By anyone’s reckoning Britain faces a housing crisis. We simply do not have enough houses in the places that people want to work and live. Why is our planning system so broken? Well, folks, the clue is in the name: planning. We have tested to destruction the idea that “plan-led” economies ever work. We know […]
In her party conference speech last year, Theresa May dedicated her premiership to “renewing the British Dream” by “fixing our broken housing market”. And so it is reasonable to assume that the ideas of anyone advising the prime minister of housing are likely to be fairly important. That is exactly what Toby Lloyd, formerly head […]
A Commons Committee has – quite seriously – argued that an Englishman’s home should no longer be his castle. You could also describe their proposal as a return of the Star Chamber – where doing something the powers that be didn’t like ended with you forfeiting your property. The English spent a number of centuries […]
The Resolution Foundation’s depressing claim that one-third of millennials face renting their whole life has made headlines today. But the think tank’s report also contained the encouraging — and unsurprising — revelation that countries building plenty of homes have generally not seen huge price rises, despite low interest rates and a big banking sector. Perhaps […]
You can get to Cambridge from Oxford directly in a roundabout sort of way: there are 53 of them between Oxford and Bedford alone. That’s one roundabout every 2 minutes and 21 seconds. It is why the proposed £3bn Expressway from Oxford to Cambridge, with a high-speed rail line to boot, can’t come soon enough. […]
How can we end the housing crisis? Would a better planning system ensure more well-designed homes with local support where they are most wanted, over time making homes more affordable than they would otherwise be? Of course it would. When it comes to whether or not something should be done about Britain’s planning system, that […]
An unhappy commuter successfully sued Greater Anglia this month after he said he experienced 183 delays in 550 journeys between his home in Halesworth and Ipswich. His claim that he spent almost 28 hours in the past year waiting for delayed trains comes amidst the latest in a line of dismal rail statistics from the Office of […]
Glory be, the villagers have bought the pub to stop it being turned into a block of flats. That, at any rate, is the story we’re being told. But it misses the point: if the villagers had been going to the pub for a drink more often then no one would have wanted to turn […]
Be more like Japan. That is the takeaway from a Bloomberg column by the always-interesting Noah Smith. His is the latest article to look at Tokyo’s approach to housing for answers to the spiralling cost of homes in comparable Western cities. On the surface, the lessons are straightforward, with Tokyo serving as a heartening reminder […]
The fire in Grenfell Tower, which began shortly after midnight on the morning of June 14 2017, killed 71 people. Three hundred and seventy-six households from the Tower and from neighbouring buildings were made homeless. Health professionals estimate that over 10,000 people from the wider community will experience physical or mental health problems as a […]
During the 2015 General Election, Ed Miliband’s flagship pledge to cap energy prices was derided by conservatives as a deranged idea from the 1970s. The then-PM David Cameron accused “Red Ed” of “wanting to live in a Marxist universe”. Yet within two years, the idea had found its way into the Conservative election manifesto, along […]
Horrified passengers suddenly realize their boat has a leak. They frantically start to paddle it with their hands towards a distant shore. The engine and sail sit ignored and unused. Meanwhile, someone at the stern refuses to raise the anchor. Theresa May’s announcement of new housing policies today has something of that feel. No-one can […]
Lord Willetts today gave a speech at the Resolution Foundation calling for wealth taxes to be imposed on the baby boomer generation in order to fund their health and social care in old age and to prevent the burden being placed on younger generations. Moreover, he has also called for a radical rethink of the […]
It’s obvious to even casual observers of British politics that the Conservative Party is desperately short of ideas. So much so that for several years now, they have mostly been implementing policies put forward by the opposition. The energy price cap, the living wage and even the exemption from stamp duty for first time buyers are just some of the […]
Next month’s Spring Statement – the first such event since Philip Hammond moved the Budget to the autumn – will reportedly be a pared-back event. The Chancellor plans to further burnish his reputation for excitement and unpredictability by being on his feet for no longer than 20 minutes and doing no more than updating the House […]
At the turn of the century banks got involved in a new product called a collateralised debt obligation, or CDO for short. These are basically lots of bits of loans packaged up into contracts that can be sold and bought. As a product it makes total sense — it provides one of the key elements […]
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