(no subject)

[andrewducker]

According to this BBC news article, the reason why the housing in the UK is so expensive is that there's not enough of it (duh!). We're building around 40,000 houses a year less than we need if we want to get housing down to an affordable level. There's two reasons for this - firstly, planning permission is much harder to get, and 8/10 construction firms are short on skilled people. Possibly we could teach some people trades rather than sending them to university?

Comments

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

There's three reasons, and the third one is the biggest of the lot - your first two are trivial by comparison.

Between 1945 and 1979, all governments, Labour or Conservative, built new affordable housing for rent.

Thatcher stopped that practice virtually cold. After 18 years of Thatcherite government, during which the housing that should have been for rent to families who needed it got sold off*, and the Tories built no more, came Tony Blair - who has done nothing to reverse this horrific legacy.

*And the local councils who were compelled to offer their housing for sale were forbidden to use the money they got via council house sales to build new council houses.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

*Beep*

Got it in one.

Take a prize!

(I.E. I was going to say that very thing, but you did so first, and better.)

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

The population isn't really increasing, though - folks must just getting more spread out (i.e. less people per house).

Not all areas are unaffordable. Not even all areas with plentiful jobs are unaffordable. It's the southeast and the pretty areas that are the biggest problem, still. Yorkshire is getting there, and Edinburgh seems to have been there for a while.

Also folks in the UK are, for whatever reason, hopelessly stuck on buying rather than renting (shades of greed, there, crowing about how much more your house is worth than when you bought it, but unless you sell up and move somewhere cheaper, how can it be a real gain?). As I understand it, most Europeans aren't so hung up on buying/vs renting, particularly in cities.

I believe that planning permission SHOULD be hard to get, at least in the countryside. There's enough ex-industrial wasteland that should be reclaimed. They recently built some flats in the disused bit of railway yard at the bottom of our road. 2 houses have gone up in what were people's garage/excess driveways in the street next to ours. They are building 2 seperate developments of flats (one lot of 42 by the YMCA, and supposedly 'affordable housing for young people')on the main road on derelict sites, and there is another lot next to one which I can see going the same way shortly. All good stuff, and how it should be,

I grew up in a town that was spreading like a cancer into the countryside in which I played, biked and walked, but with profits in farming dropping like a stone and property prices rising like a balloon, it was all pretty inevitable. I hated that, and I still do.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

kpollock said
The population isn't really increasing, though - folks must just getting more spread out (i.e. less people per house).

According to the Barker Review
According to estimates, there are between 220,000 and 230,000 new households being formed annually.

Yet, only 165,000 homes were built in 2002.

The population is increasing, while the average size of households is declining.

This is caused by a range of demographic factors, such as increasing life expectancy, and more divorces.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3305759.stm

The above link gives a good explanation of what the state of the current UK property market is, and how it got there. And points out we need an extra 2.5m properties to get to the average levels of Germany, France and Italy.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

(very) sloppy language on my part may have lead to ambiguity.

when I said

The population isn't really increasing

I meant that population growth in the UK is very low, not implying that there is no growth and somehow it is being expressed in the statistics so as to obscure this. So apologies if anyone thought that was what I meant.

your quote

The population is increasing, while the average size of households is declining

says exactly what I was trying to put across.

[sylphigirl.livejournal.com]

to add - scotland is also short of 8000 GPs, 2000 social workers, god knows how many teachers at all levels, particularly senior and experienced staff. there aren't enough plumbers and handy people to maintain the properties there are at the moment, so the problem is pretty big.

it makes one's art history degree seem actually useless. i am in favour of returning to the apprenticeship system, which i would gladly have done. but labour needs to regain a sense of dignity which i think is lost when we talk so much about vast wages and abstract managerial skills.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

but labour needs to regain a sense of dignity

*splutter!*

Sounds very, I dunno, romantic sub-communist tripe to me. It gives me visions of old USSR propaganda videos, *giggle*, or the humble worker in the field narrated in the ultra posh 1930's BBC accent where you can see the poor guy thinkning "dignity of labour my arse, I'm freezing, my joints hurt and I've got another 20 years of this shit to look forward to. What does that git know about it whih his nice warm office, I'd rather be home with a pint " etc etc. It's the old-fashioned equivalent of the modern office political tactic of keeping the workers happy (or at least scheming against each other) with pointless job titles.

Hard work is hard work and most of us would rather not do it at all given any other choice thankyouverymuch. Jobs are either something that you do purely for the money or that you do because you enjoy (and various shades in between, but mostly up the first end).

Or do you mean you want more people to respect those who take a 'manual' job? *shrugs* I've never been bothered what people think about what I'm doing and I've never really looked down on folks who build/make things. I can't really comment on the social aspects.

I agree re apprenticeships. Maybe some sort of ongoing sandwich affair alternating work and study - because learning anything purely in the classroom or purely by doing it means that you miss out on a tremendous amount of potential.

[sylphigirl.livejournal.com]

(to self) cock.

its hard to talk about these things without sounding like a wanker.

i didn't mean a romantic vision of the peasant being somehow an icon of blahblahblah. it just seems odd to me that people around me at university are scared that it is so hard to find work these days, that the graduate market is getting so competitive, that the milk round is starting the tooth and nail competition for a handful of posts in london doing marketing, consultancy, accounting and investment banking, but there aren't enough people with manual skills to empty bins, treat illnesses or teach kids.

the medical profession is highly respected among university applicants, but the other stuff isn't. i find a lot of final year students talking in terms of 25 grand to start and a car and though i agree money is important, there seems to be an imbalance here. intelligent and creative people are oozing out of humanities departments and struggling to find work. manual labour and community work struggles to find people to employ.

and everybody wants to move to london.

lost my point, sorry. mainly, more respect for people who make/build/do not just for consultants/executives/managers.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Well, it gave me a giggle anyway.

I know what you mean, I was kind of caught up in the money thing for a while, but only because I wanted to pack the whole lot in. I then realised what I needed to do was something I enjoyed and it took me years to find a something that was also a plausible way of life. I haven't got there yet, but at least I know where I'm going. And it isn't for the hugest pot o' dosh (tm).

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Population Density (persons/square km in 2000 according to the UN)
Japan 336
India 305
UK 245
Germany 230
Italy 192
China 133
France 107
USA 29
Russian Federation 9

12 February 2002: Demographia announces the release of an urbanized area population and density estimate for London. The London urbanized area is estimated to have a 1998 population of 12,232,000 living in a developed area of approximately 1,600 square miles, for an urbanized population density of 7,645 per square mile (2,949 per square kilometer). The gross area of the jurisdictions containing this developed area is 2,932 square miles, for a population density of 4,183 per square mile (1,614 per square kilometer).
http://www.demographia.com/db-lonuza.htm

So the population density of the general London are is ten times that of the UK as a whole. The density of _Inner_ London is quoted as 8,574 or almost exactly 35 times the average density of the UK.

Given that level of population, the requirements for teachers, nurses and other "service" personnel are unsurprising. And given that these service personnel tend not to have high incomes means that London property prices should level off ... however due to low interest rates and banks lending up to five times salary (or more since some are asking for no proof of salary) plus "the property ladder" it means that some areas have now gotten to the point where the average person living there can't afford to buy the average house (or in many cases even the cheapest house). For example, Hackney has the second highest ratio of house price to average income in the UK, in spite (or because) of being an underprivileged area. The average house price is nearly six times the average income (due to the large number of unemployed or low wage earners in Hackney, but with higher paid Londoners buying second properties for rental. The house prices in Hackney are low for London but high for locals ... pretty much the same as Londoners buying holiday cottages in Wales etc. and stopping locals being able to afford places to live)

[diffrentcolours]

According to a documentary I saw a few months ago, the main problem is that people want to live in the South-East. This documentary featured empty housing estates in Yorkshire (perfectly good housing, built within the last ten years) while the demand for housing in the South has gone critical. There was talk of people moving to France and commuting to London on the Eurostar, as a faster (and cheaper) alternative.

What'd help possibly is the development of more business outside London, white-collar stuff rather than industrial. But as long as having your offices in London is seen as a mark of prestige, I can't see that happening.

And yes, we need more people with trade skills than bloody arts degrees.

[sylphigirl.livejournal.com]

having lived on a housing estate in Yorkshire i can say they are pretty miserable and until the north of england gets a bit better, people aren't going to want to move there. that said, bits of it are fine, i just happen to have come from Braford, where dyed hair is a crime punishable by stoning.

and as a person soon to have an arts degree (fingers crossed) i would like to say that they have value for personal development - plain english "its great stuff to learn about-especially cause i grew up in a town of neanderthal fuckwits". but they're crap for being useful. this is one benefit of the american college system. the floatyiest art nymph has to take some classes in science, languages, history and the like. not uber practical but getting there.

[diffrentcolours]

Uhm, not all Yorkshire housing estates are identical. I'm aware that many of them are less than pleasant (especially ones near Bradford, since everything near Bradford is unpleasant). However, one of the ones featured in this programme was very nice indeed - semi-detached and detached housing rather than terraces, plenty of garden space, tastefully done rather than red / yellow brick monstrosity, landscaped gardens, play areas, and soforth.

As a person with an engineering degree, I agree that the American system is preferable to the British. However, I think that you can achieve personal development and a useful qualification without significant difficulty.

[sylphigirl.livejournal.com]

yes, true, but a university degree was held up to me as being so useful that the practicality element didn't get taken into consideration. i also failed to see past the arts or sciences split for a long time...my bad.

i get uncomfortable with the assumption within my school that the more qualifications you had, the better life you would have, the happier you would be and the richer. there wasn't much attention paid to building studies that made sense to you. people who didn't study were drop-outs, those who stayed in would get cream. it ain't working out that way.

can you tell i'm a final year student feeling a little angry at myself for my degree? (laughs) i imagine its transparent as all hell.

but i stick by the fact that in my school anyway, qualifications were fetishised and leaving school to do anything from being a mechanic/entrepreneur/hairdresser/teacher/blah was frowned on.