Thursday 24 July 2014

YPP Friday meet-up, 25 July

1. Usual haunt, Brewmaster Pub near Leicester Square Tube station, tomorrow from 5.20-ish.

2. If somebody wants to suggest somewhere else for next week/next time then I'm fine with anywhere between Canary Wharf and Southwark on the Jubilee Line (I think that must suit a few of us).

3. We have made some progress with the app, so if you can get internet on your phone I'll show you it.

Tuesday 22 July 2014

Oh, so they've finally noticed? "Young priced out of a home"

From The Daily Mail (this was today's headline):

The number of young homebuyers has plunged to a record low.

A tiny 3 per cent of house sales last month were to those aged 18 to 30, down from 12 per cent last August. The stark figure shows how stagnant wages, rising property prices and tougher rules for borrowers are squeezing the young out of the market. It comes despite Government efforts to stimulate more purchases through its Help To Buy scheme.


Of course they are suffering from typical Homey amnesia.

This is actually the normal situation in unregulated land markets.

The only reason why previous generations could rent and buy cheaply was because of rent controls and mortgage restrictions, with easily available council housing for those with low or irregular incomes.

If you get rid of those things - which Thatcher and Blair did - we go back to the old ways where the poor get poorer, the rich get richer and there is a sharp divide between those old enough to have "got on the property ladder" and those young enough to be eternally shafted (broadly speaking, the divide is between those born before 1970 and those born later).

Thursday 17 July 2014

YPP Friday meet-up, Friday 18 July/talk Saturday 19 July

Peter S said he'd be at The Brewmaster pub next to Leicester Square Tube Station from 5 or so, I'll pop in but I can't stay out long because I'm doing a talk near Cardiff at 3.30 on Saturday afternoon:
If you'd like to attend the Cardiff event, please send me an email and I will forward it to the organiser.

Friday 11 July 2014

YPP meet up Friday 11 July

1. Usual haunt, Brewmaster Pub near Leicester Square Tube station, tomorrow from 5.20-ish.

2. If somebody wants to suggest somewhere else for next week/next time then I'm fine with anywhere between Canary Wharf and Southwark on the Jubilee Line (I think that must suit a few of us).

3. We have made some progress with the app, so if you can get internet on your phone I'll show you it.

Tuesday 8 July 2014

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From the Evening Standard (8 July 2014, page 44):

Tony Travers is absolutely right (July 7) - London's land wealth could easily generate the revenue to fund all local services.

Rents are hugely in excess of building costs so councils could grant planning permission for built-to-let in exchange for [an] equity stake in each project, a common arrangement in parts of the EU.

Raising council tax to make London self-sufficient would also end the injustice of making the working poor in the rest of the UK subsidise Tube travel and (via housing benefit) rental receipts of the country's wealthiest landowners.

Joe Momberg, Young People's Party.

Tuesday 1 July 2014

"Housing crisis? What housing crisis?"

It's all the entirely predictable outcome of deliberate and massive changes in UK government policy since the 1980s.

Full article at The Intergenerational Foundation.