UK General Election Feb. 2005

[TheEarl]

Housing isn't actually seen as a big political issue (yet). It's regarded more as a fact of life - big population, small land, booming economy. House prices will always be dear. I am one of those who it will affect (living in rented accoms atm). Just one of those things to my mind.

Shared equity is where a house is owned by several people who presumably all live in it at the same time. Good idea actually - people would find it easier to get on the property ladder if they could share the cost with a friend. Equal risk rather than the uncertain income of a lodger.


This is actually one of the reasons I like Howard. Housing won't win him the election. But it's still something which he's seen that he thinks he can improve. And he's willing to act on it.

The Earl

 

[steve w]

Ogg,

I would disagree with you about the relative power of the PM and president. most political scientists take the view that the PM has greater power. As we have no constitution, there is no formalised system of checks and balances against the executive. Notwithstanding some Human Rights legislation, the UK courts have less room to counterbalance legislation. Also, in the US the Senate and Congress committees have far more power than the Parliamentary sub-committees do here. Finally, as we all saw to our horror, Blair can take the country to war without the expressed approval of either his Cabinet, or Parliament.

On Ami's point, I can answer based on my existing attempts to build a house. Britain is crowded, but far less so than, say, the Netherlands. We have a strange system here.

If you are a large company, you can buy a field that has no planning permission (building permit). You can then spend thousands lobbying the local authority to let you build a string of poorly-built, environmentally-unsound and badly-planned housing. If you succeed, the value of that land multiplies. However (and crucially), the local authority gets a percentage of that increase in value. This is a large sum for cash-strapped local authorities, and means they have a vsted interest in agreeing permits for large companies.

If you are Joe Average, and you buy a piece of land that already has permission to build a house on it, you then face 12-18 months of bureaucracy to get permission to actually go ahead. The local authority has no financial stake, and therefore you're merely a pain in the ass.

The upshot is that large companies own most of the potential building land. They deliberately release this very slowly in the form of developments, which means that supply is very restricted and therefore the cost increases each year. I live in a very rural county of 150,000 people. There are around twenty building plots for sale in the entire county. Most counties would have a lower ration than that. The average cost of building land in the UK is around £1m ($1.8mUS) per acre.

That's how it works (or doesn't).

 

[Xelebes]

Oh God, not another election.

First it was Canada's, then Australia's and then the US. The UK, already. And let us not forget the turmoilous Ukraine election that they are still wrangling over there.

And I'm still recovering from a municipal election just two weeks ago and right now diving into a provincial election!


AAAAAAArrrrgh!

Now I'll have to consider whether or not commit sepukku, hari-kari or suicide!

 

[Weird Harold]

Who would select the new President if shereads got her hands on GWB?

We took care of that Tuesday.

The US has a strict order of succession:

The Vice President takes office if the President dies or is incapacitated.

If the Vice President is also dead or incapacitated, the Speaker of the House is next in line.

The line of sucession goes deeper than those two steps, but there is a specific progression and ample precedent for unusual situations.

Gerald R. Ford was selected to replace Spiro Agnew as Nixon's VP when Agnew resigned. Then Nixon resigned and Ford became our only President not elected by the Electoral College.

At any rate, the US doesn't have to wait around leaderless in an emergency until a quorum of the ruling party can gather to slct a successor.

If Blair was struck by lightning, who would be in charge until a new PM was selected? I know who comes next as head of state -- Royalsuccessionis prety clear cut most of the time, but I've never understood who the head of government's understudy is.

 

[amicus]

1.8 million an acre? Christ...no wonder...is vertical development not approved in GB?

amicus...

 

[oggbashan]

1.8 million an acre? Christ...no wonder...is vertical development not approved in GB?

amicus...

Not in rural areas. In towns vertical development for housing has been blighted by poorly designed and shoddily built tower blocks from the 1960s, most of which are now being demolished.

In my town a two bedroom 'starter home' costs £150,000. A one bedroom flat converted from an old (1890s) building costs £90,000, more if off-road parking is included. That is cheap for my county.

One of my daughters and her partner started to buy their house 3 years ago. It cost £93,000. It would now sell for £160,000. That is a good profit on their investment but if they had waited to buy they now couldn't afford it.

My 'old' house cost £23,000 25 years ago. That was a struggle to finance then. Now it is on the market at £305,000.

Og

 

[TheEarl]

If Blair was struck by lightning, who would be in charge until a new PM was selected? I know who comes next as head of state -- Royalsuccessionis prety clear cut most of the time, but I've never understood who the head of government's understudy is.

John Prescott is the deputy Prime Minister but I think the general reaction of the British people would be a little bit of shock if he actually ended up in charge. A good politican, but very left-wing for New Labour (a term denoting Labour's shift from Left to centre) and has a tendency to do stupid things. Like landing a sweet left hook on someone who threw an eggs at him.

That was quite funny actually. This protestor threw an egg at him and started pointing and laughing until he realised that Prescott's reaction was not going to be that of your average politician .

Prescott would probably be temporarily in charge and the party would vote to choose the next leader. At the moment, I think Gordon Brown (the equivalent of Blair's running mate and the Chancellor of the Exchequer) would walk it, but given a year or so and he'd have serious competition.

The Earl

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Secretary of Education is 14th in line.

 

[amicus]

Ogbashan....Appreciate the information...and I suppose that in some ways it is not out of line...I lived in Hawaii for several years and land prices were very high there...although at the time I was there, I think you had to have 'Hawaiian blood' to actually own land and then I think it was for a limited time.

California is also very high priced for land and homes in the urban areas...which most of Southern California (socal) is, this is due to overcrowding in the main, but also to restrictive building codes and housing rules.

I bought a 3 bedroom newly built home in Washington State, in about 1976 for $23.500 about 14,000 lbs...it was on a double lot, just over a quarter acre.

As is well known, I advocate a free market place and minimum government intervention in all things and tend to social are market problems as being the result of restriction and regulation of land and resources.

I drove a motor cycle over a lot of empty countryside in England, only sheep in evidence, in about 1970 and did not notice an absence of buildable land.

Does this hold true for all of the UK...that homes and apartments are scarce and high priced?

Government manipulation and planning also plays a part here, as the inner city, or 'old town' areas degenerate and people move business and homes to the outskirts, laws are passed to prevent them from leaving the area to support the older down town areas.

Is the general feeling that it is simply a scarcity of land that created the problems there...or is it just accepted that your government is limited growth?

Thanks again...amicus...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/1413731007/reviews/026-5937196-8297265

 

[Weird Harold]

Prescott would probably be temporarily in charge and the party would vote to choose the next leader. At the moment, I think Gordon Brown (the equivalent of Blair's running mate and the Chancellor of the Exchequer) would walk it, but given a year or so and he'd have serious competition.

Is the Deputy PM one of the offices you pretty much know who will be chosen if a given party gains a majority? It seems that is the office hat would equate to "a running mate."

The US has always had the number 2 position firmly locked down from the very bginning with the office of Vice President.

Lincoln's Assination and the subsequent impeachment of his vice president, then president, Andrew Johnson revealed a flaw in the two deep succession -- who would take office if Johnson was convicted and evicted from the white House.

Somewhere along the line, the Speaker of the House was added and then during the Cold War with the fear of having large chunks of the government wiped out in one moment, the list that puts the Secretary ofEducation 14th in line was developed.

Spiro Agnew's resignation as VP established the precedent of the Congress selecting a replacement and our "Chain of Command" reached it's current state.

The thing is, that we know before the election who the top two spots are on each ballot. The VP slot on the ticket often has as much to do with success or failure as the Presidential Candidate does.

I suppose without history of assassinations we're more conscious of the importance of the VP slot. I just wondered if other countries give it much thought?

 

[oggbashan]

As is well known, I advocate a free market place and minimum government intervention in all things and tend to social are market problems as being the result of restriction and regulation of land and resources.

I drove a motor cycle over a lot of empty countryside in England, only sheep in evidence, in about 1970 and did not notice an absence of buildable land.

Does this hold true for all of the UK...that homes and apartments are scarce and high priced?

Government manipulation and planning also plays a part here, as the inner city, or 'old town' areas degenerate and people move business and homes to the outskirts, laws are passed to prevent them from leaving the area to support the older down town areas.

Is the general feeling that it is simply a scarcity of land that created the problems there...or is it just accepted that your government is limited growth?

Thanks again...amicus...

The problem of land values in the UK is complicated. The strongest factor IS market forces. The manipulation of inner city versus outskirts isn't a problem. Inner city values can be very high, much higher than in my area and there is significant 'gentification' of former depressed areas that are close to city centres.

Most 'homes' now are for much smaller people units than in the past. Houses that were built for extended families now are split for several nuclear families. People living alone are much more common than they were in the 1960s or 1970s. Each wants its own 'unit' with more facilities, such as en-suite bathrooms, than their parents or grandparents generation used or even wanted. The demand for housing is way ahead of population growth.

Governments have tinkered with Planning legislation over the years. Much higher densities per acre are permitted now than even a couple of years ago. All that seems to do is maximise profits for the land developer IF the developer can acquire land. The difference between the value of agriculural land and land with permission for housing can make a farmer who owns the land a multimillionaire in the few minutes required to grant planning permission.

Mrs Thatcher's Conservative Government sold off much Social Housing to the tenants and made capitalists of them. Although social housing still exists in a variety of formats it is much less common than it was. The majority of people in the UK live in privately owned housing. The privately owned for rent sector is increasing for people who cannot afford to reach the bottom rung of the house/flat purchase ladder but the rents have to reflect the cost of the house purchase to the owner. Rent regulation is only for those on welfare. Most landlords do not want 'welfare' tenants and are open about it.

The problem in the UK is regional. House prices have risen by different rates in different areas and cheap housing is rare anywhere. Housing is always expensive near employment or within reasonable (by UK standards) travelling distance of work.

Another factor is flood plains. In the past flood plains were not built on. In the last 20 years they have been, sometimes with catastrophic results in a storm. Now large areas of SE England are shown as flood plains and building on them is discouraged by government and the market. If you cannot sell a house there is no point in building it. If you buy a house on a flood plain, you, the owner, cannot get finance or insurance and you will not be able to sell on to a future buyer.

Compared with France the UK, particularly SE England is short of building land. That forces the price of land ever upwards.

Og

 

[Just-Legal]

I have a headache and can barely see, let alone type out a decent response, so all I will say is this.

I used to be, for most of my life when I had even a vague understanding of politics, a Labour Girl. I'm not any more.

I will be voting Liberal Democrat, despite the fact the very place I'll be voting for has my partner's great aunt running for the Conservatives. In fact, I think its because *she* is running, and I like the LD candidate a lot.

The woman does not know when to leave something alone. I deliberately do not bring up politics at family gatherings because our views differ so much, and she will drag it into conversation. I keep quiet (his family doesn't like me much), and she attempts to humiliate me.

Why?

Because I don't agree with her.

 

[steve w]

Ami,

Your key word there was "buildable". As Ogg rightly points out, much of the land touted for building (or built upon already) is liable to flooding, so is actualy less than useful to build on in the future. Britain has loads of land. 50% of the land mass is used for agriculture, which supplies only 1% of GDP and at prices artifically inflated by the European Common Agricultural Policy, which generally benefits less efficient agriculture.

One spin-off of high building land costs is seldom reported. Retail outlets find that building or owning their property is massively expensive (often four or five times more than the cost of the same thing in France, for example). They thus need to have higher prices than other countries for the same product, to generate enough profit to recover their higher build costs. This is one reason why British prices for almost anything are among the highest in the world, especially for land-hungry things such as car dealerships or supermarkets.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Despite our Constitution and web of laws, the last couple of US election have driven home for me how much our system of government depends on mutual trust and respect between the parties and all sorts of non-legal factors. When all is said and done, it’s the explicit co-operation and compliance of the citizenry that makes democracy possible, and I worry that this is becoming frayed and stretched to its limits in the drive to win at any cost.

The way things work in the US, elections are overseen by partisan politicians. The woman in charge of the Florida vote in the contested 2000 election was also the Republican secretary of state of Florda and the head of Geroge Bush’s re-election committee in the state, hardly in a position to inspire trust in her impartiality. It’s no wonder Democrats were very suspicious of her actions.

And what would happen if there were real fraud in an election as contentious as the recent one? What if some of those paperless voting machines were simply ignored. Who would know? What could they do about it? Who would have the power to investigate and set things right?

As I say, American democracy depends ultimately not so much on laws or an esepcially clever system of government, but on the trust and faith of the electorate. If that should be abused or ignored, we’d be no better than a banana republic, and it seems like there’s little we could do about it.

Once we lose faith in the honesty of the system, we're pretty much screwed.

---dr.M.