Blatant government corruption

[biggytitbo]

This Latest newbuy scheme claims to be helping first time buyers get on the housing ladder. In reality it's just another attempt to prop up house prices by channeling taxpayers money to the construction industry. At best this is seriously misguided, having 2 effects - luring first time buyers into buying a grossly overpriced asset in a falling market, thus locking them into future negative equity and secondly locking everyone else out of the market due to artificially propping up house prices.


But it's not misguided or stupid, it's plain corruption. The construction industry have donated over £3 million to Tory funds in recent years, Persimon recently announced some very bullish profit forecasts and now the Tories announce this taxpayer subsidy for them - what a coincidence!

Grant Shapps MP
Early start. On way to Daybreak sofa to discuss the NewBuy Guarantee and reinvigorated Right To Buy that I'm launching with the PM today.
PERSIMMON HOMES
@grantshapps early for us too. On our way to @bbcr4today to talk #NewBuy > Good luck. I'm on after 8.30am

And the worse thing is the media will give the whole shitty corrupt con act tons of unquestioning free advertising!

[BlodwynPig]

Anyway to stop this? i'm personally in favour of wholesale destruction of the construction industry, like in Spain, then my dream of "a mud hut for everyone" might come true.

[biggytitbo]

It's unbelievable that after everything that's happened over the last few years they've learnt fucking nothing and are repeating all the same 'mistakes'.

[biggytitbo]

Just as bad, they're now offering council tenants upto £75k discount to buy their council house, further depleting the stock of social housing. Utter cunts.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

This might seem...snobbish, but I was listening to Grant Shapps on Today earlier and my thought was "why the fuck should council housing tenants get massive discounts when they buy their houses?"

What makes them so special exactly? Is there going to be a scheme to help middle income professionals get £75k off the price of a house? Because home ownership at the moment is just as off limits to them as it is the average council house tenant.

[biggytitbo]

I quite agree. Many people are now excluded from the privilege of social housing are left to the mercy of a deeply distorted iniquitous private rental sector. They're getting fuck all from the government, whose every policy has led to ever greater rises in rents. That they should allow people to buy up the stock of social housing, which isn't been replaced[nb]Or if it is, by shoddy, badly constructed shoebox flats[/nb], at vast discounts is absolutely astonishing.


They're not just repeating the mistakes of the past with these cretinous policies they're extending them. Due to the seemingly endless government intervention in the market there is now more mortgage lending going to buy to let landlords in this country than to ordinary housebuyers.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

Buy your well built, relatively spacious 1950s council house for fuck all and we'll replace it, 'like for like' with a nightmare new build ghetto home, operated by the private sector, at a maximum charge of 80% of the private sector average rent based upon far larger, more desireable properties in slightly similar postcodes and overlook the fact that private sector rent figure is hugely inflated anyway.

But hey, back in 2009, who woulda guessed what the Tories would be like if they came to power eh?

[biggytitbo]

It was pretty hard to imagine they'd be as interventionist as Labour was I suppose, but yes its no surprise since this obsession with keeping house prices high is shared by the entire political classes, plus pretty much the entirety of the mainstream media.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It's unbelievable that after everything that's happened over the last few years they've learnt fucking nothing and are repeating all the same 'mistakes'.

What's for them to learn? They're doing it for themselves. The involvement of private interests in policy making in this country is even more ludicrous than the USA who we lambast for it.

I sincerely hope Grant gets Shapps.

[shiftwork2]

luring first time buyers into buying a grossly overpriced asset in a falling market

I agree that the situation regarding housing in this country is seriously messed up, but house prices aren't falling they're just being eroded in real terms by inflation.  In East Anglia they've been static for 2 years now.  It doesn't make any economic sense but year after year the 'crash' fails to materialise.

How would you propose to help those who would like to stop renting from twat landlords?

[BlodwynPig]

The only thing static in East Anglia is the static caravans, am i right, Alan?

[biggytitbo]

House prices have fallen since the peak (although it varies across the country), just not nearly enough.


They're still around 40% overpriced in terms of what a healthy market can sustainably maintain, and the reason for that is vast government intervention propping up what is a perverse, distorted market.


The effect this is having is to create a clear two tier popualtion. Those that were reckless and bought vastly overpriced housing they simply couldn't afford with fraudulent mortgages are been protected from their mistake by government intervention whilst everyone else is paying the price - first time buyers havent got a hope in hell of buying and are thus forced to remain in a rental market that due to the governments price fixing is also vastly overpriced, and due to long term neglect of renters rights (because renting is for losers, the only people that matter are 'home owners') provides an insure and shoddy experience for millions of people.

But it's nice to think, as you sit in your rented shoebox that you're directly subsiding the guy across the road to live in a lovely 3 bed semi with garden you have no possible chance of ever been able to afford yourself (and I mean directly, money is been taken away from you and given to him simply because he owns a house he can't afford and you rent a shit hole you can afford).

The government are either colossally stupid and ignorant or they're complicit in this rotten situation. The idea that the problem with the market is that nasty mortgage lenders won't lend unless you have a big deposit is bollocks, the reason the market is locked is because house prices are too expensive, but are been stopped from falling to a sustainable level by the government. This means those in houses they cant afford don't have to sell and those looking to buy can't afford it, the result is paralysis.


The best these endless arse brained schemes will do is delay the inevitable for another year or so, but when this shit heap finally collapses it will be a great day for this country. Because nobody buys the lies and the fantasies anymore, its been quite heartening to read the comments under the (as per usual unquestioning) coverage in the papers, pretty much to a man everyone is pointing out what a pile of shit the scheme is and how its only designed to help house builders to keep prices high. I think there's so many people disenfranchised by the housing situation now that we've passed the emperors new clothes moment and finally bust through the collective delusion that has gripped us for the last decade.


But unfortunately the government are only interesting in serving one group, and that group is not us.

[shiftwork2]

Google image search returns this badass Norwich School alumnus



when you search on 'Alan Partridge static caravan'.

Better than the picture I was intending to post anyway.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Because nobody buys the lies and the fantasies anymore

If that were true, wouldn't the day you're looking forward to so much be here already?

[George Oscar Bluth II]

the reason the market is locked is because house prices are too expensive

This is true. The average house price at the end of 2011 was £228,385 (apparently).

The average income is...£20,000ish?

It shouldn't cost you more than twenty years wages to put a roof over your head. That's outrageous.

[biggytitbo]

If that were true, wouldn't the day you're looking forward to so much be here already?

Would have happened 4 years ago if it wasn't for the cunts in Westminister.

[ZoyzaSorris]

as a homeowner one of the few things I dont mind about government policy is not ruining my life by forcing hose prices to crash. Thanks neoliberal psychopaths!

[ZoyzaSorris]

(house I mean, I think hose prices are not being held artificially high)

[biggytitbo]

I disagree, £64 is scandlous for some hose - http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=hose&hl=en&safe=active&rlz=1G1SVECCENUK386&prmd=imvns&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1216&bih=783&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=10212753355844319308&sa=X&ei=DvxdT5DCMILS8QPbtsWvBw&ved=0CHkQ8wIwAA

[Replies From View]

Depends who's been wearing them.

[Johnny Yesno]

That they should allow people to buy up the stock of social housing, which isn't been replaced[nb]Or if it is, by shoddy, badly constructed shoebox flats[/nb], at vast discounts is absolutely astonishing.

I'm astonished. Is anyone else astonished?

It was pretty hard to imagine they'd be as interventionist as Labour was I suppose, but yes its no surprise since this obsession with keeping house prices high is shared by the entire political classes, plus pretty much the entirety of the mainstream media.

Very hard. I couldn't imagine it. Could anyone else imagine it?

This would never happen in a free market economy, etc.

Individual local authorities have always had the ability to sell council houses to their tenants, but until the early 1970s such sales were extremely rare. However, the Conservative-controlled Greater London Council of the late 1960s was persuaded by Horace Cutler, its Chairman of Housing, to create a general sales scheme. Cutler disagreed with the concept of local authorities as providers of housing and supported a free market approach. GLC housing sales were not allowed during the Labour administration of the mid-1970s but picked up again once Cutler became Leader in 1977. They proved extremely popular, and Cutler was close to Margaret Thatcher (a London MP) who made the right to buy council housing a Conservative Party policy nationally.

[Johnny Yesno]

Meanwhile, the government refuses two court rulings to share its own assessment of the risks posed by the NHS shakeup:

NHS reforms: government to defy order to publish risk register

Department of Health had lost latest stage of fight to keep secret an assessment of risks involved in the health service shakeup

The government will not release its own assessment of the risks posed by its NHS shakeup, despite a second legal ruling that it must stop keeping the document secret.

The Department of Health (DH) was ordered on Friday to publish its transition risk register after it lost an appeal against the information commissioner's ruling that it should be made public. Sources within the department confirmed to the Guardian that the register would not be published.

The information rights tribunal rejected the DH's bid to overturn the commissioner's ruling after a two-day hearing earlier this week at which witnesses for the DH argued, unsuccessfully, for it to be kept private lest it set a precedent that would undermine government departments' ability to assess the risks of pursuing particular policies.

Campaigners – including Labour and key medical bodies such as the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing – have argued that it must be released so that peers debating the health and social care bill can have the full information needed to scrutinise it properly.

The DH's brief initial statement in response to the setback on Friday gave no indication that it intended to comply with the tribunal's ruling that it "dismisses the Department of Health's appeal against the information commissioner's decision that the 10 November 2010 Transition Risk Register should be disclosed, except in relation to the name of a junior official which should be redacted". The tribunal is expected to release the reasons for its ruling soon.

The DH said: "We are still awaiting the detailed reasoning behind this decision. Once we have been able to examine the judgment we will work with colleagues across government and decide next steps."

It now has 28 days from the ruling's publication in which to launch a further appeal, this time to the upper tier tribunal, but it must first prove it has legal grounds for doing so, by finding a legal fault with Friday's decision.

The government's other option, if it were to appeal and lose again, would be to deploy the rare tactic of a cabinet veto to prevent publication, in effect overriding the rulings of the bodies that have so far considered it. That veto was used most notably when Tony Blair was in power, to deny campaigners sight of the legal advice the government received about the legality of military action in Iraq in the runup to the start of the conflict in 2003.

Whatever the DH decides, it is highly unlikely that its analysis of the risks inherent in its radical restructuring of the NHS in England will become publicly available before the bill gains its final parliamentary approval, which is likely to come from the House of Lords on 19 March and the House of Commons the day after.

The ruling is a second significant victory for the Labour MP John Healey, who began seeking publication of the register in 2010 when he was shadow health secretary. "The judgment backs the public's right to know about the risks the government is taking with its NHS plans," Healey said. He renewed his call for the document to be published immediately, to help peers with the final stages of their deliberations on the bill, which is due to undergo the final day of its report stage next Tuesday, 13 March, and then have its third reading in the Lords on 19 March.

"It's near the end of the 11th hour for the NHS bill and parliament rightly expects this information before it takes the final irrevocable step to pass the legislation," Healey said. "The government could appeal, and prolong this legal row. But I call on the prime minister to accept today's court verdict and order the Department of Health to publish the risk register immediately."

He added: "This is the second legal direction to the government to release the risk register. The judgment backs the public's right to know about the risks the government is taking with its NHS plans. It gives strong legal support to a full and open debate about the NHS reorganisation.

"Ministers must now respect the law, release the risk register in full and let people make up their own minds on the NHS changes. Today's legal judgment must put an end to the government's efforts to keep this information secret. They have dragged out this process for 15 months, while parliament has been legislating for their NHS plans."

He was backed by the ex-SDP leader Lord Owen, now a crossbench peer, who has been a key critic of the bill in the Lords. Owen said it would be "a constitutional outrage" if the bill won approval from the upper house without peers having had the chance to study the risk register.

Owen, a former doctor and Labour health minister in the 1970s, said he believed the document should be released now and peers given time to analyse it before any further consideration of the legislation.

He added: "The attempt to railroad this legislation through both Houses of Parliament has raised very serious questions about the legitimacy of this coalition government.

"Now at the last moment parliament has a chance to assert its democratic rights and the many Liberal Democrat peers, who know in their heart of hearts that this legislative procedure is fundamentally wrong, have the opportunity to stand by their principles."

In an appeal to former party colleagues, Owen added: "Surely now Liberal Democrat peers, with a long and proud history of supporting freedom of information, will not go along with any attempt by the coalition government to continue with the third reading of this bill in the light of today's information rights tribunal on the NHS transition risk register."

A spokesman for the information commissioner's officer said: "We welcome the decision of the tribunal to uphold the commissioner's decision notice ordering disclosure of the transitional risk register. We will consider the full details of the tribunal's decision once it has been made available."

The decision comes as the bill enters the final stages of its protracted journey through parliament. The legislation underwent an extraordinary "pause" last year after fierce criticism from Liberal Democrats, and was then rewritten, including advice from the advisory NHS Future Forum.

The DH did win one victory on Friday. The tribunal upheld its appeal against the commissioner's decision that a separate document, the strategic risk register, should be published. While the transition risk register focuses on risks specifically associated with the reorganisation, the strategic document tackles broader risks to the delivery of the DH's objectives. Its publication had been sought by the London Evening Standard newspaper, but it will now remain secret, unless the information commissioner decides to mount an appeal.

Everything's fine, okay? How would you like your plans for the country scrutinised? Just want a bit of privacy, FFS.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

You're hardly in a position to demand full disclosure JY.

[Johnny Yesno]

You're hardly in a position to demand full disclosure JY.

No.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCDRRF72eAY

[biggytitbo]

The situation when the policy was first promoted was quite different to where it is now.


In a country where lots of new social housing is still been built and where the housing market is still relatively sane and, dare I say it, conservative, allowing people to buy their council houses was a rational idea. In a world where housebuilding is at its lowest level since 1923 and the housing and rental market have become grotesquely distorted by rotten, counterproductive government intervention then its total lunacy to further reduce the stock of affordable social housing. Every government intervention seems to result in raising prices and rents and making the situation worse so they seriously need to fuck off.

[biggytitbo]

I wonder how much poor housing and the physical and mental toll it takes on people costs the NHS each year?

[thepuffpastryhangman]

Grant Shaps sounds like a cunt among cunts, that's for sure. But why would the government act in a politically naive way and upset their core voters? Everything they do is "intervention" and you can't expect them to pick and choose in any other fashion than that which best suits themselves.

[Johnny Yesno]

The situation when the policy was first promoted was quite different to where it is now.


In a country where lots of new social housing is still been built and where the housing market is still relatively sane and, dare I say it, conservative, allowing people to buy their council houses was a rational idea. In a world where housebuilding is at its lowest level since 1923 and the housing and rental market have become grotesquely distorted by rotten, counterproductive government intervention then its total lunacy to further reduce the stock of affordable social housing. Every government intervention seems to result in raising prices and rents and making the situation worse so they seriously need to fuck off.

But it was a stupid idea then, which predictably resulted in people getting a mortgage then losing their homes due to being put out of work by the same government that encouraged them to buy. I say stupid. Property investors did alright out of it.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

This is true. The average house price at the end of 2011 was £228,385 (apparently).

The average income is...£20,000ish?

It shouldn't cost you more than twenty years wages to put a roof over your head. That's outrageous.

Well, the average house is probably bought by a couple with a bit of equity as their second home.

A single person on average salary is going to have to make do with a studio/one-bed for their first home.

[MojoJojo]

In a country where lots of new social housing is still been built and where the housing market is still relatively sane and, dare I say it, conservative, allowing people to buy their council houses was a rational idea.

On what basis is it rational? The initial motivation was to get rid of social housing, with a useful bribe to the electorate a bonus. And it's the removal of social housing that has been the single biggest cause of uncontrolled rents and house prices. Dodgy mortgage lending and government interference made it worse, but if we still had a decent level of social housing, with affordable rent s, there could never have been a bubble.
(I'm talking here about Thatcher's specific policy of encouraging people to buy their council house, and selling below market rates).