Scrutable

The brilliance of this policy is the idea that (a) people on benefits can afford to save £167 a month, and (b) nothing will happen for at least five years even if they do. No new housing will be built because of this, no new affordable homes will be built, and the number of homes involved will be capped anyway.

I also notice that in Johnson's speech, he claimed that,

Lying blancmange wrote:It’s true we’re building as fast as we can, and after a sustained decline in home ownership rates under the last Labour government, that rate is now starting to climb thanks in part to our decisive action to support first time buyers and build more homes.

Which is an interesting claim. Johnson makes it sound like ownership rates The English Housing Survey has data from 1991, and the EU has data from 2005 (which looks a lot less reliable, fwiw).
It is true that the numbers declined year-on-year from 2003 to 2014. However, the decline was very measured from 2003-2006 (less than one point in total), and heavier after that. I wonder if something serious happened to the housing market in 2007/08, though? Very strange.

Overall, housing ownership remained about 1997 levels until 2008 when that mystery housing market incident happened. Despite the Tories having (at the time of the survey) 11 years in Government, the housing ownership rate remains the same as that in 1987.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 8:19 am (a) people on benefits can afford to save £167 a month

And all this from a government which if it found out some people on benefits were able to save £167/month* would then use this as justification to reduce everyone's benefits by £200/month.

*representing a savings ratio of 50% on basic JSA, for comparison the average non-pandemic household savings ratio in the UK was ... 5.3%.

Martin_B wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 11:31 pm

lpm wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:38 pm Why does Johnson think it's a vote winner to help people on benefits buy a house?

Conservative voters hate people on benefits. They spend taxpayer money buying flat screen TVs every day.

Only hard working Brits deserve the right buy houses.

Because Tory thinking is:
- People who own houses are more likely to vote Tory.
- If we help poor people buy houses, poor people will therefore vote Tory. QED

Right to buy will reduce the housing stock. Thatcher said the money raised would be used to build more council homes. Was it? Nope.

Tessa K wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 9:37 am

Martin_B wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 11:31 pm

lpm wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:38 pm Why does Johnson think it's a vote winner to help people on benefits buy a house?

Conservative voters hate people on benefits. They spend taxpayer money buying flat screen TVs every day.

Only hard working Brits deserve the right buy houses.

Because Tory thinking is:
- People who own houses are more likely to vote Tory.
- If we help poor people buy houses, poor people will therefore vote Tory. QED

Right to buy will reduce the housing stock. Thatcher said the money raised would be used to build more council homes. Was it? Nope.

IIRC, money raised from selling council houses was specifically not allowed to be used to build more council houses.

Rich Scopie wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 10:04 am
IIRC, money raised from selling council houses was specifically not allowed to be used to build more council houses.

I wonder what the wildly unpredictable effect of that was?

Rich Scopie wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 10:04 am IIRC, money raised from selling council houses was specifically not allowed to be used to build more council houses.

The real thing that stopped councils from building more housing were council spending limits, which included capital as well as operational spending limits. Councils that broke these limits suffered "rate-capping". These restrictions were put in place to limit inflation, as part of the strict monetary policy of the Thatcher government, which so unnecessarily damaged our economic welfare in that period. There were many councils at that time with large amounts of money in the bank they couldn't spend. Some of them lost some of it in the fraudulent collapse of the BCCI bank, which had been offering councils attractive interest rates.

These controls on capital spending were very strict. Where councils contracted out services, then this could be deemed hidden capital spending and blocked. For example, companies would offer to build and operate a sports centres, which the council would then pay service payments towards. This was deemed hiding capital spending, and the capital cost of the sports centre would count towards the council's capital spending limit, often preventing such deals happening.

I think this was probably the main limitation on councils building new council houses in that period. Then a lot of social housing was moved into housing associations.

Money is fungible, as they say. Once it has been sitting in an account along with a lot of other money, it soon becomes hard to say what is being used for what. A bit like water all tipped in the same bucket - you put a cupful in, you take a cupful out, you can't say it is the same cupful. So rules saying you can't use this money for doing that probably don't have a lot of practical effect, if it can be mixed into general funds. But of course central government realised this, and wanted to control council spending in much more detail. So these days council budgets are much more compartmentalised. Now our water is not poured into a bucket, rather it is kept in many separate containers, so you can say which piece of water is which, and you aren't allowed to mix and swap them around. Councils have much less freedom of spending action in this country than regional and local authorities in many other countries. It is part of what is wrong with this country. It is over-centralised.

I think you're all getting too close to the detail.

A fundamental part of conservative rule is to make opponents be enemies of each other. When they're at the gates with torches and pitchforks, tell the pitchfork mob that the torch mob wants to steal their pitchfork. The biscuits thing.

We could argue about how real this is and how long a history it has. But since Victorian capitalism, the rise of unionised labour as a power and the extension of suffrage, the status quo "rulers" with traditional power and money have sought to deflect the anger of the masses. It's clearly absurd to have a society of deference, vast inherited wealth and inequality of opportunities. But it's persisted. In recent years there's been an increase - Marx would see it as the proletariat masses provoked into blaming their situation on immigrants, or the EU, or benefits scroungers. Consumerism is now the opiate of the masses. Unionised labour has been defeated by making creating multiple sub tribes instead of the unions-corporations-government triumvirate.

Austerity requires the people suffering to be able to see a sub tribe suffering even more. People in full time work at the inadequate minimum wage need to see people out of work with significantly less. Pensioners scraping by need to see working age people trudging off to hard work. Workers on zero hour contracts must be able to blame the EU instead of their employer.

But this deflection is suddenly in serious problems.

I think a lot of the anger at Johnson is that he's now seen as helping the "enemies". That opens up cracks in the entire structure. A lot of voters are saying Johnson needs to get back to helping those who voted for him, not really being able to articulate that but with a sense that the wrong people are being helped. When the cake shrinks, it's even more annoying if "the enemy" continues to get a slice - or if the government goes further and starts offering them a bigger slice.

Johnson voters don't want people on benefits to be able to buy their homes. They don't want energy handouts to be equal. They still resent furlough money paid to idle people. Pensioners got stiffed on the triple lock and resent working from home.

ultimately Johnson never figured out popularism. It's not about being loved by all, which he emotionally needs. It's more about being so loved by the mob that they'll smash up their neighbour's property.

A lot of people in London have been paying rent to the Duke of Westminster for many years. I'm waiting for the right to buy to be extended to them

Trinucleus wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 3:07 pm A lot of people in London have been paying rent to the Duke of Westminster for many years. I'm waiting for the right to buy to be extended to them

I used to pay rent to agents of the Legh family, of Lyme Hall. The Duke of Devonshire owns Glossop, similarly. The National Trust are landlords to an awful lot of people as well.

Grumble wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 3:48 pm

Trinucleus wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 3:07 pm A lot of people in London have been paying rent to the Duke of Westminster for many years. I'm waiting for the right to buy to be extended to them

I used to pay rent to agents of the Legh family, of Lyme Hall. The Duke of Devonshire owns Glossop, similarly. The National Trust are landlords to an awful lot of people as well.

As is the duke of cornwall

tom p wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 4:13 pm

Grumble wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 3:48 pm

Trinucleus wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 3:07 pm A lot of people in London have been paying rent to the Duke of Westminster for many years. I'm waiting for the right to buy to be extended to them

I used to pay rent to agents of the Legh family, of Lyme Hall. The Duke of Devonshire owns Glossop, similarly. The National Trust are landlords to an awful lot of people as well.

As is the duke of cornwall

And the Church

Tessa K wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 9:37 am Right to buy will reduce the housing stock.

Can you explain how that works?

Millennie Al wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 1:52 am

Tessa K wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 9:37 am Right to buy will reduce the housing stock.

Can you explain how that works?

I should have said it will reduce the council housing stock. Some understood what I meant in the context of right to buy.

Is there a rule of thumb about rental returns compared to mortgage rates for popular sized accomodation?

If someone is gping to be on housing benefit for the next 20 years, isnt it cheaper for the council to buy a property and let them live rent free rather than giving them housing benefit to pay a private landlord to pay off a mortgage.

noggins wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 11:35 am Is there a rule of thumb about rental returns compared to mortgage rates for popular sized accomodation?

If someone is gping to be on housing benefit for the next 20 years, isnt it cheaper for the council to buy a property and let them live rent free rather than giving them housing benefit to pay a private landlord to pay off a mortgage.

I don't have a rule of thumb, but a council will be paying a lower interest rate, no mortgage insurance, and lower buildings insurance (or possibly self-insuring) than a private landlord. And it's already running the tenant placing agency.

I am not sure Johnson's response to the vote will have helped the Tories in Wakefield, or Tiverton.

And if those results are bad, I can imagine that there will be threats about changing the rules of the 1922 Committee

noggins wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 11:35 am Is there a rule of thumb about rental returns compared to mortgage rates for popular sized accomodation?

If someone is gping to be on housing benefit for the next 20 years, isnt it cheaper for the council to buy a property and let them live rent free rather than giving them housing benefit to pay a private landlord to pay off a mortgage.

Housing benefit has been more or less replaced by the housing costs element of universal credit. Both are funded by the department for work and pensions. UC housing costs are paid directly through the UC claim, housing benefit was reclaimed by councils from central government. So in theory rent benefits shouldn't cost councils anything at all anyway.

Trinucleus wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 3:07 pm A lot of people in London have been paying rent to the Duke of Westminster for many years. I'm waiting for the right to buy to be extended to them

I recall sheldrake tying himself in knots when I suggested right to buy be extended to private tenants.

And then after all this the polls say this.

WTAFFS!

jimbob wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 1:01 pm And if those results are bad, I can imagine that there will be threats about changing the rules of the 1922 Committee

There was a very entertaining discussion about what Dominic Raab said about that a few days ago, on DAG.

Hmm - not sure how popular the Rwanda deal will end up being:

https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status ... 9608237058

Otto English
@Otto_English
Normal
12%
So under Paragraph 16 of the Rwanda Deal - the UK has to take "Rwanda's most vulnerable refugees" and resettle them.... in the UK.

Two questions - how are we trust Rwanda with the refugees we are sending their way?

And do Nigel and Mr 59535789 on twitter know?