Rishi Sunak - PM

[jimbob]

If she did, she has zero self respect.

And?

[bjn]

If she did, she has zero self respect.

And?

It is Dorries after all.

[jimbob]

If she did, she has zero self respect.

And?

It is Dorries after all.

Exactly.

I'm sure Sunak is looking forward to seeing the by election results.

Now three of them.

[tenchboy]

What's going on?! She quits in a sulk but doesn't get Lordified anyway?

Arise Sir Jacob. FFS. I suppose it was always going to happen.

It now looks like a public expression of opinion at not being ennobled, by resigning shortly before we all discover she isn't. It's been widely suggested her hero had promised it her. So did he always intended to shaft her, or even he couldn't in the end stomach ennobling Mad Nad, or did she get weeded out by the integrity review process?

Yergo. It was sinister forces all along. Who new?

Sinister Forces.png (359.97 KiB) Viewed 11019 times

From today's The Daily Mail via the BBC review of the papers.
Enough of this madness! I got to get on. Have a good one y'all.

[jimbob]

I managed to catch some of PMQs and Starmer was attacking on the cost of living and economic competence.

Sunak had a zinger of a reply. Which included.

.


.


.


"Chaos with Ed Miliband"

[discovolante]

I managed to catch some of PMQs and Starmer was attacking on the cost of living and economic competence.

Sunak had a zinger of a reply. Which included.

.


.


.


"Chaos with Ed Miliband"

f.cking lol.

[jimbob]

I managed to catch some of PMQs and Starmer was attacking on the cost of living and economic competence.

Sunak had a zinger of a reply. Which included.

.


.


.


"Chaos with Ed Miliband"

f.cking lol.

I was more nonplussed than Starmer, who followed up with questions about whether Sunak would block Truss's economic advisers for the "Kamikaze Budget"

[jimbob]

I think the relaxation on water pollution requirements for housebuilding is a political mistake.

There are a lot of habitual Tory voters who are members of the National Trust and like David Attenborough. I know several from my late father's neighbours. In the local council elections, the Greens did pretty well. I suspect that their support is mostly limited to local elections, but I can easily see many moving to the Lib Dems (partly because they are not that scared of Starmer, but still won't be able to bring themselves to vote Labour).

It's a simple narrative that plays into a lot of anger at the current government.

[Martin Y]

It does look like a surprising mis-step. When it's entered the popular consciousness that our rivers used to be clean but now they're full of sewage, and that building houses next to rivers is stupid anyway because of flooding, it's hard to see the voters regarding this as a good news story about sweeping away barmy Brussels rules about not polluting rivers so we can build more houses there.

[jimbob]

It does look like a surprising mis-step. When it's entered the popular consciousness that our rivers used to be clean but now they're full of sewage, and that building houses next to rivers is stupid anyway because of flooding, it's hard to see the voters regarding this as a good news story about sweeping away barmy Brussels rules about not polluting rivers so we can build more houses there.

If Tonbridge and Malling is indicative, there is already quite a lot of local anger at house building. And to be fair, not all of it is just NIMBY reasoning, as at least one residential development that the council wanted to stop on grounds of flood risk (but the developer appealed and the council folded) managed to get flooded before the building was even finished.

I can see the Tory vote getting hollowed out in such constituencies in the South East.

[lpm]

Sewage in rivers and beaches is major issue. It's talked about a lot in Tory seats.

It is easy to understand, not too controversial for friendly office chats and a good pub topic. It is directly symbolic of the country going to sh.t.

I assume the Tories aren't worrying because it's never been an election issue before. Well, not since the Great Stink. I think they are making a bad mistake, and Starmer is making a lesser mistake on not making it one of the top attack issues.

[Martin Y]

The green belt farm land right behind us, and stretching quite a long way around the town, got de-greened and allocated for 1,100 new homes some years ago. The permissions were all in place pre-Covid but nothing has been built. At some point the local tories repositioned themselves as champions of the green belt. I won't be surprised if nothing continues to happen right up until the next election.

[jimbob]

Sewage in rivers and beaches is major issue. It's talked about a lot in Tory seats.

It is easy to understand, not too controversial for friendly office chats and a good pub topic. It is directly symbolic of the country going to sh.t.

I assume the Tories aren't worrying because it's never been an election issue before. Well, not since the Great Stink. I think they are making a bad mistake, and Starmer is making a lesser mistake on not making it one of the top attack issues.

Exactly.

It will play well with a very small part of Sunak's constituency, and play really badly with far more. Emotive, an easy narrative, and ideal to annoy lots of the Tory heartland..

[dyqik]

Sewage in rivers and beaches is major issue. It's talked about a lot in Tory seats.

It is easy to understand, not too controversial for friendly office chats and a good pub topic. It is directly symbolic of the country going to sh.t.

I assume the Tories aren't worrying because it's never been an election issue before. Well, not since the Great Stink. I think they are making a bad mistake, and Starmer is making a lesser mistake on not making it one of the top attack issues.

Exactly.

It will play well with a very small part of Sunak's constituency, and play really badly with far more. Emotive, an easy narrative, and ideal to annoy lots of the Tory heartland..

Although if Starmer did make a big deal of it, it would immediately become a partisan issue, and Tory papers and a number of their former voters would suddenly find out that they supported more sewage in rivers.

[jimbob]

Sewage in rivers and beaches is major issue. It's talked about a lot in Tory seats.

It is easy to understand, not too controversial for friendly office chats and a good pub topic. It is directly symbolic of the country going to sh.t.

I assume the Tories aren't worrying because it's never been an election issue before. Well, not since the Great Stink. I think they are making a bad mistake, and Starmer is making a lesser mistake on not making it one of the top attack issues.

Exactly.

It will play well with a very small part of Sunak's constituency, and play really badly with far more. Emotive, an easy narrative, and ideal to annoy lots of the Tory heartland..

Although if Starmer did make a big deal of it, it would immediately become a partisan issue, and Tory papers and a number of their former voters would suddenly find out that they supported more sewage in rivers.

That's probably it

I think it is probably "don't interrupt your opponent when he keeps making lots of mistakes".

And it's probably more like to benefit the Lib Dems.

The longer it gets into the narrative, the more it hurts the Tories

[IvanV]

The green belt farm land right behind us, and stretching quite a long way around the town, got de-greened and allocated for 1,100 new homes some years ago. The permissions were all in place pre-Covid but nothing has been built. At some point the local tories repositioned themselves as champions of the green belt. I won't be surprised if nothing continues to happen right up until the next election.

Is it somewhere where 1,100 dwellings would be hot sellers? Is the infrastructure available to make them buildable?

The planning mistakes that Britain keeps making are:

Economically less successful places expand housing at the same rate as economically more successful places, whereas in successful countries growth is focused on the more economically successful towns and cities.

Places grow around the edges, making us ever more sprawled and car-dependent, and failing to create the localised population densities that attract jobs and businesses, whereas in successful countries growing places densify around lively hubs, which enables dense public transport and economic development.

The Tories repositioned themselves as champions of the green belt after they lost the Chesham and Amersham by-election, because that was perceived to be the point they lost on. It has been a big local issue, because of the incompetence of the local authority in repeatedly failing to propose a local plan that would succeed the inspection process. So it has been endlessly consulted on, endlessly campaigned on, and still it goes on. Though I suspect it was not the main issue for most voters in the by-election, much as the Libs who won made noise about it.

[dyqik]

The green belt farm land right behind us, and stretching quite a long way around the town, got de-greened and allocated for 1,100 new homes some years ago. The permissions were all in place pre-Covid but nothing has been built. At some point the local tories repositioned themselves as champions of the green belt. I won't be surprised if nothing continues to happen right up until the next election.

Is it somewhere where 1,100 dwellings would be hot sellers? Is the infrastructure available to make them buildable?

The planning mistakes that Britain keeps making are:

Economically less successful places expand housing at the same rate as economically more successful places, whereas in successful countries growth is focused on the more economically successful towns and cities.

Places grow around the edges, making us ever more sprawled and car-dependent, and failing to create the localised population densities that attract jobs and businesses, whereas in successful countries growing places densify around lively hubs, which enables dense public transport and economic development.

The Tories repositioned themselves as champions of the green belt after they lost the Chesham and Amersham by-election, because that was perceived to be the point they lost on. It has been a big local issue, because of the incompetence of the local authority in repeatedly failing to propose a local plan that would succeed the inspection process. So it has been endlessly consulted on, endlessly campaigned on, and still it goes on. Though I suspect it was not the main issue for most voters in the by-election, much as the Libs who won made noise about it.

In a housing constrained society like the UK (or Eastern Massachusetts), building houses can drive economic growth - as can building better public transit. Revitalizing town and city centers is probably more effective than building endless suburbs there though.

[IvanV]

In a housing constrained society like the UK (or Eastern Massachusetts), building houses can drive economic growth - as can building better public transit. Revitalizing town and city centers is probably more effective than building endless suburbs there though.

Indeed we need to build a lot more houses in this country, and indeed it can drive economic growth. But only if you build them where people want them, and provide the necessary infrastructure. I was asking Martin the question, because maybe, like so many other large housing schemes, the location was unattractive. Or maybe, like so many other potentially successful schemes, the infrastructure was lacking.

[dyqik]

In a housing constrained society like the UK (or Eastern Massachusetts), building houses can drive economic growth - as can building better public transit. Revitalizing town and city centers is probably more effective than building endless suburbs there though.

Indeed we need to build a lot more houses in this country, and indeed it can drive economic growth. But only if you build them where people want them, and provide the necessary infrastructure. I was asking Martin the question, because maybe, like so many other large housing schemes, the location was unattractive. Or maybe, like so many other potentially successful schemes, the infrastructure was lacking.

I was making the opposite point. Building the right houses and infrastructure can lead to companies setting up there and people wanting to live there.

For older examples, that's how the garden cities came into being.

[IvanV]

Indeed we need to build a lot more houses in this country, and indeed it can drive economic growth. But only if you build them where people want them, and provide the necessary infrastructure. I was asking Martin the question, because maybe, like so many other large housing schemes, the location was unattractive. Or maybe, like so many other potentially successful schemes, the infrastructure was lacking.

I was making the opposite point. Building the right houses and infrastructure can lead to companies setting up there and people wanting to live there.

For older examples, that's how the garden cities came into being.

That worked in the post-war years, when Britain was still substantially a manufacturing economy, and many of the present cities had their work cut out recovering from the destruction of the war. Today, the diversity of skills and supply chain most valuable economic activity would like to have means that it doesn't really work like that any more. "Build it and they will come" no longer operates.

What has happened from about 40 years ago is that a lot of old industry closed down, leaving people living in towns where there were no longer the numbers of jobs to support the size of the population. If you were right, then it wouldn't take very much to get new firms to come into take their place and take advantage of a locally under-employed workforce. And Mrs Thatcher thought that would happen. To some extent some footloose economic activities that are unfussy about location, and relatively cheap to set up and move on, and who would like a cheap workforce, do move into these places, like call centres. In the USA, cities like Detroit lose population when their old economy close down. But Britain is small enough you can mostly commute to the next place that has jobs available, so old places continue even without jobs, and sometimes expand because that's where you can build new houses easily. So the practical reality is that these places continue to be occupied largely because they become, in part, cheap housing dormitories for other places that have the economic activity. On the one hand, you can keep these places going by providing better transport commuting connections to lively employment hubs. On the other had, probably the better approach is to expand the housing in places more convenient for the lively employment hubs.

Even in London, where housing is so short, it is difficult to get build houses and make money by doing so, if it is nasty bit of London and not well connected to places where there are jobs. I recently did a study of why it had taken forever to get the 10,000 dwelling unit development at Barking Riverside going, and even now it has a railway station recently opened, it is probably going to take till well into the 2030s to build it out, at a rate that you sell the houses for more than it costs to build them. The present edition of Private Eye has an article on the similar travails of the Meridian Water development site in Enfield, where they did at least understand that nothing would happen until you built the railway station and got on and built it pretty sharpish, instead of taking 30 years over it like at Barking Riverside. Barking and Enfield are pretty much the least attractive corners of London to live in.

You'll find these themes amply exemplified in this recent DfT study on transformational impacts. Transformational impacts are when an infrastructure improvement produces economic development, such as changes in land use and new employment, rather than just improving the infrastructure for the existing pool of users and potential users. The Barking Riverside study I wrote was commissioned by DfT as a side-gig to that research contract, but I'm not aware they have published it.

[FlammableFlower]

Failing to incorporate decent infrastructure does balls things up.
Edge of E/NE Bristol they built a new housing estate. They did manage to put in a few small shops (bit not many), a community centre and a primary school. And then forgot about it. No planning for a GP surgery then, with the current NHS issues now, has led to a massive knock-on impact on neighbouring areas. Every surgery is massively oversubscribed. Same thing with secondary schooling: the previously at capacity schools are again massively oversubscribed. Overall it leads to really annoyed voters. I do hope they take it out on our incumbent Tory.

[Trinucleus]

Failing to incorporate decent infrastructure does balls things up.
Edge of E/NE Bristol they built a new housing estate. They did manage to put in a few small shops (bit not many), a community centre and a primary school. And then forgot about it. No planning for a GP surgery then, with the current NHS issues now, has led to a massive knock-on impact on neighbouring areas. Every surgery is massively oversubscribed. Same thing with secondary schooling: the previously at capacity schools are again massively oversubscribed. Overall it leads to really annoyed voters. I do hope they take it out on our incumbent Tory.

What they ought to do is every ten years or so, count how many people there are, and where they live. And also to levy developers to pay for the infrastructure improvements.........

[Trinucleus]

Failing to incorporate decent infrastructure does balls things up.
Edge of E/NE Bristol they built a new housing estate. They did manage to put in a few small shops (bit not many), a community centre and a primary school. And then forgot about it. No planning for a GP surgery then, with the current NHS issues now, has led to a massive knock-on impact on neighbouring areas. Every surgery is massively oversubscribed. Same thing with secondary schooling: the previously at capacity schools are again massively oversubscribed. Overall it leads to really annoyed voters. I do hope they take it out on our incumbent Tory.

What they ought to do is every ten years or so, count how many people there are, and where they live. And also to levy developers to pay for the infrastructure improvements.........

Also, if you were a competent government and you had to close some schools for emergency building work would you do it

a) as the schools break up and will be empty for six weeks

or

b) just before they reopen after the six week holiday

Correct

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66461879

[headshot]

Failing to incorporate decent infrastructure does balls things up.
Edge of E/NE Bristol they built a new housing estate. They did manage to put in a few small shops (bit not many), a community centre and a primary school. And then forgot about it. No planning for a GP surgery then, with the current NHS issues now, has led to a massive knock-on impact on neighbouring areas. Every surgery is massively oversubscribed. Same thing with secondary schooling: the previously at capacity schools are again massively oversubscribed. Overall it leads to really annoyed voters. I do hope they take it out on our incumbent Tory.

What they ought to do is every ten years or so, count how many people there are, and where they live. And also to levy developers to pay for the infrastructure improvements.........

Also, if you were a competent government and you had to close some schools for emergency building work would you do it

a) as the schools break up and will be empty for six weeks

or

b) just before they reopen after the six week holiday

Correct

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66461879

It's almost as if they haven't got a f.cking clue how to govern...

[JQH]

Failing to incorporate decent infrastructure does balls things up.
Edge of E/NE Bristol they built a new housing estate. They did manage to put in a few small shops (bit not many), a community centre and a primary school. And then forgot about it. No planning for a GP surgery then, with the current NHS issues now, has led to a massive knock-on impact on neighbouring areas. Every surgery is massively oversubscribed. Same thing with secondary schooling: the previously at capacity schools are again massively oversubscribed. Overall it leads to really annoyed voters. I do hope they take it out on our incumbent Tory.

What they ought to do is every ten years or so, count how many people there are, and where they live. And also to levy developers to pay for the infrastructure improvements.........

Also, if you were a competent government and you had to close some schools for emergency building work would you do it

a) as the schools break up and will be empty for six weeks

or

b) just before they reopen after the six week holiday

Correct

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66461879

It gets better. There was someone on Good Morning Britain this am who pointed out this problem in 2018. The government chose to do nothing for five years. And it's not just schools - hospitals and "other public buildings" may have the same problem.

Not specifically mentioned but I wonder whether any local authority blocks of flats have the same problem.