EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Not really. More like this

Trotskysist diatribe. There's a balanced impartial view for you...

Reading this drivel is like looking into the limp warm pineapple asshole of the gammon steak.

Wot bit is that then?

All I have suggested is that everyone needs take a balanced, impartial view (including of their own biases) and work together to avoid brexit, collectively and in a nonpartisan way.

So when the discussion turned to one possible cause of resentment through wealth inequality and deprivation, sneering at it was just a further raising of everybody's consciousness?

If you just want to jump on the bandwagon of "burn the dissenting voice because he doesn't accept our groupthink"

Martyr complex coming along just fine, then.

Great work guys.
-bogbrush

brosse à tourbière as they say in Europe.

Here in NI we have housing not for profit co-ops [so sorta your company structure but not with as much £££ behind it as some commercial developments] or the Northern Ireland Housing Executive [government owned, so it is run into the ground of course...sigh...]

I see what you mean about regulation/capital etc.
But it also seems to me that a lot of the time the capital and clout is used to make an easy profit/lobby for lowering regulations/making it about paperwork which THEY can fill out but it is hundreds of pages of legalize none of us will understand.

And the "small" landlord cannot compete against big companies either (it seems to me).

Imagine having to go through a utility company style telephone system to report problems?

This is exactly how Housing Associations and TMOs work. It's awesome.

oder Spülbürste in der Teutonenzunge

"Klobürste".

City councils already have the power to enact enforcement orders to buy properties from problem landlords (at least in Scotland they do) it's just that this requires a court order and a lot of time and money spent to do so.

Happened recently in Glasgow because one multi property owner had single handedly turned a whole street into a ghetto of crime, prostitution and people smuggling. I think that's a measure of how bad things need to get before they take action.

So, if they won't take action against individuals until it gets to that point, I wonder if it's easier or harder to do so against a large company?

Klobürste

Kackwurstpinsel

And the "small" landlord cannot compete against big companies either (it seems to me).

I'm all for small business in general - from what I've read they generate more wealth and employment for the local economy. But in the housing sector I struggle to see what value it adds. It's exactly the sort of business that seems best matches to large institutional money... which is why ( anecdotally) so many institutions are looking to get into long term care and OAP resi property.

I also don't have the same negative view of regulation.

It's all by the by as any legislation implemented needs to be part of a wider unified housing policy.

NI is an odd one anyway as you had decades of abnormal suppression of the housing market.

I think the problem is that all that is good is getting concentrated in cities and - funnily enough - you can't build enough housing to make it cheap for the entire population to live in them. Supply meet demand. Fix that problem, distribute good stuff around a bit so that not everyone has to live where everyone else wants to, and the rental market might sort itself out a bit, at least cost wise to tenants. I don't think rent caps are the answer, neither do I think a mega 'National Rental Homes' is either. The former would result in the capped properties being immediately filled and humongous waiting lists, those lucky enough to get one through the virtue of nothing but being first in the queue. The later being too big to give a shit about the people it would supposedly provide a service for.

I think devolving business rates to regional authorities might help here - the UK is basically London, in terms of where companies locate. If we don't change that we'll never resolve the housing situation and so forth.

In NYC people with rent controlled apartments just hang on to them forever and/or sublet them. So I'm always dubious about that as a solution.

There was an interesting Will Self doc. on R4 about planning and the Garden City. It seems like we need something similar now, or at least similarly creative.

My experience of dealing with big business is that its horrible almost all the time. Small companies can be great and can be horrible. Maybe my perception is unrepresentative, but if the problem is customer service and the general public's solution is "we need massive corporates" then the general public are a bit weird.

Housing associations have mostly been an excellent thing, maintaining good relationships with their tenants. That's degrading now, under government pressure, but the principle is sound.

In my opinion the problem is not small landlords, it is the entire property market.

The fundamentally feudal nature of property law here is malign.

My experience of dealing with big business is that its horrible almost all the time. Small companies can be great and can be horrible. Maybe my perception is unrepresentative, but if the problem is customer service and the general public's solution is "we need massive corporates" then the general public are a bit weird

I've rarely experienced customer service as bad as when I try and get my local council to do something.

The fundamentally feudal nature of property law here is malign.

Property law in England and Wales hasn't been fundamentally feudal since the statute of Quia Emptores in 1290 which ended the practice of subinfeudation and required the alienation of land to take place by substitution instead.

But, as above, the real solution is to get people to move out of London. Even out the property demands (and wages) across the country, reverse the ongoing migration from the deprived areas with little work available (and hopefully, as a bit of a side effect, maybe stop people feeling so pissed off with the country's inequality that they'll vote for something like Brexit).

Obviously that's going to need some hefty carrots/sticks for businesses and plenty of investment in things like public transport and we've all seen how the Northern Powerhouse has gone so far.

^^ Read the Daily Mail while you wait?

Gives me a chance to catch up on Rotten Boroughs in Private Eye

Local government has been under assault for decades, now. Thatcher didn't trust even the Tory councils, so she was a big fan of creating legislation that gave them no choice about what to do while micromanaging (and cutting) their budgets. Successive governments have followed that trend. Blair doubled down on it, taking most decision making out of the chamber and into a smaller, single-party cabinet.

I was working in the voluntary sector back when local councils were effectively compelled to sack most of their staff and outsource. One of the first moves of many councils was to turn to the voluntary organisations they were funding and say "If you want to keep your funding, you have to take on our statutory obligations". Eventually the council leaderships realised that central government no longer cared much if those statutory obligations were honestly met (as long as there was a good cover story), so the funding for the voluntary sector began to dry up as well.

Local government would be a great idea if we still had it. Its slow death has probably played a part in the alienation that led to Brexit.

Freehold/leasehold is a rotten system directly derived from it.

It sounds like we should form a think-tank.