Barbe bleu

Hahaha. I'm going to explain my thoughts, not becaus it is massively relevant but because its 5 pm on a Friday, the sun is out and I don't want to work right now. There were no traditional front lines in Vietnam and so no easy way of telling who was winning. McNamara came from Ford motors (or was it GM?) and was used to spreadsheets that measured success so demanded the metrics for the war. What he got was regular body counts. The higher the body count the better, he thought, even more so if the differences between ours and theirs were big. Of course this led to US troops fragging anything that moved and generally making everyone hate them, all whilst ignoring things that might actually work but which are not easily measured or put in a nice graph. In the end mcnamara lost the ability to see stats as a tool and saw them as an outcome in their own right. This deluded him into thinking the war was being won and just a bit more, a few more troops and a bit more time would do it We risk doing the same with housing. If we just count houses or total new builds we might think we have got it about right but as has been said here a lot, not all houses are equal, we need some houses more than others and we need houses in some places and not in others. Sure, we could build a 100 storey block in Stockton on tees and house 1000s; That would look good on a chart, but is it actually useful to do that? Likewise, brexit may or may not cause GDP to drop but does GDP tell us everything we need to know or do we grab hold or this chart or that chart to prove a point and delude ourselves as to its real importance? The sun is shining, I'm contributing nothing to the economy right now so my chart looks bad- but I'm pretty content. I'm not intending to spend any cash ahead of the Preston game either but I know life will be good after it...

It's like Robert McNamara looking at a spreadsheet to see if the US was winning the Vietnam war. Numbers will only tell you so much, they are a tool, but if you can't measure what is important don't fall into the trap of giving undue importance to what can be measured.

Broadly agree with the first part, we have a housing capacity problem and no amount of demand management is going to fix that and supply what we need. I would be careful in saying that it is labour we are ahort of though. Appreciate that there is comfort in linking this capacity issues to brexit but it helps no one to do do if the real problem is land and not labour supply On the second point when I first heard of Help To Buy I thought exactly what you did- that will only lead to higher prices and won't solve anything. But then I realised the futility of trying to apply free market principles to a market that is anything but free, shrugged my shoulders and thought that the only analysis worth having would be in the results and they could never really be seen.

Does this necessarily follow? Sure having a big workforce drives up GDP and mitigates for an ageing population so the figures will work but does a high GDP equate to higher living standards? Is there often some value in the free things that no amount of accounting can really capture. Is it OK if we have less cash in our bank if we get to spend it on what we want rather than on rent that goes to an increasingly select few?

That's pretty much what the ONS says, "The UK population is projected to increase further; our 2020-based interim national population projections suggest the UK population will surpass 69.2 million by mid-2030 and reach 70.5 million by mid-2041." Doesn't give us 10 years to think about it though. You don't just grab a spade and go out and build a house so we need to be planning for this population now. There's plenty of evidence (see the London Plan for instance) that we dont have the capacity in lots of places to meet the identified future need, and we are not even building at capacity. All of which is quote a long way of saying that it's not sustainable to carry on as we are.

If you read further you’ll see that biggest advertiser of GBNEWS is the back pages of the pinkun forum where readers are regularly reminded of the channel

Well no, the brexit debate was a cultural one that the remain campaign were determined, and are still determined, to fight on economic grounds. In 25 years the penny might drop that it picked the wrong battles.

It was always obvious wasn't it? But did anyone actually bet on trade deals with India and China replacing the EU? I don't really recall that it the sales patter, maybe a bit with India but even then it was lukewarm. Has the guardian set up a strawman here?

I wasn't commenting on the merits of withdrawal, just on the mechanism whereby that might take place. In the UK the ECHR/ECtHR seems to be held in a high regard that isn't universal. In some/most other places the ECtHR appears to be something that they are party to but which is largely ignored. We wouldn't need to leave the court/convention to change the way we deal with things, we just change the law to allow the inconvenient bits to be ignored, or just ignore applications or rulings entirely. We would hardly be the first or last to do so.

In the UK we do not recognise international law as having direct effect. All of the protections of the convention were incorporated in domestic law by the human rights act 1998. So leaving the convention would not directly reduce protections outlined in the convention. The only immediate impact would be that uk citizens would have no right to appeal to the ECHR and nor could uk actions be challenged within it. I know of no Act of Parliament that incorporated convention membership into UK law so I think it would need Parliament to undo membership. Parliament would be who revokes the HRA though, the government couldn't themselves do that. There may be consequences of leaving the ECHR but that's another question.

I dont really have a problem playing music of someone with a dark reputation, or watching a film where the star or director has done something we now disapprove of. I'd draw the line if by doing that i was glorifying them or, especially, their actions. I'd probably also draw the line if that meant they got royalties. Other than that I can easily separate the art from the artist so to speak.

I'd feel uncomfortable if they turned out the lights. More so given that my house is from the 1920s and the electrician really shouldn't be there anymore.

One thing to remember is that when councils identify land for housing development they are looking to meet need that will arise up to 15 years into the future. It's all very well debating just how bad the current problem is right now but not funding a current problem doesn't mean that a rising population and changing lifestyles won't mean there won't be one in the medium term.

This woman is going to be so cross https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/02/woman-completes-10-year-national-trust-scone-tasting-mission

Free up the green belt and every farmer will become a development company. Wouldnt cost the state a penny and the short term economic boost would be immense. It would be a very bad idea but money isn't always the problem or the solution.

There's enough housing if you make benefits claimants live in a two bed in Stoke on Trent, or if you force people to share a house if they want to live in the south east. If that's where we want to be as a society then we saw probably OK on housing. It's not just about raw numbers,it about size, tenure and, crucially, location.

You can't blame everything on funding. The reason there is general consensus on planning rules is because both sides agree or, more likely, neither set of politicians undestands the process not thinks its something they can turn into votes. its very little to do with funding I'm not advocating a big change but there could be lots of difference between the parties on the issue. It takes nothing to de-designate the greenbelt and allow lots and lots of house building. It wouldn't take much to employ lots more people I'm the business either.

Define 'suitable'. There's enough land for sure, but whether or not its suitable depends on what you value

It's not as easy as that though. Your plan assumes councils have the money and the infrastructure to build and maintain en masse. And if they only build houses for social rent they will be delivering the same problems of unbalanced communities that blighted a lot of places in decades gone by. You are right that we need more housing and more affordable housing but there is no magic wand in most places. For instance, in London there is an identified need for 66,000 new homes (all types) per year but capacity for only about 50,000 pa. Even if housing goes all guns blazing in every authority there's not going to be a solution as things stand.

I've not heard of this policy commitment, do you have a link? The ratio of market to affordable housing is currently determined locally and I'd imagine that if you averaged out the requirements across the country they would arrive at over 30% affordable so I'm not sure what this would acheive, or whether 30% is actually right for all areas. Looks good on paper but ultimately hollow is my assessment of the headline. One thing I did like with Labour is the (admittedly very very niche) promise to set up a group that could provide advice to local authorities about 'viability'. I've my doubts that this could really be done but it's certainly something to be considered seriously if we want to get housing right. I like that Labour are looking to get some difference to the Conservatives on housing and planning (and that they are rowing back a bit on the 'build on the greenbelt' stuff they were coming up with before. As you rightly say though it's tough yo find a point of difference when the parties have been so aligned so so long.

That London needed a new sewage system to replace the victorian version built for half the population and a lot less concrete on the ground has been known for decades. As long ago as 2001 a formal report went through thw options and decided that a super sewer was the things we needed. The super sewer will open next year. But, why it's taken 24 years and billions of pounds are questions that are being overlooked. What do we do wrong when it comes to infrastructure?

Six months to an election. Too long for the angry and self important voices on the radical fringes to stfu, and long enough to allow them to sink the ship.

The daily mail have a story to tell, same as the guardian, I wouldnt take either st face value pretty much ever. Here's my thing with reform. Yes, i suspect that they are attracting a lot of tory 2019 voters so if they stand everywhere Tories will be hit the most. ..But they will only split the vote where they stand. What if they stand only in LD and Lab seats? They will have a big voice at the election but won't really harm the tory plan who will probably benefit from Ref voters going back to Con.

The last four from big companies had the same theme The lead is still healthy and this is just a small snap shot of very limited predictive value, but Starmer wont like that the gap has closed in all of them, nor that Con+Ref is pretty close to Lab. He won't like thr noise in the polls either- there's 10% plus differences between poll leads over the space of a week or so and noisy polls could suggest weak support. Question is are Reform kingmakers and kingbreakers?

Can't see it happening. Tories know that they are at the end of the road whatever happens so won't be looking for a hail mary act to mix things up with. It's about damage limitation and forcing a hung parliament now. The polls shifted in the Tories favour this week. A couple more % points off Labour onto Conservative and a lot for the reform vote 'going home' and the aim could still, inexplicably, be acheived. Conservatives will be happy with that and won't look to change things unless starmer steps up and all the signs are that he won't do that until manifesto time.