In the news

*Storm's comin'*

Wow that article needs an editor, has the same segments repeating at least twice

In any case, for balance they just killed an unarmed guy in Oklahoma.

Don't click if you don't want to see a guy die

It's grim up North. They're all work-shy, black tea drinking, flat cap wearing, lurcher breeders.

I can find people that fit and that don't fit that lazy stereotype.

Individual examples either reinforce of refute your POV, but it should be recognised that they can't describe the entire situation.

My point was that the reality is far more complex than someone with a small prism of that world can see. Broad generalisations are pretty fucking lazy and are best avoided.

Yeah but ppl from Essex are flash walkers

For the most part.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/benjamin-tal-housing-cibc-1.3769153

Not being bourgeois scum (only aspirational bourgeois scum) I'm not sure what the actual rules and laws are here. Any chance of similar things happening (if they haven't already)?

Custody battle will be interesting
Jolie vs Pitt

Some lawyers are going to get (even more) rich from that...

She wants sole custody. Win.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-37417898

Syrian aid convoy attacked. Sickening.

black tea drinking

DAFUQ YOUSAY?

Well. The world's cities are under unprecedented inflow pressure, largely owing to increasingly rampant internationalised injustice. People are fleeing smaller places (countryside, villages, towns, and cities) in droves, partly because they are pulled (attractiveness of economic opportunities in cities), partly because they're pushed (lack of attractive economic opportunities away from cities). Housing is only a symptom of that; you can play around with the housing market to your heart's content, but it won't solve the underlying problem.

I take it your question is whether similar policies on housing could happen in London? I think the chances are very slim, certainly under the current government, but there is the Brexit uncertainty factor. Then there's the office of the Mayor of London, relatively powerless compared to city mayors around the world, and I imagine the government would want to keep it like that for now.

At present, London's planning policies are pretty poor and in a sense the horse has already bolted. There is still a hope that at least some of the rubbish high-rise development in Central London can be halted, but as Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan is in a double bind. On the one hand, it's his job to benefit the city he governs, which in the simplest terms means 'growth'. On the other, he's Labour and probably does understand that growth in just the one place doesn't help the country at large a great deal. I don't know whether Khan will manage to leverage any more powers for himself. If he does, I consider it unlikely that he would be given adequate power to address the underlying problems apart from tinkering with housing a bit, i.e. set a certain price level for 'affordable' housing that would probably still be unaffordable to the vast majority.

Not much of an answer, but I think things have to change much more politically before housing policy stops being as unjust as it is at present.

Cheers, Oliver. Was just curious if the UK would ever take a position which risked stalling housing prices. It seems the country is much more interested in doing the opposite (Help to Buy ISAs, for example).

Credit fuels growth, the current government won't allow that borrowing to be public (bonds issued against infrastructure etc) so it has to he private - which means consumer credit, which means loans and mortgages in large part. They have to keep juicing the machine, so there's not a chance in hell of them doing anything meaningful to cool the housing market, it's the opposite of their ideological position (which would be to issue bonds to build public/affordable housing).

Increasing Stamp Duty was put in place to stop the over heating housing market, so was removal of the mortgage interest relief for landlords. From the information I'm getting it looks like both of those measures are having the desired effect.

In Hammersmith & Fulham they are using section 106 money from developers to fund affordable housing rather than force them to include it in the development. They restructured a lot of s106 deals which would have improved local facilities (like park pathways) to funnel money into housing. It's not that popular with people who already live here.

It wasn't, actually though. It was to keep the aspirational middle class in their place and to push property investment away from normal(ish) people and back towards the mega rich and funds. The initial plan was not to charge the extra stamp duty to those that own over 15 properties, it was only amended after pressure from Labour in the Lords...

Only about 12% of British properties are owned by private landlords (more in LDN I'm sure) so increasing tax on that small proportion of buyers won't cool things on its own, what we've seen is the cumulative effect of that tax rise, a natural slowing that happens after a period of steep growth and some referendum thing or other that happened a few months back.

You're right about the other effects, however I was focusing on what the government would do about stalling the market, which I maybe incorrectly assumed was what UK meant in the comment I was replying to.

I was quite sure the stated intent of the policies was to reduce over heating. I work in London fixing properties so probably see private landlords as a bigger part of the market than they are. I don't agree at all with the aspirational middle class bit, maybe I don't understand who they are or how it would 'keep them in their place'.

I'm being [over] cynical about the current government. Their stated intention and actual intention are mostly different...

'Amateur' landlords in need of bank borrowing to fund their purchases, who are the aspirational middle class I referred to, were the target, not the market as a whole. The policy was specifically designed to make property investment less attractive to them without harming the big investors who buy with cash.

The 15 or over exemption was utterly amazingly blatant.

regarding yet another police execution of an unarmed black man in the united states: it's been pointed out that NC is an open carry state, so even if the book he was carrying was a firearm, the pigs would have had fuck all reason to shoot him, his crime was being black.

folks feeling the need to violently protest against this shit is a reaction to being systematically targeted by an increasingly militant, structurally racist, unaccountable 'force' and they're right to do so.

It wasn't a serious comment, it was tongue in cheek, but yes you're right. I suspect they wanted him alive for whatever reason.

I don't think violence is the right response to violence, but otherwise yes.

Although violence is quite possibly the right response to those in pharma responsible for the practice known as 'gouging'. Wishing them a firey death would be OK too I reckon, but a slow painful death from a condition which could be cured by a very expensive drug but which they couldn't afford might be more fitting...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c184d2e-7eac-11e6-bc52-0c7211ef3198.html?siteedition=uk#axzz4Kttdl8qH

the reality is is that armed resistance is sometimes entirely justified, necessary and effective.

A few Iraqi war vets have been sharing the rules of engagement for vehicles etc.