The Budget & business
- Thread starter Duke Fame
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- Original Poster
- #42
Of course not, any subscription to a specialist TV channels should be claimed on top.
I don't envy the top MPs getting a decent wage but I hate the way so many in parliament have done nothing of note but been an MP. In fairness, our local MP was so surprised to get elected, he had to finish his employment before getting into parliament but too many have spent their life sucking up & playing party politics.
Too many get paid far more then they would in the real world.
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T
The Byre
If living standards had not fallen every year, we could have gone back to those halcyon days of one parent working and one staying at home.
The idea that we must have childcare to cover for both parents having to work in order to be able to feed that child and put a decent roof over its head strikes me as somewhat obscene.
Talk about a world of boiled frogs! Every day and in every way, things just get a little worse - we don't feel it because, as we get older, we individually are better off - but the generations are slipping slowly below the Plimsol line. We now have a generation entering the adult world, many (most?) of whom will never be able to buy a home.
Most will remain in debt all their lives which is just a new type of slavery.
The idea that we must have childcare to cover for both parents having to work in order to be able to feed that child and put a decent roof over its head strikes me as somewhat obscene.
Talk about a world of boiled frogs! Every day and in every way, things just get a little worse - we don't feel it because, as we get older, we individually are better off - but the generations are slipping slowly below the Plimsol line. We now have a generation entering the adult world, many (most?) of whom will never be able to buy a home.
Most will remain in debt all their lives which is just a new type of slavery.
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Too easy to fiddle
If you have money already you just start your own company/charity and pay yourself a huge salary for the year pre election in a safe seat and then get paid that amount.
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What about if they own a company and didnt take a salary first couple of years as they grew it then took a modest one the 3rd even though it had gone form nothing to having £1m in retained profit ?
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Being serious if you had planning liberation (as in no planning enforcement)#
#
How would you
1. Ensure quality (of both construction and aesthetics)
2. Deal with traffic issues
3. Deal with school/health/sewerage/power provision locally
Separately
If I gave you a 3 acre field just off a major A Road with decent access and within commuter belt of a major conurbation and said "there you go, all yours, build what you want". What would you build and what would you expect it to cost / sell for ?
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Go to Uni and study politics or history. Leave Uni and start working for an MP as a case worker or researcher. Stand for election as an MP.
Its becoming a more and more common route into the HoC meaning there are less and less experienced people running the country.
Its similar with local councils. My local council has a number of Councillors in their 20's/30's on the cabinet and treat it as a full time job. Theyve not lived or have a real clue about anything...and it certainly shows.
Years ago, when my dad was a Councillor, it was made up of experienced local people, who received tiny expenses (for genuine reasons) and nothing else, but were doing it for the honourable reasons. Now they get a basic of £11k, additional money for sitting on committees, further money for being on the cabinet and holding leadership roles.
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Planning is out of control in Devon already if you gave them a free run they would probably close the M5 and use it as an airport
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My point is that you need planning.
We can all argue about priorities but the concept of not just allowing anyone to build what they like where they like without consideration for the impact is fundamentally correct
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I also feel there ought to be a maximum number of terms someone can stand for. In Reading there are too many councillors who have made it a career as they know they won't ever get voted out, so run certain departments like a personal fiefdom.
Having no fear of losing your job is not a good thing for democracy or efficiency
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Building more houses will not get us to the point where only one parent has to work to raise a child.
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Completely agree. It's an incredibly dumb society that dumps kids with strangers - for longer and longer and from earlier and earlier in their lives - so that both their parents can go and work.
Parents justify this irresponsible behaviour with the argument that the child is learning to socialise in nursery. That is bullsh*t. It's a pathetic cover for their dereliction of parental duty.
I am 100% against the state paying for any form of nursery or pre-nursery care on a blanket level like they do now! And this budget goes even further. The Tories are even more leftie than Labour now!
Similarly with schools - schools suck more and more power, control and responsibility away from parents - whether it's on sex education or feeding the kids. Initially it was the state paying for free school lunches for a tiny proportion of particularly disadvantaged kids. Now, it's a quarter of kids on FSM. Teachers have become social workers and are tasked with teaching kids even the basics of personal hygiene, manners and other stuff that was always the preserve of parents. Why do teachers have to do this? Because parents are too busy working.
We are destroying the family unit (and don't talk about the perverse incentives the state provides for couples to split up and for kids to be brought up in single parent households).
Schools give kids tons of homework to deprive them of further time with the family. Trust me, I know a lot about this homework issue - it is completely, utterly unnecessary and serves only to cover for the incompetence of schools and their inability to deliver the curriculum despite having kids for the best part of every day, five days a week. (Schools are seriously, seriously incompetent at delivering the curriculum. I could teach any average 15 year old the entire maths and computing syllabus in just six months doing just an hour a day! And that's if they've never learnt any maths or computing ever before in their lives. It's p*ss easy work. Schools have 12 years to deliver a basic, pathetic curriculum and they still screw it up!)
This budget now wants schools to be available for kids till 6 PM (so parents can work longer hours?!)
When did we get so frigging mental?!
We need to stop this funding of nurseries, stop free school meals, stop the state taking more and more control over our kids ...and return control, and responsibility, to parents! But that ain't going to happen.
Somebody make me chancellor.
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- Original Poster
- #61
I'm not suggesting ZERO planning, just removing obstacles in a way to get results quickly.
To me there are two principle drivers as to why we have too high property prices 1) supply limited by planning 2) rental market supported by govt subsidy.
The result is the median house now costs over nine times the median salary. I think this was something you raised last week when we got into an Ali G style view of the mean streets of Burghfield where I had images of the Padworth, Mortimer and Tadley massive would be kicking off over Martinis at Burghfield Sailing club!!!!
The planning system has prevented enough homes being built in places where people want to live, and significantly increasing prices. Yes, we need to ensure there is a school and we don't just have a creeping concrete jungle but there is a way.
In my village for instance, we have opposition to new houses stating there aren't enough places in schools yet we have two schools next to each other, one is well under capacity because not enough of the kids parents believe in the same imaginary friend as the head teacher...nuts.
Good reading on this:
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- Original Poster
- #62
There is an argument that we don't have a house supply issue, just a bad distribution of Land, which not only causes 200% higher than cost prices, but deadweight losses(under occupancy, vacancy, land banking), and excessive tax liabilities for the majority of the population. All of which add up to unaffordable housing. This can be easily be solved by taxing the selling price of land down to zero.
http://www.capx.co/there-is-no-uk-housing-crisis-and-there-never-was-one/
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- Original Poster
- #64
Too right, my father was an engineer in nuke weaponry and Energy. He split his time between AWRE Aldermaston and AERE Harwell and I remember him saying 40 years ago, Nuclear power would not be cheap enough in his lifetime and really only when oil & gas starts to run out.
I wish he'd put a bet on.
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I can't see that it makes any difference that the mother works from home. You cannot work and care for a baby at the same time. One or the other suffers. It always used to drive me mad when members demanded the right to work from home because they had childcare issues. They just proved management 's belief that working from home was an excuse for not doing the job properly.
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My disabled daughter runs a baby room in a nursery, they have no plans to increase their hours and numbers, they are already exhausted and feel the extra numbers being pushed by the Gov are unsafe, I know of a couple of other smaller nurseries who feel the same.
The large National chains will do it, which says a lot about putting money over safety IMO.
As for schools, my youngest daughter is already working 70+ hours most weeks, and has come around to my argument they are just baby sitting these kids. Youngsters turn up not even toilet trained, rude and aggressive with most told not to listen to teachers and do what they want. Parents on the whole offer little support, most do not read with or help their kids at all.
In her village setting, which comprises mainly well off parents, she has five parents banned from visiting the school and being able to collect their kids, due mainly to drinking and hard drugs, domestic violence etc.
Even severe problems hardly elicit any response from the parents, my daughter was in tears the other night, a family more interested in ignoring a problem than helping a severely damaged son, who at the age of six is planning his suicide atm.
Thrown into the mix out of classes of 30 odd 3-4 SEND kids who struggle to learn in such a setting, of the others two thirds care little to learn, and the handful that wish to struggle to get help.
My daughter is a good teacher, but has anyone tried to teach in such conditions, and I haven’t even mentioned her having to set five levels of work for different kids, because she now after Covid is expected to write special lessons for kids off sick, or away on holiday. The whole system is stupid IMO.
This BTW is normal, her last school was twice as bad and even more under resourced, come Parent evenings, 60-70% never even turn up to see how their kids are doing, then blame the teachers for bad results.
Basically, it’s the Parents who are 80% responsible for most of the problem, they just want someone else to deal with the problem, as a Nation we should be ashamed of ourselves.
The large National chains will do it, which says a lot about putting money over safety IMO.
As for schools, my youngest daughter is already working 70+ hours most weeks, and has come around to my argument they are just baby sitting these kids. Youngsters turn up not even toilet trained, rude and aggressive with most told not to listen to teachers and do what they want. Parents on the whole offer little support, most do not read with or help their kids at all.
In her village setting, which comprises mainly well off parents, she has five parents banned from visiting the school and being able to collect their kids, due mainly to drinking and hard drugs, domestic violence etc.
Even severe problems hardly elicit any response from the parents, my daughter was in tears the other night, a family more interested in ignoring a problem than helping a severely damaged son, who at the age of six is planning his suicide atm.
Thrown into the mix out of classes of 30 odd 3-4 SEND kids who struggle to learn in such a setting, of the others two thirds care little to learn, and the handful that wish to struggle to get help.
My daughter is a good teacher, but has anyone tried to teach in such conditions, and I haven’t even mentioned her having to set five levels of work for different kids, because she now after Covid is expected to write special lessons for kids off sick, or away on holiday. The whole system is stupid IMO.
This BTW is normal, her last school was twice as bad and even more under resourced, come Parent evenings, 60-70% never even turn up to see how their kids are doing, then blame the teachers for bad results.
Basically, it’s the Parents who are 80% responsible for most of the problem, they just want someone else to deal with the problem, as a Nation we should be ashamed of ourselves.
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Recognise a lot of this from mates daughters stories.
Also another friend was a dep head of a primary (for complicated reasons to do with a mentally ill abusive ex who was sectioned and taken to court she is no longer allowed to teach) she once didn't arrive when we expected for a meal as she was still sat at school with a 6yo as she didn't really want to call social services again, the parent had not arrived to collect said child. In the end (about 7pm) she did and upon investigation it turned out child's mother had gone on a 3 day bender with new boyfriend. The child had got himself up and to school that day as mum hadn't come back from night out before.
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No it isnt
We are fueling house price rises with ever growing debt which is what is causing a requirement for both parents to work to fund said debt.
We need to drastically reduce the average debt per household compared to average earnings - it is the brake slowing the economy through reducing disposable income.
If i knew a simple answer to "how ?", I would be a multi millionaire but the only ways I can see all contain short term serious pain for a lot of people and/or financial institutions
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A young family member is currently looking to buy a house in my area, and sinceI deal in property they asked myself how much they thought they could budget for, to help buy a house and narrow the search down.
Both they and their partner are in good stable jobs, and using my reasoning method of working backwards, despite earning over £70k pa between them, I recommended they look at £200-250k maximum. This allows them £200 a week spending and saving money at todays rates after the mortgage and bills, plus a 10% deposit with a 25 year term.
My family member rang myself excitedly yesterday after speaking to a mortgage advisor, who has told them they will be eligible for mortgages of up to £320k, based on a 5% deposit and 35 year term. We ran the numbers again allowing for a 1% rate increase, and they have decided to ignore the advisors suggestion and stick with getting a cheaper home.
Most would have took out a larger mortgage.
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It may be, but it is a pretty meaningless figure because most people have to buy within a certain area. The average house price round here is £160,000 (Gateshead). The average for the part of Gateshead where I live is £178,000
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Simple question then
How many houses more do you think would need to be built to bring average house prices down from £250k to £175K (in todays prices)
If you can not answer that question with a vague degree of certainty then the concept of "keep building houses and the prices will fall " is a fallacy
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Even in 1994 when we bought our first house for 50k on a repayment mortgage we were being told to stretch ourselves as much as possible and get an endowment mortgage and buy somewhere bigger. Luckily my uncle was an IFA at the time and told me not to touch an endowment with someone else's bargepole and where I could get a good mortgage deal (which he couldnt introduce me to, but was better than any he could). That meant i could clear that mortgage by 1999 and use it's value as a deposit for the house i am now in -in my mind my investment into the housing market is the £50k for house 1 plus the difference to house 2 (84k) so £134k total for which i have had 29 years of utility and still have a roof over my head
That is the way to look at property NOT "i bought a house for 50 sold for 90 so 40k profit then bought a house for £174 that is now worth c£600k so another 426k profit wow arent i rich
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I don't think it is easy access to credit that is causing the house price issue. Apart from various government interventions designed, apparently, only to increase house proces. there is also the availability of money. An ordinary person who has managed (probably with help from relatives) enough for a deposit can only buy a property at a price the mortgage provider will approve. Someone who does not need a high % mortgage can always offer slightly more to get a house they want, whether they want it to rent out, to live in or as a second home. That helps inflate prices.
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Government interventions are certainly not helping, but the biggest issue is that governments don't see increasing house prices as a problem.
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