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tim.....

"e27002 aurora" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 10:49:52 -0600,
wrote:

In article ,
(aurora) wrote:

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 05:26:11 -0800 (PST), "R. Mark Clayton"
wrote:

Do remind me of when the residents of Middlesex were polled in a
referendum regarding their future.

It was abolished in the days when the consensus was that referendums were
the tools of dictators and our system of representative government was
wholly accepted (except for Sunday pub opening in Wales).

The London County Council was unique in being
granted powers not given to other counties. Why these powers could
not have been granted the Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent is a mystery.

Because they related to a capital city (and the largest urban centre
by a large margin)?

IIRC the extra powers related to education and orphanages. These are
hardly matters that could not be handled by the existing boroughs, or
counties.

Much the greatest extra power was to build and manage council housing. No
other county had that. All counties had education powers.

IIRC the establishment of the LCC (1889) predates the Education Act
(1902).

You clearly believe government should be in the housing for rent
market.

Yes I do!

We have a situation at the moment where house prices to buy/rent are way
above what a large part of the electorate can afford. This has led to
windfall profits for owners of land that can get properties built on their
land.

We are attempting (and failing IMHO) to fix that problem by mandating that a
percentage of houses are available on a "low cost" basis to the prices out
demographic by subsidising them using money taken out of the pockets of the
purchasers of the more expensive properties - rather than from the people
who have made the windfall profits.

I think that wrong. We should be stopping the windfall profits, not "taxing"
house purchasers.

And, short of directly taxing those windfall profits (and idea that has been
mooted but abandoned as impractical), the only solution to the problem is
to bring down the price of new build properties (and hence the value of the
land they are sitting on) by swamping the market with millions of new
houses.

And it is impossible to expect private developers to build this excess of
house as they would have to buy the land to put them on at the inflated
prices (and hence go bankrupt in the process) The only way that we can
achieve this is if government agencies commission the house on land that
they have acquired at un-inflated prices.

And as I'm shortly to be retire and start living off my "pile", accumulated
mostly due to this perverse increase in house values - overall I don't give
a damn if UK PTB solve this problem, so you can shoot the messenger if you
wish

tim