O/T - general election 2019

[Exiletyke]

It was heralded over a year ago where many felt "politically homeless" a phrase which could not have been more appropriate

[animallittle3]

Animal - I agree with you totally on 2019 Victorian Britain. I have mates that are single with decent jobs living in Rotherham who struggle to support themselves independently.

Im going to get lunched for this by gm and others but I blame Thatcher.*

I look at rent and utility bills as a proportion of income now compared to the 1960s. My parents, who lived in a council house, reckoned it was about 30% of their income. Now, its over 60% of income (rent for average 3 bed former council house round here is £550pm, add in utilities and you're close to £800, if you're on minimum wage you aint got much left after covering off the basics).

Selling off council houses and privatising utilities had a huge impact on the rise in these costs.

In the 80s we were told we'd all be householders and shareholders. As an example the bulk of BT shares ended up in hands of private fundholders within a few years of floating.* 60% of council has ended up in the hands of private landlords. The uncertainty in short term rentals for young families must be debilitating.

The average person in the UK didnt benefit. The next generation are paying the price. Home ownership and shareholding for them is a distant dream.

Add to this in 1980 Thatcher used monetrist policy to sqeeze credit in an effort to fight off inflation. The self inflicted recession led to 5m unemployment and the cost was to kill off many major industries hitting Northern cities the hardest.

When the economy recovrred industry looked abroad for production (neoliberal outsourcing) mainly to the far east.* Those jobs were gone forever.

It took major Northern cities like Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield the best part of 30 years to recover. The cost was that high skilled jobs and well paid careers were lost and replaced by minimum wage jobs in warehousing, shops, hotels, bars and the service sector. While there is high employment its low paid work.

I dont see the problem as down to the EU. My opinion I know.* I cant help thinking many brexiteers have targeted the wrong villian. And now working class northerners are voting with the Tories again.

The legacy needs depositing where she resides right now and I'll leave this earth a contented man if that happens .

[KerrAvon]

Animal - I agree with you totally on 2019 Victorian Britain. I have mates that are single with decent jobs living in Rotherham who struggle to support themselves independently.

Im going to get lunched for this by gm and others but I blame Thatcher.*

I look at rent and utility bills as a proportion of income now compared to the 1960s. My parents, who lived in a council house, reckoned it was about 30% of their income. Now, its over 60% of income (rent for average 3 bed former council house round here is £550pm, add in utilities and you're close to £800, if you're on minimum wage you aint got much left after covering off the basics).

Selling off council houses and privatising utilities had a huge impact on the rise in these costs.

In the 80s we were told we'd all be householders and shareholders. As an example the bulk of BT shares ended up in hands of private fundholders within a few years of floating.* 60% of council has ended up in the hands of private landlords. The uncertainty in short term rentals for young families must be debilitating.

The average person in the UK didnt benefit. The next generation are paying the price. Home ownership and shareholding for them is a distant dream.

Add to this in 1980 Thatcher used monetrist policy to sqeeze credit in an effort to fight off inflation. The self inflicted recession led to 5m unemployment and the cost was to kill off many major industries hitting Northern cities the hardest.

When the economy recovrred industry looked abroad for production (neoliberal outsourcing) mainly to the far east.* Those jobs were gone forever.

It took major Northern cities like Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield the best part of 30 years to recover. The cost was that high skilled jobs and well paid careers were lost and replaced by minimum wage jobs in warehousing, shops, hotels, bars and the service sector. While there is high employment its low paid work.

I dont see the problem as down to the EU. My opinion I know.* I cant help thinking many brexiteers have targeted the wrong villian. And now working class northerners are voting with the Tories again.

Your post is based more in your political ideology than in history, WanChai. To liken the current UK to Victorian Britain is a bit silly.

There is no evidence that selling off council houses has had a significant impact upon housing costs.

Home ownership is a relatively new concept to the UK. It started at a very low base (30% or so) in actual - as opposed to imaginary - Victorian Britain and grew slowly through the 20th Century. It passed the 50% mark in the 70s and then continued to expand until 2001, when it peaked at around 70%. It has now fallen back to around 65%.

The price of housing has little, if anything, to do with the sale of council housing stock – it comes down to the failure of the market to deliver sufficient housing for the rapidly growing number of households in the UK and particularly the rise which occurred when the ‘baby boomer’ generation fledged in the 80s and 90s. That same mismatch between supply and demand has made buying property to rent out an attractive investment.

There is no evidence that privatising the utilities caused an increase in price. There is no reason to believe that a state owned monopoly can deliver cheaper energy than a competitive market (albeit the functioning of that that market is hampered, to a degree, by the seeming reluctance of many customers to act rationally and shop for cheaper deals). As it stands, energy prices in the UK are cheaper than in many of our European competitors:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48284802

If people chose to sell of their BT shares then that was their choice. In reality, the public remain significant owners of BT via their pension funds.

Thatcher’s policies didn’t kill off major industries as you assert. Manufacturing in the UK began to fall off in the 1960s. The same thing happened in most Western economies as we became uncompetitive in comparison to emerging economies. The UK may have taken a particular hit as markets in the former Empire in which we had received favourable treatment became far more competitive. Manufacturing remains a significant sector of the UK economy, but it remains at risk of being lost if other countries become a more attractive place to operate as seems to have happened with Dyson.

If you wish to see the UK attract more high quality jobs, you need to make it a place that is attractive to do business. The Labour Party policies that you seemed strangely reluctant to comment upon yesterday do the exact opposite and will discourage companies from choosing to invest here. The announcement of the nationalisation of part of BT on Friday is particularly stupid – stupid to a degree that even I didn’t think Labour would go. Why would companies now choose to invest in the UK when they know that they are at risk of having their investments seized at the whim of John McDonnell?

P.s. If your chum is paying £250 per month on utitilites then he is probably doing something wrong.

[wendun]

Agree with lots of what you say, Kerr. But I feel you underplay the Thatcher government's role in the recession of 1980-1. As I remember it the budget response to looming recession was to increase taxes and cut government spending which resulted in a spike in unemployment and a loss of manufacturing capacity. As you say there were long term trends at play but this can't disguise the fact that in a single year UK manufacturing capacity fell by 20%. My sources for this include such left-wing rags as The Daily Telegraph. In Lancaster alone that year saw the closure (or virtual closure) of the three largest manufacturing employers, Storeys, Nairn Williamson and Lansil.

[ragingpup]

Your post is based more in your political ideology than in history, WanChai. To liken the current UK to Victorian Britain is a bit silly.

There is no evidence that selling off council houses has had a significant impact upon housing costs.

Home ownership is a relatively new concept to the UK. It started at a very low base (30% or so) in actual - as opposed to imaginary - Victorian Britain and grew slowly through the 20th Century. It passed the 50% mark in the 70s and then continued to expand until 2001, when it peaked at around 70%. It has now fallen back to around 65%.

The price of housing has little, if anything, to do with the sale of council housing stock – it comes down to the failure of the market to deliver sufficient housing for the rapidly growing number of households in the UK and particularly the rise which occurred when the ‘baby boomer’ generation fledged in the 80s and 90s. That same mismatch between supply and demand has made buying property to rent out an attractive investment.

There is no evidence that privatising the utilities caused an increase in price. There is no reason to believe that a state owned monopoly can deliver cheaper energy than a competitive market (albeit the functioning of that that market is hampered, to a degree, by the seeming reluctance of many customers to act rationally and shop for cheaper deals). As it stands, energy prices in the UK are cheaper than in many of our European competitors:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48284802

If people chose to sell of their BT shares then that was their choice. In reality, the public remain significant owners of BT via their pension funds.

Thatcher’s policies didn’t kill off major industries as you assert. Manufacturing in the UK began to fall off in the 1960s. The same thing happened in most Western economies as we became uncompetitive in comparison to emerging economies. The UK may have taken a particular hit as markets in the former Empire in which we had received favourable treatment became far more competitive. Manufacturing remains a significant sector of the UK economy, but it remains at risk of being lost if other countries become a more attractive place to operate as seems to have happened with Dyson.

If you wish to see the UK attract more high quality jobs, you need to make it a place that is attractive to do business. The Labour Party policies that you seemed strangely reluctant to comment upon yesterday do the exact opposite and will discourage companies from choosing to invest here. The announcement of the nationalisation of part of BT on Friday is particularly stupid – stupid to a degree that even I didn’t think Labour would go. Why would companies now choose to invest in the UK when they know that they are at risk of having their investments seized at the whim of John McDonnell?

P.s. If your chum is paying £250 per month on utitilites then he is probably doing something wrong.

I think that the price of housing was also significantly affected by the willingness of banks to lend up to 5 x the amount of buyer's wages as well as allowing them to continue to repay into their 70s. Bank's were very happy to hand out even risky mortgages as they know that if it defaults, they can simply take hold of the property. Relatively easy money and without any regulation, there was no reason for owners, obviously encouraged by the financial services industry (agents, advisers, banks) to not take advantage of this easy money creation scheme. Supply and demand is an important factor, but with some regulation, might not have been the wealth grab that emerged, that hugely disadvantages millions of youngsters today.

[wendun]

People are first and foremost influenced by self-interest. I know trade unionists who suddenly supported Thatcher because they could get their council house at a discount. People I worked with binged on the various discounted share options the government peddled - free money. One of my biggest gripes with Thatcher is that with the privatisations and with North Sea Oil they really did sell off the family silver for political gain. It's (to me at least) a tragedy that the UK did not establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund.

[KerrAvon]

Agree with lots of what you say, Kerr. But I feel you underplay the Thatcher government's role in the recession of 1980-1. As I remember it the budget response to looming recession was to increase taxes and cut government spending which resulted in a spike in unemployment and a loss of manufacturing capacity. As you say there were long term trends at play but this can't disguise the fact that in a single year UK manufacturing capacity fell by 20%. My sources for this include such left-wing rags as The Daily Telegraph. In Lancaster alone that year saw the closure (or virtual closure) of the three largest manufacturing employers, Storeys, Nairn Williamson and Lansil.

When Thatcher took over, the country was locked in an inflationary spiral that was destroying the value of money (particularly not fun if you are on a relatively fixed income such as a pension or benefits but damaging to everyone). That spiral was fuelled in part by militant Trade Unions who had little regard for the wellbeing of the industries that their members relied upon for employment and little regard for internal democracy.

Thatcher addressed the inflationary spiral by restricting the money supply and addressing TU excesses. The consequences of neither were pretty.

A consequence of restricting the supply of money within the economy was to limit demand and investment and that triggered a recession. It is fair to say that some manufacturing was lost as a consequence, but the reality is that it merely hastened the inevitable as opposed to causing the losses. The fact is that a good deal of UK manufacturing had become uncompetitive – nobody was buying British fabric when a similar quality product could be bought from, say, Bangladesh at a fraction of the cost. Japanese motorbikes, electrical goods and other consumer products from Hong Kong etc. – the list goes on.

Thatcher can be criticised for, perhaps, failing to provide sufficient incentives for new business to come to the UK – she did it with the likes of Nissan, Toyota and Honda, but could probably have done more.

And for the purposes of this thread – the important lesson from history is that if you want quality jobs in this country you do have to incentivise employers to create jobs here, whereas just about every current Labour policy seems to do the reverse…

[wendun]

Kerr, I think that's a reasonable appraisal. Interesting regarding "quality jobs" and my blueberry point on this morning's Piennar's Politics the Conservative minister stated that in respect of construction and farming European immigration had not only held down UK wages in those sectors but also had meant UK firms in those sectors had used it to avoid modernising production so that for example a house in the UK was still essentially built using methods used fifty years ago and took around 24 weeks rather than best practice in Europe and elsewhere that takes 3-4 weeks. I think this supports my argument that UK business is "lazy". It almost certainly also partly explains the UK productivity conundrum.

[wendun]

Kerr, one small point. As you say the Lancaster firms were mainly in wallpapers, fabrics and floor covering. I am not at all certain that in these sectors UK production was uncompetitive. The problem was that the decisions to close were irreversible, plant sold off and skills base quickly lost. So far as I know there are no significant manufacturing jobs now in the Lancaster area and the major employers are the NHS and the University. A friend who was a chemist at Storeys now drives a bus.

[WanChaiMiller]

Kerr just to tidy a few things up.

My reply was to Animal. The comment 'Victorian Britain' was to let him know my reply was linking to his post which he signed off 'This is 2019 not Victorian Britain' - my agreement was to the comments he made in that post.* So jump in by all means but please get the context right.

Having missed the point of my meaning 'Victorian Britain', pretty much all of what you say home ownership and house price inflation*has no relevance to my post.* We can have a different debate based on your post by all means.* I was commenting on rents for former council houses (and specically that now these are in private ownership tenants pay inflated commercial rates - I know commerial rates are based on the price of housing; my contention is that rents would not have gone up at commercial rates if council houses had remained in state ownership).

You either didnt grasp what I said or deliberately spun it to suit your take on history. I know my writing is not great but please lets have a debate on what intended to say and not on what you think I meant.