Varadkar GONE

[Terry Torpid]

I've no idea really where he sits on the spectrum. Explain to me in UK terms: is he Truss or Starmer?

Classic Tory Boy. Sides with the rich over the poor every single time. Doesn't even pretend to be a Compassionate Conservative.

When he launched his bid for leader, he said he wanted to lead a party "for people who get up early in the morning".

When the cost of living crisis collided with the runaway rent increases, he defended landlords by saying "One person's rent is another person's income - it might be their pension, it might be how they pay their mortgage." Boo fucking hoo.

One of his big slogans was "Welfare Cheats Cheat Us All".

Pull up your socks, tighten your belts, know your place. Just your typical neolib bastard. Good riddance to the cunt.

[EOLAN]

I don't suppose anyone here holds any stock in the idea that he was told to resign after his speech on Paddy's Day? (Which was fairly milquetoast, except for one small bit about why Ireland doesn't like genocide.)

No. If anything I would think he might have decided to use this moment in time to retire, after the Patrick's Day visit. Get the visit in, also after the referenda and give a couple of months for new leader to prepare for local/Euro elections and have some time to build up for the General Election.

His comments on Palestine, were pretty much in line with all major figures in Irish politics. Though some obviously may express with different levels of vigor. Maybe knowing he was going to resign soon, made him feel a little more freedom to speak out face to face.

[George White]

Classic Tory Boy. Sides with the rich over the poor every single time. Doesn't even pretend to be a Compassionate Conservative.

When he launched his bid for leader, he said he wanted to lead a party "for people who get up early in the morning".

When the cost of living crisis collided with the runaway rent increases, he defended landlords by saying "One person's rent is another person's income - it might be their pension, it might be how they pay their mortgage." Boo fucking hoo.

One of his big slogans was "Welfare Cheats Cheat Us All".

Pull up your socks, tighten your belts, know your place. Just your typical neolib bastard. Good riddance to the cunt.

I remember him in his welfare tirade, going on that I, Daniel Blake didn't show both sides of the story, because it didn't show benefits cheats.
Watch Raining Stones, then.
It has Benjy Riordan in it, too.

[Senior Baiano]

He was probably worried that the anti-genocide stance he has to take because of Irish public opinion might harm his future prospects of a lucrative davos-US lecture circuit-thinktank gig, so best to bail now.

[Oosp]

Varadkar is launching a pop culture podcast with Jonathan Pie, sponsored by Lockheed Martin

[bgmnts]

"One person's rent is another person's income" as a statement to defend landlords is genuinely quite funny.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

What's become of this country? We used to kill the landlords.

[dissolute ocelot]

"One person's rent is another person's income" as a statement to defend landlords is genuinely quite funny.

One person's rent is usually that same person's income.

[Minami Minegishi]

I assumed the timing was for new people to bed in, allowing enough months before elections. If he had pulled out later he would have been perceived as undermining the party, I think.

They are going to get a kicking at the next election so not entirely a surprise.

[buttgammon]

This is looking a bit like the last time the British Tories were looking for a new leader, with one obvious candidate and nobody else willing to take over knowing they're fucked.

[George White]

"One person's rent is another person's income" as a statement to defend landlords is genuinely quite funny.

As the son of a landlady, though, I agree with it, in principle.
It's just that he wasn't defending the small-time landlords like my parents but yer Ronans and yer mysterious vulture funds. 

[Zetetic]

The small-time landlords are often worse. Landlording is both their main source of income (and directly linked to how much they can screw out of individual tenants) and only hobby. They provide political cover to the rest and they're the ones who turn up to party meetings. The ones with maybe 3-20 properties.

If it's an investment setup 25% owned by the PRC and 75% by a company in Jersey, they're exploitative cunts but at least they're rarely personal about it and - depressingly - the actual people you deal with can be easier to convince that being less cunty is the better route to a quiet life and they're not nearly as invested in every single coin they wrest from a tenant.

[bgmnts]

Yeah sorry can't really square any landlords away in my head, no matter who they are.

The landlady of my flat is genuinely a lovely woman and we're so fortunate but I still hate that she's exploiting our need for a home.

[George White]

The small-time landlords are often worse. Landlording is both their main source of income (and directly linked to how much they can screw out of individual tenants) and only hobby. They provide political cover to the rest and they're the ones who turn up to party meetings. The ones with maybe 3-20 properties.

If it's an investment setup 25% owned by the PRC and 75% by a company in Jersey, they're exploitative cunts but at least they're rarely personal about it and - depressingly - the actual people you deal with can be easier to convince that being less cunty is the better route to a quiet life and they're not nearly as invested in every single coin they wrest from a tenant.

True.
I probably will become a landlord. For a while, I did joke that I was going to start wearing a brown cardigan and constantly say 'My Gawdddd!' and put my hands on hips, and have a cat called Vienna.

[falafel]

Yeah sorry can't really square any landlords away in my head, no matter who they are.

Never any good or reasonable reason to be renting out? Say if you're not absolutely loaded but relatively young and you can travel somewhere super cheap and spend a couple of years living off modest savings supplemented by renting out your home belt you go back to it. That's still being a landlord, is it in itself fundamentally evil? Is that something nobody should be able to do in an ideal world?

[bgmnts]

Never any good or reasonable reason to be renting out?

No.

I'm sure most would be okay exploiting someone's basic human need for shelter to fund a jolly around the world, but I don't think it's good or reasonable, personally, no.

[falafel]

What if the renters themselves were only living in an area for work or for personal reasons for a short period of time? Should they stay in a hotel? Or should their accommodation be provided by the state? And in other European countries where renting is much more normalised, controlled, tenants have more rights and many people happily do it forever; is it being a landlord in itself that is a problem or is it not more to do with how profitable it is?

[jamiefairlie]

If you have absolutely no landlords then there's no renting. Some people don't want to or can't afford to buy so what about them?

Government, local or otherwise, could do it but they're still landlords and they couldn't get out of that game quickly enough anyway.

[Minami Minegishi]

Weird how people are so keen to defend landlordism in 2024.

Flat earthers seem saner.

[Asclepius]

Stop using 'I'm defending the right of people to rent' in order to defend people being landlords.

People rent because they need to rent because they can't afford to buy.

All Landlords use that need, that desperation to make themselves a shedload of money by doing as little as possible.

All Landlords are parasites. You won't change my mind.

[Deano]

Never any good or reasonable reason to be renting out? Say if you're not absolutely loaded but relatively young and you can travel somewhere super cheap and spend a couple of years living off modest savings supplemented by renting out your home belt you go back to it. That's still being a landlord, is it in itself fundamentally evil? Is that something nobody should be able to do in an ideal world?

Yes. If you're young and own your own home you are absolutely loaded anyway :D
But you have to think of it in terms of the whole system.
What about the people who can't afford deposits, where would they live? Well you wouldn't need a deposit, why should you? Why can you not just get a mortgage with 0% and just pay monthly just like everyone who is renting does, but then also accrue ownership in the place you are living? Why do we need an intermediary to keep all the money?
And if you do that, that well-off young person can just sell their old place, and they wouldn't be renting in the place they are living abroad, they'd be gaining ownership of the place they are living instead, and can sell that when they move on.

It does all work.

We already have the concept pretty much established that you don't actually need to be able to afford a house in order to "own" a house. That you can actually just buy a tiny portion of the house, while a bank own the rest of it and let you live in it in exchange for you paying them £100s a month in interest while paying for the rest of the house.

We just have an arbitrary 10% or 5% "deposit" figure which frankly only exists to ensure landlords can be a thing. Rents are higher than mortgage payments for equivalent properties now anyway. Everyone renting could afford a mortgage, there's just this barrier put up of needing £20,000 in a lump sum to keep low-earners out. It's totally artificial.

[falafel]

Weird how people are so keen to defend landlordism in 2024.

Flat earthers seem saner.

Not defending, asking.

[Minami Minegishi]

Not defending, asking.

Same fucking questions and hypothetical scenarios I have been reading online since 1995.

Yeah but what about this specific scenario where...

[falafel]

Yes. If you're young and own your own home you are absolutely loaded anyway :D
But you have to think of it in terms of the whole system.
What about the people who can't afford deposits, where would they live? Well you wouldn't need a deposit, why should you? Why can you not just get a mortgage with 0% and just pay monthly just like everyone who is renting does, but then also accrue ownership in the place you are living? Why do we need an intermediary to keep all the money?
And if you do that, that well-off young person can just sell their old place, and they wouldn't be renting in the place they are living abroad, they'd be gaining ownership of the place they are living instead, and can sell that when they move on.

It does all work.

We already have the concept pretty much established that you don't actually need to be able to afford a house in order to "own" a house. That you can actually just buy a tiny portion of the house, while a bank own the rest of it and let you live in it in exchange for you paying them £100s a month in interest while paying for the rest of the house.

We just have an arbitrary 10% or 5% "deposit" figure which frankly only exists to ensure landlords can be a thing. Rents are higher than mortgage payments for equivalent properties now anyway. Everyone renting could afford a mortgage, there's just this barrier put up of needing £20,000 in a lump sum to keep low-earners out. It's totally artificial.

This makes sense to me. Seems you would need to culturally shatter the concept that a home is a financial investment with any return (and I've never been a fan of that concept anyway) and in doing so burst the bubble that has been propping up a lot of the UK economy? My gut feeling is that a rigorous enough change at a policy level or whatever would need to be done to structurally alter how the whole concept of home ownership is perceived would probably be chaotic and risk being disastrous in the short term for not just multi-property landlords but naïve homeowners with normal jobs who have been sold a certain ideal.

Not that it wouldn't be the right thing to do. Maybe it would be lancing the boil. I suspect most people in the UK, even renters, would see it as pretty radical.

And you'd have to regulate house purchases a lot more too, people can get away with murder with how easy it is to pull out at pretty much any point at the moment. That is one area where a deposit is useful. A buyer needs to be invested or it's too easy to walk away and screw everyone else, which would be a big problem in a world where renting for a few months wasn't an option. Maybe you could have homes designated as short term purchases with maintenance contracts to span multiple ownership periods so that people with no incentive don't progressively run a place down. A bit like renting but you're carrying your mortgage with you somehow rather than paying someone else's?

Evidently, I am not an economist.

[Deano]

What if the renters themselves were only living in an area for work or for personal reasons for a short period of time? Should they stay in a hotel?

Yes.

[Underturd]

Makes me think of the evil people who run the shop who exploited my need for a loaf of bread that time.

[Deano]

This makes sense to me. Seems you would need to culturally shatter the concept that a home is a financial investment with any return (and I've never been a fan of that concept anyway) and in doing so burst the bubble that has been propping up a lot of the UK economy? My gut feeling is that a rigorous enough change at a policy level or whatever would need to be done to structurally alter how the whole concept of home ownership is perceived would probably be chaotic and risk being disastrous in the short term for not just multi-property landlords but naïve homeowners with normal jobs who have been sold a certain ideal.

Not that it wouldn't be the right thing to do. Maybe it would be lancing the boil. I suspect most people in the UK, even renters, would see it as pretty radical.

And you'd have to regulate house purchases a lot more too, people can get away with murder with how easy it is to pull out at pretty much any point at the moment. That is one area where a deposit is useful. A buyer needs to be invested or it's too easy to walk away and screw everyone else, which would be a big problem in a world where renting for a few months wasn't an option. Maybe you could have homes designated as short term purchases with maintenance contracts to span multiple ownership periods so that people with no incentive don't progressively run a place down. A bit like renting but you're carrying your mortgage with you somehow rather than paying someone else's?

Evidently, I am not an economist.

You only need to look as far as Scotland to see a different (and better) way of managing house purchase chains. But honestly the system right now is as busted as you say as until exchange there's no investment from either side. And gaps between exchange and completion are getting shorter.

The reality is you probably don't need 0% deposits for this work. You could probably do 1% deposits or 3% deposits. We are seeing things move in that direction. Banks make a lot of money out of landlords (especially as plenty of them have mortgages that are much lower risk) but they make far more money out of people getting mortgages in houses to live. Hence why we are seeing mortgages with smaller and smaller deposits needed and things like accepting history of rental payments as evidence that you'd be a good risk to not miss mortgage payments. It's not altruism, it's banks clawing back part of that market from landlords.

[Deano]

Makes me think of the evil people who run the shop who exploited my need for a loaf of bread that time.

Why? Could you not afford the loaf of bread so they offered to let you take it with you and look at it for a bit for £1200 a month?

[falafel]

Same fucking questions and hypothetical scenarios I have been reading online since 1995.

Yeah but what about this specific scenario where...

I'm not trying to persuade anyone of anything. Nor am I surprised that my reflections aren't original, or may even be tiresome. My questions are genuine. Got to start somewhere.

[Underturd]

Why? Could you not afford the loaf of bread so they offered to let you take it with you and look at it for a bit for £1200 a month?

More to do with the looks I got when I came back a couple of days later with a shit in a plastic bag and asked for my deposit back.