General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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[email protected] appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
labour being so sociopathic that they don't care about pensioners, trans kids, the environment, or genocide but they do care about landlords and human rights violators wasn't on my bingo card for 2024
The housing secretary, who is also the deputy prime minister, said building more homes would stop prices from rising further and pricing new buyers out.
This would only really works if supply outstrips demand, but even if Labour delivers on the 1.5m pledge, it still falls far short of the current 4m+ deficit. The best this policy will do is stop prices rising as fast, but it won't stop prices rising.
One thing I have liked about the Starmer government is that they appreciate problems need a holistic.approach, you can't just make a.headline grabbing change, you need to adjust a range of systems. So.I.hope this move is accompanied by others, like building more social housing, addressing the empty homes problem, converting more high street shops into housing, etc all of which combined could start to address the wider problem.
converting more high street shops into housing
This. And offices. There is plenty of empty office space already. The government should consciously promote working from home to free even more office space and to convert it to housing. Office space can be easily converted into starter studio flats to house people who are just entering the market.
I agree with this. And all your mooted solutions require changes to planning policy, first, so this is a good start by the government!
For me, what would really fix the problem is banning right to buy, but I'm quite sure that will never happen.
So they’re moving the newts and still building? That seems ok, as long as it’s done properly.
Sadly, translocation has a very low success rate. It lets the developers say that they've been good, but if you return to check 5 years down the line chances are the reception site will be in a very poor condition and the tranlocated population much reduced or gone altogether.
If we are on a position where Labour are saying that the tories protected wildlife too much, my hopes for wildlife are not high.
Ok. I take it all back then. To be fair the idea that the Tories would protect anything but themselves or money is bonkers.
Yes, because in a country where wildlife is declining rapidly, a country that has one of the lowest biodiversity levels in the world, the solution is to allow developers to just build over the remaining habitats whilst making vauge hand-waving promises about protection.
I get the need to build more, but unless the government is going to take biodiversity loss seriously, you're just destroying more of what we have the most little of.
The government is taking biodiversity seriously by banning bee-killing pesticides, encouraging a shift to regenerative farming and through their commitment to green energy generally. They've also promised to make considerations around biodiversity part of the new planning policy.
What they have to stop is the use of biodiversity as a mere excuse for nimbyism. And, yes, this will entail building on some 'green' land. However, just because there's a bit of grass on something doesn't necessarily make it particularly biodiverse. We'll do far more for biodiversity by making protected green land truly biodiverse (rather than vast areas of near-dead monocultures, which is what all too much 'green space' in the UK actually is) while building good homes on some of the low-quality green space - which is the plan.
The people that love to talk about the importance of democracy love it when starmtroopers overrule local democracy.
Near me the planning inspectorate recently overruled a refusal for hundreds of little boxes on a zone 3a floodplain. Why are we not prioritising building on high areas given sea level rises are pretty inevitable?
We end up building on floodplains because NIMBYs block building everywhere else. These reforms will help us get more homes built where they're needed. And they don't overrule local democracy, they'll take away the outsized influence of the blockers. Democracy requires a level playing field.
And they don’t overrule local democracy
They overrule the democratically elected local councillors on the planning committee on local decisions, it does exactly that.
We can all keep throwing around the word 'democracy' while the housing crisis gets worse, or the government can exercise its democratic (see?) mandate to change planning regulations in order to fix the housing crisis. For me, this change prevents councillors going rogue against the democratically (there it is again!) agreed local plans - there's no 'overruling' by the government because it's not a centrally made decision to overrule them, they simply won't be able to poleaxe their own plans.
So, it's democratic twice over: the government exercises its mandate to allow councils to exercise their mandate to build.
Well there's the other solution, the final solution to this problem which you are advocating for by default. But most people agree that that's not the direction to go so maybe we need more housing now and accept the loss of some scenery.
the other solution, the final solution to this problem which you are advocating for by default
Say what now?
If you don't build houses and people can't afford to live in the few houses that exist, then you're condemning them to death, so just build the houses or admit you're fine with killing the undesirables instead of hiding behind pointless green washed versions of NIMBYism.
See, this reads very reasonably, but I think people were a bit put off by your original reference to a 'final solution', which has some... overtones.
How awful.
The wretched woman is only in post to give the party a bit of cover with the working class .
What's awful in building more houses, sweetie?