Quote Originally Posted by WanChaiMiller View Post
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.