[Closed] Getting rid of the frightful lower orders from nice areas...

Is all analysis just assumptions then? Or just left wing analysis? Or all analysis you don't agree with? Or just mine?

Is all analysis just assumptions then?

Generally yes - it's just that some assumptions have a better basis than others. I just thought it a rather funny way to defend yourself from accusations of knee-jerk leftyism. Particularly when you come out with gems like "as self-serving and divisive as the huge majority of other Tory Policies".

So [i]if[/i] the think tank's proposals were to become policy to the letter, (long shot), who would be charged with building these new social housing projects? Private companies?

If there was somewhere to build them, would there be a building program based on the amount of sold off properties? Would a local authority build say 10 new social houses on a plot of land? Or would they green light the building of large new estates on greenfield sites where only 10 of the houses were social houses?

I've seen the latter happen first hand. And it doesn't work.

So your assumption is that Tory policies aren't in fact self-serving and divisive at all?

I think even the most cursory appraisal of their record would prove, pretty conclusively, that they are!

So your assumption is that Tory policies aren't in fact self-serving and divisive at all?

You mean like:
"We will make Network Rail more accountable to its customers."
"We will continue to be an active and activist participant in the European Union, with the goal of ensuring that Europe is equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty."
"We will maintain Britain's nuclear deterrent, and have agreed that the renewal of Trident should be scrutinised to ensure value for money."
"We will work with the Mayor of London to ensure a safe and successful Olympic and Paralympic Games in London in 2012, and deliver a genuine and lasting legacy."
"We will use our relationships with other countries to push for unequivocal support for gay rights and for UK civil partnerships to be recognised internationally."

?

i live in social housing, luckily i am in wales, where we have an assembly that has stopped the right to buy, the biggest house building that ever happened where i live occured in 1935-- over 1000 homes were built by the local authority, in a time of recession, money was borrowed over a long period, it is still considered one of the most progressive things they have ever done, where there's a will there is a way.

This is a small place, population 15,000-- so that was a monumental undertaking -- those houses are still in great nick, and much sought after

Up here the Council has sold whole estates to Housing trusts(which are NOT tenant owned.)They then went as far as evict tenants where they wanted to clear old stock and start again. Hence my post about how the council can sell your house from under you. It already happens,The plastering firm I worked for had the maintenance contract before and after.Guess when people's homes were better maintained?

The big con -- housing associations, trusts, they are all unaccountable, as you say duckman, the service will be worse, the rights go for a burton and a general malaise sets in.......

I used to work for a local council in building maintenance, we were 'turned' into a new housing association-- guess what all the execs had 60% salary increases, us on the sharp end had sweet fa, the service has since gone west......... i am out of there, is was getting very depressing.....

You're proclaiming the shambles of our privatised rail system as some grand philanthropic gesture?

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans! That really doesn't even warrant a reply

But as you're on a right-wing roll, do feel free to add how handing over the NHS to rabidly money-grubbing American Corporations will be a huge benefit to everyone in society, in particular the most needy......

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aracer- are you a WUM- do not believe you can put that tripe on here and expect a serious response

You mean like:
"We will make Network Rail more accountable to its customers."
"We will continue to be an active and activist participant in the European Union, with the goal of ensuring that Europe is equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty."
"We will maintain Britain's nuclear deterrent, and have agreed that the renewal of Trident should be scrutinised to ensure value for money."
"We will work with the Mayor of London to ensure a safe and successful Olympic and Paralympic Games in London in 2012, and deliver a genuine and lasting legacy."
"We will use our relationships with other countries to push for unequivocal support for gay rights and for UK civil partnerships to be recognised internationally."

Just words. Any Government can say this, but in reality a little harder to quantify what the outcomes will be as no targets have been set. Also a distraction from the main topic here, which I would expect nothing less from a current Government supporter.

exactly how can you sentence future inner city communities to dispersal onto former brownfield sites or even worse the suburbs. How can future social cohesion be achieved in the aftermath of such a policy? Where are the large social housing projects of the future going to be?

Same tory ideology that shattered communities in the 1980s. Some things never change and putting profit first whatever the cost to 'little' people is a cornerstone of all conservatives.

The Government has produced many ridiculous policies over the past ten years, from tax credits to the Millennium Dome, but none are as bafflingly pointless as John Prescott’s Pathfinder scheme.

In 2003, the then-Deputy Prime Minister’s plan to rejuvenate collapsing property markets in many northern cities – including Liverpool, Manchester and Hull – and build sustainable communities was announced to much fanfare.

The plan was to “bring back to life those areas where there is low demand for housing and where, in the worst cases, homes have been abandoned”, said Prescott. And the way to create this nirvana? Bulldoze 90,000 ‘slum’ houses.

The idea of knocking down houses to compensate for a lack of demand at a time when the rest of the UK was undergoing a property boom (which all the pundits liked to put down to a shortage of affordable properties) didn’t make much sense, even at the time. And now, four years later, it’s been revealed as the most ill-thought-out policy the Labour government has ever introduced.

Many people have been evicted from their homes with no thought of where they should go, thousands of structurally sound buildings have been demolished and many more derelict estates created as a result of demolitions and renovations being held up in the planning stages. “Given its performance to date, it is hard to think of another programme that was trumpeted with as much fanfare, but which has hit so many wrong notes,” says Edward Leigh, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

The first problem with the plan rapidly became apparent. Why spend hundreds of thousands of pounds and many years demolishing rows of terraced houses that could be renovated for half the cost and in a fraction of the time?

In 2005, the Tonight With Trevor McDonald show highlighted this flaw by sending two experts to renovate a terraced house in Toxteth, Liverpool. In two weeks the pair spent £24,000 on turning the house into a desirable two-bedroom home valued at £65,000. That’s only £6,000 more than the £18,000 cost of demolishing the building and considerably less than the cost of building a new one on the site. Best of all, the house was affordable – the homes that were planned to replace that terrace were expected to sell for around £140,000. With so many first-time buyers being priced out of the market and the Government pushing various shared-ownership schemes to help, where was the sense in a plan purposely to inflate property prices?

The second signs of trouble appeared when the Government began trying to issue compulsory purchase orders. What John Prescott and his team may have regarded as slums, many people called home; they didn’t want to leave. Especially as there was a sizeable gap – around £35,000 – between the £28,000 they were to be given for their home and the price of a typical new house in the area. On top of this, property investors swooped in and bought streets of abandoned houses in order to make a profit from the compulsory purchase orders. These factors ended up “putting the overall bill up by £50m over five years”, reports the National Audit Office. 

The final evidence of the stupidity of the scheme was released last week when the National Audit Office published a report saying that it was “not possible to identify a causal link” between the Pathfinder programme and changes in the local property markets. Prices have gone up, but that’s been the case across the entire country. So the £2.2bn project has achieved no visible results. And yet the Government has just assigned a further £1bn to the Pathfinder scheme.

In any case, it’s almost impossible to work out exactly what the Government was hoping to achieve anyway. The idea that improving houses in isolation and driving up the prices can somehow regenerate areas bereft of jobs and decent infrastructure is hopelessly naive. Even estate agents know that the key to finding a decent home is ‘location, location, location’.

So we are left with a baffling policy that has led to 10,200 houses being demolished, 1,000 built and 37,000 fell derelict awaiting the bulldozer. And for what? Because the Government was horrified that houses were selling for “as little as £5,000”.

You're proclaiming the shambles of our privatised rail system as some grand philanthropic gesture?

I don't think I said that - I'll just check back...

...nope - I seem to have suggested that making Network Rail accountable to its customers isn't a bad thing. That isn't quite the same is it?

But as you're on a right-wing roll

Am I? Well I suppose if pointing out how your rabid hatred for anything the Tories do (even if they happen to accidentally do something good) makes you a knee-jerk lefty is something only somebody to the right of Genghis Khan would do, then guilty as charged.

rudebwoy - well clearly I was right not to expect an intelligent response from you.

Just words.

They appear to be policies. In the same way all policies are "just words". I presume they must all be part of binners' "huge majority", as it's hard to understand how I'd have found them if they were part of the other tiny minority.

PSA discussed on Newsnight BBC2 now

They appear to be policies.

They appear to be pretty woolly "policies" at the best; and all pretty difficult to measure. I can't think of any centre left or centre right government that [i]wouldnt[/i] have those policies at present. So they're not setting themselves apart as a force for change for the better with those ones.

Newsnight.

So policy exchange made the statement:

"people should not be offered council houses that are worth more than the average house in their local authority".

73% agreed.
86% Tory voters agreed. So the Tories run with it because it "polled" well.

Well, yeah, when you put it like that... Jesus wept.

Newsnight - Tory caricature - hard to tell if it was Harry Enfield or not.

They picked him well. I bet he wears red trousers at the weekend. 🙂

We will continue to be an active and activist participant in the European Union, with the goal of ensuring that Europe is equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty."

Would love to see the reaction in here if Tories declared that the Pope was Catholic and Bears Crap in the woods.

Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

It is not a great leap to assume that a reasonable % of tories and their MP's are somewhat Eurosceptic.

There is a reason I picked that one from the "Europe" list 😉 There are some others in that section which are rather more what you'd expect (though still hardly self-serving and divisive).

Where as you can believe the Labour Party

Right wingers. They just don't like it up 'em.

It does sound like a tamed down version of the Final Solution, turn the north of the country into a ghetto and move all the unemployed, ill and disabled away from the affluent South and leave them to rot in the North.

We're you just hoping to shock with this unbelievably dumb & immature statement or is ths really what you believe?!

There are 2.2 million empty properties in the uk, most are second homes,speculative investments, or derelicts,is it right to allow them to remain empty when people are desperate for places to live, preferably near where they are from / work-- no doubt the right wingers will say tuff titty-- how people have worked 'hard' blah blah blah---- personally can't understand the obsession of 'owning' a place to live-- its a human right -- food clothes and shelter--

personally can't understand the obsession of 'owning' a place to live-- its a human right -- food clothes and shelter--

Nice idea, how are they to be provided and funded? Are you advocating the government acquiring second homes/houses?

And is it a right to be housed, no matter what, surely if the state is providing it is appropriate to apply some condition to the provision - location etc?

Not saying you are wrong, just that you invite some interesting questions.

yes it is a job for the state, for economic reasons alone homes are needed where employment exists-- the great housing initiative after the war was an example--- homes fit for heroes etc-- ironically they are still fit, but mostly 'sold' off in attempts to destroy social housing.

Now we have the destroyers attempting to gerrymander what is left of 'desirable' stock for their own ends

The provision and conditions would be the idea that abuse of the housing system would be a crime against the community-- everyone would get a chance, but if you wreck your house thats it-- you don't get another, use the national insurance system as a check--

Creating responsibility won't happen overnight, but if people beleive they have 'collective ownership' then things change very quickly-- accountability is key to make this succeed-- none of this is rocket science-- its ideological yes-- for the good of all-- not the profit of a few !

its ideological yes-- for the good of all-- not the profit of a few !

And therefore goes absolutely against every single principle* of everything the Tory's represent

*such as they are

There are 2.2 million empty properties in the uk, most are second homes,speculative investments, or derelicts,is it right to allow them to remain empty when people are desperate for places to live, preferably near where they are from / work

Hmm - the question is how many of those 2.2m are near where the homeless live/work, and how many in areas with no work, or for example in holiday areas which are nice to visit in the summer - and might do seasonal work - but not so handy for relocating the homeless to out of season?

Don't sit on the fence, binners.

Binners do you not like tories?

Good effort Binners, there was almost a rational discourse beginning - good to get than stamped out before it flourished into something interesting! 😉

I think Binners underestimates the evil, yes evil, of both the tories and Policy Exchange.

Their report, and the comments on the news yesterday "we think there should be social housing" (How genorously magnanimous of them!) but that social housing shouldn't be 'better' then that that would be available to 'workers' living there (as if all social housing tennants are unemployed) showed up their underlying prejudice, and how they seek to foster snide envy and division. There is more I could say about Policy Exchange and their ilk but the STW swear fliter would go into meltdown.

Debate? STW? Are you mad. Much better to have a bigoted rant than discuss and develop an argument. Shame really.

@rudebwoy - in principle it sounds reasonable. However, a lot of the property and holiday homes etc are the result of people's endeavours based upon the economic conditions prevailing at the time.

It would be punitive in the extreme to simply sequester the assets of people who have sought to better themselves and acquire these assets.

They have not all been acquired by wealthy landlords seeking to deprive a segment of society of their housing. Many have been acquired as holiday homes for themselves or as a business, buy to let, or as investments for their children. So defining an empty house would be an interesting exercise.

Proximity to employment is a challenge - I worked in Cornwall for a few years and there would be a lot of empty houses (at the time the MOD owned a lot of ex navy houses, all of which were boarded up) but they were not close to places of employment.

It would be interesting to know what proportion of the 2.2 million were in locations that would afford access to work, transport links to work or areas where employment may be generated by sustainable enterprise (not by skewing the economy with subsidies/grants/incentives which cause the employers to relocate to chase the funding).

rudebwoy, I'd vote for you - you talk much sense.

The problem is not so much Tories (who will always do what Tories do) but ideologies which reduce every social relation to market relations - and hasn't the dear old Labour Party been guilty of that?

Another aspect of this 'marketised cleansing' is that one of the groups it is likely to particularly effect are people with complex disabilities, who will need more space for access reasons, equipment, live-in carers, etc.

And taking the North Westminster/ North Kensington examples, not to mention many parts of Camden, Islington but not sadly Wandsworth any more, one of the real joys of living in London has been the mixed and diverse communities, often cheek-by-jowl with each other, with huge cultural ranges of expression - food, music, streetlife. Do we really want inner-city wealthy suburbs and condo-ghettos with armed guards - do we want episodes like the poor black kid who got popped by some vigilante nutter in the wealthy bit of a Southern US city recently?

its this chant 'there is no alternative' - that is echoed by the 'dear' old labour party , that is ball ocks, there are alternatives-- but they do not like them - --- yes i know its not in their (selfish) interest, but for the vast majority of humanity it is, the waste of peoples talent and resources under capitalism is a crime.

You should always judge a society by how it treats the sick,the vulnerable and the elderly,not by GDP, house prices etc

You should always judge a society by how it treats the sick,the vulnerable and the elderly,not by GDP, house prices etc

Couldn't agree more. All any politicians understand is the bottom line. Particularly the venomously nasty Tory Party under Cameron. They know the price of everything, and the value of nothing!

The better half works in the Charity/third sector and what is happening to the disabled and most disadvantaged in our society under the guise of this farcical 'Big Society' initiative is an absolute scandal! The most vulnerable in our society are having the rug pulled from under them. Services they depend on for a half-way reasonable quality of life are completely withdrawn, the only alternative being well-meaning but powerless and unfunded 'volounteers'

And this from a party that then prioritises tax breaks for the very wealthiest

So... no... I don't like the Tories much. Because I see the results of their utterly cynical self interest, and limitless greed every day. And at the sharp end, its completely inhumane

This suggested policy, and the fundamental motivation behind it, is no different

And if any of you Tory apologists want to try and justify that.... you know.... the important stuff.... instead of waffling on about meaningless drivel like restoring accountability to Network Rail... do feel free.....

rudebwoy - Member
There are 2.2 million empty properties in the uk, most are second homes,speculative investments, or derelicts,is it right to allow them to remain empty when people are desperate for places to live, preferably near where they are from / work-- no doubt the right wingers will say tuff titty-- how people have worked 'hard' blah blah blah---- personally can't understand the obsession of 'owning' a place to live-- its a human right -- food clothes and shelter--

FYI there are 250,000 second homes in England according to the data i have in front of me, about 1%.

rogerthecat - Member
@rudebwoy - in principle it sounds reasonable. However, a lot of the property and holiday homes etc are the result of people's endeavours based upon the economic conditions prevailing at the time.

...

It would be interesting to know what proportion of the 2.2 million were in locations that would afford access to work, transport links to work or areas where employment may be generated by sustainable enterprise (not by skewing the economy with subsidies/grants/incentives which cause the employers to relocate to chase the funding).

There are 7500 second homes in Westminster and 7000 in Kensington and Chelsea.

Since the very wealthy make up a very small proportion of any society, they rely on others to do their dirty work for them, they are rewarded with salaries, nice homes and maybe even a gong for services rendered, ceelebs are great at this, rewarded for providing meaningless entertainment, the barking dogs in the work place to keep you in line, the snitches who think that brownosing is job security, all these apologists just go with the flow.......

I like the tories, they made it possible for my Gran to buy the house she had lived in for years.

Capt Jon, according to your sources-- how many Empty properties ?

It is never an exact science but looking at poll tax exemptions gives a clue,