To anyone with any common sense, allowing large scale immigration
necessitates a large increase in houses.

In article ,
(Robin9) wrote:

tim.....;150017 Wrote:
"Robin9" wrote in message
...-

e27002 aurora;149992 Wrote:-

Here we differ. The years of tepid socialism were culminating in
piles of garbage in the street, a growing rat population, and the dead
were unburied. Can you imagine how this added to the emotional load
of the families and friends of the recently decease?

Margaret Hilda Baroness Thatcher was raised up to restore our United
Kingdom. She achieved so much before the cowards in the tory party
had their palace coup.

This included trades union legislation and the defeat of Scargill and
co. Decent people were making a living again and the UK's national
esteem was being restored.-

The refuse not being collected and the dead lying unburied were not
normal, consistent features of life in the 1970s.

Thatcher did not restore the U. K. and because of her, huge numbers of
decent people were unable to make a proper living.

I was lucky. I was already a home-owner before 1979. In the 1970s,
before Thatcher, normal people on normal incomes could aspire to owning
their own home. Thatcher destroyed that dream. She created a housing
shortage and then, at the behest of her financial backers who could not
compete, she killed off building societies who dominated the mortgage
market. I feel sorry for today's young people, most of whom have given
up dreaming of their own home.-

What utter nonsense

whatever Thatcher do, or did not do wrong, creating a housing shortage
was not one of them,

That came much later (mostly on the watch of Mt T Blair)

You're obviously qualified to talk about utter nonsense.

Thatcher made it illegal for local authorities to spend the money they
received for council houses in building new homes. If you really believe
that has nothing to do with today's housing shortage, you are fantasising.

During Thatcher's period in office, house prices rose so sharply that in
the London area, it became the major subject of conversation. Prices rise
when there is a shortage.

The problem has got much worse since Thatcher's time. Arguably the
ridiculous speculator-driven housing market is a product of Gordon Brown
taxing pension funds so people can't otherwise save for their old age.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

I think everyone - even diehard Labour supporters - will agree that the
situation has become even more serious since Thatcher. (For what it's worth,
I dislike Labour even more than I dislike Tories, and I think Tony Blair was an
even worse Prime Minister than Thatcher) However a balanced perspective on
the entire housing problem must be based on facts, not on tribal loyalty.

During the 1950s home ownership increased enormously and the construction
industry achieved completion figures that put today's industry to shame. In
some years they built more than 400,000 houses. Today we can't manage even 300,000.

When Labour came into office in October 1964, they set about clearing the
remaining slums and hugely increasing council housing. I've always suspected
there was a lot of corruption involved but the indisputable fact is that
Harold Wilson's otherwise hopeless Government did bring about a vast
improvement in housing, in both quality and quantity. This improvement
was mainly achieved by building on a large scale both houses to
buy and council houses.

Thatcher's decision to prevent local authorities from building new council
accomodation meant that one half of the supply of additional housing stock
came to an end. Right wing dogmatists concocted a silly theory: the private
housing market would finance the construction of new houses to rent in the
private sector, standards would rise and everything would be fine. It didn't
work out like that at all.

That neither John Major nor Tony Blair took the growing housing problem
seriously does not absolve Margaret Thatcher from her share of the blame.

In message , at 19:50:44 on Mon, 7
Sep 2015, Robin9 remarked:

In some years they built more than 400,000 houses. Today we can't
manage even 300,000.

That's because Gordon Brown caused a serious recession and people
couldn't easily pay for new houses. Whole "new towns" have been put on
hold as a result.
--
Roland Perry

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at 19:50:44 on Mon,
7 Sep 2015, Robin9 remarked:

In some years they built more than 400,000 houses. Today we can't
manage even 300,000.

That's because Gordon Brown caused a serious recession and people
couldn't easily pay for new houses. Whole "new towns" have been put
on hold as a result.

The high figures in the 1960s are deceptive. A lot of houses were demolished
as "slums" at the same time so the net figures weren't so impressive.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

. . . and that is why I've always suspected there was corruption. The fact
that perfectly good houses were sometimes demolished to make room for
pretty much the same number of new dwellings indicates that people on high
were not primarily concerned to provide homes to the homeless, but instead
had an interest in creating building projects.

I'm not one to defend Gordon Brown, but the reduction in housing completions
began long before he was Chancellor.

On Tue, Sep 08, 2015 at 10:06:21AM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 19:50:44 on Mon, 7
Sep 2015, Robin9 remarked:
In some years they built more than 400,000 houses. Today we can't
manage even 300,000.
That's because Gordon Brown caused a serious recession and people
couldn't easily pay for new houses. Whole "new towns" have been put on
hold as a result.

I'm more inclined to blame Clement Attlee's green belts. At least in
London and its immediate surroundings there is little land left to build
on unless you first knock something down. ALL of the new developments
near my place - and there are a lot of them - are on the site of some
now demolished building.

--
David Cantrell | top google result for "internet beard fetish club"

You can't judge a book by its cover, unless you're a religious nutcase

In message , at 14:28:06
on Wed, 9 Sep 2015, David Cantrell remarked:
In some years they built more than 400,000 houses. Today we can't
manage even 300,000.
That's because Gordon Brown caused a serious recession and people
couldn't easily pay for new houses. Whole "new towns" have been put on
hold as a result.

I'm more inclined to blame Clement Attlee's green belts. At least in
London and its immediate surroundings there is little land left to build
on unless you first knock something down. ALL of the new developments
near my place - and there are a lot of them - are on the site of some
now demolished building.

Whereas where I live in Mid-Cambs, a place with a severe housing
shortage, the vast majority of new homes are on green fields sites.
Assuming the developers can be bothered to build them, which for a
couple of the developments north of Cambridge they can't.

There are a few brown-site developments in the City Centre, but they are
usually at the high end of the market (eg £500k for two beds).
--
Roland Perry

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
14:28:06 on Wed, 9 Sep 2015, David Cantrell
remarked:
In some years they built more than 400,000 houses. Today we can't
manage even 300,000.
That's because Gordon Brown caused a serious recession and people
couldn't easily pay for new houses. Whole "new towns" have been put on
hold as a result.

I'm more inclined to blame Clement Attlee's green belts. At least in
London and its immediate surroundings there is little land left to build
on unless you first knock something down. ALL of the new developments
near my place - and there are a lot of them - are on the site of some
now demolished building.

Whereas where I live in Mid-Cambs, a place with a severe housing
shortage, the vast majority of new homes are on green fields sites.
Assuming the developers can be bothered to build them, which for a
couple of the developments north of Cambridge they can't.

There are a few brown-site developments in the City Centre, but they
are usually at the high end of the market (eg £500k for two beds).

The large amount of (fairly) recent building on former employment sites,
mainly ex-Philips like at St Andrew's Road and St Matthew's Gardens, is more
reasonably priced. And some 30% is affordable housing (40% on newer
developments).

--
Colin Rosenstiel