UK Politics VIII

[Poobah]

Our country is getting increasingly fucked up. As much as I dislike (and indeed at the general election my vote was more against them, rather than for any other party) Labour... I kinda feel like maybe we should get them back next time around.

The tories are doing crazy tory things like increasing my fellow students' tuition fees (I'm attending university in Scotland so I'm protected by socialism) so they pretty much lost my vote with that single policy. And the lib dems are just sitting there wagging their tails whenever their tory masters look in their direction so fuck that. If only there were a broadly moderate and broadly left learning federalist party that I could vote for...

Getting back to actual UK politics for a second (I know, I'm letting the side down), I'd like to congratulate the government on their solution to English higher education funding. It really takes an extraordinary level of dedication to come up with a solution this bad. Fees tripled, but with no extra cash for universities to compete internationally? It's a hell of a solution - screw everyone. Graduates saddled with enormous debt, universities get no money yet government control is actually increased, early repayment of your fees will be penalised but paying up front is fine (so students with wealthy parents pay less than people from a poor background who graduate to a high-paying job), cap on fees retained, no extra cash for students to live on while studying: yeah, this is about as bad a solution as could conceivably have been found.

This quotation... makes me rage so hard :( Why did we put these people in charge. I have to agree with the sentiment I saw in a few posts following this that pretty much the idea is to move towards a US style education system where the poor get totally fucked over and priced out, and the rich kids get a nice and of course well deserved since they're the right sort of chaps, boost towards good jobs.

If a house is priced too high it won't sell.

Yes, of course, the market will solve the problems... except that the market is being forcibly propped up because if house prices are allowed to fall to levels which ordinary people can afford in more than 50 years then people like you are going to lose a lot of (theoretical) money since your properties will now be worth less.

I should not be taxed a second time because I choose to use my money differently (and more wisely) than they.

Half of the reason you're being criticised is because you're being laughably arrogant and humourless.

Someone doesn't appear to be listening. I am buying a second property to LIVE IN.

Unless you have mutant superpowers you cannot live simultaneously in two places at once.

Also, observe how I managed to quote your different posts and make vague and somewhat pointless comments in response to them all in a single post, instead of making five or six. I can sympathise in general with the sentiment that punishing people for something which is aparrently profitable is bad but mostly this is shortsightedness. The banks were making loads of profits, short term profits... which then exploded and melted the entire economy. BTL may well end the same way with a massive crash if this sort of stuff isn't reined in soon. But human beings are masters of self delusion. When the shit hits the fan everyone will be throwing blame around and trying to find a few individuals to crucify but noone will really ask "why did this come about" or if they do will certainly not be interested in broad trends and such, just a simple "who is responsible, who can we blame?" is what they will want.

Since I'm building up a nice large store of debt as a student I doubt I'll be living anywhere except my parents or grandparents houses for at least the next couple of decades, unless house pricing crashes. I'm fortunate in that my grandparents on both sides of my family own their own houses, and just last year my parents finally paid off their 25 year morgage, so I'd imagine that I have somewhere that I can live at least without my already shaky finances getting further raped by some landlord.

[mormont]

Poobah: stay in Scotland. Prices are still crazy, but at least they're just about affordable in most places. (Average £153K as opposed to £230K nationally.) And we can always use more BwBers up here!

(Where are you studying, by the way?)

[Poobah]

I'm studying at Dundee.

[mormont]

I'm studying at Dundee.

Ah, Queen's Poly, as we know it on the other side of the Tay Bridge. ;) Well, the house prices are certainly pretty reasonable there, except in the Ferry perhaps, but there's a reason for that!

[VarysTheSpider]

EDIT: Mormont, how is the demographic development in the UK? Is it similar to Germany, (i.e. a probably shrinking population, depending on the future amount of immigration)? If so, it could be dangerous to put all the eggs in one basket, i.e. your house...

In the UK we actually have the opposite situation. The population is growing strongly, and the demand for housing is further compounded by the fact that increasing numbers of our population want to live alone. I think housing prices are inflated, but the days of being able to buy a house for the prices our parents paid are long over.

Some more info and scary graphs http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article22616.html

[Poobah]

Ah, Queen's Poly, as we know it on the other side of the Tay Bridge.

Hey man, Dundee is a proper university!

[Zoë Sumra]

Hey man, Dundee is a proper university!

*performs the traditional St Andrews laugh*

[Eurytus]

Half of the reason you're being criticised is because you're being laughably arrogant and humourless.

Well at least you admit to ad hominem attacks. I guess that's a start.

Unless you have mutant superpowers you cannot live simultaneously in two places at once.

Nowhere did I say I would be. The fact remains that I am buying the house to live in. I am not BTL.

Also, observe how I managed to quote your different posts and make vague and somewhat pointless comments in response to them all in a single post, instead of making five or six.

Do you think that merits some sort of praise?

[Poobah]

Well at least you admit to ad hominem attacks. I guess that's a start.

I'm never afraid to buck the norms of debate and not hide a personal attack behind sophistry.

Nowhere did I say I would be. The fact remains that I am buying the house to live in. I am not BTL.

You're buying a house, and letting a house. You are not living in both houses. You have bought and you are letting.

Do you think that merits some sort of praise?

As opposed to multiposting, yes.

[Lyanna Stark]

Why exactly would it be good policy? To reward the profligate?

To encourage people to spend what they don't have?

To waste rather than save?

With views like that its no wonder Britain has a truly astounding level of personal debt, quite beyond that of mortgages. Its encouraged. For those who try to portray all the problems at the door of housing policy they might want to consider that people appear unable to manage their expenditure in areas quite removed from home ownership.

Let me give you a clue:

In Sweden I could perfectly fine afford a property if I lived together with someone. It would be easy to put away money on two incomes (I am not known for any expensive habits, have never had a credit card, etc). I was brought up Lutheran so we were taught not to spend.

Yet here I am in the UK, both my husband and I work full time, yet with the rent costs, it would take us 15 years to save up for a deposit. And trust me, we DO NOT have an expensive lifestyle. We don't use credit cards, we don't go abroad on holidays. You just have no clue what prices are like vs people's incomes.

And yes, our rent is WAY over what people would pay for the mortgage. Ofc, with the average price for a property in our area is way over £250k+, and you need at least 25% deposit, it's not like we'll ever get a shot at anything else than a shitty private rent anyway. We are too rich for social housing and way too poor for getting on the property ladder.

FYI our neighbours are trying to sell their 2 bedroom (more like two cupboard) starter home. A terraced house with a garden the size of most people's bathroom for £198k.

The shortage of properties in our area also means you can sell your house for absolutely whatever you want. It will always sell. You live in total fantasy land if you think there is anything like proper market mechanics running the show. People with money, mostly inherited, turn into BTL landlords. Normal people have no chance of getting onto the ladder. Ever.

So tell me again how on earth us people on normal incomes can save up for a mortgage again? Taking into account a 35-45% deposit you need for a good rate. Please, tell me how we have "been living over our income" since we never have.

EDIT: Ofc, there is a solution for us: when our parents die, we inherit, and can then charge someone else a stupid amount of money for selling their house. Bank of mum and dad!! Great, no?

Absolutely and utterly incorrect.

I scrimped and saved to pay off my houses mortgage myself, when I was living in it. I used no rental income to pay off the mortgage AT ALL. I did it myself.

My second house I will also pay for myself.

Its typical of the subject that people would choose to portray all landlords as corrupt vultures.

No, it's correct. Rents are far higher than mortgage payments on average. On an average two bedroom house, if you can actually get a mortgage for it, you will pay substantially less than if you rent. As there is no cap on private rents, they are going crazy. As long as there is pressure from people who want to move into the area, prices will rise. And they have, and continue to. We live in a tiny rented starter home despite having a kid, simply because we cannot afford even a big two bedroom house. The rents are just way too high, even with two incomes.

To me, this is a stupid and really scary system that should not be allowed to exist, but what powers do I have? According to you I am just a poor idiot who is just envious.

[The Iceman of the North]

To me, this is a stupid and really scary system that should not be allowed to exist, but what powers do I have? According to you I am just a poor idiot who is just envious.

You can always pack up and move back where you came from, bloody immigrant. ;)

[Werthead]

It's been said many times before, but somehow the latest policy announcement from the coalition made me wonder again how many Lib Dem voters are sitting at home wondering how a Lib Dem government - a Lib Dem government [/Kinnock] - is introducing a compulsory 'work for your benefits' programme. After tripling tuition fees and slashing the social housing budget. Regardless of what you think of the merits of the policy, to see Lib Dem ministers defending it is astonishing and somewhat weird.

You can only blame the deficit for a certain amount of this: the rest is down to the quiet takeover of the party by the 'Orange Book' faction, hardly commented on at the time but now becoming more clearly significant with pretty much every announcement from the coalition. (Remember, in the Orange Book David Laws argued for the abolition of the NHS and Nick Clegg for repatriating agricultural policy from the EU, ideas that would be regarded as on the radical fringe even of the Tory party.)

As an aforementioned LibDem voter, I am pretty stunned by what's happening, to the tune of maybe never voting LibDem again. However, my local MP (the redoubtable Bob Russell) seems to be pretty much in the same boat and I get the impression he'd have walked if the coalition government hadn't gone to some lengths to reassure him about steps being taken to curb child poverty (his big campaigning platform). If those steps don't materialise, I could quite easily see him jumping ship to Labour or going independent.

Back in May I could kind of see the reasoning behind the coalition. The country was in a financial crisis and if the LibDems had refused to at least consider the coalition, they'd have been criticised for sending everyone back to the polls and faffing around for yet another month, with the result being either an outright Tory victory, a Labour-LibDem pact or simply a second hung Parliament and the need to form coalition anyway. In addition, the LibDems were being promised things very close to their hearts, such as voting reform (even if in a watered-down form).

Unfortunately, I now get the distinct impression that, in order to get that fricking voting reform and a few other concessions too minor to really get worked up about, they've had to sell their principles down the river and betrayed a lot of their campaign promises. Tripling tuition fees rather than getting rid of them as they'd promised, even as a long-term plan? Right. The problem is that now we've seen what having a coalition government does, people who'd happily have voted for the voting reforms a few months ago may now vote against anything that makes future coalitions more likely in the future. Bit of an own goal there, I think.

On the 'work for your benefits' plan, if it's simply an extension of the New Deal (say a version that goes on indefinitely rather than the time-limited version at the moment) where you can work anywhere that has you, that's not unreasonable, but the manual labour thing is just surreal.

[mormont]

Wert: as I say, I think people underestimated (or discounted) just how radical the 'Orange Book' crowd are. I mean, I did that and I'd been told this stuff. At least, people seem to have believed that the party membership controlled them rather than the other way around. But the election result, in hindsight, provided them with the leverage they needed to escape from that control, to ditch bits of their manifesto and be more radical. I don't think the 'forced manual work' thing is a betrayal of the principles of some of the Lib Dem leadership at all, though it certainly is of their members and voters. I think it's the kind of politics they genuinely subscribe to.

I heard Danny Alexander confidently asserting that the coalition's policies - and this one in particular - were going to see a massive vote for the Lib Dems in 2015. Putting aside the obvious laugh of comparing that to their present position in the polls, it's a revealing remark. He isn't going along with this because the bad old Tories have his arm twisted up his back: it's a policy he believes in. Indeed, if you read accounts of the coalition negotiations, you find the Tories were surprised how easy the Lib Dem leadership were to deal with. Meaning, they were much further to the right than even the Tories expected them to be.

It'll be interesting to see whether the Lib Dem leadership can actually control the party... that will dictate whether this coalition lasts to 2015.

[Hereward]

There was a reason I was flirting with a LibDem vote. I've been waiting for years for a economically and socially liberal party. I'm relatively happy, defence cuts, my own impending redundancy and child benefit excepted.

[TrueMetis]

Just stumbled upon this List of the world most overvalued real estate.

6. Britain Overvalued by: 32 per cent

[MinDonner]

So Cameron visits China... looks like the conversation went something like "Hey, remember that last lot, that were always banging on about human rights or some boring hippy crap? Well, there's a new sheriff in town. Give us yer money and we promise not to mention any of that ever again!"

[Hereward]

So, no change in policy towards China then. I remember the Chinese state visit to Britain under Labour. I seem to recall high sided vehicles being parked in front of the protestors so the Chinese didn't even have to look at them as they drove by.

[ants]

On Lib Dems, regardless of what their personal politics was they had to do this, as they were screwed either way. Labour didn't have enough seats to form an effective coalition, so if they hadn't gone with the Tories it would have been another election. In any re-run votes become far more two-party concentrated, as people try to get one of the two real candidates over the line - and the fact the lib dems wouldn't have gone coalition means it would have been only two options (Torries alone or a libdem/labour coalition/labour power).

The LibDems would have been slaughtered. With no silver lining at all.

Instead, they went into the coalition where quite possibly their vote will be slaughtered at the next election. But their is the silver lining that they will have some election reform, and there is some small possibility they may accrue some benefit from having been in government.

Frankly, an easy choice out of those two options.

[Night Watchman]

So, big protest in London...I wish I was there. I'll be sure to be at the next one, and there will be more to come.

[MinDonner]

Did they just nick a sofa out of Tory HQ? That beats any student protest I ever went to.