Zak Goldsmith ... ha ha

crunchman

octatonic said:

crunchman said:

We couldn't even afford to buy in Acton or Brentford at current prices - or not without a big helping hand from parents with a very large deposit.

When were you looking?

Around 2007.  We had a flat, but with our first child on the way, the jump up to a house would have meant borrowing another £200k or so which was too large to be able to afford.

We don't currently have a deposit as we used the money we made on the flat to do a lot of necessary work on the house we are now living in which belongs to my mother-in-law.  She inherited the house but it was not in a good state, and didn't have the cash to fix it up.  At some point we'll get that money back if she ever sells the house but it's tied up at the moment.  We have a very favourable rent though so I can't really complain.  We have some money going into a savings account every month but it's not enough to make a significant dent in the price of a London house before we retire.

My wife's younger sisters are still in their early/mid twenties.  They can't even afford to buy flats around here.

As @mellowsun said, anyone who didn't get on the ladder before 1998 is stuffed.  One of our problems is that we bought in 2000 and didn't make silly money on our flat.  Prices probably doubled between 1998 and 2000.

Eventually we may well end up moving out of London.  If we move out, there is another teaching vacancy in my wife's school, which is already struggling massively to recruit staff.  Several other teachers that we know are moving out.  London is coming to a crisis point where there won't be enough people to run essential services.  You can't just rely on rich foreigners paying lots of stamp duty, or young Eastern European workers living 10 to a house.  The whole London economy needs to be rebalanced.

It's not a simple issue, because reducing house prices to a sensible level would cause a massive drop in stamp duty receipts but they do have to do something to stop rich foreigners buying property in London as investments and distorting the market.  Stopping non-citizens from buying as a lot of countries do might be a bit drastic, and it wouldn't help much with a large number already owned by non-citizens.  Adding a stamp duty and/or council tax surcharge for non-citizens would probably make more sense.  At this point that wouldn't help much with people from the EU as they have the same rights as us, but it would help with the Chinese, Arabs and Russians.

Bucket

Fretwired said:

HS2

No.

ESBlonde

UKIP have to pull something impressive out of the bag soon.

They have one MP who defected to them and brought his seat with him, he thinks Farage is a dodgy geezer. They have some MEPs that will be redundent in two years time, and....no reason d'etre!

ICBM

Bucket said:

Fretwired said:

HS2

No.

Probably going to happen, and probably a better idea than expanding Heathrow. Your perception may vary depending on how far you are from either of them.

HS2 would more or less make Birmingham Airport as close to central London as Heathrow in travel time too.

crunchman

ICBM said:

Bucket said:

Fretwired said:

HS2

No.

Probably going to happen, and probably a better idea than expanding Heathrow. Your perception may vary depending on how far you are from either of them.

HS2 would more or less make Birmingham Airport as close to central London as Heathrow in travel time too.

By rail.  Realistically, most people will still want to travel to either airport by car.  It should still get built for other reasons though.

A high speed rail link between Heathrow and Gatwick would make even more sense though.

ICBM

crunchman said:

ICBM said:

HS2 would more or less make Birmingham Airport as close to central London as Heathrow in travel time too.

By rail.  Realistically, most people will still want to travel to either airport by car.  It should still get built for other reasons though.

I think more people go to Heathrow by Tube than by car, although I could be wrong.

crunchman said:

A high speed rail link between Heathrow and Gatwick would make even more sense though.

One between London and Gatwick even more so. The number of transfers from Heathrow to Gatwick would still be small if proper route allocation was allowed so some destinations were not exclusive to one airport or the other.

crunchman

If we go to the airport we almost always go by car in some form or other - often the car is a taxi rather than our own though. 

It depends on the kind of traveller but if you have lots of luggage then public transport is not good.  My brother-in-law travels a lot on business, but his company normally sends a car to pick him up.  Having to cross the A4 every day to get to work, and seeing the number of taxis, and black Mercs with a passenger in the back, he's far from the only one getting picked up by a car.

Budgie

Fretwired said:
I'm sorry to say this but I think we're close to riots and violence and I think there will be a surge in UKIP support.

The streets will be overrun with OAPs waving their walking sticks... nasty things walking sticks. 

They can can have a practice run when they are('nt) having a massive demo at the Supreme Court hearing. 

Scary stuff indeed... a third of the population are somewhat miffed

TheBigDipper

ICBM said:

<snip>
Expanding Heathrow makes no sense at all from a capacity, cost or environmental point of view at all, and the only reason it's been approved is because the government doesn't have the guts to stand up to the big business interests who run it and are only interested in lining their own pockets. And supposedly because May didn't want to appear "anti-business" in the wake of Brexit - which would be pathetic even if it wasn't the case that expanding the other two airports would be even more of an economic boost.

Mrs May is quite a clever operator - somewhat teflon-coated, it seems. Which is good for her career and her party, but not necessarily for us or the country.

Heathrow will not get a third runway, but Mrs May won't get the blame for it. Someone else - environmentalists, the courts, whoever, will. She didn't have the guts to take the responsibility herself, but it will be stopped and she will have clean hands. 

She is using the same approach to Brexit. She won't alienate the people who voted Leave by openly opposing their choice. She's not daft enough to let us commit short-term economic suicide (whatever the long term prognosis is, the short term decimation we face is clear). Just wait, we'll end up in a position where the consequences of a hard Brexit are unbearable and a soft Brexit won't deliver the "independence" or "control over borders" that many Leavers were looking for. She'll ask us to decide which path we want to take and, whatever it is, we'll take the blame and she will have clean hands. 

Philly_Q

octatonic said:

crunchman said:

The problem for the LD's is that they want a "soft" Brexit which will include freedom of movement.  This is essentially no Brexit at all.  This won't wash with the majority of the population.  May knows this.  The people of Richmond Park, who are mostly the elites who are doing very well out of the current system, still haven't realised how much the rest of the country despises what they stand for.

It isn't the majority of the population.
It is 52% of the people that voted in the referendum.
48% of the people that voted in the referendum wanted to stay.
There was a huge number of people that didn't care enough to vote- whether they care to cast their vote the next time will depend on how hard their lives are due to withdrawing from the EU and various other issues that usually affect elections.

I don't think it's even the majority of the people that voted.

48% didn't want Brexit at all.  Of the 52% who did, I'm sure there'd have been a significant minority who wanted to "regain sovereignty" and/or have some control over immigration, but would wish to retain access to the free market.

So despite all the shouting on Question Time every week, I very much doubt there's any kind of majority in favour of a "hard" Brexit.  Yet that's the direction we're apparently being pushed in.

crunchman

The problem is that it looks like that retaining access to the free market would mean accepting freedom of movement.

You've also forgotten about the gathering storm in the Eurozone.  Italy might well be asking for a Greek style bailout in the not too distant future.  The problem is that it will cost too much and Germany and the other Northern Eurozone countries won't pay for it.  I saw something earlier along the lines of "Too big to fail, too big to save"

octatonic

crunchman said:

octatonic said:

crunchman said:

We couldn't even afford to buy in Acton or Brentford at current prices - or not without a big helping hand from parents with a very large deposit.

When were you looking?

Around 2007.  We had a flat, but with our first child on the way, the jump up to a house would have meant borrowing another £200k or so which was too large to be able to afford.

We don't currently have a deposit as we used the money we made on the flat to do a lot of necessary work on the house we are now living in which belongs to my mother-in-law.  She inherited the house but it was not in a good state, and didn't have the cash to fix it up.  At some point we'll get that money back if she ever sells the house but it's tied up at the moment.  We have a very favourable rent though so I can't really complain.  We have some money going into a savings account every month but it's not enough to make a significant dent in the price of a London house before we retire.

My wife's younger sisters are still in their early/mid twenties.  They can't even afford to buy flats around here.

 * As @mellowsun said, anyone who didn't get on the ladder before 1998 is stuffed.  One of our problems is that we bought in 2000 and didn't make silly money on our flat.  Prices probably doubled between 1998 and 2000.

Eventually we may well end up moving out of London.  If we move out, there is another teaching vacancy in my wife's school, which is already struggling massively to recruit staff.  Several other teachers that we know are moving out.  London is coming to a crisis point where there won't be enough people to run essential services.  You can't just rely on rich foreigners paying lots of stamp duty, or young Eastern European workers living 10 to a house.  The whole London economy needs to be rebalanced.

It's not a simple issue, because reducing house prices to a sensible level would cause a massive drop in stamp duty receipts but **they do have to do something to stop rich foreigners buying property in London as investments and distorting the market.  Stopping non-citizens from buying as a lot of countries do might be a bit drastic, and it wouldn't help much with a large number already owned by non-citizens.  Adding a stamp duty and/or council tax surcharge for non-citizens would probably make more sense.  At this point that wouldn't help much with people from the EU as they have the same rights as us, but it would help with the Chinese, Arabs and Russians.

* I don't think sweeping statements like this are accurate.
We didn't buy a house to live in until 2008- we waited for the market to drop, which it did by about 20-25%.
Did it up to eventually sell, which we did in 2015 when the time was right and fucked off out of London.
It can be done but you need to be patient and/or lucky.
I didn't want to live in Acton and we disliked quite a lot about living there but it was the right thing to do.

** They have made some inroads in that direction- capital gains tax is now imposed on foreign sellers- previously they were not.

ToneControl

ESBlonde said:

UKIP have to pull something impressive out of the bag soon.

They have one MP who defected to them and brought his seat with him, he thinks Farage is a dodgy geezer. They have some MEPs that will be redundent in two years time, and....no reason d'etre!

People need to be a bit less complacent about UKIP, especially after the 3 votes that didn't go the way  expected recently

UKIP  got 12.5% at the last GE, way more than the Libs or SNP

My prediction is that if Brexit is blocked,  there will be a big swing to UKIP in the next GE
That will be when people learn  that they don't have many polished pro politicians. The public may even like that

ICBM

ToneControl said:

People need to be a bit less complacent about UKIP, especially after the 3 votes that didn't go the way  expected recently

UKIP  got 12.5% at the last GE, way more than the Libs or SNP

No, the SNP got 50% - of the vote in Scotland.

You cannot compare the overall UK figures since the SNP didn't stand outside Scotland - where UKIP only got 47,000 votes in total (1.6%).

I know this doesn't mean anything in the context of the UK because the SNP isn't ever going to be fielding candidates outside Scotland, but it's important to not confuse things by using the wrong statistics .

I'm not complacent about UKIP despite their irrelevance in Scotland, I just think that without Farage, they will be much less attractive - they essentially dug their own grave by succeeding in tripping Cameron into calling the referendum.

crunchman

octatonic said:

 

We didn't buy a house to live in until 2008- we waited for the market to drop, which it did by about 20-25%.
Did it up to eventually sell, which we did in 2015 when the time was right and fucked off out of London.
It can be done but you need to be patient and/or lucky.
I didn't want to live in Acton and we disliked quite a lot about living there but it was the right thing to do.

We could probably afford to buy something small if if didn't have kids, but it's impossible for normal people to live here with a family - unless you can get some kind of social housing but we earn too much to be able to get that.  It's only because of my wife's family that we can afford to live here at all.

Fretwired

ICBM said:

ToneControl said:

People need to be a bit less complacent about UKIP, especially after the 3 votes that didn't go the way  expected recently

UKIP  got 12.5% at the last GE, way more than the Libs or SNP

I'm not complacent about UKIP despite their irrelevance in Scotland, I just think that without Farage, they will be much less attractive - they essentially dug their own grave by succeeding in tripping Cameron into calling the referendum.

Nuttall's not an idiot - he always does well on QT. He senses there's a mood in the country that no longer trusts the traditional parties. If he can raise some money and get some real policies and keep the Brexit pot boiling I can see UKIP winning seats from Labour. The Lib Dems have always done well in by-elections but it remains to be seen what happens at a GE. And if the Italian banking system crumbles and 5 Star get into power Italy could leave the Euro which will put the EU under pressure and may make more people think the UK is better off out. 

Steffo

What a pillock. The arrogant muppet got what he deserved.

Reverend

Fretwired said:

ICBM said:

ToneControl said:

People need to be a bit less complacent about UKIP, especially after the 3 votes that didn't go the way  expected recently

UKIP  got 12.5% at the last GE, way more than the Libs or SNP

I'm not complacent about UKIP despite their irrelevance in Scotland, I just think that without Farage, they will be much less attractive - they essentially dug their own grave by succeeding in tripping Cameron into calling the referendum.

Nuttall's not an idiot - he always does well on QT. He senses there's a mood in the country that no longer trusts the traditional parties. If he can raise some money and get some real policies and keep the Brexit pot boiling I can see UKIP winning seats from Labour. The Lib Dems have always done well in by-elections but it remains to be seen what happens at a GE. And if the Italian banking system crumbles and 5 Star get into power Italy could leave the Euro which will put the EU under pressure and may make more people think the UK is better off out. 

Them crazy Italians are all System Addicts. But it will back fire and they will All Fall Down. 

Brize

Philly_Q said:

I don't think it's even the majority of the people that voted.

48% didn't want Brexit at all.  Of the 52% who did, I'm sure there'd have been a significant minority who wanted to "regain sovereignty" and/or have some control over immigration, but would wish to retain access to the free market.

So despite all the shouting on Question Time every week, I very much doubt there's any kind of majority in favour of a "hard" Brexit.  Yet that's the direction we're apparently being pushed in.

Resist the tyranny of the 34.5% who know better!

ToneControl

why not put an airport at Ashford?
37 mins from St Pancras