UK Politics - Asset stripping on a national scale

[kiko]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

To be fair, Horse has shown often that German humour is notoriously hard to spot.

The correct wording of this thesis needs to be appended. Add a "...by British people". 

You guys have this blind spot in your humor detection unit. I believe the reasons for that are obvious.

[Heartofice]

12 minutes ago, kiko said:

The correct wording of this thesis needs to be appended. Add a "...by British people". 

You guys have this blind spot in your humor detection unit. I believe the reasons for that are obvious.

Sorry, I forgot that Germany was recognised around the world for its top class comedy and sense of humour. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

Housing is a big problem, quality as well as quantity. There’s a lot of older housing stock that is insufficiently insulated to deal with the colder winters and hotter summers.

And a lot of our newer housing stock, depending on the building firm, is substandard, built by subcontractors and from cheap materials. 
 

Many of those properties are still insufficiently insulated, and/or are not ventillated sufficiently to avoid mould.

Edited April 13, 2023 by Derfel Cadarn

[kiko]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Sorry, I forgot that Germany was recognised around the world for its top class comedy and sense of humour. 

Thanks for proving my point, I guess.

[Raja]

7 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Not everyone is as scrupulous though and I hear horror stories from friends in London being hit with huge rent rises overnight.

I'm coming up to a year now and thankfully my rent is the same for next year but a friend had an increase of 400 and she moved out. I'm in East London so there are defo more expensive places around the city.

Prior to moving over here, I thought it would be relatively straight forward finding a place but London has been the hardest place to find a place to rent compared to the other cities in the UK that I've lived in ( Reading isn't a city, to be fair)

I am so far away from buying a house though, it's depressing. Also, my credit score is terrible cause I'm relatively new to the UK.

[Heartofice]

It seems like both parties have been making noises about prioritising housing for the next election, its only taken them 20 years to work out that housing costs is probably the key issue underpinning most societal problems. Not that anything will ever really be done about it, planning will never really be improved enough and the same bad fixes we've had for the past decades will be rolled out again. More along the lines of making it easier to borrow more money rather than dealing with the actual issue.

Unless we actually do return permanently to a more normal level of interest rates this is going to be a problem for a long time, and for many young people who are basically priced out of ever being able to own their own homes and are being held hostage to insane rental prices, something is going to break.

 

[mormont]

7 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Housing is a big problem, quality as well as quantity. There’s a lot of older housing stock that is insufficiently insulated to deal with the colder winters and hotter summers.

And a lot of our newer housing stock, depending on the building firm, is substandard, built by subcontractors and from cheap materials. 
 

Many of those properties are still insufficiently insulated, and/or are not ventillated sufficiently to avoid mould.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-65136313

It's a shocking waste, a classic example of externalities. Landlords don't pay the heating bill, so they have no incentive to invest. The result is tenants paying money they shouldn't have to, environmental damage and waste, and people suffering in the cold and damp for no reason. Capitalism. 

I've been seeing 20% rises in rent year on year for rented properties up here, for student properties. Consider that for a minute in the context of rises in student support in the low single figures in percentage terms - 2.8% this year for English students. And yet tenants pay it because they're desperate. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

51 minutes ago, mormont said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-65136313

It's a shocking waste, a classic example of externalities. Landlords don't pay the heating bill, so they have no incentive to invest. The result is tenants paying money they shouldn't have to, environmental damage and waste, and people suffering in the cold and damp for no reason. Capitalism. 

I've been seeing 20% rises in rent year on year for rented properties up here, for student properties. Consider that for a minute in the context of rises in student support in the low single figures in percentage terms - 2.8% this year for English students. And yet tenants pay it because they're desperate. 

Lot of dodgy insulation on offer too:

Retroactive cavity insulation. Concerns of health problems, and if not done properly, can result in cold bridging.

Foam insulation, which many lenders will refuse to touch. Heard horror stories of owners having to replace their entire roof (joists and all) in order to sell.

[dog-days]

3 hours ago, Raja said:

I'm coming up to a year now and thankfully my rent is the same for next year but a friend had an increase of 400 and she moved out. I'm in East London so there are defo more expensive places around the city.

Prior to moving over here, I thought it would be relatively straight forward finding a place but London has been the hardest place to find a place to rent compared to the other cities in the UK that I've lived in ( Reading isn't a city, to be fair)

I am so far away from buying a house though, it's depressing. Also, my credit score is terrible cause I'm relatively new to the UK.

Would it need to be London? I've often wished that I'd moved to London for a few years, because living in a shared house a few zones out but with a London salary could have let me save a deposit for somewhere else relatively quickly. It would have been miserable, but I don't think there's a fun way to save for a deposit these days. 

I spent part of Tuesday scrubbing the walls in a corner of my room with sugar soap to get rid of the mould. The damp isn't too bad in this house – I've seen late Victorian/early Edwardian HMOs in much worse states with the paint peeling off everywhere you look and huge grey-brown patches on the ceilings – still, it does feel like a place that hasn't seen serious investment for around twenty years. The new landlords have started making improvements, but not so far to the extent of replacing the aged rattling steam engine of a boiler – which would surely have made sense given that they're the ones paying for the utilities. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, dog-days said:

Would it need to be London? I've often wished that I'd moved to London for a few years, because living in a shared house a few zones out but with a London salary could have let me save a deposit for somewhere else relatively quickly. It would have been miserable, but I don't think there's a fun way to save for a deposit these days. 

I spent part of Tuesday scrubbing the walls in a corner of my room with sugar soap to get rid of the mould. The damp isn't too bad in this house – I've seen late Victorian/early Edwardian HMOs in much worse states with the paint peeling off everywhere you look and huge grey-brown patches on the ceilings – still, it does feel like a place that hasn't seen serious investment for around twenty years. The new landlords have started making improvements, but not so far to the extent of replacing the aged rattling steam engine of a boiler – which would surely have made sense given that they're the ones paying for the utilities. 

Sorry to hear that :/

The key to avoiding mould seems to be (assuming its not due to penetration from outside or rising damp, in which case you need the walls repaired and damp-proofing) heating and ventilation. Don’t hang washing inside of you can help it, keep  air circulating and get fresh air inside.

if there’s a bad area, get a plug-in dehumidifier  (small onea are pretty cheap). Get a thermometer that measures humidity (again mini ones are cheap). 
 

Maybe ask the landlord to pay for a reputable damp specialist to look the place over - lcosts a couple hundrdd £.

Make sure the kitchen is well ventilated when cooking.

Edited April 13, 2023 by Derfel Cadarn

[Raja]

2 hours ago, dog-days said:

Would it need to be London? I've often wished that I'd moved to London for a few years, because living in a shared house a few zones out but with a London salary could have let me save a deposit for somewhere else relatively quickly. It would have been miserable, but I don't think there's a fun way to save for a deposit these days.

Nah, it doesn't. The vagaries of doctor training in the UK means that I could end up anywhere in the country depending on how I rank places etc, so it will depend on where I end up which I should find out in the next couple of years.

So it's not something I really need to think about *too* much at the moment, but when you see that half of first time buyers require parents helping out, I'm not that optimistic.

[Raja]

Hmm. Nurses seem like they're going to reject the pay deal put forward by the union reps.

[dog-days]

29 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Sorry to hear that :/

The key to avoiding mould seems to be (assuming its not due to penetration from outside or rising damp, in which case you need the walls repaired and damp-proofing) heating and ventilation. Don’t hang washing inside of you can help it, keep  air circulating and get fresh air inside.

if there’s a bad area, get a plug-in dehumidifier  (small onea are pretty cheap). Get a thermometer that measures humidity (again mini ones are cheap). 
 

Maybe ask the landlord to pay for a reputable damp specialist to look the place over - lcosts a couple hundrdd £.

Make sure the kitchen is well ventilated when cooking.

Thanks! Luckily it does seem to be just mould and nothing more structural. I've been running a small dehumidifier all winter during the day. Knew I should be opening the windows but couldn't face coming back to a freezing room. No dryer - very few shared houses have dryers because of the cost of running them; either the landlord foots the bill and is unhappy or the tenants do and start fighting with each other about the level of usage - so everyone dries their clothes inside. 

It was probably once a solidly built house and still is to an extent No noise comes through from the neighbouring terraces, so the walls must be fairly thick. 

[dog-days]

8 minutes ago, Raja said:

Nah, it doesn't. The vagaries of doctor training in the UK means that I could end up anywhere in the country depending on how I rank places etc, so it will depend on where I end up which I should find out in the next couple of years.

So it's not something I really need to think about *too* much at the moment, but when you see that half of first time buyers require parents helping out, I'm not that optimistic.

Hope you end up somewhere both nice to live and affordable! 

[Derfel Cadarn]

48 minutes ago, dog-days said:

Thanks! Luckily it does seem to be just mould and nothing more structural. I've been running a small dehumidifier all winter during the day. Knew I should be opening the windows but couldn't face coming back to a freezing room. No dryer - very few shared houses have dryers because of the cost of running them; either the landlord foots the bill and is unhappy or the tenants do and start fighting with each other about the level of usage - so everyone dries their clothes inside. 

It was probably once a solidly built house and still is to an extent No noise comes through from the neighbouring terraces, so the walls must be fairly thick. 

Maybe open all the windows for either 10 mins twice a day, or once for an hour a day?

[Derfel Cadarn]

Also, are the windows double-glazed, not too old, and do they have trickle-vents to let in a small but steady supply of fresh air?

When its cold, are you seeing condensation on the windows? If so then there’s a lot of damp inside the house. The issue isn’t necessarily the windows, its just that damp will show on the windows as condensation.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Raja said:

Hmm. Nurses seem like they're going to reject the pay deal put forward by the union reps.

Our govt has just put a bunch more healthcare roles on our residency green lane list. While that means there's an option for disgruntled British healthcare workers, the problem, aside from the challenges for anyone permanently moving as far away from home as it's possible to go, is that our healthcare workers are running up against the same BS as UK healthcare workers.

Re housing - housing quality is a problem you can only think about when you have a house to live in. So to me the first problem to address is supply. Once you have sufficient supply then the market can be used to sort out the quality issue. No sane person will voluntarily live in poor conditions when adequate conditions are affordably available. So owners of squalid houses and flats will either need to bring them up to scratch or sell them. Assuming modern building codes are decent all new housing should establish a decent quality floor that existing housing stock would need to approach to be able to command comparable rents. But building out supply, esp for low income earners, will need to be a govt venture, since the market will not provide for poor people as there is no profit in it for new builds.

Edited April 13, 2023 by The Anti-Targ

[Raja]

1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Our govt has just put a bunch more healthcare roles on our residency green lane list.

Yeah, I noticed that. Here it's 5 years till you become a permanent resident whereas in NZ you can essentially become one as soon as you get there if you're a doctor.

It's quite tempting as I have family in Auckland but I've moved around so much that I kinda want to stay in one place for a bit.

[The Anti-Targ]

18 minutes ago, Raja said:

Yeah, I noticed that. Here it's 5 years till you become a permanent resident whereas in NZ you can essentially become one as soon as you get there if you're a doctor.

It's quite tempting as I have family in Auckland but I've moved around so much that I kinda want to stay in one place for a bit.

Don't bloody move to Auckland (if you do come one day)! Otherwise you are most welcome. 

[Raja]

13 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Don't bloody move to Auckland

Hahaha why not? I know everyone goes there but still!