we are well over 20%. 
 

Either way it doesn’t get away from the fact that renewables are not viable alone currently, and probably not for a period measured in decades. 

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

viable alone currently

Well no, but you are comparing a technology that has been used for over 100 years (large scale centralised generation) with a technology that has only been commercialised in the last 20 or so, with 90% of the capacity installed in the last 7 years (ish).

Like saying a 5 year old at school has not worked out what dark matter is.

No one is every claiming that wind and solar can match existing generation today.

5 years ago, who would have thought that around 850,000 BEVs were on our roads, the same argument about 'not enough capacity to charge them' was said back then.

Probably accounts for all the BEVs I see on the side of the road when I drive, they must go into cloaking mode to save embarrassment.

 

Our National Grid is an engineering marvel, we should be proud of what it does, not saying that it has reached its peak and nothing else can be done.

 

As for the French, and other interconnects, much of this is to do with economics, not capacity.  We, like France, Holland, Belgium etc would be mad not to swap power at times it is not needed locally.  The whole of physical Europe is interconnect, it is the way it has been designed, it is not a bail out.

[AliG]

1 hour ago, FuerteStu said:

 

To my eyes this is deliberate.. 

 

Over the last 20 years there has been a huge increase in the working class getting second homes and buy-to-let mortgages (thanks to low interest rates) have been encouraging this. 

 

The top end of the spectrum (with no mortgage costs because they buy outright) are not affected by the recent changes, in fact, excess capital is allowing them to snap up the additional properties the small scale landlords are forced to sell. 

 

I might be labelled a tory basher for saying that, but the fact is, the last dozen years has only widened the rich poor divide and the political situation has been steered to encourage it. 

 

The last dozen years has not actually widened the rich poor divide. The gini coefficient in the UK peaked in 2007/8. Wealth distribution has been broadly the same for the last 25 years.

 

The notion that somehow more working class people became landlords so the government decided to have it in for them is nonsense. Many many people have been complaining about landlords and with typical expediency the government thought there might be votes in being anti landlord.

 

House prices are down roughly 5% from the all time high last year, rich people are not suddenly snapping up houses on the cheap, house prices have barely moved. Even if they are cash buyers they can put cash in the bank and earn interest with no hassle of being a landlord. The average rental yield on property is around 5%, very similar to savings rates. Meanwhile, two years ago it was much higher than savings rates. So again why would people now want to take their savings and use it to buy houses.

 

The government have been quite incompetent on many fronts recently, but this is just a conspiracy theory with no evidence to support it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FuerteStu]

7 minutes ago, AliG said:

 

The last dozen years has not actually widened the rich poor divide. The gini coefficient in the UK peaked in 2007/8. Wealth distribution has been broadly the same for the last 25 years.

 

I'm sorry, but you can't use income as a reliable measure when the majority of our incomes are unable to use the tax avoidance schemes that anyone earning large amounts can. 

 

The wealth increases in 'rich lists' prove those graphs pointless. 

 

How can the rich get richer with no increase in income? 

[AliG]

21 minutes ago, FuerteStu said:

I'm sorry, but you can't use income as a reliable measure when the majority of our incomes are unable to use the tax avoidance schemes that anyone earning large amounts can. 

 

That's why I put the chart of wealth distribution in as well, the second chart.

 

I am not saying it is good or fair, just that it has been broadly the same for some time.

 

Despite what people think if you actually earn money from working it is extremely difficult to avoid paying taxes. I certainly am not aware of how to do so, when I was working I earned a large amount of money, every penny was taxed. The top 1% of earners make 13% of income, but pay 29% of income tax in the UK. This does not suggest that they are avoiding taxes.

 

On the other hand I used to sit next to a non dom guy at work who basically paid no tax. It was very annoying. I believe this has been somewhat tightened up.

 

If you inherit a lot of money and make it from investments tax avoidance is much easier. It is also much easier if you are self employed irrespective of your income. I know IT contractors who were using EBTs to avoid tax until the loophole was closed, or you have the likes of Jimmy Carr.

 

People not paying tax are generally at it nowadays. I have come up with a solution for this. They should offset inheritance tax against income tax paid while you were alive. Thus if people manage to suspiciously accumulate lots of assets without paying any income tax then they get caught out in the end, but if it has already been taxed, it doesn't get taxed again.

 

 

 

 

[FuerteStu]

I spent nearly 5 years working for a billionaire.. He told us that us contractors probably payed more in tax that he did, and that most of his friends were the same.. 

 

All the works done on his millionaire mansion was paid for by a company that made a loss.. Owned by him. All legal. 

 

If you think the rich are 'getting by'. Like the rest of us, you have no idea how it is working in the real world. 

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by FuerteStu

[MikeSharp01]

8 hours ago, FuerteStu said:

He told us that us contractors probably payed more in tax that he did, and that most of his friends were the same.. 

Been the case forever and for close to 50% of our young people - recent graduates, their real taxation rate is over 50% when you take into account the student loan repayments. How are they going to make a start when the rich pay less than their share and they pay more than their share.

[SteamyTea]

You have to be careful when comparing how much tax people pay on earnings.

There is the percentage rate and the nominal rate, they can be very different.

Then there are the indirect taxes on goods and services.  I have not paid any tax on a haircut for decades.

 

Wealth and Income are not the same thing.

[AliG]

The argument has changed now.

 

Of course there is a lot of inequality in the country/world and systems can in particular be abused by the ultra wealthy. The problem with taxing them is they can move around and they have so much money they don’t need to take much income relative to their rising wealth so have neither realised gains nor income to tax. Hence my idea of netting tax paid against inheritance tax. These people haven’t paid the double tax that people complain comes with inheritance tax. They haven’t paid any tax. Not only that but the people inheriting money won’t have paid any tax on it as they never had any income at any point. So this issue could be improved upon, although it’s tough as they can easily move country.

 

The charts on wealth and income inequality show that it has been pretty similar for a long time. Maybe we were less aware of it as there weren’t so many rich people flaunting their wealth on TikTok. They just hid it better previously and tbh that kind of conspicuous consumption is probably getting people’s backs up.

 

However, I don’t like conspiracy theories and the suggestion that working class people got into being landlords so the Tories started to make it worse to be a landlord is nonsense. As is the suggestion that rich people are suddenly hoovering up cheap houses when house prices are barely off their all time high.

 

 

[Square Feet]

14 hours ago, AliG said:

 

The average rental yield on property is around 5%, very similar to savings rates. Meanwhile, two years ago it was much higher than savings rates. So again why would people now want to take their savings and use it to buy houses.

Because you are missing the point of why most people invest in property - for capital growth. 

[Triassic]

12 minutes ago, Square Feet said:

Because you are missing the point of why most people invest in property - for capital growth. 

Property is a long term investment. I have a rent property in one particular location and seen very little capital growth in th3 last ten years. Mind you the yeald  is around 14%.

 

Talking to a local EA, he’s seeing lots of landlords selling up, due to poor yeald and some, due to age and the hassle of being a landlord.

[Mattg4321]

18 hours ago, joe90 said:

I disagree, it was the west that started the pollution, (Industrial Revolution) so we need to lead with becoming clean.

What makes you think they’ll take any notice?

 

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-climate-envoy-says-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-unrealistic-2023-09-22/

 

Adapting to possible future climate change is what we should be doing alongside efforts to reduce carbon emissions. It’s clear there’s no joined up thinking going on and even in the best case scenario carbon emissions on a global level will be well above net zero for many decades yet. It’s fantasy to think otherwise.