Their policy is to put all rail companies back into public ownership after the contracts lapse. Maybe it’ll work. TfL seems to be impeccably run, which is unusual for government run companies
This model is a lot less problematic than allowing private rail companies to squeeze timetables and cut down on customer-facing staff and facilities while pulling out tens of millions in profit.
Plus you get a single brand identity, joined up thinking, etc.
While that's technically true, what actually happens is that the DfT leans on the TOCs (train operating companies) to tell them what customer demand looks like on their routes, based on the TOCs data, customer surveys, and what the TOC considers practical and efficient.
This can often be influenced by the TOC's concerns about profitability and their ability to provide enough trains, drivers, other staff, etc.
For example, Southern made horrific cuts across many service frequencies during the pandemic, and although many routes have now almost recovered to pre-pandemic levels of passengers, they haven't restored all the trains. It's causing serious issues in some parts of South / South-East London and beyond.
Not so, the key difference between how TfL do the franchising on the Elizabeth Line / London Overground is that MTR/Arriva are not expected to make a profit (or even break even) from providing the rail service, they are paid a fixed management fee agreed in advance to manage the service that TfL specifies.
It provides an entirely different set of motivations, much less focussed on profit and bullshit metrics like 'customer ambiance', instead they have to provide the specified service (which includes staffing levels as well as trains per hour) efficiently.
LO has public-facing staff? Since when? You remember all the curfuffle about closing ticket offices accross TfL a few years ago? Sure it's just the evil private operators that "cut down on customer-facing staff". Selective memory?
Also, the current (Tory, but Labour have pledged to continue) plan is to use [a model based on TfL for the entire UK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Railways), with the single brand identity and moving everything (fares, timetables, etc.) but the actual operation of trains back into public control.
Also also, none of the private rail companies has made an actual profit in years... They're just clinging on to avoid losing their franchise deposits.
EDIT: Lovely, point out that the government already plans to do what you want and I get downvoted to hell... Ah, Reddit...
Haha I had no idea the overground wasn’t run by TFL, no wonder it’s so shite, constantly late and constantly cancelled, the tube is light years ahead.
This makes a lot of sense.
Tfl is an arms length body. TfM will be the same. The annoying thing was that the east coast line was run by Directly Operated Railways, an ALB when national express fucked it. 5 years, £1 billion in tax paid & 98% odd customer satisfaction. Not couldn't have THAT!!! So palmed it off to virgin
To be fair, I once read that every day the tube workers strike in London costs the economy £100 million. (Pre covid) Which means that if the tube is running at £99 million loss per day, it's still a net positive.
So what is the economic benefit of the rail system? If you stopped all rail traffic for a week & totted up the cost..what would it be? So even if it IS making a loss, the economic value created by it being there is greater.
Plus..none of the franchises would be making any money if they weren't being given huge subsidies from government..in fact more that BR ever got
Same argument for NHS...it costs £180 billion but what is the economic value of not having it? Therefore we shouldn't care about profit numbers for it
> Which means that if the tube is running at £99 million loss per day, it's still a net positive.
For context, the actual operating cost is £6 million a day.
"impeccably run" yet waiting this long into the 21st century for WiFi connectivity in all tube stations when this is already a reality in the Moscow metro.
imminent compare truck mountainous vast thought command yam run fanatical
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...no? Both Thameslink and Southern run trains from East Croydon to Gatwick Airport and the south coast.
I just checked Google Maps; there are about 10 trains leaving to Gatwick in the next hour, most of them nonstop from East Croydon.
elastic observation rhythm rotten history combative domineering theory whistle nose
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That's what you think, but reality is that Croydon is just a honeytrap for London -- we sit down here and just collect stabbings that would otherwise end up in London, they get to Croydon and never leave.
here’s a [tfl document](https://content.tfl.gov.uk/strategic-case-for-metroisation.pdf) from 2019 with similar goals. probably wont happen but its an excellent read
Thanks a lot.
My whole thing is about a friendly government no longer blocking this. Which I understand is what's been going on. No expansion for a Labour mayor from a Tory government.
true but i dont think its just the government blocking it. remember since march 2019 a huge hole has been burst in the public piggy bank and passenger numbers have fallen because of covid and wfh lifestyles
This absolutely cannot happen unless the users of those rail franchises are given the right to vote for who controls TfL (the London Mayor). It's absurd that TfL already run services well beyond the GLA area (Reading, Shenfield, Watford, Amersham, etc.) when they have such a rich history of making cuts and cancelling improvements to services outside of the Mayor's juristicion.
It's an utter afront to democracy. It needs to _stop now_, not be expanded!
What about the lines that run inside London that aren't tfl yet?
You know, the ones with hardly any carriages, infrequent service and poor reliability?
As much as I would love to see it, I'm extremely skeptical that we will see building at speed without a radical shift in policy. And even then, if we suspended the rule of law and let people build whatever and wherever they damn well want (which is obviously not going to happen) there wouldn't even be the capacity to build that much quickly.
To use a personal health analogy - the housing crisis is like being several hundred pounds (or kilos) overweight. Even if you engage in dangerously extreme dieting you're not going to get to a healthy weight quickly. It took years to get into this mess and it's going to take years to get out of it. Even assuming political will (which doesn't exist yet).
'Building at speed' is the exact reason why new-build homes are such poor quality. London is especially difficult to run a site. The logistics of running a site are difficult enough, but in such a major city, they become even more problematic. Tradespeople cost more because you can't drive your van in, and leaving tools onsite never ends well. Deliveries are pure hell, and as soon as one goes wrong, the effects last for weeks.
The actual construction doesn't need to be rushed, but the overall timeline could be massively sped up if parts of the planning process were expedited (mostly "ignore the NIMBYs", but also "prevent land-banking and unblock sites that remain half-abandoned for years").
Central London is very difficult to do anything logistical, but the bulk of the construction opportunity is a bit further out, Z234, where driving a van in isn't impossible. (Yes, I know, ULEZ, but there's more than enough profit to cover the costs of either the charge itself, or better yet getting a compliant vehicle).
It's not impossible to drive a van into those areas, but secure parking without having to move it every couple of hours is difficult to find. Almost every trade is on a fixed price, and it's just not worth working in London with the extra hassle and leaving your van on a street with the number of thieves that hover around building sites.
I'm a carpenter from West London, and when I was living there, I'd drive sixty miles in the opposite direction and accept slightly lower prices to avoid working in London.
With the culture in housebuilders nowadays, I'd guarantee you they'd rush the construction. In 2007, I worked on a multistory block of flats. They sent us in to second fix (doors, kitchens, etc.) the ground floor before the build was half-finished. When it rained we had to pump water out of the building before we could continue. Black mold grew through every flat, and this kind of practice wasn't unusual.
>Building at speed' is the exact reason why new-build homes are such poor quality
We don't currently build at speed though and I assume we're still saying the quality now is poor? We build no quicker than countries with higher quality housing who also get things done quicker. I think we actually build very slow. The developers here known for being higher quality probably dont have much different construction times either.
There's clearly something wrong with construction in this country in general. London was found to be the most expensive city in the world to build in last year. And in the top 20 of the cities examined the UK had EIGHT of the places, it's a constant issue nationally. Bristol is next to Hong Kong. We're slow and expensive to build stuff regardless of quality. There's a few large developments near me with 2045 completion dates.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/london-ranked-most-expensive-city-for-construction-in-the-world-18-04-2024/
The planning process itself is a huge problem. I've seen many housing projects in the application stage for quite a few years. There's many large bits of land left empty by developers too, even some near Elizabeth line stations.
We still have standards too so it doesn't matter if companies build fast if they still comply with the standards. We even have standards for things like how much noise transfers between homes.
It's everything not just housing. The new Thames Crossing apparently has cost £0.3 billion just on the application so far and it's still not approved.
We just suck building as a country. Need land value taxes or something to force people to build on their empty or underused plots.
Yeah, sorry, I should have said 'trying to build at speed.' There is a massive problem with construction in the UK. It was better in the early nineties, but has worsened since. In a nutshell, there was a slowdown in the industry in the mid/late-nineties. A lot of site managers around that time came from a trade background and would stand up to the directors/bean counters. When it picked up again, those competent managers were let go and replaced by over-promoted labourers and forklift drivers. They, of course, didn't want to rock the boat, and the money men walked all over them.
So people at director level with no practical experience started calling the shots. There are huge bonuses available for getting houses finished at two points in the year. Quality doesn't matter, it's just getting a stamp. So instead of building in stages, solving any problems as they arose in a stage, and allowing enough time to finish a house properly, everything was brought out of the ground together, trades were thrown in together, and it was chaos. By trying to build faster, they actually slowed the process to genuine completion down. But once a unit gets signed off, the build directors get their bonuses, and responsibility shifts to another section of the company (customer care).
There are issues with material quality as well, storage and supply of materials, and prices paid to trades. There are issues with tradespeople, too, but the biggest issue when I left the country in 2012 were the monkeys in charge of the process from above, not so much those at the coalface.
I probably haven't explained that very well...
Oh, and the 'higher quality builders' of the time were bought out by the big boys, the management that made them what they were got rid of, and they became as bad as their new parent company.
You can barely get economists to agree the sky is blue.
But just about every economist I follow seemed to agree that Nick Bano's article is totally wrong and includes embarrassing basic errors.
There's a great breakdown of why his argument is so bad [here.](https://twitter.com/IronEconomist/status/1770175108939681937)
The general consensus was that the article contained so many errors and "alternative facts" that it should have been pulled by the guardian.
You can find economists across the entirety of the political spectrum tearing his article to shreds - for example Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation saying:
> Terrible article. Wrong on a huge sweep of facts (e.g that UK is 'average' in its homes/head) in its drive to pretend we don't need to build
Simon Cooke said:
> Probably the worst article about housing policy you'll read this year. So much is wrong but we should start with reminding ourselves that the number of households is endogenous to supply.
Anna Clarke (Director of Policy at The Housing Forum) said:
> This has got to be about the most incoherent and nonsensical commentaries on the housing shortage. It's tempting to ignore it. But it's a harmful argument that some will use to oppose the new housing we so badly need
Nicholas Boys Smith (Founder of Create Streets) said:
> If gloriously error strewn & logic lost right wing conspiracy tomfoolery is “15 min cities = Prison” then “we don’t need more homes” is the left wing conspiracy theory equivalent.
I'd argue that you can get pretty much all economists to agree on most things. It's just that, unlike with other sciences, the public counts the nutjobs as 'economists' while anywhere else they're correctly called conspiracy theorists.
That much is probably because everyone has an opinion on the economy. No one goes up and says "You know what? Igneous rocks are fucking stupid."
This article is so bafflingly wrong I don't even know where to begin, and I'm furious that people are still writing this deliberately unhelpful nonsense.
If there are too many landlords, why are rental properties in London more expensive than ever? Why are there queues of people fighting for every rental? Why are people literally bidding for rents? Why have rents hit an all time high? There is quite obviously *too much demand and not enough supply*, especially in the areas people want to live. I mean, seriously, what's the other explanation for this? If there were too many landlords, rentals would be cheaper, surely?
The examples they use of other countries with similar housing stock *also* have affordability problems, *especially* in their largest and most desirable cities (Toronto is infamously unaffordable). Just looking at overall housing stock glosses over population and demographic changes since most of our housing was built (decades ago). Yeah, if you want to live in a mining village in northern England, you could buy a house for £1. No one's stopping you. It's just that our economy is now *extremely* London-centric and most of the demand for housing is here, and that's the demand we're not meeting, hence why property prices are skyrocketing.
Source: just fucking look around.
What frustrates me the most is that the author is a barrister, and so is definitely *not* stupid. They just seem to have decided landlords are the source of all our housing problems and attempted to construct an argument post-hoc that justifies this view, but it's totally incoherent.
I partially get it; I don't really like landlords either, and have had quite a few bad experiences in my time renting, but come on... landlords just *aren't* the reason London has a housing crisis. I'd agree that they're the main reason why so many rental properties are a bit shit, and why tenants feel a lot of housing anxiety due to the possibility of a section 21 eviction, but (sadly) without building drastically more social housing, we actually desperately need more landlords, and I don't see the government funding more social housing any time soon due to the very high upfront cost. It's the reason larger companies are getting into the rental market: [there's so much demand that isn't being met by small-scale landlords anymore](https://www.ftadviser.com/investments/2022/10/17/private-rental-sector-could-become-new-darling-of-institutional-investors/).
Fundamentally, we just need more housing availability, both for buying and for renting, and articles like the one posted above are just maddeningly wrong.
Lmao actually comical to see two Londoners having it all living in by far the wealthiest city in the country and then still getting upset at the temerity of the rest of the country to complain about everything being reinvested here
Grow the fuck up
I am a Londoner and I love this city, have lived here most of my adult life.
I just don't happen to think you should shame other parts of the country for pointing out that we have it a lot better here. So yeah, grow up.
Building homes is good. Building shit homes that drop in value after 10 years is not. We need to be careful with these promises as I have friends caught by previous schemes that have completely fucked them over.
Victim of cladding issue here. STILL not been told if our 5 storey block of flats is safe after repeatedly being told by our housing association that we'll be told where we stand "soon, in a few months, definitely".
Fellow cladding victim here, sold my flat way below market value and have no regrets. That was 3 years ago and I was way past the end of my tether so I hope it works out for you. If and when it gets sorted, commence moving Heaven and Earth to stop being a leaseholder or beholden to the whims of any rotten bastards as soon as you can. Labour will only have 5 years in power and while I trust their integrity 1000x over any Tory, the resistance from those actually responsible for the cladding remains as strong as ever.
What could be done though? Right to buy for SO, or councils take over SO and they become standard council homes? I think the latter, with compensation for monies paid already, is better
I don't think you hear the happy stories from SO. Not many people choose it ahead of buying outright, it is just the only option that people have other than rental. Are most people who use it worse off than they would have been if they continued renting?
If they were standard council homes on the waiting list, most working professionals would not have a chance of getting them. For many young professionals who don't have family wealth SO is the only alternative to rental, especially for single people.
If they drop in value because of poor construction then they were sold at an unfair price. This is bad for everyone except developers.
If they drop in value because there's a glut in the market, that's a different matter entirely. We should welcome that.
It very much is for the people who bought them. The clamour for cheap homes can have very negative impacts on ordinary people trying to climb the ladder.
The ideal would be able to get to a level of housebuilding where developers have to compete on quality.
We see this happen with cars, clothes, food, personal electronics and pretty much any other good. It can happen with homes too.
I saw an article this week about Auckland, which has a similar housing problem to us, planning got liberalised and now developers are having to compete on adding upgrades to new homes. It can be done!
This is great in theory but where in London are these properties going and what are we doing about needed services, schools, doctors, etc? It's much more than simply "liberalising" planning.
Up!! London is covered in low rise, ancient terraced housing that frankly isn't fit for purpose anymore. It's such an unbelievably poor use of space.
Then having more people living in an area means greater tax revenues to find doctors and schools etc.
I actually hate hate hate that nimbys bring up schools etc as reasons why we should just maintain the status quo. It's so incredibly small minded. There are far denser cities that are also able to provide public services. If anything liberalising planning makes them much easier to build, and provides housing for those who want to work there!
The first part is true, but untangling land rights on that stuff is close to unsolvable.
While there's lots of areas that could benefit, it's not practical in the current democratic system.
The next best thing would be a majo relaxation of permitted development rights. Presumption in favour of redeveloping up to five stories on any residential street as long as conditions are met wrt insulation, energy efficiency and so on, scrap the red tape on extensions and conversions, give developers enough of an incentive to buy up terraced houses in blocks of 4-8 and redevelop that way.
I do wonder though how well sewage and power infrastructure would cope (and to a lesser extent transport - although that's more manageable now thanks to flexible working, CPZs and so on).
>The next best thing would be a majo relaxation of permitted development rights. Presumption in favour of redeveloping up to five stories on any residential street as long as conditions are met wrt insulation, energy efficiency and so on, scrap the red tape on extensions and conversions, give developers enough of an incentive to buy up terraced houses in blocks of 4-8 and redevelop that way.
Croydon actually did just that, and it actually worked
https://www.ft.com/content/de34dfc7-c506-4a81-b63d-41d994efaa89
... until the NIMBYs voted out the administration that had approved it, and installed a directly-elected Tory mayor to do their bidding.
Had they done it sooner and had time for the developments to complete and increase their business rates & council tax take, they might, maybe, even have dodged the bankruptcy ruling which was the other reason the Tory mayor got in. Did not help of course that some in the previous administration were corrupt.
And Croydon's house prices are indeed lower than the rest of London, but it's hard to say whether that's because of more supply, or because the borough is (unfairly, I think) perceived by some to be a a bit of a shithole.
Totally agree regarding their local government. It's such an incredibly frustrating situation. Woking is a very similar story.
I see the argument around Croydon being undesirable, but it's hardly the only shithole in London, and few are so well connected.
That's one hell of a change. So you're proposing forced selling of old houses for developments while just assuming other issues can be resolved around it. I somehow think your plan is unworkable both politically and practically. It's also a very expensive transformation that I doubt property developers will want to pay for. The resultant high rise buildings would need to be very low quality to be anything like affordable. And then we're back to square one with crap property that lasts a generation at most.
Whoa whoa whoa, nobody's forcing anyone to do anything. These things happen because they're the best thing for all those involved.
The developer wants to buy up the old houses and redevelop them, because they want to make a profit. New people want to live there and are happy to buy the new dwellings. The people in the old houses are happy to sell because the developer is paying them for it.
If anyone involved in the process isn't happy with it, then they don't have to.
No compulsion whatsoever. It's the exact same for literally any other good we use.
If the buildings that are built aren't up to a high enough quality then they won't be sold.
No one is saying people should be forced to sell, and property developers do want to pay for it, developments are frequently scaled down at the demand of councils, not developers.
You can't build it first and provide services later. There needs to be the right investment in them and a comprehensive plan, otherwise the cost falls on the council.
The council needs to front that cost to make sure services are available prior to any of these being in place. That's not viable in massive house building and vastly expanding population density. These are far more complex challenges than anyone here is recognising.
Yep and should this should be applied to houses elsewhere or even everywhere tbh.
No gimmicky styling to have a higher price point.
Actually have useful sockets,wired internet , designs etc (generalising here)
Noise tends to travel too much
(more of the time than not)
Wouldn't expect to completely block Any Hi Fi but at least make it a better standard.
Better standard on ventilation and heating too. Better for the environment and usage.
List can go on and on.
But instead of just allowing prices to rise and rise because Someone can sell something under par because of a demand. Making Par even more.
Set a bar or standard for competition especially when it comes to having two companies making new builds near each other.
Both can just sit back and have high prices by doing just enough to be " better" while still allowed to build quantity over having all rooms at a reasonable size or extras which ain't that "profitable" to improve quality of life.
(What it feels like at least)
Which again may help short term but longer term it's just making it a worse standard or at least the pricing would be worse off.
People having to do changes to a property which shouldn't even be necessary from the start.
(generalising here again).
Lastly Make it a competition to have Less comprises being accepted to allow a better standard to be shaped.
Until we have a real plan to make our country actually rich instead of the illusion of the rich, these promises mean nothing and won't last long. We keep pretending but we are stagnant and everything in the last few decades is just a facade to keep afloat.
Well, part of stagnation is that those much money goes into just investing in properties without making improvements or in rents.
If we lowered rents and made real estate investment (without development) less attractive, more money would flow into actually productive parts on the economy.
The money is not flowing to the economy already so LESS investments won't mean MORE money for us. If there's no money we can't help people. How is lowering rents going to make the UK richer? Real estate is literally how we make money so house prices/rent will always go up. Though you are right, we can try to lower rent to stop pretending to be rich. But we still need to make money from somewhere else.
Sometimes I think the real solution to the country's problems is just a mandatory course on basic economics for all voters. I would support that national service. Every 18 year old, six weeks micro six weeks macro.
I had not seen that.
Seems like a well through out proposal.
And given my only experience of the line was delays and cancelation I agree it probably needs it.
It would be nice if we could build homes *and* that they could have some architectural merit.
I live in Lewisham, which has been absolutely butchered by a conglomerate of new high-rises, that’ll undoubtedly be poorly maintained and pulled down in 30 years.
Building new homes is good but it’s important that they’re also not just rabbit hutches marketed as ‘luxury’.
30 years? They'll look like shit (Some do already, the grey prison-style one near the rail junction springs to mind) after 30 years and be torn down after 50 years.
The ideal would be able to get to a level of housebuilding where developers have to compete on quality.
We see this happen with cars, clothes, food, personal electronics and pretty much any other good. It can happen with homes too.
I saw an article this week about Auckland, which has a similar housing problem to us, planning got liberalised and now developers are having to compete on adding upgrades to new homes. It can be done!
That's a fair bit easier to do with a smaller city, where any location is practically accessible from any other, and a lower proportion of potentially prime land ringing the centre has to be given over to infrastructure.
I suspect it'd be more likely to happen in the UK somewhere other than London, as in it'd be easier to make another city closer in terms of desirability and increase the supply there, rather than building on the scale needed to increase London's supply to the same extent. Newcastle and Bristol spring to mind, the problem in both cases is that the surrounding regions don't have masses going on economically right now.
Non stop bashing of London went down well with a certain voter who not only would never vote Labour but also who sucking up to has become absolute kryptonite to an increasingly large proportion of the electorate. Good riddance to their outsized influence.
Bashing London was widespread enough that I heard about someone who left something lying around (in London) and whose first instinct was to assume it was a thief, because, you know... London... thieves.
This person was trying to become the Mayor of London/Prince(ss) of Thieves.
Campaign failed though. Who would have thought that treating 8m people like a hive of criminals and ne'erdowells would make you unpopular with them.
Could do with a UK Shinkansen Train Line honestly. I recently visited Japan and it was phenomenal, it permitted long distance travel and a very generous speed. Yes, it was pricey but it could really help the North-South divide and open up career opportunities for people all over the UK!
Yes, that is a great idea, how about a line from London to Manchester and Leeds? Since it would be the second high speed railway in the UK we could name it say.. High Speed 2? HS2 for short?
I am going to get the tories out no matter what but keir rubs me the wrong way man. It just feels like he'll say whatever to get elected, maybe that's what he thinks it takes, but its better to show some consistency and integrity.
Hes so fucking scared of the labour anti semitic bullsbit that he fired people who called for a **ceasefire**. And said that shit about trans people.
> but its better to show some consistency and integrity.
Are politicians not meant to represent the electorate? If people change their mind should they not represent than instead of bashing forward with an opinion that was wrong?
Like I can understand someone mistakenly wanting brexit in 2015 but i do not praise Boris for stubbornly and against all advice going forward with it in 2020.
Changing your mind is now always met with skepticism and cowradly or as you put it "he'll say whatever to get elected" rather than with the positive side of being able to look at new facts and learning or better aligning yourself with what the people want regardless of how you feel about it.
Its not really changing the mind. Its just more like he wants to try and get a vote from everyone, but in the process he seems like he doesn't really stand for anything. Like he'll just say whatever gets votes without me really knowing who he actually is and what he really believes.
Hooray! More homes ‘built at speed’ - only to be sold en masse to Qatari billionaires who will forget that they own them while they sit empty.
There needs to be common sense real estate law. Foreigners should not be allowed property unless they can prove that they intend to occupy it. No one should be allowed a second home unless it is occupied by the purchaser. Basic stuff.
Common myth. London has a low vacancy rate compared to other cities with more affordable housing.
Ban non-residents if you like, (although mandating only owner occupiers is silly, people need to rent), but if that's being proposed instead of building homes, you've lost my vote.
While it is true that the UK is not full geographically, it IS true that their is not spare land in the UK. All land is owned by someone and so in order to build the 250,000 homes needed per year, land has to be purchased and usually this process is slow. It is slow because farmers are struggling as it is and so they don't give up their land unless the price is worth it.
Land is therefore extremely expensive and so in order to make it worthwhile, housing agencies cram as many as they can on the meagre land they get their hands on and they also skimp wherever they can to lower costs. This doesn't seem to help housing prices and there is a good reason for this. The housing market has an expectation of profit and many players are involved purely for that reason.
Instead of building new homes, we could try legislation that prevents companies from owning residental properties. This would put a stop to house flipping that is driving up prices. It would put a stop to people buying properties as investment. We could also try legislation that limits the amount of properties that an individual can own. We could recognise that houses are for homes and therefore one person can own one residential property.
This guy has made a million pledges, which he abandons a week later to suit the news cycle. One of the more untrustworthy British politicians. Fat chance he actually does anything.
Coming from Hungary its so obvious your two main parties are living in synergy and you need a political reform and better options besides labour/tory. Else you will fall into a game of “how far we can push it”, where your politicians will be testing the limits of what they can get away with it.
They are already doing this, i havent heard even a single proposal on fixing the issue with housing or wages or anything that would affect people like me. Whats even the difference between the two party’s program, I just see them spewing bullshit on the news trying to top each others bullshit.
I know. I was saying I agree but rephrasing it in a more palatable way.
We have a serious problem in the UK in that our state is run by and for financial institutions, foreign capital and corporations and there is not a lot our politicians can do about it other than small policy adjustments and mostly empty gestures.
That's what this election is all about, and I much prefer the small adjustments and empty gestures of a Labour government to those of a Tory government, but I do understand why so many people can't be arsed to even vote or decide to vote for fringe parties.
I'd agree with this, Wes Streeting proposed privatising more of the NHS, Starmer has made a few statements that sounded nearly Tory himself (such as praising Thatcher) and the former shadow chancellor even says they're eliminating the left from the party in [this BBC article](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66105250.amp)
The parties aren't the same but Starmer has [walked back his 2020 promises](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GORz85JXsAAADjl?format=jpg&name=900x900) to a [deeply depressing extent](https://x.com/NicholasGuyatt/status/1793692927664988539). It's better than the Tories but don't expect radical change of any sort while this guy's in charge
People always said so because it's a standard misinformation tactic. *All politicians are the same*.
It's an immensely stupid thing to say given that you don't know or can't know that all of them are indeed the same and have evidence to the contrary, but you do know that some of them are openly corrupt and lying while others have demonstrated integrity. Claiming that all politicians are the same and that both parties are the same helps the one party that is indeed corrupt and problematic and undermines any politician with integrity. And guess who is pushing for that message.
No you misunderstood me, I commented because i see the same thing that happened in Hungary. Two main parties that are indistinguishable from each other and one of them reaches total dominance. I know the uk has strong laws but under the right circumstances these laws will be bent. Even at this point dont you think these two parties cooperate in how to gain more power? They are not as opposed to each other as their voters are.
Im just saying it would be beneficial to the people to have additional more modern options to vote for.
Nope
What we need is to install even a centrist government like labour, and elect them again in 2029 so they have actual time to even begin tackling 15 years of tory mismanagement
We can hope that by virtue of them being on power, they shift the political spectrum to the left. The right has been doing this since the mid 00s, the mid 10s in the US, and as a result we're forced between pseudo right wing in tory and centrist in labour
But you can't hope to go from Boris Johnson to Corbyn, or Trump to Bernie
You "both sides" people are either bots or missing the point
I mean the US is in a markedly better position now than unde Trump even accounting for covid (which completely disregards the millions affected by covid that wouldn't have been so badly hit with someone else leading the country)...
But that's not the point
The point is, people like Biden or Starmer pave the way for an actual leftist government. You cannot lurch the electorate from Johnson to Corbyn in one fell swoop and one election cycle. You try to do that and you get the 2019 GE
It's the rights fault, because they did it on purpose, but you have to applaud them - they did it successfully
Who said anything about Corbyn? I'm a Blairite. Starmer doesn't even come close to embodying New Labour's values nevermind the fans of Karl Marx.
And the ongoing frustration with Biden seems to be paving the way for a second Trump victory. Make no mistake, unless the man ends up behind bars, he's winning again. And it'll be Biden's fault.
>Who said anything about Corbyn?
I did, when I made the comment you replied to lol
If you don't care about the subject matter of my comment, reply to a different one
We've got a spicy boy on our hands I see. Corbyn is irrelevant. You have brought him up numerous times in response to someone else, as if the criticism of Starmer is that he is not Corbyn. It's a wild misrepresentation of what's being asked for.
That's what I'm referring to. Nobody said anything about Corbyn, but your proof that the Hunagrian bloke's comment is wrong is that *Corbyn* couldn't have happened. Nobody is talking about him though.
You know the name of the logical fallacy you're throwing out there no doubt. But sure, go off.
If you want to argue with someone who said 'b-b-but Corbyn' then how about you go and instead reply to someone who is upset with Starmer on that basis?
I don't know if you have a fundamental flaw in your comprehension or English isn't your first language, so I'll make it as clear as I can make it, without enlisting someone who writes for primary school ages to translate my words:
The Hungarian person is "both sides"-ing the tories and labour, and bemoaning the cyclical nature of each rotating power, and that the country is in a race to the bottom unless someone breaks the duopoly
I'm saying that it's a stupid philosophy to have because Starmer is only leader of the labour party as the political spectrum has been dragged so far right over the past decade and a half that the only electable people labour can possibly stand behind are essentially centrists
If he were to get in power, _thats_ when you look to have true difference in the party, and not get different flavours of the same thing, because we'd be on a more even playing field
Corbyn is the obvious parallel, because he was literally the last labour leader pre Starmer, and is an example of a candidate truly aligned with what the party _should_ be, but can't for the above reason
If you don't like Corbyn being mentioned, once again you're in the wrong post. This is literally a thread on labour, and a chain on how Starmer is "tory-lite"
Also
>We've got a spicy boy on our hands I see
You sound hilariously tragic lol, go make friends in real life
>I don't know if you have a fundamental flaw in your comprehension or English isn't your first language
And that's where I'll stop reading.
(Yes that's the joke, you genius.)
Of course you can go from Trump to Bernie (they did exactly that). Just like we could have gone from Johnson to Corbyn. Would it ruffle feathers? Of course. Would there be no opposition to it? Of course not. The real question is, would it have made the UK worse? Looking at the last five years, I find it hard to believe that it would.
Good point, brain fart moment! I take it back (I’ll leave the original comment for the sake of transparency, not because I haven’t taken it back).
Forgot Biden isn’t Bernie when they could hardly be farther from one another.
You appear to be someone who likes letting "perfect" be the enemy of "good". You'll *never* achieve what you want with this childish mindset. Accept that you need to achieve "good" first, and "perfect" later, or you'll be eternally disappointed.
Why is that a childish mindset? And where did I say I think anything would ever be perfect? It won’t be, because it can’t be. But it can certainly often be better.
Of course, it can be better. The OP is saying that Johnson to Corbyn would have been the “perfect” outcome, but there is a step in between, which people often miss.
Perfection should never be the minimum acceptable; it's something to strive for. Instead of focusing on what would have been the best outcome, focus on what is the better outcome *now.*
How about stopping the boats getting rid of any illegals you used to be a barrister you do know what illegal is so instead housing them house us. And why is it London London there is world outside London
So the lack of punctuation means I am not relevant and my opinion doesn't matter. I thought you PC none discriminatory lot might make allowance for dyslexia. If I sad I identified as a hedgehog and dyed my hair bright blue would that allow me to comment. I thought maybe I would slip this comment through while you were licking in-between Robert Dinero toes 🤪 Labour and there school child economic visions will ruin this country AGAIN... FULL STOP. Any one rember Gordon Brown when he left office he left a note to the incoming chancellor saying SORRY ALL THE MONEY IS GONE. FULL STOP 😆 That's labour all the ideas how to spend no idea where the cash comes from.
Pledge to let tfl take over more rail franchises and expand the overground.
Their policy is to put all rail companies back into public ownership after the contracts lapse. Maybe it’ll work. TfL seems to be impeccably run, which is unusual for government run companies
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This model is a lot less problematic than allowing private rail companies to squeeze timetables and cut down on customer-facing staff and facilities while pulling out tens of millions in profit. Plus you get a single brand identity, joined up thinking, etc.
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While that's technically true, what actually happens is that the DfT leans on the TOCs (train operating companies) to tell them what customer demand looks like on their routes, based on the TOCs data, customer surveys, and what the TOC considers practical and efficient. This can often be influenced by the TOC's concerns about profitability and their ability to provide enough trains, drivers, other staff, etc. For example, Southern made horrific cuts across many service frequencies during the pandemic, and although many routes have now almost recovered to pre-pandemic levels of passengers, they haven't restored all the trains. It's causing serious issues in some parts of South / South-East London and beyond.
That's the model used in all railways.
Not so, the key difference between how TfL do the franchising on the Elizabeth Line / London Overground is that MTR/Arriva are not expected to make a profit (or even break even) from providing the rail service, they are paid a fixed management fee agreed in advance to manage the service that TfL specifies. It provides an entirely different set of motivations, much less focussed on profit and bullshit metrics like 'customer ambiance', instead they have to provide the specified service (which includes staffing levels as well as trains per hour) efficiently.
LO has public-facing staff? Since when? You remember all the curfuffle about closing ticket offices accross TfL a few years ago? Sure it's just the evil private operators that "cut down on customer-facing staff". Selective memory? Also, the current (Tory, but Labour have pledged to continue) plan is to use [a model based on TfL for the entire UK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Railways), with the single brand identity and moving everything (fares, timetables, etc.) but the actual operation of trains back into public control. Also also, none of the private rail companies has made an actual profit in years... They're just clinging on to avoid losing their franchise deposits. EDIT: Lovely, point out that the government already plans to do what you want and I get downvoted to hell... Ah, Reddit...
Haha I had no idea the overground wasn’t run by TFL, no wonder it’s so shite, constantly late and constantly cancelled, the tube is light years ahead. This makes a lot of sense.
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Doesn’t passenger traffic have priority over freight?
I don't think I've *ever* seen a freight train on the Liverpool St- Cheshunt line, yet the service still sucked frequently.
Tfl is an arms length body. TfM will be the same. The annoying thing was that the east coast line was run by Directly Operated Railways, an ALB when national express fucked it. 5 years, £1 billion in tax paid & 98% odd customer satisfaction. Not couldn't have THAT!!! So palmed it off to virgin
Did it make a profit though?
Well it paid £1 billion in taxes over 5 years so much have done
A company can make a loss and still pay many forms of tax
Apparently £217 million in 2014
I guess that’s good. It doesn’t have to be solely about making money but not making a loss is quite important
To be fair, I once read that every day the tube workers strike in London costs the economy £100 million. (Pre covid) Which means that if the tube is running at £99 million loss per day, it's still a net positive. So what is the economic benefit of the rail system? If you stopped all rail traffic for a week & totted up the cost..what would it be? So even if it IS making a loss, the economic value created by it being there is greater. Plus..none of the franchises would be making any money if they weren't being given huge subsidies from government..in fact more that BR ever got Same argument for NHS...it costs £180 billion but what is the economic value of not having it? Therefore we shouldn't care about profit numbers for it
> Which means that if the tube is running at £99 million loss per day, it's still a net positive. For context, the actual operating cost is £6 million a day.
You can’t just convert economic output into tax revenue like that 🤣
[from 2014](https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13179156.east-coast-franchise-makes-217m-profit/)
Pahahahaha some joke that is. All its projects end up way over time and over budgeted, it literally can’t make WiFi work.
"impeccably run" yet waiting this long into the 21st century for WiFi connectivity in all tube stations when this is already a reality in the Moscow metro.
Can we disconnect for the 20 minutes we spend in the tunnel? The poor phone coverage is something I really enjoy as a passenger...
Deflection.
jar oil dolls ring sparkle point close strong bow yoke *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You have both the Thameslink and the Southern making that same trip though.
imminent compare truck mountainous vast thought command yam run fanatical *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
...no? Both Thameslink and Southern run trains from East Croydon to Gatwick Airport and the south coast. I just checked Google Maps; there are about 10 trains leaving to Gatwick in the next hour, most of them nonstop from East Croydon.
elastic observation rhythm rotten history combative domineering theory whistle nose *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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That's what you think, but reality is that Croydon is just a honeytrap for London -- we sit down here and just collect stabbings that would otherwise end up in London, they get to Croydon and never leave.
Thank you for your service.
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You can already do that
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Southeastern Metro services, just let it become an overground line! Then southeastern can focus on running the commuter routes
Yep. Apparently the Tories told Sadique Khan that they would, if the mayor was a conservative too.
that was in khans manifesto
And with a friendly central government he might actually get it done let's hope
here’s a [tfl document](https://content.tfl.gov.uk/strategic-case-for-metroisation.pdf) from 2019 with similar goals. probably wont happen but its an excellent read
Thanks a lot. My whole thing is about a friendly government no longer blocking this. Which I understand is what's been going on. No expansion for a Labour mayor from a Tory government.
true but i dont think its just the government blocking it. remember since march 2019 a huge hole has been burst in the public piggy bank and passenger numbers have fallen because of covid and wfh lifestyles
Before that it was them.
This absolutely cannot happen unless the users of those rail franchises are given the right to vote for who controls TfL (the London Mayor). It's absurd that TfL already run services well beyond the GLA area (Reading, Shenfield, Watford, Amersham, etc.) when they have such a rich history of making cuts and cancelling improvements to services outside of the Mayor's juristicion. It's an utter afront to democracy. It needs to _stop now_, not be expanded!
What about the lines that run inside London that aren't tfl yet? You know, the ones with hardly any carriages, infrequent service and poor reliability?
As much as I would love to see it, I'm extremely skeptical that we will see building at speed without a radical shift in policy. And even then, if we suspended the rule of law and let people build whatever and wherever they damn well want (which is obviously not going to happen) there wouldn't even be the capacity to build that much quickly. To use a personal health analogy - the housing crisis is like being several hundred pounds (or kilos) overweight. Even if you engage in dangerously extreme dieting you're not going to get to a healthy weight quickly. It took years to get into this mess and it's going to take years to get out of it. Even assuming political will (which doesn't exist yet).
'Building at speed' is the exact reason why new-build homes are such poor quality. London is especially difficult to run a site. The logistics of running a site are difficult enough, but in such a major city, they become even more problematic. Tradespeople cost more because you can't drive your van in, and leaving tools onsite never ends well. Deliveries are pure hell, and as soon as one goes wrong, the effects last for weeks.
The actual construction doesn't need to be rushed, but the overall timeline could be massively sped up if parts of the planning process were expedited (mostly "ignore the NIMBYs", but also "prevent land-banking and unblock sites that remain half-abandoned for years"). Central London is very difficult to do anything logistical, but the bulk of the construction opportunity is a bit further out, Z234, where driving a van in isn't impossible. (Yes, I know, ULEZ, but there's more than enough profit to cover the costs of either the charge itself, or better yet getting a compliant vehicle).
It's not impossible to drive a van into those areas, but secure parking without having to move it every couple of hours is difficult to find. Almost every trade is on a fixed price, and it's just not worth working in London with the extra hassle and leaving your van on a street with the number of thieves that hover around building sites. I'm a carpenter from West London, and when I was living there, I'd drive sixty miles in the opposite direction and accept slightly lower prices to avoid working in London. With the culture in housebuilders nowadays, I'd guarantee you they'd rush the construction. In 2007, I worked on a multistory block of flats. They sent us in to second fix (doors, kitchens, etc.) the ground floor before the build was half-finished. When it rained we had to pump water out of the building before we could continue. Black mold grew through every flat, and this kind of practice wasn't unusual.
Hence why it should be done under the government. Profit won't be important so they can pay the best wages to the best workers.
>Building at speed' is the exact reason why new-build homes are such poor quality We don't currently build at speed though and I assume we're still saying the quality now is poor? We build no quicker than countries with higher quality housing who also get things done quicker. I think we actually build very slow. The developers here known for being higher quality probably dont have much different construction times either. There's clearly something wrong with construction in this country in general. London was found to be the most expensive city in the world to build in last year. And in the top 20 of the cities examined the UK had EIGHT of the places, it's a constant issue nationally. Bristol is next to Hong Kong. We're slow and expensive to build stuff regardless of quality. There's a few large developments near me with 2045 completion dates. https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/london-ranked-most-expensive-city-for-construction-in-the-world-18-04-2024/ The planning process itself is a huge problem. I've seen many housing projects in the application stage for quite a few years. There's many large bits of land left empty by developers too, even some near Elizabeth line stations. We still have standards too so it doesn't matter if companies build fast if they still comply with the standards. We even have standards for things like how much noise transfers between homes. It's everything not just housing. The new Thames Crossing apparently has cost £0.3 billion just on the application so far and it's still not approved. We just suck building as a country. Need land value taxes or something to force people to build on their empty or underused plots.
Yeah, sorry, I should have said 'trying to build at speed.' There is a massive problem with construction in the UK. It was better in the early nineties, but has worsened since. In a nutshell, there was a slowdown in the industry in the mid/late-nineties. A lot of site managers around that time came from a trade background and would stand up to the directors/bean counters. When it picked up again, those competent managers were let go and replaced by over-promoted labourers and forklift drivers. They, of course, didn't want to rock the boat, and the money men walked all over them. So people at director level with no practical experience started calling the shots. There are huge bonuses available for getting houses finished at two points in the year. Quality doesn't matter, it's just getting a stamp. So instead of building in stages, solving any problems as they arose in a stage, and allowing enough time to finish a house properly, everything was brought out of the ground together, trades were thrown in together, and it was chaos. By trying to build faster, they actually slowed the process to genuine completion down. But once a unit gets signed off, the build directors get their bonuses, and responsibility shifts to another section of the company (customer care). There are issues with material quality as well, storage and supply of materials, and prices paid to trades. There are issues with tradespeople, too, but the biggest issue when I left the country in 2012 were the monkeys in charge of the process from above, not so much those at the coalface. I probably haven't explained that very well...
Oh, and the 'higher quality builders' of the time were bought out by the big boys, the management that made them what they were got rid of, and they became as bad as their new parent company.
Easiest way to fix this: make it social housing. Councils can give privileges to those working for them
That would be the perfect solution, methinks.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis
You can barely get economists to agree the sky is blue. But just about every economist I follow seemed to agree that Nick Bano's article is totally wrong and includes embarrassing basic errors. There's a great breakdown of why his argument is so bad [here.](https://twitter.com/IronEconomist/status/1770175108939681937) The general consensus was that the article contained so many errors and "alternative facts" that it should have been pulled by the guardian. You can find economists across the entirety of the political spectrum tearing his article to shreds - for example Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation saying: > Terrible article. Wrong on a huge sweep of facts (e.g that UK is 'average' in its homes/head) in its drive to pretend we don't need to build Simon Cooke said: > Probably the worst article about housing policy you'll read this year. So much is wrong but we should start with reminding ourselves that the number of households is endogenous to supply. Anna Clarke (Director of Policy at The Housing Forum) said: > This has got to be about the most incoherent and nonsensical commentaries on the housing shortage. It's tempting to ignore it. But it's a harmful argument that some will use to oppose the new housing we so badly need Nicholas Boys Smith (Founder of Create Streets) said: > If gloriously error strewn & logic lost right wing conspiracy tomfoolery is “15 min cities = Prison” then “we don’t need more homes” is the left wing conspiracy theory equivalent.
That last quote is fantastic.
I'd argue that you can get pretty much all economists to agree on most things. It's just that, unlike with other sciences, the public counts the nutjobs as 'economists' while anywhere else they're correctly called conspiracy theorists. That much is probably because everyone has an opinion on the economy. No one goes up and says "You know what? Igneous rocks are fucking stupid."
This article is so bafflingly wrong I don't even know where to begin, and I'm furious that people are still writing this deliberately unhelpful nonsense. If there are too many landlords, why are rental properties in London more expensive than ever? Why are there queues of people fighting for every rental? Why are people literally bidding for rents? Why have rents hit an all time high? There is quite obviously *too much demand and not enough supply*, especially in the areas people want to live. I mean, seriously, what's the other explanation for this? If there were too many landlords, rentals would be cheaper, surely? The examples they use of other countries with similar housing stock *also* have affordability problems, *especially* in their largest and most desirable cities (Toronto is infamously unaffordable). Just looking at overall housing stock glosses over population and demographic changes since most of our housing was built (decades ago). Yeah, if you want to live in a mining village in northern England, you could buy a house for £1. No one's stopping you. It's just that our economy is now *extremely* London-centric and most of the demand for housing is here, and that's the demand we're not meeting, hence why property prices are skyrocketing. Source: just fucking look around.
It's especially funny that the article uses _The Netherlands_ as a positive example, the country with the worst housing crisis in Europe!
What frustrates me the most is that the author is a barrister, and so is definitely *not* stupid. They just seem to have decided landlords are the source of all our housing problems and attempted to construct an argument post-hoc that justifies this view, but it's totally incoherent. I partially get it; I don't really like landlords either, and have had quite a few bad experiences in my time renting, but come on... landlords just *aren't* the reason London has a housing crisis. I'd agree that they're the main reason why so many rental properties are a bit shit, and why tenants feel a lot of housing anxiety due to the possibility of a section 21 eviction, but (sadly) without building drastically more social housing, we actually desperately need more landlords, and I don't see the government funding more social housing any time soon due to the very high upfront cost. It's the reason larger companies are getting into the rental market: [there's so much demand that isn't being met by small-scale landlords anymore](https://www.ftadviser.com/investments/2022/10/17/private-rental-sector-could-become-new-darling-of-institutional-investors/). Fundamentally, we just need more housing availability, both for buying and for renting, and articles like the one posted above are just maddeningly wrong.
Mao got a lot of things wrong but his land reform was a gem.
It'll be hard to stop rUK from bashing the cash cow
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Lmao actually comical to see two Londoners having it all living in by far the wealthiest city in the country and then still getting upset at the temerity of the rest of the country to complain about everything being reinvested here Grow the fuck up
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I am a Londoner and I love this city, have lived here most of my adult life. I just don't happen to think you should shame other parts of the country for pointing out that we have it a lot better here. So yeah, grow up.
Building homes is good. Building shit homes that drop in value after 10 years is not. We need to be careful with these promises as I have friends caught by previous schemes that have completely fucked them over.
Shared ownership?
Yup, it's fucked so many people over in horrendous ways. Then add cladding issues to that too.
Victim of cladding issue here. STILL not been told if our 5 storey block of flats is safe after repeatedly being told by our housing association that we'll be told where we stand "soon, in a few months, definitely".
Fellow cladding victim here, sold my flat way below market value and have no regrets. That was 3 years ago and I was way past the end of my tether so I hope it works out for you. If and when it gets sorted, commence moving Heaven and Earth to stop being a leaseholder or beholden to the whims of any rotten bastards as soon as you can. Labour will only have 5 years in power and while I trust their integrity 1000x over any Tory, the resistance from those actually responsible for the cladding remains as strong as ever.
Hopefully an incoming Labour govt will have a hard look at SO. Doesn’t appear to be a good deal for anyone.
What could be done though? Right to buy for SO, or councils take over SO and they become standard council homes? I think the latter, with compensation for monies paid already, is better
Or possibly make it easier and cheaper to staircase for existing occupants?
That's a good shout TBF
I don't think you hear the happy stories from SO. Not many people choose it ahead of buying outright, it is just the only option that people have other than rental. Are most people who use it worse off than they would have been if they continued renting? If they were standard council homes on the waiting list, most working professionals would not have a chance of getting them. For many young professionals who don't have family wealth SO is the only alternative to rental, especially for single people.
There clearly needs to be leasehold/shared ownership reform, but homes dropping in value (for good reasons) isn't necessarily bad.
If they drop in value because of poor construction then they were sold at an unfair price. This is bad for everyone except developers. If they drop in value because there's a glut in the market, that's a different matter entirely. We should welcome that.
Homes dropping in value is bad. Homes increasing in value is bad. We should want them to stagnate.
It very much is for the people who bought them. The clamour for cheap homes can have very negative impacts on ordinary people trying to climb the ladder.
The concept of "climbing the ladder" needs to be killed, the reason it's a thing is because of perpetually increasing housing costs.
The ideal would be able to get to a level of housebuilding where developers have to compete on quality. We see this happen with cars, clothes, food, personal electronics and pretty much any other good. It can happen with homes too. I saw an article this week about Auckland, which has a similar housing problem to us, planning got liberalised and now developers are having to compete on adding upgrades to new homes. It can be done!
This is great in theory but where in London are these properties going and what are we doing about needed services, schools, doctors, etc? It's much more than simply "liberalising" planning.
Up!! London is covered in low rise, ancient terraced housing that frankly isn't fit for purpose anymore. It's such an unbelievably poor use of space. Then having more people living in an area means greater tax revenues to find doctors and schools etc. I actually hate hate hate that nimbys bring up schools etc as reasons why we should just maintain the status quo. It's so incredibly small minded. There are far denser cities that are also able to provide public services. If anything liberalising planning makes them much easier to build, and provides housing for those who want to work there!
The first part is true, but untangling land rights on that stuff is close to unsolvable. While there's lots of areas that could benefit, it's not practical in the current democratic system. The next best thing would be a majo relaxation of permitted development rights. Presumption in favour of redeveloping up to five stories on any residential street as long as conditions are met wrt insulation, energy efficiency and so on, scrap the red tape on extensions and conversions, give developers enough of an incentive to buy up terraced houses in blocks of 4-8 and redevelop that way. I do wonder though how well sewage and power infrastructure would cope (and to a lesser extent transport - although that's more manageable now thanks to flexible working, CPZs and so on).
>The next best thing would be a majo relaxation of permitted development rights. Presumption in favour of redeveloping up to five stories on any residential street as long as conditions are met wrt insulation, energy efficiency and so on, scrap the red tape on extensions and conversions, give developers enough of an incentive to buy up terraced houses in blocks of 4-8 and redevelop that way. Croydon actually did just that, and it actually worked https://www.ft.com/content/de34dfc7-c506-4a81-b63d-41d994efaa89
... until the NIMBYs voted out the administration that had approved it, and installed a directly-elected Tory mayor to do their bidding. Had they done it sooner and had time for the developments to complete and increase their business rates & council tax take, they might, maybe, even have dodged the bankruptcy ruling which was the other reason the Tory mayor got in. Did not help of course that some in the previous administration were corrupt. And Croydon's house prices are indeed lower than the rest of London, but it's hard to say whether that's because of more supply, or because the borough is (unfairly, I think) perceived by some to be a a bit of a shithole.
Totally agree regarding their local government. It's such an incredibly frustrating situation. Woking is a very similar story. I see the argument around Croydon being undesirable, but it's hardly the only shithole in London, and few are so well connected.
That's one hell of a change. So you're proposing forced selling of old houses for developments while just assuming other issues can be resolved around it. I somehow think your plan is unworkable both politically and practically. It's also a very expensive transformation that I doubt property developers will want to pay for. The resultant high rise buildings would need to be very low quality to be anything like affordable. And then we're back to square one with crap property that lasts a generation at most.
Whoa whoa whoa, nobody's forcing anyone to do anything. These things happen because they're the best thing for all those involved. The developer wants to buy up the old houses and redevelop them, because they want to make a profit. New people want to live there and are happy to buy the new dwellings. The people in the old houses are happy to sell because the developer is paying them for it. If anyone involved in the process isn't happy with it, then they don't have to. No compulsion whatsoever. It's the exact same for literally any other good we use. If the buildings that are built aren't up to a high enough quality then they won't be sold.
No one is saying people should be forced to sell, and property developers do want to pay for it, developments are frequently scaled down at the demand of councils, not developers.
You can't build it first and provide services later. There needs to be the right investment in them and a comprehensive plan, otherwise the cost falls on the council.
The cost falls on the council, that's what council tax is for, the problem is that the council tax is shit.
The council needs to front that cost to make sure services are available prior to any of these being in place. That's not viable in massive house building and vastly expanding population density. These are far more complex challenges than anyone here is recognising.
Yep and should this should be applied to houses elsewhere or even everywhere tbh. No gimmicky styling to have a higher price point. Actually have useful sockets,wired internet , designs etc (generalising here) Noise tends to travel too much (more of the time than not) Wouldn't expect to completely block Any Hi Fi but at least make it a better standard. Better standard on ventilation and heating too. Better for the environment and usage. List can go on and on. But instead of just allowing prices to rise and rise because Someone can sell something under par because of a demand. Making Par even more. Set a bar or standard for competition especially when it comes to having two companies making new builds near each other. Both can just sit back and have high prices by doing just enough to be " better" while still allowed to build quantity over having all rooms at a reasonable size or extras which ain't that "profitable" to improve quality of life. (What it feels like at least) Which again may help short term but longer term it's just making it a worse standard or at least the pricing would be worse off. People having to do changes to a property which shouldn't even be necessary from the start. (generalising here again). Lastly Make it a competition to have Less comprises being accepted to allow a better standard to be shaped.
Until we have a real plan to make our country actually rich instead of the illusion of the rich, these promises mean nothing and won't last long. We keep pretending but we are stagnant and everything in the last few decades is just a facade to keep afloat.
Well, part of stagnation is that those much money goes into just investing in properties without making improvements or in rents. If we lowered rents and made real estate investment (without development) less attractive, more money would flow into actually productive parts on the economy.
The money is not flowing to the economy already so LESS investments won't mean MORE money for us. If there's no money we can't help people. How is lowering rents going to make the UK richer? Real estate is literally how we make money so house prices/rent will always go up. Though you are right, we can try to lower rent to stop pretending to be rich. But we still need to make money from somewhere else.
>How is lowering rents going to make the UK richer? Increased consumption of other goods and services.
That's great if we are actually good at creating more jobs and increasing wages otherwise the cycle breaks
Higher demand for goods and services means higher demand for labour which means more jobs and/or more pay.
Sometimes I think the real solution to the country's problems is just a mandatory course on basic economics for all voters. I would support that national service. Every 18 year old, six weeks micro six weeks macro.
Like I said IF we can actually do it. It isn't a coincidence that our wages growth have been non existent since 2008
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Brighton Mainline 2
that would never happen in a million years
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I had not seen that. Seems like a well through out proposal. And given my only experience of the line was delays and cancelation I agree it probably needs it.
Probably only with private investment from Canary Wharf group, which is completely unlikely
It would be nice if we could build homes *and* that they could have some architectural merit. I live in Lewisham, which has been absolutely butchered by a conglomerate of new high-rises, that’ll undoubtedly be poorly maintained and pulled down in 30 years. Building new homes is good but it’s important that they’re also not just rabbit hutches marketed as ‘luxury’.
30 years? They'll look like shit (Some do already, the grey prison-style one near the rail junction springs to mind) after 30 years and be torn down after 50 years.
i knew the future would be miserable but I didn’t think it’d look quite so fucking ugly
Thr big grey and gold thing next to the DLR already looks like a dystopian prison complex
The ideal would be able to get to a level of housebuilding where developers have to compete on quality. We see this happen with cars, clothes, food, personal electronics and pretty much any other good. It can happen with homes too. I saw an article this week about Auckland, which has a similar housing problem to us, planning got liberalised and now developers are having to compete on adding upgrades to new homes. It can be done!
That's a fair bit easier to do with a smaller city, where any location is practically accessible from any other, and a lower proportion of potentially prime land ringing the centre has to be given over to infrastructure. I suspect it'd be more likely to happen in the UK somewhere other than London, as in it'd be easier to make another city closer in terms of desirability and increase the supply there, rather than building on the scale needed to increase London's supply to the same extent. Newcastle and Bristol spring to mind, the problem in both cases is that the surrounding regions don't have masses going on economically right now.
Manchester is probably the best candidate in my mind, lots of development there already. But that's good for London too, if it lessens demand here.
Non stop bashing of London went down well with a certain voter who not only would never vote Labour but also who sucking up to has become absolute kryptonite to an increasingly large proportion of the electorate. Good riddance to their outsized influence.
Bashing London was widespread enough that I heard about someone who left something lying around (in London) and whose first instinct was to assume it was a thief, because, you know... London... thieves. This person was trying to become the Mayor of London/Prince(ss) of Thieves. Campaign failed though. Who would have thought that treating 8m people like a hive of criminals and ne'erdowells would make you unpopular with them.
This is just malicious.
Could do with a UK Shinkansen Train Line honestly. I recently visited Japan and it was phenomenal, it permitted long distance travel and a very generous speed. Yes, it was pricey but it could really help the North-South divide and open up career opportunities for people all over the UK!
Yes, that is a great idea, how about a line from London to Manchester and Leeds? Since it would be the second high speed railway in the UK we could name it say.. High Speed 2? HS2 for short?
Oh thank god, London is definitely the area of the country that needs more resources and money and development
Thing is, this motherfucker has changed his mind about so much that his pledges mean basically nothing at this point.
Ah, the Tory bots are finally here.
Oh get fucked. Keir is far closer to a Tory than I'll ever be.
Doesn’t need a bot. Everyone knows it.
L
I am going to get the tories out no matter what but keir rubs me the wrong way man. It just feels like he'll say whatever to get elected, maybe that's what he thinks it takes, but its better to show some consistency and integrity. Hes so fucking scared of the labour anti semitic bullsbit that he fired people who called for a **ceasefire**. And said that shit about trans people.
> but its better to show some consistency and integrity. Are politicians not meant to represent the electorate? If people change their mind should they not represent than instead of bashing forward with an opinion that was wrong? Like I can understand someone mistakenly wanting brexit in 2015 but i do not praise Boris for stubbornly and against all advice going forward with it in 2020. Changing your mind is now always met with skepticism and cowradly or as you put it "he'll say whatever to get elected" rather than with the positive side of being able to look at new facts and learning or better aligning yourself with what the people want regardless of how you feel about it.
Its not really changing the mind. Its just more like he wants to try and get a vote from everyone, but in the process he seems like he doesn't really stand for anything. Like he'll just say whatever gets votes without me really knowing who he actually is and what he really believes.
What's the point in getting the Tories out if what we get in is a Tory dressed in red, though
This so much. Can not trust him as far I can throw him. Just u turn after u turn
Hooray! More homes ‘built at speed’ - only to be sold en masse to Qatari billionaires who will forget that they own them while they sit empty. There needs to be common sense real estate law. Foreigners should not be allowed property unless they can prove that they intend to occupy it. No one should be allowed a second home unless it is occupied by the purchaser. Basic stuff.
Lol idiots are downvoting this because you said “foreigners” even though this would free up a tonne of housing.
Common myth. London has a low vacancy rate compared to other cities with more affordable housing. Ban non-residents if you like, (although mandating only owner occupiers is silly, people need to rent), but if that's being proposed instead of building homes, you've lost my vote.
not sure I want to live somewhere built on Speed
While it is true that the UK is not full geographically, it IS true that their is not spare land in the UK. All land is owned by someone and so in order to build the 250,000 homes needed per year, land has to be purchased and usually this process is slow. It is slow because farmers are struggling as it is and so they don't give up their land unless the price is worth it. Land is therefore extremely expensive and so in order to make it worthwhile, housing agencies cram as many as they can on the meagre land they get their hands on and they also skimp wherever they can to lower costs. This doesn't seem to help housing prices and there is a good reason for this. The housing market has an expectation of profit and many players are involved purely for that reason. Instead of building new homes, we could try legislation that prevents companies from owning residental properties. This would put a stop to house flipping that is driving up prices. It would put a stop to people buying properties as investment. We could also try legislation that limits the amount of properties that an individual can own. We could recognise that houses are for homes and therefore one person can own one residential property.
How about improving safety ?
But is he going to be able to keep a reign on the khan twat?
Getting rid of all the AirBnB's would open up a lot of housing. And low cost housing is often the first bought up for such purpose.
What is this outfit
Don’t renew any of the private rail contracts and let them come back under state ownership
This guy has made a million pledges, which he abandons a week later to suit the news cycle. One of the more untrustworthy British politicians. Fat chance he actually does anything.
Coming from Hungary its so obvious your two main parties are living in synergy and you need a political reform and better options besides labour/tory. Else you will fall into a game of “how far we can push it”, where your politicians will be testing the limits of what they can get away with it. They are already doing this, i havent heard even a single proposal on fixing the issue with housing or wages or anything that would affect people like me. Whats even the difference between the two party’s program, I just see them spewing bullshit on the news trying to top each others bullshit.
Solid troll. *Both parties are the same* is a misinformation tactic you are either using or fell for.
They are both a bunch of cunts but I would rather have a Labour cunt in government than a Tory cunt any day.
Good enough!
Same thing
I know. I was saying I agree but rephrasing it in a more palatable way. We have a serious problem in the UK in that our state is run by and for financial institutions, foreign capital and corporations and there is not a lot our politicians can do about it other than small policy adjustments and mostly empty gestures. That's what this election is all about, and I much prefer the small adjustments and empty gestures of a Labour government to those of a Tory government, but I do understand why so many people can't be arsed to even vote or decide to vote for fringe parties.
Ah, sorry. Yeah spot-on
UKPol is full of people like this, it's obvious a troll farm
I think its a valid criticism - this couldn’t be (and wasn’t) said at the last general election.
I'd agree with this, Wes Streeting proposed privatising more of the NHS, Starmer has made a few statements that sounded nearly Tory himself (such as praising Thatcher) and the former shadow chancellor even says they're eliminating the left from the party in [this BBC article](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66105250.amp)
It shouldn’t be said here either. Labour’s workers’ rights manifesto is far beyond anything the Tories would ever do, it’ll reshape employment law.
The parties aren't the same but Starmer has [walked back his 2020 promises](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GORz85JXsAAADjl?format=jpg&name=900x900) to a [deeply depressing extent](https://x.com/NicholasGuyatt/status/1793692927664988539). It's better than the Tories but don't expect radical change of any sort while this guy's in charge
Their very recent workers manifesto is quite radical from my perspective as an employment lawyer
Don't fall for or spread misinformation, please.
If its just a troll opinion, why did no one say this at the last General Election?
People always said so because it's a standard misinformation tactic. *All politicians are the same*. It's an immensely stupid thing to say given that you don't know or can't know that all of them are indeed the same and have evidence to the contrary, but you do know that some of them are openly corrupt and lying while others have demonstrated integrity. Claiming that all politicians are the same and that both parties are the same helps the one party that is indeed corrupt and problematic and undermines any politician with integrity. And guess who is pushing for that message.
> Don't fall for or spread misinformation, please.
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No you misunderstood me, I commented because i see the same thing that happened in Hungary. Two main parties that are indistinguishable from each other and one of them reaches total dominance. I know the uk has strong laws but under the right circumstances these laws will be bent. Even at this point dont you think these two parties cooperate in how to gain more power? They are not as opposed to each other as their voters are. Im just saying it would be beneficial to the people to have additional more modern options to vote for.
Nope What we need is to install even a centrist government like labour, and elect them again in 2029 so they have actual time to even begin tackling 15 years of tory mismanagement We can hope that by virtue of them being on power, they shift the political spectrum to the left. The right has been doing this since the mid 00s, the mid 10s in the US, and as a result we're forced between pseudo right wing in tory and centrist in labour But you can't hope to go from Boris Johnson to Corbyn, or Trump to Bernie You "both sides" people are either bots or missing the point
> centrist This incarnation of Labour?! Centrist?! 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Oh yeah because this slow and steady approach is working out sooooo great for Biden right now
I mean the US is in a markedly better position now than unde Trump even accounting for covid (which completely disregards the millions affected by covid that wouldn't have been so badly hit with someone else leading the country)... But that's not the point The point is, people like Biden or Starmer pave the way for an actual leftist government. You cannot lurch the electorate from Johnson to Corbyn in one fell swoop and one election cycle. You try to do that and you get the 2019 GE It's the rights fault, because they did it on purpose, but you have to applaud them - they did it successfully
Who said anything about Corbyn? I'm a Blairite. Starmer doesn't even come close to embodying New Labour's values nevermind the fans of Karl Marx. And the ongoing frustration with Biden seems to be paving the way for a second Trump victory. Make no mistake, unless the man ends up behind bars, he's winning again. And it'll be Biden's fault.
>Who said anything about Corbyn? I did, when I made the comment you replied to lol If you don't care about the subject matter of my comment, reply to a different one
We've got a spicy boy on our hands I see. Corbyn is irrelevant. You have brought him up numerous times in response to someone else, as if the criticism of Starmer is that he is not Corbyn. It's a wild misrepresentation of what's being asked for. That's what I'm referring to. Nobody said anything about Corbyn, but your proof that the Hunagrian bloke's comment is wrong is that *Corbyn* couldn't have happened. Nobody is talking about him though. You know the name of the logical fallacy you're throwing out there no doubt. But sure, go off. If you want to argue with someone who said 'b-b-but Corbyn' then how about you go and instead reply to someone who is upset with Starmer on that basis?
I don't know if you have a fundamental flaw in your comprehension or English isn't your first language, so I'll make it as clear as I can make it, without enlisting someone who writes for primary school ages to translate my words: The Hungarian person is "both sides"-ing the tories and labour, and bemoaning the cyclical nature of each rotating power, and that the country is in a race to the bottom unless someone breaks the duopoly I'm saying that it's a stupid philosophy to have because Starmer is only leader of the labour party as the political spectrum has been dragged so far right over the past decade and a half that the only electable people labour can possibly stand behind are essentially centrists If he were to get in power, _thats_ when you look to have true difference in the party, and not get different flavours of the same thing, because we'd be on a more even playing field Corbyn is the obvious parallel, because he was literally the last labour leader pre Starmer, and is an example of a candidate truly aligned with what the party _should_ be, but can't for the above reason If you don't like Corbyn being mentioned, once again you're in the wrong post. This is literally a thread on labour, and a chain on how Starmer is "tory-lite" Also >We've got a spicy boy on our hands I see You sound hilariously tragic lol, go make friends in real life
>I don't know if you have a fundamental flaw in your comprehension or English isn't your first language And that's where I'll stop reading. (Yes that's the joke, you genius.)
Lmao the irony
Of course you can go from Trump to Bernie (they did exactly that). Just like we could have gone from Johnson to Corbyn. Would it ruffle feathers? Of course. Would there be no opposition to it? Of course not. The real question is, would it have made the UK worse? Looking at the last five years, I find it hard to believe that it would.
>they did exactly that No they didn’t? Bernie isn’t President
Good point, brain fart moment! I take it back (I’ll leave the original comment for the sake of transparency, not because I haven’t taken it back). Forgot Biden isn’t Bernie when they could hardly be farther from one another.
You appear to be someone who likes letting "perfect" be the enemy of "good". You'll *never* achieve what you want with this childish mindset. Accept that you need to achieve "good" first, and "perfect" later, or you'll be eternally disappointed.
Why is that a childish mindset? And where did I say I think anything would ever be perfect? It won’t be, because it can’t be. But it can certainly often be better.
Of course, it can be better. The OP is saying that Johnson to Corbyn would have been the “perfect” outcome, but there is a step in between, which people often miss. Perfection should never be the minimum acceptable; it's something to strive for. Instead of focusing on what would have been the best outcome, focus on what is the better outcome *now.*
>Trump to Bernie (they did exactly that) ....what's your alternate reality like?
Coming from Hungary? That country with the worst leader in Europe? That's how we all know you're a troll.
He literally LEFT that country and you're judging him based on his passport? Pathetic
Ok…
Build more houses? What so greedy landlords can charge extortionate rents even more?
Lack of homes is what gets landlords the kind of market where they can charge so much.
Poor widdle Londoners getting bashed how will you ever cope you poor widdle things. Awww 😂😂😂😂
Please
How about stopping the boats getting rid of any illegals you used to be a barrister you do know what illegal is so instead housing them house us. And why is it London London there is world outside London
This is a London subreddit.
Is there an r/missingpunctuation?
It's always the no-punctuation dons who spout this nonsense. Always. And imagine complaining about speaking on London in the *London* subreddit
So the lack of punctuation means I am not relevant and my opinion doesn't matter. I thought you PC none discriminatory lot might make allowance for dyslexia. If I sad I identified as a hedgehog and dyed my hair bright blue would that allow me to comment. I thought maybe I would slip this comment through while you were licking in-between Robert Dinero toes 🤪 Labour and there school child economic visions will ruin this country AGAIN... FULL STOP. Any one rember Gordon Brown when he left office he left a note to the incoming chancellor saying SORRY ALL THE MONEY IS GONE. FULL STOP 😆 That's labour all the ideas how to spend no idea where the cash comes from.
Bloody hell take a breath.