I couldn't have made this up in the FT:
As a rebuttal that's pretty robust.
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Comes to something when a bank is more responsible than the Government!
What I don’t understand (OK;maybe I’m stupid).
This is a disaster waiting to happen.
Everyone knows it is
No-one is stopping it
Ship hitting iceberg
BANG
Unusually, Richard I disagree. This isn’t a prudent warning from a bank… it’s the new way of doing propaganda. Look at what they’re ACTUALLY saying. ‘If you don’t go down the route of stripping Local Authority (and hence residents) of their power to veto developments, a terrible thing will happen!”
We saw the same Yesterday in the warning (by the head of NHS London) that the Capital’s NHS hospitals are dangerously understaffed. His conclusion? Londoners will just have to accept the closure of vital local services and Hospitals. Or something terrible will happen!
It is a rhetorical device which uses an apparent ‘warning’ by a seemingly ‘impartial’ third party, which gives credibility to the Government’s neo-liberal de-regulation agenda.
So obviously enmired has this Government become that their endorsement of ANYTHING is viewed with deep mistrust by the public. So get someone else to say it instead.
Interesting point
Thanks
Appreciated
Yes, I thought the same thing. The only thing mentioned in terms of stimulating supply is slashing regulation. No mention of stimulus spending. Local planning offices are notoriously corrupt (see the Private Eye, they’ve covered this many times of the years). Big money speaks loudest and there’s always a way around public consultations, etc.
I think the warning may be earnest but there’s a clear subtext of neoliberal ideology sensing another opportunity to advance itself.
There may not be any ships close at hand to come to the rescue this time. HMS Britannia may sink below the waves very quickly taking with her the ordinary, poor, unemployed and vulnerable. Only the well off minority with well stocked Mae Wests will be able to swim to safety.
Ah, but we’re now welcoming in wealthy Chinese! That’ll fix it.
The level of economic illiteracy at work here causes one’s jaw to prop even further than anatomically possible! What Lloyds should really be recommending is LVT, diverting the 12 billion for the ‘help to create a bubble scheme’ into house building, cut out the buy-to-let vampires and speculators and allow house prices to slump like they’ve never slumped before so they are not worth much more than the unecological materials they are built from. Then, maybe then, people can remove the millstones and start living!
Economic illiteracy it may be, but people do know the meaning of “vested interests”…
Agreed! At another level they know what they are doing!
I heard on the Today programme this morning someone from the Ernst & Young Item club saying that there would be no bubble and that everything would be fine. This was because price-rises of 6% were affordable as the cost of houses has apparently dropped by 25% ‘in real terms’ and planning applications were up by 30%.
Typically unenquisitive, the BBC City bod didn’t challenge him on the geographical skewing of these prices or how this ‘affordability’ looked in historic terms, but the thing that really shocked me was the answer to the question about what might happen to the reputation of a bank that went to the government for the payment of the portion of the mortgage that the scheme had guaranteed.
That’s alright, we were blythely assured, as all of this would be done in secret. I can’t imagine how anyone who might consider themselves a journalist could let this slide, but slide it did.
Is it really the case that the taxpayer will have no idea of who get’s bailed out and on what basis the loans were made initially?
The left wing BBC at work eh….tell Dacre
I’ve long since given up on the BBC being inquisitive -nearly all the questions that might occur to an inquisitive mind don’t get asked, so the mortgage and house price myth carries on unchallenged.
I’m always suspicious of these ‘warnings’. The ‘threat’ of house prices increasing will still spur on the greedy buy to letters and increase fear in anyone not yet on the ladder – must buy NOW!! Such warnings can themselves fuel a boom. And given Lloyd’s recent billboards encouraging the ‘dream’ of home ownership, I’m taking what they say with a bucketful of salt.
Yes – they are very adept at reverse psychology -the thieves!
The obvious solution is to allow local authorities to build council houses, but that route is being massively stamped upon as well.
Then there is the scandal of local authorities allowing perfectly serviceable homes stand boarded up and empty in order to sell them off to property developers who often use the land to build unaffordable luxury apartments out of reach of most of the local community. It is estimated that there is up to a million such homes standing empty that could simply be refurbished and sold or rented to local residents.
I wonder who the buy-to-letters are going to let to..
The amount of lets that are now “no dss” are at an all-time high.
Housing benefit pays around 80% (+-) of the rent, and even council tax benefit is now “council tax reduction”, and does not pay 100%.
A one-bed around here has a rent of £530-550/month with HB paying £477 and CTR around £115-125, with council tax around £140/month.
On top of that you have the letting agents fee of £200+- and the deposit (1 month).
Housing associations are clearing their waiting lists (literally, they just send waiters letters saying “goodbye-reapply”)
So people who cannot afford to buy, have to rent, at a rental that is more than the mortgage cost?
What about those who [[now] cannot afford to rent?
Are we to have “tent” cities?
Remind we that this is supposed to be a first-world civilised country…….
Yes John, we will end up with tent cities, just as they have in the US. And as this government and its sponsors and fellow travellers on the political right continue to dismantle the welfare state and refuse to recognise need for a substantial social housing sector (that would be, horror of horrors, SOCIALISM!), it can only get worse.
What makes you think the right care about whether this is a civilised country?
Surprisingly in many places, including near where I live, it is cheaper to rent than buy. See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e07605b0-303d-11e3-9eec-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=uk#axzz2hd3rub4G.
But not surprising actually because it is a sure sign that we’re in a speculative bubble, since the relationship between rental and capital value should conform to a stable formula.