The Politics Thread

[BWFC_Insane]

If we must have privatised utilities then you regulate the feck out of them and fine the feck out of them if they don't provide adequate service/infrastructure. If they don't like it they can walk away and either someone else will, or the taxpayer will like we used to. British Rail might have been shit, but it cost £30 to go London Manchester. Now its more crowded, more or less just as shit and it probably costs £400. Might as well be shit and cheaper than shit and beyond the means of Joe Average.

I mean I agree entirely with that but the issue is that the people responsible are the shareholders - as in they are the ones demanding lower costs and more revenue. Yet we can’t get to them as they aren’t by law legally responsible. Which is a nonsense. But also we can’t get to them through tax as most aren’t here and often are wealth funds, foreign corporations and pensions.

This is the issue. We are cracking down on the bosses of companies who aren’t really responsible for the history of the problem and are now going to struggle to solve it as to do so they need the shareholders and investors to cough up.

Ok. I hear you. Where precisely are you going to take the tax from. Put it in front of us.

What I think happens is this. The people you and I know need targeting - those who have extreme wealth, mostly unearned through work but through investment etc will not be touched by measures intending to do so. Instead what will happen is the tax measures will hit the people we don’t intend to that will cause some economic contraction and ultimately be counterintuitive.

My view is that in real practical terms we will need much broader tax hits. We could do it on house value for example. 1% tax for house value above £500k. You run into the same issue with APR in that not everyone has commensurate income but my patience with that argument starts to run and wear thin. For me that is a more attractive way to do it - on assets - rather than income as we see already the marginal rates for example are reducing economic activity and real stuff like consultant hospital hours.

I’d also increase CGT - to similar rates the Nordic countries pay. This will - likely have more rich folk leaving - and may end up not raising much revenue as a result and is a relatively small change. But I’d argue we should be in line with Northern Europe and undercutting isn’t working.

[Worthy4England]

Part of the problem you're going to have is the disparity between house prices down South and Oop North - a 500k house down South is probably not as big as the same house in Gateshead.

[Worthy4England]

Also we're way behind Norway, Finland, Sweden on standard of living...

[BWFC_Insane]

Part of the problem you're going to have is the disparity between house prices down South and Oop North - a 500k house down South is probably not as big as the same house in Gateshead.

Sure but it’s a proxy for asset value. So I’m happy that it will be regionally disproportionate. And it could be 500K or 1M or whatever - the tax would be on value above that. You could have a ratcheted threshold.

And while we are doing that we can use it to update council tax valuations and bands too and modernise that system.

[Worthy4England]

How much asset value are u leaving your children? Broad brush..do you have any?

[BWFC_Insane]

How much asset value are u leaving your children? Broad brush..do you have any?

I mean yes and yes. The threshold is debatable. But this is the issue isn’t it? The most taxable asset that we can use would have people being very unhappy. There is no magic tax the wealthy option in a way that it targets those you and I want to target.

So we either try using property as the least fluid asset or we don’t and keep shuffling paper round. I doubt Reeves has the cajones for a property value tax so we are likely to carry on as is for the foreseeable and best we can do is lift some kids out of poverty in the meantime.

[Worthy4England]

It's a noble cause, mate. Blair's government did relatively well on this issue, without taking any buggers property. There is plenty we could do to help. For a start, we could provide more affordable housing, which I've argued for ages, because the level of poverty after housing costs is about 50% higher than before housing costs...you'd probably have been able to do this without HS2, I reckon for what we've spent on that you could've delivered maybe 200,000 houses.That'd have been just a judgement call. If the state owned them and I say state rather than councils unless their funding model changed, you can build them not for profit and then set affordable rent.

[BWFC_Insane]

It's a noble cause, mate. Blair's government did relatively well on this issue, without taking any buggers property. There is plenty we could do to help. For a start, we could provide more affordable housing, which I've argued for ages, because the level of poverty after housing costs is about 50% higher than before housing costs...you'd probably have been able to do this without HS2, I reckon for what we've spent on that you could've delivered maybe 200,000 houses.That'd have been just a judgement call. If the state owned them and I say state rather than councils unless their funding model changed, you can build them not for profit and then set affordable rent.

Blair’s government inherited relatively low debt and a growing economy. It also enjoyed the further expansion of the single market bringing more working age folk into the country allowing the economy to further expand. So I think it’s pretty much a non comparison to the situation now. Blair pumped money into public services and their infrastructure off the back of those conditions and it was the right thing to do. Then came the financial crash and conditions massively changed both in terms of the public finances and austerity robbing public services for years.


I agree on affordable housing btw. I just don’t know how a government can do that outside of what Labour are trying to do. HS2 is held up as a debacle and it is but then most other nations have proper high speed train infrastructure that we don’t. The UK has neglected infrastructure for decades and decades and it’s embarrassing and we are paying the price for it. Why we can’t do it is probably reflective of why we also can’t grow our tech industry.

[Worthy4England]

On affordable housing. Plenty they could do. What (in part) they're doing is equivalent of hit and hope with a Hail Mary thrown in, like the Tories did. Which is why I contend (again in part) it won't work. Paraphrasing the cycle.

At the start they do a viability assessment. This nearly always shows why it's a brilliant idea to hand over your green land and they will return 25% of the units as affordable (with the affordable tied to market rates not average wages.

As development progresses, they reappraise their EVAs, and now it looks a lot closer or loss making.

The only thing they can cut are the lower margin units or the infrastructure contributions, so they deliver nearer 1-2% of actually affordable houses so they have a get out of jail card which they play pretty much every time.

Labour have done diddly about this as did the Tories. It's pretty simple. You build this volume of genuinely affordable houses and when you have, we'll give you some nice green space to build on.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

I'd say the UK train system has a capacity problem rather than a speed one, along with a set-up much like Worthy's favourite DoF set-up in football. It is designed so it allows endless buck passing. HS1 was an expensive way to improve capacity, but the west coast line is still a mess.

[BWFC_Insane]

I'd say the UK train system has a capacity problem rather than a speed one, along with a set-up much like Worthy's favourite DoF set-up in football. It is designed so it allows endless buck passing. HS1 was an expensive way to improve capacity, but the west coast line is still a mess.

Capacity and speed are linked though. High speed lines have higher capacity since you can simply run more trains.

Platforms also get expanded but bottom line is train size is limited (obvs by other stuff but hard limit) is platform size. Then to increase capacity you need to run more trains but that is limited by line speed.

[BWFC_Insane]

On affordable housing. Plenty they could do. What (in part) they're doing is equivalent of hit and hope with a Hail Mary thrown in, like the Tories did. Which is why I contend (again in part) it won't work. Paraphrasing the cycle.

At the start they do a viability assessment. This nearly always shows why it's a brilliant idea to hand over your green land and they will return 25% of the units as affordable (with the affordable tied to market rates not average wages.

As development progresses, they reappraise their EVAs, and now it looks a lot closer or loss making.

The only thing they can cut are the lower margin units or the infrastructure contributions, so they deliver nearer 1-2% of actually affordable houses so they have a get out of jail card which they play pretty much every time.

Labour have done diddly about this as did the Tories. It's pretty simple. You build this volume of genuinely affordable houses and when you have, we'll give you some nice green space to build on.

What would you have the government do? Are you saying they use the carrot and stick of greenbelt to say to enforce building affordable homes? And isn’t that broadly not what they are doing?

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

I'd say the UK train system has a capacity problem rather than a speed one, along with a set-up much like Worthy's favourite DoF set-up in football. It is designed so it allows endless buck passing. HS1 was an expensive way to improve capacity, but the west coast line is still a mess.

Capacity and speed are linked though. High speed lines have higher capacity since you can simply run more trains.

Platforms also get expanded but bottom line is train size is limited (obvs by other stuff but hard limit) is platform size. Then to increase capacity you need to run more trains but that is limited by line speed.

Yes, but the high speed trains are sharing parts of tracks with slow trains. If you're bothering with high speed they need to be on separate lines, and given distances involved hardly worth the extra cost. Automated trains with good signalling and routing means you can run more trains closer together. Sure, a bit slower, but most folk would rather reliability, comfort and sensible prices over getting to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker.

[BWFC_Insane]

I'd say the UK train system has a capacity problem rather than a speed one, along with a set-up much like Worthy's favourite DoF set-up in football. It is designed so it allows endless buck passing. HS1 was an expensive way to improve capacity, but the west coast line is still a mess.

Capacity and speed are linked though. High speed lines have higher capacity since you can simply run more trains.

Platforms also get expanded but bottom line is train size is limited (obvs by other stuff but hard limit) is platform size. Then to increase capacity you need to run more trains but that is limited by line speed.

Yes, but the high speed trains are sharing parts of tracks with slow trains. If you're bothering with high speed they need to be on separate lines, and given distances involved hardly worth the extra cost. Automated trains with good signalling and routing means you can run more trains closer together. Sure, a bit slower, but most folk would rather reliability, comfort and sensible prices over getting to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker.

Yeah but then the unions go mental…

One of the big problems is that we are doing HS2 which serves a route that is one of the better ones already. The other problem as you say is we try and do everything as half measures. Add on to a crumbling system rather than fixing the fundamentals.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

I'd say the UK train system has a capacity problem rather than a speed one, along with a set-up much like Worthy's favourite DoF set-up in football. It is designed so it allows endless buck passing. HS1 was an expensive way to improve capacity, but the west coast line is still a mess.

Capacity and speed are linked though. High speed lines have higher capacity since you can simply run more trains.

Platforms also get expanded but bottom line is train size is limited (obvs by other stuff but hard limit) is platform size. Then to increase capacity you need to run more trains but that is limited by line speed.

Yes, but the high speed trains are sharing parts of tracks with slow trains. If you're bothering with high speed they need to be on separate lines, and given distances involved hardly worth the extra cost. Automated trains with good signalling and routing means you can run more trains closer together. Sure, a bit slower, but most folk would rather reliability, comfort and sensible prices over getting to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker.

Yeah but then the unions go mental…

One of the big problems is that we are doing HS2 which serves a route that is one of the better ones already. The other problem as you say is we try and do everything as half measures. Add on to a crumbling system rather than fixing the fundamentals.

As soon as they announced they were doing the southern bit first you knew the north of Birmingham bit would be cancelled.

[Worthy4England]

I was thinking back a little to how long it took me to go from Munich to Frankfurt. It was 3 hours, give or take - 150 miles...The Manchester to London route may be "one of the better ones," but it's like tallest dwarf and probably still hasn't picked up much post COVID. It was truly awful in the lead-up, when businesses were more likely to try and get you into London for a 2 hour, non-essential, meeting. Their business case for phase 1 was only marginally "positive," when they made it, and we all know what's going to happen to an in-flight project - it's going to go South (just in this case not from where it was planned to go South).

It was also going to save what? 5 mins a trip (from Manchester)? I mean that would be a welcome 10 minutes back from a day - but unlikely to increase output much, given that most folks are already taking that trip in their own time and on that basis, I'd struggle with the overall "benefit."

[Worthy4England]

On affordable housing. Plenty they could do. What (in part) they're doing is equivalent of hit and hope with a Hail Mary thrown in, like the Tories did. Which is why I contend (again in part) it won't work. Paraphrasing the cycle.

At the start they do a viability assessment. This nearly always shows why it's a brilliant idea to hand over your green land and they will return 25% of the units as affordable (with the affordable tied to market rates not average wages.

As development progresses, they reappraise their EVAs, and now it looks a lot closer or loss making.

The only thing they can cut are the lower margin units or the infrastructure contributions, so they deliver nearer 1-2% of actually affordable houses so they have a get out of jail card which they play pretty much every time.

Labour have done diddly about this as did the Tories. It's pretty simple. You build this volume of genuinely affordable houses and when you have, we'll give you some nice green space to build on.

What would you have the government do? Are you saying they use the carrot and stick of greenbelt to say to enforce building affordable homes? And isn’t that broadly not what they are doing?

I would have them do just that. And no they're not unless there's some very recent changes to the bills relating to it. Is in the main, why it's a fcuking nonsense, mate.

[BWFC_Insane]

£39Bn announced for social and affordable housing. This is why it was critical to divorce capital from day to day spending in the fiscal rules.

[Worthy4England]

£39Bn announced for social and affordable housing. This is why it was critical to divorce capital from day to day spending in the fiscal rules.

The number isn't really that important - I mean nice that it's a chunk. It's what they do with it, given that they don't (generally) own any land and don't own any bugger to build them.

[BWFC_Insane]

£39Bn announced for social and affordable housing. This is why it was critical to divorce capital from day to day spending in the fiscal rules.

The number isn't really that important - I mean nice that it's a chunk. It's what they do with it, given that they don't (generally) own any land and don't own any bugger to build them.

Yeah that’s the funding side sorted and beyond expectation - but they need to get the policy side right too. Their issue is that they may well not be in government and all these capital investments are ripped up before they bear fruit.