None of them will give the right answer of course

Shoot the people who demand bat tunnels

That’s a bit illiberal Tim. Let them demand bat tunnels all they like, and if they pay for them, they can have them.

Getting rid of Rachel Reeves might be a start and replacing her with Baron Kwasi Kwarteng.

The puzzling thing is that it was obvious from July 2024 that Reeves didn’t have a clue but went ahead like a wrecking ball. What do people actually do in the Treasury? Are there no officials who advise Labour ministers of the likely impact and outcome of their policies? They seem ready enough to thwart Conservative ones and
to howl about bullying if their inertia is challenged.

Oh, and that stuff Tim is talking about too, obvs.

Swannypol……….re government cannot create growth, it may depend on the government. China is building about 3000 kilometres a year of High Speed Rail a year, 10,000 kilometre of freeway a year. Plus about two thirds of the worlds ships.

Jimintheantipodes:

When it’s doing that, is it really government? You can have something state-owned and operated and still make stuff.
But that saying is for privately owned things, where the government is not your boss as such.

And the Chinese are *not* interested in paying so-called “scientists” to go out and “find” new species in front of the proposed route for any new road or rail.
The latest is that the “snail darter” didn’t exist – it was part of an existing species that wasn’t endangered. The guy who “found” it basically made it up.

Let them demand bat tunnels all they like, and if they pay for them, they can have them.

It’s never ‘they’ though is it? Always ‘us’.

do the Chinese people need them?

Much of the time, no. Most of the useful high speed lines were completed years ago. And there’s millions of apartments, office buildings and malls which have been built (not necessarily by the state but often by SOEs) which are not needed.

More leeches!

Stat!

I think it’s a mistake to include the point about school uniforms, this is actually a good thing, it’s a move against anti-competitive/monopolistic behaviour. Schools that require branded items effectively force parents into paying a premium through their preferred supplier when perfectly suitable equipment can be obtained elsewhere for a much lower price.

I was amused (being somewhat distant) to read that the 60 fire engines sent by Oregon to assist in the southern California wildfires had to stop in Sacremento for a Department of Transport inspection before they could continue south. They must be inspected again before they can return home, apparently with any problems they’ve picked up during their stay fixed before that can happen.

And best wishes for good luck have already been offered to those seeking rebuild permits . . .

Blow up the planning system.

No, just No! Reform it, radically even. But in a small, densely populated island, some form of planning and development control is essential for civilised life.

“No, the only answer is to remove all regulation.”

Well all that will do is give the control freaks a chance to come back with even more stringent regulation, once the free for all has created chaos. When sewage has backed up into your toilet for the 5th time this month because the new housing development slightly up hill from you has piped all its sewage into the existing system despite it not having any extra capacity, you’ll vote for anyone to promises to fix it, even it means Communism.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but lots of private businesses are run by psychopathic arseholes, and will do anything to make a few quid. Remove all regulations from them and they’ll sell you brake pads made out cheese if they can.

So, what’s good regulation and what’s bad?

Not overloading drains would seem to be good. Not allowing an overbearing extension also sounds okay.

I assume some of the “planning” regulations must be bad because we’re complaining that it holds back the UK productivity.

What about the size of the toilet cistern? Can we allow people to use extra water if they need to flush a massive brown trout? Or is that wasting precious water?

And who gets to decide what are good and bad regulations? The fuckwits who came up with (and/or enforce) the current list or someone else?

“ , what’s good regulation and what’s bad?

Not overloading drains would seem to be good”

Using over loading of drains as an excuse to blocking a development – bad, saying that we can’t stop you if you meet this regulation – good. The next problem is making sure that the regulation isn’t isn’t made unnecessarily restrictive or expensive is the next problem.

“I assume some of the “planning” regulations must be bad because we’re complaining that it holds back the UK productivity.”

The things that are holding back housing developments are a) a lot of the environmental and eco-nonsense stuff, b) the fact that council planning departments make a snail look like Lewis Hamilton when it comes to dealing with large planning applications, and c) the lack of basic infrastructure capacity for water, power and sewage disposal. . All the other stuff is a bit of a bind, but not actually much of a problem. Whether a cistern has to be X cubic centimeters or can be the size of a large suitcase is neither here nor there, its not going to slow things down much, or add drastically to the costs. Having to find hundreds of acres of extra land to provide ‘Bio Net Gain’, or ‘Nutrient Neutrality’ will, as will waiting for 3 months for the council to process some small part of the planning application, because everyone dealing with it is either on holiday, sick or on maternity leave, or WFH, ie skiving. Equally waiting for those well known semi-nationalised industries the utility companies to install sewers, cable and pipes tends to hold things up a bit too (and of course all their work is hampered by exactly the same planning problems the house builders have – all their infrastructure has to go through the same planning process as well, and adhere to all the environmental bollocks too). .

Solve those three problems and you’re a long way to getting more houses built. Of course if you weren’t importing a city the size of Nottingham each year you might not need so many houses anyway………but thats a different argument.

“making sure that the regulation isn’t isn’t made unnecessarily restrictive or expensive is the next problem.”

No, it’s the only problem.

We have around 80 years experience with the TCPA which demonstrates that regulation ratchets one way.
You won’t turn it back to any sensible level because of a myriad of interconnected legislation and special interest groups.
If any part of the solution requires the blob to give up even a tiny bit of power, then it won’t happen.

And nuclear electricity will be too cheap to meter. Remember that?