The General Election Thread

[supercity88]

Do we really need more housing? If all the vacant properties (including those used for a few days at a time by rich foreigners) were turned over to the people, I'd bet there would be more than enough to go round. And if there are to be more houses, then the plans also need to be in place for the supporting infrastructure - extra schools, for one. Unfortunately, houses seem to spring up in their dozens, and the existing communities are just expected to cope.

It's quite a complex debate, and no one is quite sure, you are quite right in saying that there are under used houses, however they are mostly private property and as such the owners can more or less do what they wish including leaving them vacant, as for infrastructure there is such thing as Planning Gain, i.e developers have to include new infrastructure in proportion to the number and type of houses they build, as to brown field sites it depends where they are and if people are willing to shell out a fortune to live in a dodgy area

It's not really complex with social housing - if you're under-occupying your social housing the local council could place a homeless person or family there.

The issue with housing in this country ( I work for a housebuilder) is that the land market is unregulated and therefore it is very difficult to get a proportionate "planning gain" from a scheme. The fact of the matter is, in order to buy a site to build on you have to make the highest bid, but each developer actually clearly wants to spend the least - so how do they save money? By telling councils it is unviable to provide x % "affordable housing" (social housing) or that they cannot pay as much on infrastructure (education, library, highways contributions etc).

Yes there are plenty of "empty homes" though nowhere near as many as people think - not enough to answer the problem. Also, these are generally either second homes or are in areas of decline. The only people who could live there are those on the social housing register, but the costs in renovating these place is huge and no private developers (of a large scale) will touch them.

The regulation of land will not happen though - it is a right to a landowner to sell to the highest bidder. And planning gain is a good way of trying to get some money back from the grant of planning permission. The issue is that you have to build the houses first - they then generate the income that developers can use to pay to the councils. Cashflow. Technical consultants just have to ensure transport, drainage etc is below a certain point to say there is no issue on a site. So for all of those people who see a road full of cars, it doesn't always mean that it can't take another 100 homes "technically". But the original poster is 100% correct. Build homes, and then the infrastructure, jobs etc should follow. (should because many councils sit on the money they receive from planning gain - particularly at county level).

 

[Len Rum]

Shoe-in route for a Labour victory in May........
1. Alan Johnson back
2. Miliband (the Elder) in support providing visible credibility as Miliband (the Younger) becomes more evanescent
3. Into bed with the Lib Dems
4. UKIP continues to erode the Tory vote

Then wait till the country is on its knees again and ask to Dave to sort it out....again.

Don't call him Dave, his name's David William Donald.

 

[malg]

Heard a bit on Radio 4 about the Royal Mail selling off parts of Mill Hill for housing, and a local councillor banging on about Boris Johnson basically letting Royal Mail get their own way. Some other politician was complaining on Sunday that all journalists are giving Johnson an easy ride, and that he never gets the same in-depth grilling that other politicians get. Hopefully some journalist with a set of balls will ask Johnson if £1690 a month is really affordable to normal working class Londoners:

Boris Johnson criticised for approving Royal Mail housing scheme
Boris Johnson granted approval on Friday for a central London housing scheme on Royal Mail land that will include supposedly “affordable” two-bed flats that could cost up to £1,690 a month to rent.

The London mayor overrode objections from the Labour-led local authorities of Camden and Islington and gave consent to the privatised Royal Mail’s 681-unit revamp of its Mount Pleasant sorting office site, which is believed to be worth £1bn.

During an impassioned two-and-a-half-hour hearing at City Hall attended by more than 100 vocal objectors, council leaders told the mayor he must be “from the planet Zog” if he believed the proposed homes were affordable and said Royal Mail’s affordable housing provision was derisory. They said approval would hand the firm “an unwarranted £30m windfall at the expense of affordable housing for ordinary Londoners” and described the deal as “cynical”.

Johnson insisted the rents would be affordable to people on housing benefit. “We have a housing crisis in London and we urgently need to provide more homes and more affordable homes,” Johnson said. “I have been to the site and seen its potential. On the matter of the affordable housing quotient and the matter of whether they are affordable it is absolutely clear that development cannot go ahead unless it corresponds with the GLA framework. We will insist on that.”

Opponents of the scheme claim the level of the “affordable” rents has “made a mockery” of the idea that affordable housing is for the most needy.

 

[Rascal]

My freind will get back to you on your points , or me. Whatever you chose to believe.

You can choose :)

View from UKIP voter -
Yes that is correct to a very small degree only NOW....take a look at this demographic and tell me if you think the EU is Right Wing, it is not the countrys Party that has the power in Europe it is who is elected to represent the country in Europe that takes the seats

you will find a large majority of Liberal, Socialist and left wing seats, the EPP lead and claim to be centre Right but also pro European and tighter integration

The rise of the Right in European Politics highlights how inefective the EU was during the time it was pro Left, see the second demographic

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11721146" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11721146</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/europes-left" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailycha ... ropes-left</a>

So traditionally and only up until the last 2 years the EU has been very much of the left of politics but due to incompency that is now turning

As for Your Second point yes the obsticale is Freedom of Movement in the EU but whereas a Conservative Governement would look to restrict it and combat it Labour embraced it to their own ends, this is well documented and is obvious as immigration will only increase the Labour vote to attract those who rely on the state, i did not want to use a bias paper or article to highlight this which is numorous and almost universally accepted (remember tories do the same with low taxes to middle and upper class - all parties will engineer to stay in power) so instead i have found a direct admision to this by a close Labour aid

-- The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.
He said Labour's relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to "open up the UK to mass migration" but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its "core working class vote".
As a result, the public argument for immigration concentrated instead on the economic benefits and need for more migrants.

Critics said the revelations showed a "conspiracy" within Government to impose mass immigration for "cynical" political reasons.

Mr Neather was a speech writer who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, in the early 2000s.

i could show much more.

''We already have a points system in place.'' ...er no we dont only for outside EU

if my rhtoric is Daily Mail and UKIP.....(why not?) then your rhetoric sounds very much like Labour Ministers trying to labelise anyone with a view that Britain should be controlled and proud of their country as racists which makes you fly their flag

The reason thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of people may be voting for UKIP is not because their Racist and neither am i, i champion Immigration but we have lost our identity and social cohesian and all immigriants now face hate campaigns by Racist groups and Muslim communities also spreading Shia Law, all this because of inept policy making and blatent Social Engineering under the Blair Government.

You lump the Liberals in with the left wing to try to prove the Parliament is left wing :))

The Conservatives cannot do anything about Freedom of Movement, the rest of the EU will not allow it. Only by leaving the EU can immigration controls be reestablished. Immigrants actually pay more into the UK coffeers than they take out BTW so your welfare point is just false. Immigrants are more likely to work. They come here to work not for JSA. You could argue our 2 million Brits in France put a much greater strain on the French state than any EU immigration puts on ours. As for Neather he is a crank obviously with an axe to grind as he is patently a nobody who not many have ever heard off.

We do have a points based system for non EU immigration. Rightly so.

Why would i as stated many times in this thread as a proud Mancunian, Englishman who is also proud to be British be bothered by somebody flying an English flag. I dont want to ban Christmas or say happy holidays to people either. Its just nonsense that the right accuse the left of peddling.

I have not mentioned race, but with UKIP it does appear race is always close to the surface. I stated i believed UKIP to be borderline fascist. I dont agree social cohesion is disintegrating communities and as that proud Mancunian Englishman i certainly dont feel any loss of identity. Manchester like many big cities has always had a wide dispora of immigrants. The 2nd largest Chinatown outside China for instance. A large Jewish prescence, a large exiled Libyan community, the Curry mile, Sikh Temples, Mosques, Synagogues and a beautiful cathedral. We even have Catholics, its how United started. Im used to living in a cultural melting pot. Sharia law does not scare me, if the Muslim community wish to use Sharia to decide disputes, then great it saves money from our Court system.


Rascist attacks i have left to last. Yes they are on the rise because in times of austerity people look for someone to blame. It is easy to target the hard working Muslim shop owner who maybe works 18 hours a day because he looks like a "paki" and he is taking our jobs. Its easy to target Poles who come here to work and better themselves because they believed the UK was a fair country who many free Poles fought for in WW2. Its easy to target any minority but thankfully its only usually a minority of sad inherently racist ignorant bigots who attack anyone.

 

[Damocles]

Back to the election what are the issues that are important to people

To me it's the following

1) Revitalisation of the North of England, which must include some devolution of power
2) English votes for English issues (It's what will hammer Labour if Ed does not come up with a better plan than a talking shop sometime in the distant future)
3) The Economy, which party has the best policies
4) The NHS
5) Education
6) Immigration

1) The NHS......Needs investment simple
2) Education... Equality of opportunity
3) Housing..simple we need housing. loads of brownfield sites we can build on now. get started, it creates jobs
4) The Economy.. I want to see investment and somebody be brave to say austerity is a sham
5) Regional Democracy. A NW or Gt Manchester parliament given its own budget and tax raising powers
6) A move to a more Federal state, with less centralisation of power.
7) Transport. We will grind to a halt without a visionary transport guru. Trains back under state ownership.
8) Energy ..Brought back into public ownership

6)

1) A sustainable job market
2) A sustainable job market
3) A sustainable job market

In the next 30 years, the job market in the world will entirely change. The speed which technology is replacing human jobs is becoming rapider and rapider and robots are becoming smarter, better and cheaper. Almost every job in the country can be theoretically replaced, most of them can be literally replaced by a computer right now and the only factor is initial cost.
I'm not just talking about machine workers either but everything from bankers/economic forecasters to mechanics to janitors and computer programmers. This isn't science fiction, these things are available right now and will only get more widespread. Computers are better than humans in everything that they are designed to do already. In 30 years the ship would have sailed.

This is one of the reasons why I feel a certain ambivalence about most current events; this whole economy is coming to end and within my lifetime, and we'll transition into a new type of economy which none of us have invented or envisioned yet. Think of how many jobs have been lost to robots in the past 30 years since 1985. Now think how many will be lost in the next 30 remembering that robots are now infinitely smarter than they were in 1985. In 30 years time we're looking at a real and significant possibility that most of the job titles we here today won't exist.

When a political party realises this and actually tries to take control of the situation somewhat, then I won't just vote for them but I'll probably campaign and stand for them. Most people are fiddling while Rome burns, banging on about the old left-right divide or silly things like immigration. Think an immigrant will work for less pounds an hour than you for your job? Think how much a robot will work for, and think how many smoke breaks it needs.

 

[Ducado]

Back to the election what are the issues that are important to people

To me it's the following

1) Revitalisation of the North of England, which must include some devolution of power
2) English votes for English issues (It's what will hammer Labour if Ed does not come up with a better plan than a talking shop sometime in the distant future)
3) The Economy, which party has the best policies
4) The NHS
5) Education
6) Immigration

1) The NHS......Needs investment simple
2) Education... Equality of opportunity
3) Housing..simple we need housing. loads of brownfield sites we can build on now. get started, it creates jobs
4) The Economy.. I want to see investment and somebody be brave to say austerity is a sham
5) Regional Democracy. A NW or Gt Manchester parliament given its own budget and tax raising powers
6) A move to a more Federal state, with less centralisation of power.
7) Transport. We will grind to a halt without a visionary transport guru. Trains back under state ownership.
8) Energy ..Brought back into public ownership

6)

1) A sustainable job market
2) A sustainable job market
3) A sustainable job market

In the next 30 years, the job market in the world will entirely change. The speed which technology is replacing human jobs is becoming rapider and rapider and robots are becoming smarter, better and cheaper. Almost every job in the country can be theoretically replaced, most of them can be literally replaced by a computer right now and the only factor is initial cost.
I'm not just talking about machine workers either but everything from bankers/economic forecasters to mechanics to janitors and computer programmers. This isn't science fiction, these things are available right now and will only get more widespread. Computers are better than humans in everything that they are designed to do already. In 30 years the ship would have sailed.

This is one of the reasons why I feel a certain ambivalence about most current events; this whole economy is coming to end and within my lifetime, and we'll transition into a new type of economy which none of us have invented or envisioned yet. Think of how many jobs have been lost to robots in the past 30 years since 1985. Now think how many will be lost in the next 30 remembering that robots are now infinitely smarter than they were in 1985. In 30 years time we're looking at a real and significant possibility that most of the job titles we here today won't exist.

When a political party realises this and actually tries to take control of the situation somewhat, then I won't just vote for them but I'll probably campaign and stand for them. Most people are fiddling while Rome burns, banging on about the old left-right divide or silly things like immigration. Think an immigrant will work for less pounds an hour than you for your job? Think how much a robot will work for, and think how many smoke breaks it needs.

To be fair the same thing has been said (in different ways) for many years, we are now meant to have more leisure time than ever before as well as power to cheap to metre not to mention holidays on Mars and hover boards (all predicted), the way I see it all economies need consumers, if the consumers can not earn money through work then there can be no economy henceforth no need for robots

 

[Damocles]

To be fair the same thing has been said (in different ways) for many years, we are now meant to have more leisure time than ever before as well as power to cheap to metre not to mention holidays on Mars and hover boards (all predicted), the way I see it all economies need consumers, if the consumers can not earn money through work then there can be no economy henceforth no need for robots

This is different. These things were said when you had crap robots on Tomorrow's World and the average computer had 16 megabytes of RAM.

Now we have self driving cars, computers that write computer programs quicker than humans do, computers that can scan terabytes of data and make correlations that no human could possibly do and computers that can essentially remember and cross reference an almost limitless amount of data in seconds.

Computers are now writing symphonies, painting pictures, giving excellent economic forecasts, diagnosing patients and performing operations, building houses and landing planes. Most of the time they do this quicker, better and cheaper than workers do it. They've achieved this in around 30 years. In 30 years time they'll be ubiquitous.

Let's take a single example there and look at the new self driving cars. These are legal on British roads in 10 weeks time. They have already driven hundreds of thousands of miles and shown to be safer than normal people driving by a huge amount. They are quicker to react to developing conditions, they never break the speed limit, always know whether or not they can make it to the next petrol station and can see and react to a crash in 100 times the rate of humans. They need no breaks and no wages. Give this technology 30 years and tell me where that leaves the long haul trucking industry or even the short carrier service? We've already shipped out workers from the warehouses due to automated systems, the ones in the cabins are the next to go.

Where will the bus and coach driver go? What about the average white van man?

Due to a single new technology that is here RIGHT NOW, that is a source of employment that will no longer exist in a decade or two.

Think who we would have replaced in 30 years.

 

[mackenzie]

To be fair the same thing has been said (in different ways) for many years, we are now meant to have more leisure time than ever before as well as power to cheap to metre not to mention holidays on Mars and hover boards (all predicted), the way I see it all economies need consumers, if the consumers can not earn money through work then there can be no economy henceforth no need for robots

This is different. These things were said when you had crap robots on Tomorrow's World and the average computer had 16 megabytes of RAM.

Now we have self driving cars, computers that write computer programs quicker than humans do, computers that can scan terabytes of data and make correlations that no human could possibly do and computers that can essentially remember and cross reference an almost limitless amount of data in seconds.

Computers are now writing symphonies, painting pictures, giving excellent economic forecasts, diagnosing patients and performing operations, building houses and landing planes. Most of the time they do this quicker, better and cheaper than workers do it. They've achieved this in around 30 years. In 30 years time they'll be ubiquitous.

Let's take a single example there and look at the new self driving cars. These are legal on British roads in 10 weeks time. They have already driven hundreds of thousands of miles and shown to be safer than normal people driving by a huge amount. They are quicker to react to developing conditions, they never break the speed limit, always know whether or not they can make it to the next petrol station and can see and react to a crash in 100 times the rate of humans. They need no breaks and no wages. Give this technology 30 years and tell me where that leaves the long haul trucking industry or even the short carrier service? We've already shipped out workers from the warehouses due to automated systems, the ones in the cabins are the next to go.

Where will the bus and coach driver go? What about the average white van man?

Due to a single new technology that is here RIGHT NOW, that is a source of employment that will no longer exist in a decade or two.

Think who we would have replaced in 30 years.

I'm going to downsize this (considerably!) by relating my experience at the library tonight.
There is a new swipe machine that checks your books in and out; it's been there about 6 months. There are hardly any library assistants left (2 instead of the usual 4). Progress of sorts; I don't have to wait for one of them to serve me and I like being left to my own devices. Being an avid book reader I also have misanthropic tendencies, so I enjoy not being bothered by other people when I'm on a good book finding venture.
Apart from the fact that the stupid machine thinks I checked a book out some weeks ago called '50 Knit and Crochet Projects' (as if??!!!). It now also reckons I owe 6 quid.
So, whilst I know humans make mistakes, I also know computers do.

 

[Rascal]

To be fair the same thing has been said (in different ways) for many years, we are now meant to have more leisure time than ever before as well as power to cheap to metre not to mention holidays on Mars and hover boards (all predicted), the way I see it all economies need consumers, if the consumers can not earn money through work then there can be no economy henceforth no need for robots

This is different. These things were said when you had crap robots on Tomorrow's World and the average computer had 16 megabytes of RAM.

Now we have self driving cars, computers that write computer programs quicker than humans do, computers that can scan terabytes of data and make correlations that no human could possibly do and computers that can essentially remember and cross reference an almost limitless amount of data in seconds.

Computers are now writing symphonies, painting pictures, giving excellent economic forecasts, diagnosing patients and performing operations, building houses and landing planes. Most of the time they do this quicker, better and cheaper than workers do it. They've achieved this in around 30 years. In 30 years time they'll be ubiquitous.

Let's take a single example there and look at the new self driving cars. These are legal on British roads in 10 weeks time. They have already driven hundreds of thousands of miles and shown to be safer than normal people driving by a huge amount. They are quicker to react to developing conditions, they never break the speed limit, always know whether or not they can make it to the next petrol station and can see and react to a crash in 100 times the rate of humans. They need no breaks and no wages. Give this technology 30 years and tell me where that leaves the long haul trucking industry or even the short carrier service? We've already shipped out workers from the warehouses due to automated systems, the ones in the cabins are the next to go.

Where will the bus and coach driver go? What about the average white van man?

Due to a single new technology that is here RIGHT NOW, that is a source of employment that will no longer exist in a decade or two.

Think who we would have replaced in 30 years.

It all depends if these advances in technologies and the subsequent wealth created are shared on an equitable basis surely. If the rise of these technologies is to work for society then surely everyone must share in the proceeds. This will no doubt result in much more leisure time for all and leisure itself is a huge employer.

If the workers of today are left idle by these advances without enjoying the benefits of the wealth created and that wealth goes to a narrow margin of society then we could well be in real trouble. Rich Ghettos, poor Ghettos, mass unemployment, huge inequalities. The destruction of social cohesion, perhaps destruction of the state in favour of rule by Corporation.

Todays political thinking is as relevant to 30 years from now as it was 30 years ago as people will always fight for what they believe in

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

To be fair the same thing has been said (in different ways) for many years, we are now meant to have more leisure time than ever before as well as power to cheap to metre not to mention holidays on Mars and hover boards (all predicted), the way I see it all economies need consumers, if the consumers can not earn money through work then there can be no economy henceforth no need for robots

This is different. These things were said when you had crap robots on Tomorrow's World and the average computer had 16 megabytes of RAM.

Now we have self driving cars, computers that write computer programs quicker than humans do, computers that can scan terabytes of data and make correlations that no human could possibly do and computers that can essentially remember and cross reference an almost limitless amount of data in seconds.

Computers are now writing symphonies, painting pictures, giving excellent economic forecasts, diagnosing patients and performing operations, building houses and landing planes. Most of the time they do this quicker, better and cheaper than workers do it. They've achieved this in around 30 years. In 30 years time they'll be ubiquitous.

Let's take a single example there and look at the new self driving cars. These are legal on British roads in 10 weeks time. They have already driven hundreds of thousands of miles and shown to be safer than normal people driving by a huge amount. They are quicker to react to developing conditions, they never break the speed limit, always know whether or not they can make it to the next petrol station and can see and react to a crash in 100 times the rate of humans. They need no breaks and no wages. Give this technology 30 years and tell me where that leaves the long haul trucking industry or even the short carrier service? We've already shipped out workers from the warehouses due to automated systems, the ones in the cabins are the next to go.

Where will the bus and coach driver go? What about the average white van man?

Due to a single new technology that is here RIGHT NOW, that is a source of employment that will no longer exist in a decade or two.

Think who we would have replaced in 30 years.

Unusually for you, you've failed to address the point he was making, or at least the final part of it.