Tories have lost the vote of the young generation.

[Chippy_boy]

I don't get your point. Ypou personally are unhappy with the number of homes being built in the South west. Therefore you personally think that is wrong. However house are built and houses are sold. Supply vs demand. There is a demand for houses hence the supply enhancements. You might not like it but that in itself doesn't make it wrong.

We're going round and round here. Your point that we should just keep building and building until not a property is empty, is naive. Apart from anything else, it would be never ending, since anyone unemployed would simply keep moving to Bristol to instantly move into their new home. There umpteen other issues with what you suggest. Think it through.

 

[bluethrunthru]

We're going round and round here. Your point that we should just keep building and building until not a property is empty, is naive. Apart from anything else, it would be never ending, since anyone unemployed would simply keep moving to Bristol to instantly move into their new home. There umpteen other issues with what you suggest. Think it through.

but your NIMBY attitude - " I think there is enough development where I live - we don't need more houses round here " is one of the major reasons why we are in the situation we are in with house building programme in the UK

 

[Chippy_boy]

but your NIMBY attitude - " I think there is enough development where I live - we don't need more houses round here " is one of the major reasons why we are in the situation we are in with house building programme in the UK

It's a factor for sure. But not all objections are nimbyism. Some are bone fide genuine objections, like when there's already gridlock on the existing roads and no proposals for new ones. Ditto schools, ditto health centres. North Bristol / South Gloucester has seen literally tens of thousands - perhaps 100,000 new homes built already. In the context of a population a of 500,000 I'd say we have done our bit. The infrastructure already cannot support what we have.

My village of population just 3,000 has already had 600 new homes built in the last 20 years. Another 1500 houses are planned already, more than doubling our housing capacity. Am I being a nimby in saying no more?

Anyway a much bigger factor than nimbyism is that builders acquire land and then don't actually built on it. Because they can make more money by waiting than by building now.

There's another point I want to make that I don't want lost in the above so I will post it below.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Watching This Week last night the comment was made that in order to fix the housing supply problem, we'd have to build on a huge scale, much bigger than proposed.

It occurred to me what a disaster that would be and how we must not do that.

If someone cannot afford a £200,000 home, then they won't be able to afford 3 other new £200,000 homes either. So the only way this works as a solution is is we build so many extra homes that the price drops to more affordable levels.

But our economy is already very fragile and crashing the housing market like that could have catastrophic consequences. Increasing house prices underpins much of our economy. People move and free up equity and spend it. Or borrow more and spend that. A price fall, especially as interest rates are soon to rise, could lead to negative equity, repossessions and another huge crash to the economy. It also could wreck the rental sector if landlords faced losing equity on the rental properties they acquire.

(FWIW I used to be a landlord, but dropped it a few years ago when it had become economically unattractive with the additional stamp duty and other factors.)

That's perhaps why the Tories are putting more money into the buy side (help to buy) as well as the demand side (new homes). We need to help people buy at existing prices, not crash the housing market.

 

[jonmcity]

Please change the title. "Tories have lost the vote of the young, old and in-between generations".

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

But people who do more menial jobs manage, it's a choice to live in London when your job can take you anywhere in Britain. Yet again Nurses Doctors and firefighters are being used as political collateral at the expense of the real poor.
Here's an example...I can't afford to live in Hale Barnes so I don't. Maybe we should think about bringing back live in accommodation for nurses to solve the problem?

I'll leave this here.................

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-41519353/housing-crisis-bbc-finds-families-in-disused-pub

 

[jonmcity]

We have neglected to build social housing for far to long. The Private sector are only interested in Wonga! and lots of it, so the CEO's and investors can live in Hale Barnes.

 

[Magicpole]

We're going round and round here. Your point that we should just keep building and building until not a property is empty, is naive. Apart from anything else, it would be never ending, since anyone unemployed would simply keep moving to Bristol to instantly move into their new home. There umpteen other issues with what you suggest. Think it through.

"it would be never ending, since anyone unemployed would simply keep moving to Bristol to instantly move into their new home. There umpteen other issues"

I hope you were on magic mushrooms when you wrote all the unemployed would move to Bristol for a new house.

Maybe get there on their bikes? Only this time it's a house at the end of that Tory rainbow.

I'm fearing for your sanity otherwise.

 

[Chippy_boy]

I'll leave this here.................

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-41519353/housing-crisis-bbc-finds-families-in-disused-pub

Again, an example in London. London and the southeast face a unique set of problems not shared in much of the rest of the country. Foreign investors buying up property and leaving it empty for example. You don't see much of that in Stockport. We need specific solutions for London, not a sledgehammer fits all solution for the whole country.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Please change the title. "Tories have lost the vote of the young, old and in-between generations".

They seem to at the moment, in that there seems to be a consensus that were an election to be held tomorrow, the Tories would lose it.

Personally, I am in a mixed mind about what the situation is. On the one hand, all governments fall eventually. After a period in office, the electorate become tired and bored of the same old, same old and eventually when enough of them want a change, the government falls. It is possible that this Tory government has simply run its course and that's all there is to it.

On the other hand, what gives me some hope, is that the Tories ran the most dismal election campaign ever, and still won. OK, not the landslide projected, but winners nevertheless. With THE most useless Tory PM the country has ever seen at the helm. They won, despite not really dismantling Corbyn's lunatic ideas and showing how and why his plans are simply undeliverable. The Tories ran a shockingly bad campaign.

Crucially, and this is a really, really big point, they forgot that there needs to be a positive vision of the future that people can buy into. People of all ages and demographics. If you say to someone, look we've got this terrible deficit and we must do something about it, people will in the main accept it if there is a "so that we can in future do xyz and deliver abc". They forgot all about the last bit. There was no "hope", no future vision of wealth and prosperity for all.

They need to have a long hard think about what policies should they be putting in place specifically to appeal to young people. What messages should they be putting out, what vision should they be painting. In short, a compelling message of WHY young people in particular should vote Conservative. If they were to do that, then who knows what the result of the next election might be.

What concerns me, is that (a) the current PM is clearly a walking disaster and needs to be replaced as soon as possible, and yet there seems little appetite to do so, and no obvious suitable replacements. And related to that, (b) the entire cabinet is packed with useless, uninspiring - or positively repulsive - individuals who would arguable fair little better. What the party needs is a total reshuffle. Press the <reset> button, get rid of the PM, get rid of at least half the cabinet and bring some new, vibrant, bright faces in with new ideas and some energy to revitalise the party. I really do think they need that.