The options. Burnham could revisit the idea of tightening eligibility requirements, or he could reduce the value of some benefits. But this seems unlikely given his political instincts and pledge to avoid “crude cuts”. Instead he will probably focus on reducing demand.
Clues. Burnham has already given indications he intends to pursue this path. He has promised a massive programme of council house building and described the growing number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neets) as “deeply concerning”.
He’ll destroy a vast amount of wealth – council houses are worth very much less than it costs to build them – and not kill any part of the benefits bill.
Well done, Andy.
This, um, house building. Didn’t the ginger growler already promise that a couple of years back?
I mean, it’s performative. They think that by announcing it people think it’s happened. Hell, they may even think that by announcing it it will happen.
But it’s not going to happen.
There isn’t any places left to build on in my borough!
As I drive around I see estates being built all over. You see little yellow signs on roundabouts with a house symbol and some twee name for the development pointing down one of the exits. Not council houses but they are pretty much favelas all the same.
Councils could build housing. They choose not to. They could buy land and grant planning or use some of the 1.3 million acres they collectively own. Use cheap Public Works Loan Board finance to build a bit smaller and a bit denser. If they want the homes to be rented in perpetuity, partner with a housing association (councils can set up housing associations). The only thing councils can’t get cheaper is labour and materials.
Councils can buy land at “current use value” if they get away with it – or at some modest premium for “hope value” if they don’t, then grant themselves planning permission and build houses at a lower cost than a private developer.
The trouble comes with Labour’s policy of charging half market rent so that rents do not cover ongoing maintenance costs after the NHBRC ten-year guarantee runs out.
The policy was a piece of propaganda “Eeevil landlords are charging rents twice as high” to which the proverbial ten-year-old schoolboy could reply “why haven’t they built a million houses if renting them out is that profitable?”
“Councils can buy land at “current use value” if they get away with it – or at some modest premium for “hope value” if they don’t, then grant themselves planning permission and build houses at a lower cost than a private developer.”
Er no they can’t, as evidenced by this:
https://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/25968174.wilts-councils-housing-firm-4m-debt-without-single-home-built/
Local council’s own development arms will always be a cess pit of DEI hires, working from home layabouts, massive over-management and ideological hiring. Getting houses out of the ground would take about 5th fiddle to having all the correct pronouns, Pride flags, diversity and general graft. And thats all before they try to actually sign contracts with real businesses, and get completely taken to the cleaners, as public bodies always do.
I don’t know if this is quite what you’re getting at, but there is this really weird thing of local authorities setting up businesses. Not just investing (usually stupidly) in the stock market, but actually setting up arm’s length businesses. I’ve come across some and, if it weren’t so predictable it would be funny, the businesses cannot function properly – ie with a view to earning the local authority money – because the local authority has to behave in certain ways regardless of commercial good sense.
So, tbf to some of the people I’ve encountered in these businesses, they’re normal, commercially incentivised people, but the stuff they need to do they are prevented from doing because their owners cannot permit it.
Insane.
They *can* – it is just that Wiltshire doesn’t. It is possible to hire Wimpey (now Taylor Wimpey) to do the actual work of building houses. When I was covering the construction sector Wimpey used to build roughly equal numbers of houses for themselves and as a contractor for local authoritities.
Certainly not smaller and denser. They’re already far too low quality.No gardens, no garages, not even a proper driveway.
A lot of that was Prescott. What was it – 14 dwellings per acre or some such nonsense? So you get 3 storey rabbit hutches.
Problem solved!
(although I have seen projects where a few storeys are bolted onto an already tall building – but it’s difficult and time-consuming)
Why are council rents so cheap, compared to the open market?
It’s a subsidy – often to the idle and feckless – worth £8 – 12 thousand a year, for life.
It freezes labour mobility, it discourages initiative. It’s wicked.
Maybe we should give the poor a leg up. But for a limited time only. Councils are broke enough without losing money on every home they own.
Solution: a few years of cheap rent, then an escalator (say, inflation + 7% p.a.) until the free market rent is reached.
Solution (alternative) include cost of rent, above a predetermined figure, in Universal Credit so that you are subsidising those in need of subsidy and not Labour MPs and trade union bosses in council flats.
Talk is cheap…
They promised 300,00 new homes a year but at the moment they are running at fewer than 200,000 per year.
This is to a large extent blamed on not enough builders and a shortage of building materials. And now they are going to build council houses too?
Where are the builders and building materials going to come from?
Precisely!
They ain’t coming in rubber boats, that’s for sure.
Of course not, they’re full of rocket scientists and engineers.
Well, they’ve lost me to the construction trade as my other knee got kackered last year. Before that I could about manage crawling around dragging cables, but not at a speed an employer was prepared to pay me for. I did work for family where they didn’t care I could only do one afternoon a week.
I’m with the great Steve Baker – the share of national income going to the NHS, triple-locked pensions and public sector unions is baked in to increase forever. Even if the pie grows their share of that pie grows by more. Every major decision, drilling permits in the sea next to us, will face a judicial review. Local governments are infested by commies who are already trying to steal private property if used for unapproved purposes. Every cabinet meeting will be about who can we tax more. Inflation will tick up as people retire early and become unproductive spend downers. Bonds will go up. It will be an absolute circus.
There will be some reduction in the benefits bill because the NEETs will lose their benefits if they refuse to take a job on a building site.
I doubt I’ll live to see a building site manned by silly fat tattooed girls.
I hope never to see that day as there’s a risk, albeit vanishingly small, that I may end up living in that house
“Work on a building site? I’ve got a degree yknow!”
Remember Obama thought there were “shovel-ready” projects out there? (like Burnham, Obama never had a real job either, so couldn’t conceptualise that if it was a great idea, somebody would already be doing it)
The government is rapidly shrinking the building trades, quarterly digital tax is driving a wave of early retirements of joiners, roofers, plumbers etc. The burden of complying with endless and often capricious planning regulations is another reason why blokes wot made their money in building houses no longer build houses. You can easily spend YEARS arguing over the runoff water arrangements.
Eyelash Twat has no understanding of any of this, because he’s a bullshit merchant whose only transferable skills involve sniffing Muslim groins.
Burnham, like most socialists, doesn’t understand the cause and effects of things. He’s worried about NEETs but I bet he won’t scrap the minimum wage. Low paid jobs are a good way for people with nothing to build their reputation. Someone who has nothing on their CV is not going to be paid much. Someone with something on their CV will.
A lot of regional managers at WH Smith started on the tills. 16 years old. They turned up on time, looked presentable, did their job, had a good manner and were helpful to customers, maybe have some suggestions. Pretty soon they’re going to head a section. Do that well, and you’re running a small branch. Do that well and you get a larger branch.
If you set a minimum wage, you don’t get the lads on the tills. WH Smith might run the numbers and decide that a self-checkout is cheaper than £10.85. They might prefer to have humans, if they can get humans at £9/hour. But the government bans someone who might be glad to take £9/hour from doing it.
I’d also add in the way that the state forces kids to stay in school to 18 instead of kids going to work, and pedo vetting, which means a lot of businesses won’t hire kids under 16 for Saturday jobs.
Yoss – if Burnham (Burnham? I’d fucking incinerate im) had any nous, instead of shitty reheated New Labour soundbites from the early 2000’s, he might ask himself:
* Why aren’t NEETs working in construction already?
Apprenticeships died yonks ago. Hasn’t made any economic sense for tradesmen to train young lads for a long, long time. A lot of the people working in building trades now have grey hair. If you want the job done right, you go to the greybeards.
Many such cases across society.
It’s Boomers who refuse to retire and Gen X who are keeping the lights on. They’re the ones who know how things work. As they age, retire and die off, we face a cliff edge of a Competency Crisis because their replacements simply aren’t capable.
The problem with apprenticeships is that no-one likes the whole deal with them. Most people don’t know the whole story.
Apprenticeships meant that you hired someone to be a carpenter, blacksmith, whatever. He worked for you, got paid a bit, got trained, and then worked for you for a few years, after which he was a master craftsman. Now that “worked for you for a few years” is important. It repaid the cost of training.
Nowadays, that’s illegal. They can leave whenever they want. Which means you might get someone to a competent level, and not make much money from it, and they go. So, no-one is bothering.
In my early years during some tough economic times I got two jobs by offering to work free for a week and telling them that after that they would want me and could start to pay me. Worked fine both times but now I’m sure is highly illegal.
The government is rapidly shrinking the building trades, quarterly digital tax is driving a wave of early retirements of joiners, roofers, plumbers etc.
I doubt that’s actually happening. What’ll be happening is increasing numbers will be going black. There’s always people want jobs done for cash.
It’s a feature of the industry. You only go legit when there’s advantages to being legit
I doubt that’s actually happening
I know quite a few blokes in the trades and I can assure you, it’s happening.
What’ll be happening is increasing numbers will be going black.
Obvs, everybody pays cash in hand whenever practicable but you can only do so much under the radar of HMRC.
Can’t just build a new row of houses on the black market, mate.
Btw you probably haven’t had the experience of trying to take your own money out of the bank in cash, or putting cash into your bank account, in Current Year Britain Zone.
You’d think carrying a few thou was asking to borrow the crown jewels. You’re immediately treated like a potential criminal and asked all sorts of intrusive questions that, candidly, are none of the bank’s fucking business.
Sometimes they tip off the cops to raid the building site. The British authorities hate cash and are trying to eliminate it.
I went in to a bank in Wales with a £20 note and asked for 20 x £1 coins because they were still backward and I needed to feed parking meters.
They asked if I was a customer and when I said no, First Direct, they told me I had to find a HSBC.
This was just after COVID, we haven’t been back since because they’d made the motorhome experience as difficult as possible.
Not back to Wales, or not back to that bank?!
Not back to Wales.
It will require a big culture shift, but the anti-money-laundering stuff – which I think gestated under Maggie, oddly – ought to go.
I seem to recall that Sean Gabb has been on this for yonks.
Agreed. US statutes are clearly unconstitutional general warrants.
My financial affairs are none of the government’s business.
AML stuff and it’s evil cousin, KYC, are probably in the first instance from US Treasury at the behest of the DEA. It got enforced on financial organisations that do any business whatsoever in the US, so by that little clause it all got exported to much of the rest of the world. It’s also why some people get debanked because their politics don’t ‘align’. Nothing to do with drugs but once the rules & processes are in place for drug dealers then the feature creep kicks in. As the banks’ downside for infractions is so large, they rapidly become obsessively risk-averse.
Oh, I’ve always had copious ways of circumventing those sort of irritations. And I’m sure that lots of other people do. Laws aren’t there to be obeyed but evaded. They just make life more interesting..
The banks & the government will only be able to eliminate cash if you let them. So you need to forego the ease & convenience of cashless transactions. Don’t bitch & expect other people to do it for you.
I’ve drawn cash in reasonable amounts with no annoying problems (£500 or more they tend to want a second form of ID in case you’ve pinched the bank card and are good at forging signatures).
Over a certain level the bank staff are required, on pain of being arrested and charged with facilitating money-laundering, to ask you a standard set of questions. Don’t blame them – *they* are being treated like a potential criminal!
Remember Obama thought there were “shovel-ready” projects out there?
The governor sent Barry a note explaining that we use backhoes in South Carolina.
which require skilled operators not NEETs straight off the dole.
Bollocks to young people not in education, employment or training, they have minimal outgoings, what about me not in education, employment or training???? I’ve got a mortgage to pay.
Don’t worry.
He’s not going to help NEETs either.
By the way, and this is one thing I’m not criticising Eyelash Twat for, just an obvs…
Did he just kill the tie?
The traditional half Windsor knot (or full Windsor if you’re a knob) silk tie has been going the way of the bowler hat since lockdowns. The death of the traditional office culture and its customary costume. Everything is much more casual these days.
Israelis have never liked ties, but you wouldn’t if you lived in the Med. But Burnham is the first British male politician I’ve seen to usually go tieless. What’s next, a replica Everton shirt whilst visiting the King? Shell suits, while we wait in bread queues?
I’d say that’s been well underway for a time. The enshittification* of the UK male. I’ve commented on it here. Brit tourist couples headed out for the evening. Her in a cocktail dress & heels. Him in some sort of polo shirt or football top, shorts & trainers.
It what I was saying on a recent thread. The general abandonment of respect & consideration.
The other word that jumps to mind is enniggerification.
I forgot to mention the prevalence of tattoos, didn’t I?
Gawd, I hate tats. So chavvy.
They’re a sign of insecurity. They’re not something you can see from your own perspective. If you’re so concerned about what other people can see…
Like fashion. Fashion is to conform with others, not stand out from the crowd. Style is entirely different. The stylish person makes an individual statement. Although their style today, can be tomorrow’s fashion.
I tried to explain this to a girlfriend regarding her 20,000 quids worth of prominently logoed designer handbags. Sorry love, you’re just telling people you’ve got no style. The stylish bag has no logos & only women with style will recognise it. If you want to go for ultimate style, it’s the bag stylish women admire but don’t know where to buy one. You’ll recognise it when they start pleading.
The one that always gets me is how coppers these days have arms covered in shitty drawings like a child got at them with the felt tips.
They’re going for “tough guy” but it just makes them look like the twats they are.
I’d not really thought of it like that, about those things, but it makes total sense.
If you’re confident about style, you buy what’s good, what works for you. Might even be cheaper because you’re not having to pay for a logo.
I’ve told my brood that if they get tattoos I’ll have no more to do with them.
Outside of sailors, stevedores and the ladies of negotiable virtue who help them with their, er, needs, tats are a marker, either of self-harm or degeneracy. Often, both.
I’ve got to hand it, tho’, to the evil genii who set out to destroy us (yes, Theo, they exist): a good place to start is to make women look diseased and/or like men, and to make men look like preening narcisists.
I absolutely loathe tats – especially on (formally) pretty girls…
And those enbiggened lips!
I’m fairly ambiguous about tats on women. i have to be. The current one’s quite liberally if tastefully decorated. But attractive women are to be looked at & tats can introduce a touch of the exotic. Can. However men are to be respected.
You’d never see Ronnie and Reggie wearing tattoos and hoodies. Always dressed for success, those lads. You got a better class of psychopathic violent criminal in the old days.
Haven’t noticed any tats on Aussie women.
Of course this might simply be because I’m so self-centred I don’t notice anything!!
plenty of them….. you usually have to get a bit intimate with them to see them, though… 0:)
Angelina Jolie has had a more profound effect on how women want their faces to look than any other person in the last 50 years*.
Discuss.
*Can’t understand it. She looks perm-miserable, astringent and devoid of humour. She also has tats.
Nailed it. Don’t they all. They have the Instagram face of a Thunderbirds puppet.
“The general abandonment of respect & consideration.”
This is all about a lack of enforcement. You drop litter, you pay a fine. You talk in the cinema, you get kicked out. You listen to music on the train aloud, you’ll be getting off at the next station. You wear a football shirt, you don’t come in.
Many people have a general sense of consideration, but for the ones that don’t they need a punishment. And if you get enough people understanding that, they’ll also raise their kids properly. “pick the litter up, or you’re not having an ice cream”.
Why do you see Japanese people taking their trash away at football matches? Because that’s deeply ingrained in their culture. You’re a scumbag if you don’t take your litter home. British fans just leave all their trash. Also why our towns are full of litter and Japanese ones aren’t.
It doesn’t even cost much. You enforce it a bit, everyone gets the message. People generally don’t switch their phones on at the Royal Opera House, because an usher will be on you, and you’ll be out. If you don’t enforce that, like cinemas, people just do likewise.
Beau Brummell was comfortably the most influential figure in men’s fashion.
Discuss.
Sink me!
He’s an C18th example of enniggerification.
That black style of wearing sportswear was to signal that the wearer didn’t participate in common work but had other “sources of income”. A person of perpetual leisure.
See also: untanned complexion; soft hands; pot belly.
Beaux Brummel and Nash changed the fashion, from flamboyance to discretion. Most people think it was the reverse, but in fact they got rid of sable furs, ruffs and codpieces. Good for them.
See also BiS’s remarks on style. If you need to be decked out in logos you’re a twat.
Reminds me that Beau Brummell resigned his commission when his regiment was transferred to Manchester on the grounds that he “was not prepared to go on foreign service.”
I wonder how many civil servants will feel the same about Number 10 North. Not that they’ll resign of course
Style works! I went out to dinner yesterday evening with not one, not two but three very attractive latinas. They’re not with me because I’m going to pick up the tab. There would be a queue of blokes round the block would do that. They do it partially because because we have style together. Never been to the restaurant before. When we entered there a slight hush, enough to hear women grinding their teeth. Our reserved table on the route to the toilets was swiftly changed for the best in the room. The girls are always seated first. Someone else must have been disappointed. Service was provided at a mere tilt of the head or raised finger. The proprietor came & asked if everything was satisfactory. Twice. He may well earn being Christian named if he continues to please. Complementary liqueurs were proffered after the payment of the tab. The bill itself seemed to have two or three items missing. The proprietor wants our custom. We raise the tone of the place. If you want to be treated like royalty look & behave like royalty. Not Meg ‘n ‘Arry.
Indeed. Pretty privilege we can call it. And don’t those who had it bitch when they don’t any more.
Enjoy it while it exists!
Tim. Manners & consideration will get you everywhere.
It’s all theater. The women are out of the poor barrios & favelas of S. America. Their frocks are cheap Chinese cotton knock offs. The only decent bit of clothing between us was my antique, US made, restrained colours, Hawaiian shirt. I like 50/60s Americana.
It’s how you behave.
Ay ay ay. Calm down!
Chicken and a can of Coke for me Mam
“Four fried chickens and a Coke!”
Uhhh . . . okay. Distinction?
Tightening eligibility = supply side reform
“Focus on reducing demand” = he’s already given in to the political impossibility of getting welfare spending under control because the thickies on the green benches are flying the national plane directly into the mountainside
If Britain was a business, you wouldn’t invest.
Fixed.
If the people of UK want to give money to the disabled, they can. Nothing is stopping them. Government doing it is trashy politics. Expensive trashy politics. Uniparty members get the warm feeling of altruism by spending other people’s money.
You can’t repair Pip; get rid of it. And the horse . . . .