Election Year or Fear!

[Geoff Parkstone]

Legal was autocorrected from "leg"

[swaledale]

I take your points, well made, but to me what you are suggesting is a way more comprehensive solution than HS 2 phases 1 or 2. The speration of freight and passenger capacity, allowing more use of the railways for freight is most important. That way freight can be got off the roads, cut pollution and have a more efficient freight distribution network. Even reviving the canal system which was at one point considered I think would help ease this.

The creation of more freight capacity does not need to be high speed and the shifting of freight off the passenger network would ease pressure on the latter and so improve journey times by unclogging those systems.

As for passenger journey times, I simply don't get the need for these to be faster. It's unnecessary and as it would only be arterial routes enhanced it wouldn't help people going from non hub stations (eg my Wolverhampton example where you could enhance speed between London and Birmingham but if you were travelling from Southend to Wolverhampton you'd be stymied by conventional legal to the journey).

Even with a more comprehensive HS network, why is it of value to get from Edinburgh to London (say) quicker? You could argue it would ease business travellers but what value is that saved time - thanks to wifi people can work on those trains anyway. But for domestic travellers, is there value for money in saving journey time? I used to travel London to Newcastle on trains with some regularity 10 years ago and the journey was not that onerous.

Virtually all the North/South passenger traffic would have been routed via the HS2 network as originally conceived, this would create more capacity on existing routes for freight serving a variety of destinations and terminals, it wouldn't achieve much to build a dedicated freight line and the costs of building a new railway are not much different whether its for 140 mph or 80 mph.

There would still be a time saving for someone who went say from Southend to Wolverhampton albeit not as great as between the hubs. But taking the very fast limited stop trains off say Birmingham to London Euston, would allow a service on existing journey times serving intermediate stations with the capacity created by shifting long distance trains to HS2.

I get your point on speed, but journey times do influence the mode of travel people use, an reduction in 30 mins to over an hour would mean that train would be more attractive than domestic air services, indeed France for example has reduced most domestic air services due to its high speed network, though it is of course a larger country. However, there are people who still use Manchester and Newcastle and of course Edinburgh/Glasgow to London air services so the time factor is an issue for them. If the city centre to city centre journey time is reduced to match the overall time it takes by air, taking into account the journey to and from the airport, then a shift becomes attractive to those for whom time is a factor.

I use Eurostar quite frequently these days and almost never fly to mainland Europe and the reduction in time that HS1 has created is the reason.

10 years ago I used to use train a lot to visit regional offices in all parts of the country, yes one can do work on the train as I did, but even so one spent a lot of time travelling for meetings. I remember when back in the day it was said that technology such as zoom etc. would mean business travel to meetings would die out both domestically and internationally. But though it has been reduced, it was still necessary to see the "whites of the eyes" of ones managers and indeed building relationships with clients requires some face to face contact on a regular basis. Given one is building a new line, it makes sense to make it high speed, but whether ultra high speed is necessary is questionable.

[Geoff Parkstone]

An interesting budget. No increase in personal taxes but increase in ERNI will directly reduce gross wages as a knock on effect. So no lies but perhaps a few truths bent here and there Glad to see nondoms abolished but this may simply mean flight of such people, so net tax take might not be as much as they hope.

Good to see hike in SDLT to push back from multiple home ownership which coupled with council house building programs should ease supply of housing and reduce the Airbnb market. CGT again hit which you'd expect as it mostly hits the "non working man".

Interest rates likely to stay higher longer as a consequence, and cost of government borrowing trending up in market, but not in a Trussian way.

All in all doesn't really hit me as a self employed businessman so broadly content, but I question if the changes will raise as much as the spending plans demand, so I imagine things may bite closer, on direct and indirect taxes, in another 12 months time.

[Trickytreesreds]

An interesting budget. No increase in personal taxes but increase in ERNI will directly reduce gross wages as a knock on effect. So no lies but perhaps a few truths bent here and there Glad to see nondoms abolished but this may simply mean flight of such people, so net tax take might not be as much as they hope.

Good to see hike in SDLT to push back from multiple home ownership which coupled with council house building programs should ease supply of housing and reduce the Airbnb market. CGT again hit which you'd expect as it mostly hits the "non working man".

Interest rates likely to stay higher longer as a consequence, and cost of government borrowing trending up in market, but not in a Trussian way.

All in all doesn't really hit me as a self employed businessman so broadly content, but I question if the changes will raise as much as the spending plans demand, so I imagine things may bite closer, on direct and indirect taxes, in another 12 months time.

I think your analogy is spot on GP.

https://news.sky.com/story/budget-chancellor-says-it-would-be-irresponsible-to-rule-out-further-tax-rises-13244848

I thought it would be more brutal, bit comforted myself in that a penny came off a pint.
If i drink 20 pints a day for 2 weeks I get a free half.
Winner winner , chicken dinner

[Geoff Parkstone]

Only if you drink draft beer though, Tricky

[Andy_Faber]

Good to see hike in SDLT to push back from multiple home ownership .

2% increase will have less impact on property buyers than the beer duty has on draft drinkers, in fact this small increase combined with a relatively larger increase in disposal (CG) tax might well change the minds of those in property to dispose of their assets. I was expecting and in fact had adjusted for some sort of income tax differential for 'unearned' income

[Geoff Parkstone]

It's a move in the right direction, coupled with the removal of the favourable holiday let tax treatment might curtail antisocial Airbnb-ists. I don't have a problem with the private residential rental market: just the locking up of rentable property in the occasional holiday let market. Fine it we had surplus residential property stock to use up, but we don't.

[Andy_Faber]

It's a move in the right direction, coupled with the removal of the favourable holiday let tax treatment might curtail antisocial Airbnb-ists. I don't have a problem with the private residential rental market: just the locking up of rentable property in the occasional holiday let market. Fine it we had surplus residential property stock to use up, but we don't.

I'll agree with the air b n b thing, I was briefly in the air b n b game but always keen to keep my property full, and with responsible types.

[Trickytreesreds]

I did like the idea of appointing a task force to track down the PPE fiasco. Though it had better deliver some actual foul play now, or end up with egg on the face.

[Geoff Parkstone]

I did like the idea of appointing a task force to track down the PPE fiasco. Though it had better deliver some actual foul play now, or end up with egg on the face.

Deliver some cash-back to pay for itself hopefully, but somehow I doubt it

[ramAnag]

It's a move in the right direction, coupled with the removal of the favourable holiday let tax treatment might curtail antisocial Airbnb-ists. I don't have a problem with the private residential rental market: just the locking up of rentable property in the occasional holiday let market. Fine it we had surplus residential property stock to use up, but we don't.

I have heard it suggested - in a non vested interest/political way - that there are enough empty properties in the UK to solve the housing crisis ‘at a stroke’. Don’t know enough to know if that’s true or not. Thoughts?

[Andy_Faber]

I have heard it suggested - in a non vested interest/political way - that there are enough empty properties in the UK to solve the housing crisis ‘at a stroke’. Don’t know enough to know if that’s true or not. Thoughts?

What part of housing do you consider to be in crisis rA it’s a complex many faceted issue

[ramAnag]

What part of housing do you consider to be in crisis rA it’s a complex many faceted issue

The shortage. I have no point to make on this. Don’t pretend to know enough about it. Happen to have spent the last couple of days in Oxford…there’re an awful lot of people - men and women of all ages and colours - on the streets there. So I’m sure it’s ’complex and many faceted’…maybe more so to the homeless people I saw today than to you and I.

[Andy_Faber]

The shortage. I have no point to make on this. DonÂ’t pretend to know enough about it. Happen to have spent the last couple of days in OxfordÂ…thereÂ’re an awful lot of people - men and women of all ages and colours - on the streets there. So IÂ’m sure itÂ’s Â’complex and many facetedÂ’Â…maybe more so to the homeless people I saw today than to you and I.

I can only offer enlightenment on this from my own observation and experience, and for Tricky-related reasons I won't include comment about immigration pressures

An observation about 'the homeless': You may recall I did charitable work that brought me into contact with 'the homeless' (I don't now by the way, halo slipped). I was surprised/shocked that a significant amount of those I spoke to PREFERRED to be homeless, for reasons too complex for me to help with, including many who were given shelter and either refused it or quickly/repeatedly gave it up. Solving that (in those cases) seemed to me to be a mental health issue not an accommodation-shortage issue

Regarding empty properties, personally as a landlord I consider gaps in occupancy of my own properties beyond a couple of days per tenant changeover to be a failure on my part and I/we work bloody hard to avoid it happening, so seeing empty properties around frustrates me. BUT there are lots of genuine reasons, beyond the obvious 2nd home/occasional airbnb anomolies - houses in probate, houses vacated by people in old folks homes, houses empty due to temporary work relocation, houses waiting for sale where the owner has had to move, houses willed to people not yet capable of occupation, there are loads more and there's a lot of such inertia, I have indirect knowledge of the volume through my own and Mrs F's employment in estate agency/management. In most of these cases, and because every case is different, its not practically possible to give these properties over to people in need, think of the time (and cost) of bringing them up to standard as a for instance

Add to that the fact that if an accidental empty property owner becomes a landlord and gets it wrong, it can be a nightmare to put it back right. Whatever the noble intentions in allowing tenants into a property, once they are in they are in and they hold almost all of the cards, regardless of behaviour, inclination to pay or adhering to other conditions. Landlordship is a profession and I would always recommend owners NOT to risk their property unless it was for the long term and with eyes absolutely wide open to the pitfalls

Just a few points, not any sort of solution

[Geoff Parkstone]

Having just googled, last data (12m old) suggests some 260,000 long term empty properties, rising to over a million if you include holiday lets and second homes.

So numerically there could well be scope for easing "crisis" but in practice the location of homeless may not align with where these second homes/holiday lets are. Eg the latter are probably in rural/coastal areas whilst the former are more likely urban.