Thatcher Revelations

[Quackers]

Well we can afford to give an Afghanni family of 7 a massive home in a rich part of London I don't think that social housing is in dire straits. I don't see homeless families freezing to death on the streets - do you?

You on the other hand make hillarious claims that Thatcher's policy of selling council homes to working class tenants invented the BNP.

 

[bathsheba666]

But remember Thatcher sold social housing to working class Britons for very low below market price. Arguebly it is a huge transfer of wealth from the state to ordinary individuals and families.

OMG your blaming the BNPs rise on Thatcher? Are you kidding me? Every left-wing lunatic in the UK blames everything bad that has happend to this country on her. The BNP wasn't even around during Thatcher's years. In any case how does giving working class people their own homes for a cut-price value in anyway create working class resentment and extremism?

Social housing is in short supply? I don't think it is. I thought it was only in private housing that their was such little availiable so prices are very, very high and many people live with their parents till they are 35 because they cannot afford those homes. Private housing is expensive because A) we are a small country therefore land is expensive to buy and build. B)We have a growing population from the third-word in the South-East which drives up demand and pushes up prices C) Government regulations are huge barriars to companies who want to build homes.

There is plenty of decent social housing even non-citizens get fantastic rewards for never paying taxes and having loads of kids.

Well we can afford to give an Afghanni family of 7 a massive home in a rich part of London I don't think that social housing is in dire straits. I don't see homeless families freezing to death on the streets - do you?

You on the other hand make hillarious claims that Thatcher's policy of selling council homes to working class tenants invented the BNP.

It seems pretty clear that if you sell off a lot of accommodation, and prevent it being replaced, there will be less of it.

It seems pretty clear that people would take advantage of the rape of public assets to enrich themselves.

So it seems pretty clear that most property on offer would go.

Your claim that there is plenty of social housing available appears wildly incorrect.

 

[GinandTonic]

It seems pretty clear that if you sell off a lot of accommodation, and prevent it being replaced, there will be less of it.

Is the key point.

 

[Quackers]

Yeah but those same people who lived in social houses who bought their social homes and owned them privately both reduces the supply and demand at the same time IE) cancels each other out. Therefore no more social housing in that simple scenario is needed.

 

[GinandTonic]

Yeah but those same people who lived in social houses who bought their social homes and owned them privately both reduces the supply and demand at the same time IE) cancels each other out. Therefore no more social housing in that simple scenario is needed.

If you follow the kind of idealised free market that pays no attention to the real world that led to the unfortunate incidents with those famines in ireland and india then, yes.

In the real world, no.

The switch from council housing to pay to let private housing paid via council tax to the pay to let investors costs the country hundreds of millions a year. It makes the tax payer poorer. In makes the needy more vulnerable. The only people who win are slum landlords, and they really are the scum of the earth - pimps in a world where women cannot be born and everyone has to get laid every night.

The social housing stock has simply been replaced with a licence for slum landlords, which in turn props up the fascicle house prices that cripple this country.

 

[Quackers]

Yeah I condone the Indian and Irish famines. Nice bit of logic that.

It is undeniable that this was the largest transfer of wealth from the government (or to put it into liberal speak the largest, greediest, oil mulitinational corporations x 100) to ordinary individuals and families.

 

[GinandTonic]

Yeah I condone the Indian and Irish famines. Nice bit of logic that.

I didnt say that. I pointed out that the free market has failed to provide housing for the most needy, in roughly the same way that the free market failed to feed the most needy. Laissez faire does not provide for those who are unable to pay the market rate. The goverment must intervene in instances where it's citizens would otherwise face starvation of homelessness.

It is undeniable that this was the largest transfer of wealth from the government (or to put it into liberal speak the largest, greediest, oil mulitinational corporations x 100) to ordinary individuals and families.

First off the social housing stock belonged to local councils, not central government. Since the effective privatisation of social housing there is now a vast transfer of wealth from the council tax payer - incidentially the most regressive tax in the UK - to the slum landlords. Before the sell-off the tax-payer owned the houses, and the homes were let out at what amounted to not-for-profit rents. Now the tax-payer pays the slum landlords at market rates, and does not even own the property.

Right to buy wasnt the problem, it was a good thing. Ring-fencing the money so councils could not reinvest it has been catastrophic.

The need for social housing is town-planning 101. Try Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities, written in 1961.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

The gap between first tier and second is not nearly as big as the gap between second and third tier.

I disagree. The U.S. advantage over the likes of Britain and France is far greater than the British or French advantage over Canada (which I use for convenience). Canada could simply triple the not so huge military budget, and build a handful of nukes over the course of a few years. This would make the gap relatively small while making Canada's military effort only slightly greater. The economic size of those countries is also at most twice that of Canada. The point is that Canada has the potential to be only slightly less powerful than those countries (perhaps even more powerful in the next 50 years).

There are a huge number of countries that are 3rd rate powers that could also easily reach the same league as Britain and France.

Britain and France, however, could never, ever, ever come to be in the same league as the U.S. if considered individually. It is a factor of 5 or 6 compared to a factor of 2 or 3.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Now the tax-payer pays the slum landlords at market rates, and does not even own the property.

Quite so, but it is even worse than that.

The bail out of the banks and depression of the interest rates; (all at the
expense of the next generation of working tax payers) has enabled those
very same landlords who have overborrowed to remain solvent while having
both properties at high rates and many unoccupied properties on their books.

We are therefore in the peculiar situation of having historically high unit rental
rates in the middle of a recession.


There is all this talk about public spending cuts after the next election.

I just hope the the Department for Work and Pensions will be prepared to use its
aggregate purchasing power of rented accommodation to drive down rental prices.

 

[Kerozine]

This article doesn't say as much as the one in the other thread.

 

[Traitorfish]

OMG your blaming the BNPs rise on Thatcher?

The annihilation of traditional industrial communities and the creation of a massive, habitually unemployed underclass comprised primarily of alienated, disenfranchised working class youths, particularly male, has contributed pretty heavily to the rise of British neo-fascism, yes.

...Was that a trick question?

 

[REDY]

I thought that it led to rise of Punk, Ska and Reggae

 

[Plotinus]

Well we can afford to give an Afghanni family of 7 a massive home in a rich part of London I don't think that social housing is in dire straits. I don't see homeless families freezing to death on the streets - do you?

That's a poor argument. First, if you've ever been to London you'll have seen plenty of people freezing on the streets. Now in fact there aren't as many people sleeping on the streets as it often appears - only a few hundred in London on any given night. But most people who are trying and failing to get social housing are not sleeping on the streets - they are in temporary accommodation, shelters and hotels. In fact at the moment there are 1.7 million families (that's families, not individuals) awaiting social housing in England (not the UK as a whole). That's according to Shelter, which also gives plenty more information on the social housing crisis. So the number of people you see freezing on the streets isn't the point, since most of these people are not visible in that way.

Right to buy wasnt the problem, it was a good thing. Ring-fencing the money so councils could not reinvest it has been catastrophic.

Right! It's an interesting and somewhat depressing fact that Thatcher's right-to-buy policy was inspired by the success of the HDB system in Singapore, where the Housing Development Board built blocks of flats, rented them out to low-income families, and allowed those families to buy the flats they were living in. The key differences were that the accommodation which the HDB initially built was much nicer than what had been there before (it basically cleared the slums that the country had inherited from British rule and replaced them with basic but decent flats), and it re-invested the money raised in new builds. These continue today and the newest HDB flats are extremely nice. I used to live in one (not one of the newest ones - in fact it was in a fairly old estate, most of which has since been demolished), and I would astound visitors by telling them that it was the Singapore equivalent of a council flat. Thatcher hoped to emulate the success of the HDB in Britain, but failed for the very simple reason that the British accommodation, unlike the Singaporean, was so horrible that (a) no-one really wanted it, and (b) once they'd bought it they were trapped there. Both of which were the result of under-investment. The basic policy was a good idea, but it failed because of short-sightedness.

Incidentally, the notion that the UK (or indeed France and even Germany) is a world power on a par with Russia and China made me laugh greatly, so thank you for that.

 

[nonconformist]

Maggie, when you die, and I hope your death comes soon, I will be out on the streets with the Welsh, the Northerners, the Miners, the Unemployed, the Poll Tax refuseniks, the disenfranchised, the blacks, the asians, and the left wing, and we'll be dsrinking, dancing and copulating like it was VE day.

I'll follow your casket, into the ground, to make sure that you're dead
then I'll piss on it for good measure.

Maggie, when you die, it will be the final emancipation.

FWIW, who's up for an impromptu UK CFC meet right after she dies, at her funeral?

 

[Traitorfish]

Maggie, when you die, and I hope your death comes soon, I will be out on the streets with the Welsh, the Northerners, the Miners, the Unemployed, the Poll Tax refuseniks, the disenfranchised, the blacks, the asians, and the left wing, and we'll be dsrinking, dancing and copulating like it was VE day.

I'll follow your casket, into the ground, to make sure that you're dead
then I'll piss on it for good measure.

Paraphrasing Bob Dylan there, perhaps?

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Or perhaps just a sentiment so universally felt towards this sort of scum that it cannot help but be expressed in similar terms?

I thought that it led to rise of Punk, Ska and Reggae

It can do both. Sometimes at the same time...

 

[Quackers]

The annihilation of traditional industrial communities and the creation of a massive, habitually unemployed underclass comprised primarily of alienated, disenfranchised working class youths, particularly male, has contributed pretty heavily to the rise of British neo-fascism, yes.

...Was that a trick question?

Yes which led to the massive support the National Front got during the 80s. But actually it didn't, did it?

BNPs rise = Labour's irresponsible immigration policy. Anything else is political hackery and lies.

 

[Quackers]

That's a poor argument. First, if you've ever been to London you'll have seen plenty of people freezing on the streets. Now in fact there aren't as many people sleeping on the streets as it often appears - only a few hundred in London on any given night. But most people who are trying and failing to get social housing are not sleeping on the streets - they are in temporary accommodation, shelters and hotels. In fact at the moment there are 1.7 million families (that's families, not individuals) awaiting social housing in England (not the UK as a whole). That's according to Shelter, which also gives plenty more information on the social housing crisis. So the number of people you see freezing on the streets isn't the point, since most of these people are not visible in that way.

Incidentally, the notion that the UK (or indeed France and even Germany) is a world power on a par with Russia and China made me laugh greatly, so thank you for that.

They are in accomadation awaiting new homes so whats the problem? The government isn't going to kick them out onto the streets. But if it wasn't for hundreds of thousands of immigrants that number would be lower and that is indisputable. I have been to London a few times - what can I say? Like any other city it's ugly, it smells and their are too many people. I have City-phobia tbh.

Hmm well the way I see it is that if Russia starts chucking nukes at us - we'll start chucking nukes at them and eventually due to MAD we will both be muturally annihilated, same with China and France therefore we wil be prety equally destroyed and therefore equally matched.

 

[Plotinus]

They are in accomadation awaiting new homes so whats the problem?

Good God, you try to bring up a family in a small hotel room and see what the problem is. If you can't see the difference between being in temporary accommodation and having a permanent home then you really need to work on your empathy skills. This is like saying that someone on the dole has an income, so why does it matter that he doesn't have a job?

But if it wasn't for hundreds of thousands of immigrants that number would be lower and that is indisputable.

You might just as well say that if it weren't for hundreds of thousands of immigrants working hard and paying taxes to the government, there would be even less public money available to house those people or do other things. That's just as indisputable.

There are all sorts of reasons for the lack of social housing (and all the other problems in our society). A too-high population is, arguably, one of the many reasons behind it. But even that in itself is not solely down to immigration, and just simplistically blaming everything on immigrants alone is as over-simplistic and ignorant as it is immoral. Plenty of other reasons have been highlighted in this thread - just putting your hands over your ears and saying "No, it's the immigrants" is not a rational response to these points.

Hmm well the way I see it is that if Russia starts chucking nukes at us - we'll start chucking nukes at them and eventually due to MAD we will both be muturally annihilated, same with China and France therefore we wil be prety equally destroyed and therefore equally matched.

Right, so you think the only measurement of global power is number of nukes, do you? Don't you think that, say, cultural and economic influence might be kind of important too? And China has far more of both of those than Britain does. So until the nuclear holocaust levels everything out, I think it's safe to say that China is much more important on the world stage than Britain is.

The idea that a country needs to be powerful on the world stage, and that a leader who makes it powerful is better than one who doesn't, is pretty childish anyway. If it were really true of Thatcher - which it isn't - that "Basically she prevented us from turning into a 2nd rate power and we remained a Great power" then that would be utterly irrelevant to whether she was a good prime minister or not. Caring about your country being a "great power" is like walking around with a pit bull - it's just displaced concern for inadequacy in the trouser department.

 

[GinandTonic]

Right! It's an interesting and somewhat depressing fact that Thatcher's right-to-buy policy was inspired by the success of the HDB system in Singapore, where the Housing Development Board built blocks of flats, rented them out to low-income families, and allowed those families to buy the flats they were living in. The key differences were that the accommodation which the HDB initially built was much nicer than what had been there before (it basically cleared the slums that the country had inherited from British rule and replaced them with basic but decent flats), and it re-invested the money raised in new builds. These continue today and the newest HDB flats are extremely nice. I used to live in one (not one of the newest ones - in fact it was in a fairly old estate, most of which has since been demolished), and I would astound visitors by telling them that it was the Singapore equivalent of a council flat. Thatcher hoped to emulate the success of the HDB in Britain, but failed for the very simple reason that the British accommodation, unlike the Singaporean, was so horrible that (a) no-one really wanted it, and (b) once they'd bought it they were trapped there. Both of which were the result of under-investment. The basic policy was a good idea, but it failed because of short-sightedness.

I cant agree with the point that council housing was horrible or that no-one wanted it. The victorian terraced house next to my dads was council. Nice three-bed, side road, 200 yards from Arsenal tube. Same as this one thats on the market for £600k.

I'm doing up my mum's right-to-buy flat to sell atm. Most of the flats in the building have been sold and are private. Hope to get somewhere between £430-£480k.

Clearly the council decorators were slap-dash, but lots of the houses and flats were very nice. The demand to buy them was very high.

They are in accomadation awaiting new homes so whats the problem? The government isn't going to kick them out onto the streets. But if it wasn't for hundreds of thousands of immigrants that number would be lower and that is indisputable. I have been to London a few times - what can I say? Like any other city it's ugly, it smells and their are too many people. I have City-phobia tbh.

The problem is that once upon a time the council owned the properties and so could let them to the needy at the cost of a small subsidy. Say the council lost £5 a week after the rent it received. Now a similar needy family are in the same flat but paying rent to a private landlord. A two bed flat around here is the best part of a thousand pounds a month. Of course those in need of social housing cannot afford that so they receive housing benefit. So the tax payer coughs up thousands of pounds a year.

The free market cost the tax payer several thousand percent more. I'ld call that a monstrosity of a problem.

 

[Quackers]

Good God, you try to bring up a family in a small hotel room and see what the problem is. If you can't see the difference between being in temporary accommodation and having a permanent home then you really need to work on your empathy skills. This is like saying that someone on the dole has an income, so why does it matter that he doesn't have a job?

Being in a hotel or temporary accomadation is far better than being on the streets. Ask Tekee he said he had to live in one before he got his house he got on alright. Better than freezing and dying on the streets.

You might just as well say that if it weren't for hundreds of thousands of immigrants working hard and paying taxes to the government, there would be even less public money available to house those people or do other things. That's just as indisputable.

By far our immigrants are the low skilled third world variety and therefore work in the lowest payed jobs. Due to our progressive redistributive tax system he/she probably won't pay tax and will probably recieve far more in benefits (NHS, Housing, schooling for kids etc) than they will ever pay into the tax system. It's obvious it isn't beneffitting us economically but some people just like to cover their ears and ludiciousely defend mass immigrantion just because they're dark and poor.

We did get benefits from the handful of American bankers in the City but...well we know how that turned out. And have benefitted some aspects of our healthcare.

There are all sorts of reasons for the lack of social housing (and all the other problems in our society). A too-high population is, arguably, one of the many reasons behind it. But even that in itself is not solely down to immigration, and just simplistically blaming everything on immigrants alone is as over-simplistic and ignorant as it is immoral. Plenty of other reasons have been highlighted in this thread - just putting your hands over your ears and saying "No, it's the immigrants" is not a rational response to these points.

Obviously I don't just blame immigrants on the lack of private or social housing but obviously hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year for the past decade have greatly reduced our housing stock and pushed up prices for Britishborn patroits.

Right, so you think the only measurement of global power is number of nukes, do you? Don't you think that, say, cultural and economic influence might be kind of important too? And China has far more of both of those than Britain does. So until the nuclear holocaust levels everything out, I think it's safe to say that China is much more important on the world stage than Britain is.

The idea that a country needs to be powerful on the world stage, and that a leader who makes it powerful is better than one who doesn't, is pretty childish anyway. If it were really true of Thatcher - which it isn't - that "Basically she prevented us from turning into a 2nd rate power and we remained a Great power" then that would be utterly irrelevant to whether she was a good prime minister or not. Caring about your country being a "great power" is like walking around with a pit bull - it's just displaced concern for inadequacy in the trouser department.

I'm referring to Military power. I don't care about cultural or economic - if NK could hit every US city with a nuke do you think USA would invade? They wouldn't they would get obliterated.

So you think that a leader who lets her country decline in contrast to a booming continental Europe is a good leader? Or that it is irelevent? Either way your wrong. A leader is judged on several things and one of them is foreign policy clout and a strong powerful military is just a component of that - a British rebate on the ECC was a masterstroke and shows genuine concern for others people's money rather than labor's utter contempt for the taxed people of the UK. I'm not sure about cosmopolitans like you but I would rather my country be as strong and powerful and prosperous that it can be rather than second best.