Guardian: £180m cut from regeneration plans for Tony Blair's flagship housing project
Oh noes! A comparatively trivial sounding £180m denied to what is undoubtedly a worthy project, redeveloping a deprived and run-down housing estate. But read on, and:
"The £180m would have directly financed the construction of just 350 of the eventual 4,200 new homes replacing the Aylesbury's brutalist concrete towers and walkways."
Oh right, so just the £514,286 per new home then. I mean, I know they're nice new eco homes and everything, but seriously, WHAT THE FUCKETY FUCK!!
The Guardian seem to be affronted that the government has pulled the plug on what would have been, by any sensible standard, an obscene waste of the taxpayer's money. Even at the height of the property boom in 2007 a nice 2-bed newbuild flat in South East London could be bought, brand new from the developer, for under £300k. That figure includes the developer's profit margin (presumably quite inflated in 2007), and the cost of acquiring the land to build on, also not cheap during the boom. But one would assume that Lambeth council already own the the land the new flats were to be built on.
Now as a member of www.housepricecrash.co.uk (from where I got the link to the Guardian story), I'm of the opinion that £300k for a two bed flat is a quite ludicrous price. But it's a fucksight more sensible than £514k. A fair build cost for a decent flat on land you already own would be nearer £100k IMO. No wonder we're running a record deficit if our elected officials thought that paying five times over the odds for a building was anything other than sheer insanity.
Jesus.
Monday 27 December 2010
Good work, Mr Peston
Angry Liberal- always first with a sensible reaction to the hot news stories of the day. Yes, this was news six days ago, but seeing as I haven't updated this blog in six months, that's not bad going by my standards.
So anyway. It transpires that the Daily Telegraph quite sensibly chose not to publish a few of the comments Vince Cable made to their undercover reporters- specifically those pertaining to News Corp's attempt to buy a majority share- or full ownership- of BskyB.
Blog post here.
A 'whistleblower' then leaked the full transcript to Robert Peston, who went public with it on his BBC blog.
On the one hand, you've got to admire Peston's journalistic integrity and devotion to exposing the truth.
On the other hand, what a fucking stupid cunt he is. At the end of his blog, Peston comments:
"Some will notice that when it comes to opposition to Mr Murdoch’s proposed takeover of Sky, there is a convergence of the Telegraph’s views and Mr Cable’s views."
Yes....with the views of everyone else in the country with a functioning brain. Murdoch is an implacable opponent of the BBC, he's a famous tax avoider (for clarification, that doesn't mean evader, just in case m'learned friends are reading), he's no fan of 'consolidation' in the media sector himself, apparently, and he's generally a nasty, pernicious old bastard.
The Lib Dems have essentially achieved fuck all in this coalition; now the one good thing they might have managed has probably been scuppered by a stupid-voiced twat riding on someone else's journalistic efforts and essentially stealing their story.
And while I'm on a Peston slagging tip, a friend once gave me 'Brown's Britain' and insisted I read it. Possibly the most recursive and tedious tome it has ever been my misfortune to have to struggle through.
So anyway. It transpires that the Daily Telegraph quite sensibly chose not to publish a few of the comments Vince Cable made to their undercover reporters- specifically those pertaining to News Corp's attempt to buy a majority share- or full ownership- of BskyB.
Blog post here.
A 'whistleblower' then leaked the full transcript to Robert Peston, who went public with it on his BBC blog.
On the one hand, you've got to admire Peston's journalistic integrity and devotion to exposing the truth.
On the other hand, what a fucking stupid cunt he is. At the end of his blog, Peston comments:
"Some will notice that when it comes to opposition to Mr Murdoch’s proposed takeover of Sky, there is a convergence of the Telegraph’s views and Mr Cable’s views."
Yes....with the views of everyone else in the country with a functioning brain. Murdoch is an implacable opponent of the BBC, he's a famous tax avoider (for clarification, that doesn't mean evader, just in case m'learned friends are reading), he's no fan of 'consolidation' in the media sector himself, apparently, and he's generally a nasty, pernicious old bastard.
The Lib Dems have essentially achieved fuck all in this coalition; now the one good thing they might have managed has probably been scuppered by a stupid-voiced twat riding on someone else's journalistic efforts and essentially stealing their story.
And while I'm on a Peston slagging tip, a friend once gave me 'Brown's Britain' and insisted I read it. Possibly the most recursive and tedious tome it has ever been my misfortune to have to struggle through.
Sunday 6 June 2010
Biggest waste of police time ever?
Now obviously, the death of 12 innocent people in a shooting spree is a massive tragedy. But does it really require 100 detectives to be assigned?
Channel 4 story
The facts are pretty clear: a guy shot 23 people, 12 of them fatally, then shot himself. There's no doubt about who committed the crimes- and he's in the morgue. The long and the short of it is, a massive cunt killed 12 people, for no good reason.
I fail to see what's going to be achieved by assigning 100 detectives to the case, beyond eliciting random gossip for the tabloid press. We will never know what was going through the killer's mind, because the last thing to go through it was a bullet from his own gun.
This is of course an unbearable tragedy for the families of the victims- not only have they lost a loved one, they can never know why, because the killer can never tell. And 'justice' can never be done, because the killer can never face a court of law.
And so, as far as I'm concerned, case closed. Bear in mind that 12 people dead is a fraction smaller than the per-person average of the four 7/7 bombers. There was, as I remember, considerable investigation into that tragedy too, and the conclusion was basically that they too were a gang of massive cunts, and that there wasn't much to be done about it.
These things happen. People die randomly every day- 8 people per day on average die in road accidents in this country, and there's rarely any 'justice' for their families, just the long gnawing pain of bereavement. A grown up society should just accept that pointless death is a tragic fact of life, and move on.
And, for reasons of full disclosure, no I don't own a gun or a shotgun, or a licence for either. But I can see where this is heading, and I don't like it.
Channel 4 story
The facts are pretty clear: a guy shot 23 people, 12 of them fatally, then shot himself. There's no doubt about who committed the crimes- and he's in the morgue. The long and the short of it is, a massive cunt killed 12 people, for no good reason.
I fail to see what's going to be achieved by assigning 100 detectives to the case, beyond eliciting random gossip for the tabloid press. We will never know what was going through the killer's mind, because the last thing to go through it was a bullet from his own gun.
This is of course an unbearable tragedy for the families of the victims- not only have they lost a loved one, they can never know why, because the killer can never tell. And 'justice' can never be done, because the killer can never face a court of law.
And so, as far as I'm concerned, case closed. Bear in mind that 12 people dead is a fraction smaller than the per-person average of the four 7/7 bombers. There was, as I remember, considerable investigation into that tragedy too, and the conclusion was basically that they too were a gang of massive cunts, and that there wasn't much to be done about it.
These things happen. People die randomly every day- 8 people per day on average die in road accidents in this country, and there's rarely any 'justice' for their families, just the long gnawing pain of bereavement. A grown up society should just accept that pointless death is a tragic fact of life, and move on.
And, for reasons of full disclosure, no I don't own a gun or a shotgun, or a licence for either. But I can see where this is heading, and I don't like it.
Friday 21 May 2010
The Honeymoon Is Over
Well, it had to happen. I've been in the unprecedented position of having gone a week and a half without the government of the day having announced a half-baked policy calculated to infuriate a freedom-loving liberal. Well, they've now fucked it big time, with the announcement that they're (apparently) going to ban the sale of alcohol at less than cost price. This, frankly, is a policy so illiberal, unworkable, and frankly so fucking stupid that it's difficult to decide where to begin.
But hey ho, needs must. Let's start with the issue of competition. I was under the impression that a guiding principle of a liberal free market economy was that competition was important- nay imperative. That's why we have the Competition Commission. But apparently there are limits. It's fine for cutthroat competitors to, say, fight to see who can give the biggest mortgage to sub-prime borrowers. Or, in the name of competitiveness, for companies to put British workers out of a job in favour of call centres in Bangalore, or manufacturing plants in China. But woe betide anyone who competes to allow struggling British proles to get off their face on the cheap.
Tesco came out in favour today. Well there's a massive fucking surprise with bells on. A company that already (apparently) takes in one pound in every eight spent in UK retailers is in favour of no longer having to compete on price on a major area of its business. Apparently:
"A survey of Tesco's customers found nearly 70 per cent thought excessive drinking was one of the most serious issues facing the country, while 61 per cent were concerned about anti-social behaviour as a result of drinking."
Maybe so. And if you think that's why they're supporting this measure, you're a stupid, gullible cunt. And if you think there actually is an workable mechanism whereby the government can demand to know the cost price of the alcohol sold to every retailer in this country, and enforce a 'not below cost price law', without properly fucking up any pretence of competition, then you're doubly so.
Let's move on to the issue of who this measure is actually going to affect. Much has been made of the fact that David Cameron was a member of the Bullingdon Club when he was a student at Oxford. I personally have never held it against him, but it's as well to keep in mind the obvious purpose of the club- for posh kids to get roaringly drunk, and frequently behave obnoxiously. From the Wiki article:
"I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. [...] A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."
So far, so par for the course for the young people of today- except the paying in cash part. I think it's fair to say that a minimum price for alcohol is not going to dissuade a budding Bullingdon yob from having a good time, given that the increase in his booze bill is likely to be insignificant beside the bill for trashing a restaurant. This measure is quite transparently an attack on the poorest in society, and carries the implicit assumption that they are the most likely to misbehave if they are allowed to drink to excess. Even if you believe that that is true, which I emphatically don't, you're still a fucking arsehole if you think you have a right to price the lowest paid (and, presumably, unemployed) out of drinking on the basis that they can't handle it and you can.
Is booze culture a problem in this country? Debatably. I daresay that the police spend a considerable amount of time policing high streets and night spots on Friday and Saturday nights- but so what? That's the fucking job. And, to take the unfashionable option of looking at cold hard statistics for a minute, instead of media hysteria and hypocrisy, the number of people who get killed in instances of drunken town-centre yobbery must surely pale into insignificance beside the number of people killed in drink drive incidents- 460 in 2007. Now yes, I guess there are a few poor people driving drunk in uninsured old bangers, but in the main the cost of running a car in this country is now prohibitive for the unemployed and people on the minimum wage, and so I'd wager that the significant majority of those deaths were caused by people who can afford an increase in the basic price of booze.
So don't be a wanker- oppose this stupid, nanny-statist, illeberal bollocks.
And a quick edit for the sake of full disclosure: as someone lucky enough to make the median wage in London (despite a fondness for the sauce) I can just about afford to run a shitty old diesel car, so I buy all my booze in France courtesy of P&O's £19 day trips. So this measure won't fuck me at all.
But hey ho, needs must. Let's start with the issue of competition. I was under the impression that a guiding principle of a liberal free market economy was that competition was important- nay imperative. That's why we have the Competition Commission. But apparently there are limits. It's fine for cutthroat competitors to, say, fight to see who can give the biggest mortgage to sub-prime borrowers. Or, in the name of competitiveness, for companies to put British workers out of a job in favour of call centres in Bangalore, or manufacturing plants in China. But woe betide anyone who competes to allow struggling British proles to get off their face on the cheap.
Tesco came out in favour today. Well there's a massive fucking surprise with bells on. A company that already (apparently) takes in one pound in every eight spent in UK retailers is in favour of no longer having to compete on price on a major area of its business. Apparently:
"A survey of Tesco's customers found nearly 70 per cent thought excessive drinking was one of the most serious issues facing the country, while 61 per cent were concerned about anti-social behaviour as a result of drinking."
Maybe so. And if you think that's why they're supporting this measure, you're a stupid, gullible cunt. And if you think there actually is an workable mechanism whereby the government can demand to know the cost price of the alcohol sold to every retailer in this country, and enforce a 'not below cost price law', without properly fucking up any pretence of competition, then you're doubly so.
Let's move on to the issue of who this measure is actually going to affect. Much has been made of the fact that David Cameron was a member of the Bullingdon Club when he was a student at Oxford. I personally have never held it against him, but it's as well to keep in mind the obvious purpose of the club- for posh kids to get roaringly drunk, and frequently behave obnoxiously. From the Wiki article:
"I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. [...] A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."
So far, so par for the course for the young people of today- except the paying in cash part. I think it's fair to say that a minimum price for alcohol is not going to dissuade a budding Bullingdon yob from having a good time, given that the increase in his booze bill is likely to be insignificant beside the bill for trashing a restaurant. This measure is quite transparently an attack on the poorest in society, and carries the implicit assumption that they are the most likely to misbehave if they are allowed to drink to excess. Even if you believe that that is true, which I emphatically don't, you're still a fucking arsehole if you think you have a right to price the lowest paid (and, presumably, unemployed) out of drinking on the basis that they can't handle it and you can.
Is booze culture a problem in this country? Debatably. I daresay that the police spend a considerable amount of time policing high streets and night spots on Friday and Saturday nights- but so what? That's the fucking job. And, to take the unfashionable option of looking at cold hard statistics for a minute, instead of media hysteria and hypocrisy, the number of people who get killed in instances of drunken town-centre yobbery must surely pale into insignificance beside the number of people killed in drink drive incidents- 460 in 2007. Now yes, I guess there are a few poor people driving drunk in uninsured old bangers, but in the main the cost of running a car in this country is now prohibitive for the unemployed and people on the minimum wage, and so I'd wager that the significant majority of those deaths were caused by people who can afford an increase in the basic price of booze.
So don't be a wanker- oppose this stupid, nanny-statist, illeberal bollocks.
And a quick edit for the sake of full disclosure: as someone lucky enough to make the median wage in London (despite a fondness for the sauce) I can just about afford to run a shitty old diesel car, so I buy all my booze in France courtesy of P&O's £19 day trips. So this measure won't fuck me at all.
Monday 29 March 2010
Manifesto
I've been meaning to start this blog for ages. A chap on a forum I frequent asked posters to contribute a personal manifesto for the forthcoming election- and having written mine, I thought that it'd be a good way to start this blog and set out my stall. This will probably the first and only post that contains no swearing, so, erm, enjoy:
1) Immediate moves to decriminalise all recreational drugs. Heroin, Crack etc. available on prescription to minimise the harm associated with criminal activity; Cannabis, Ecstasy, Mushies etc. taxed and sold through licenced outlets to over 18s.
2) Prisons to become centres of rehabilitation rather than punishment. Early release to be conditional upon completing a course in basic literacy; for longer sentences, vocational job-skills courses to be mandatory. Releasing prisoners without first equipping them to 'go straight' is a waste of everyone's time and money.
3) All Local Education Authorities to reintroduce Grammar Schools and Secondary Moderns; streaming to be compulsory. HOWEVER- Grammar schools to get 15% less resources per pupil and teachers to be paid 10% less- they will thus have the choice between teaching 'smart' kids, or earning more working with more 'challenging' pupils. Pupils to be given annual or biannual opportunities to move schools so that 'failing the 11 plus' is not a life sentence. Secondary Moderns to focus heavily on skills based jobs training so that pupils leave equipped to make good money as builders/plumbers/mechanics etc. rather than a McJob being their only opportunity.
4) ID cards and the National Identity Register scrapped immediately. All those responsible for introducing them in the first place to be tried for Crimes Against Democracy*.
*Optional.
5) Existing planning regulations to be chucked in the bin wholesale. A massive program of investment in new housing to begin immediately. Anyone talking about 'Affordable Housing' to be put in the stocks and slapped about the face with a wet fish- ALL HOUSING SHOULD BE AFFORDABLE FFS. The current unaffordability of housing is IMO at the root of most of this country's problems. It reinforces class divides and makes our workforce uncompetitive in the worldwide market. We have the smallest newbuild houses in Europe, and yet as a proportion of our landmass Great Britain is 89% undeveloped- the highest proportion in Europe. This is complete stupidity, and it must be corrected.
6) In conjunction with the above- strict control of the banks. The housing bubble and subsequent catastrophic bust (which is just getting started, by the way) was caused by a complete failure to prevent banks from printing money and giving it to anyone and everyone, thus bidding up the price of a basic human right- a home- to stupid levels. This could and should have been prevented, and must be in future.
7) Massive investment in renewable energy- and most importantly large scale energy storage systems. We could power this country through wind and wave power alone- but only if we (say) build another 20 Dinorwigs. Even if this costs £100bn over 10 years it would be money well spent.
8) Complete renationalisation of the railways; all local bus services to be, at the very least, regulated by local transport authorities in a similar way to how London bus services are tendered.
9) Inheritance Tax threshold to be reduced back to its previous level of £375k or less. I would be personally 'disadvantaged' by this in the event of the death of either of my parents. I inherited a brain, a good education, and a good upbringing from my parents. I shouldn't need their money too. Large inheritances simply perpetuate ongoing class divides and inequality.
10) Tax System to be massively simplified. For a start- 'tax credits' will be abolished immediately, as paying one set of civil servants to collect tax, and then another set to pay it back out again is complete stupidity. Instead, your tax code will reflect your circumstances- single people will pay no tax on the first £6k-ish of their earnings as now, people with 1 child will pay no tax on first £10k etc. etc. Result should be considerable efficiency savings without noticeably altering anyone's overall taxation/benefit level.
1) Immediate moves to decriminalise all recreational drugs. Heroin, Crack etc. available on prescription to minimise the harm associated with criminal activity; Cannabis, Ecstasy, Mushies etc. taxed and sold through licenced outlets to over 18s.
2) Prisons to become centres of rehabilitation rather than punishment. Early release to be conditional upon completing a course in basic literacy; for longer sentences, vocational job-skills courses to be mandatory. Releasing prisoners without first equipping them to 'go straight' is a waste of everyone's time and money.
3) All Local Education Authorities to reintroduce Grammar Schools and Secondary Moderns; streaming to be compulsory. HOWEVER- Grammar schools to get 15% less resources per pupil and teachers to be paid 10% less- they will thus have the choice between teaching 'smart' kids, or earning more working with more 'challenging' pupils. Pupils to be given annual or biannual opportunities to move schools so that 'failing the 11 plus' is not a life sentence. Secondary Moderns to focus heavily on skills based jobs training so that pupils leave equipped to make good money as builders/plumbers/mechanics etc. rather than a McJob being their only opportunity.
4) ID cards and the National Identity Register scrapped immediately. All those responsible for introducing them in the first place to be tried for Crimes Against Democracy*.
*Optional.
5) Existing planning regulations to be chucked in the bin wholesale. A massive program of investment in new housing to begin immediately. Anyone talking about 'Affordable Housing' to be put in the stocks and slapped about the face with a wet fish- ALL HOUSING SHOULD BE AFFORDABLE FFS. The current unaffordability of housing is IMO at the root of most of this country's problems. It reinforces class divides and makes our workforce uncompetitive in the worldwide market. We have the smallest newbuild houses in Europe, and yet as a proportion of our landmass Great Britain is 89% undeveloped- the highest proportion in Europe. This is complete stupidity, and it must be corrected.
6) In conjunction with the above- strict control of the banks. The housing bubble and subsequent catastrophic bust (which is just getting started, by the way) was caused by a complete failure to prevent banks from printing money and giving it to anyone and everyone, thus bidding up the price of a basic human right- a home- to stupid levels. This could and should have been prevented, and must be in future.
7) Massive investment in renewable energy- and most importantly large scale energy storage systems. We could power this country through wind and wave power alone- but only if we (say) build another 20 Dinorwigs. Even if this costs £100bn over 10 years it would be money well spent.
8) Complete renationalisation of the railways; all local bus services to be, at the very least, regulated by local transport authorities in a similar way to how London bus services are tendered.
9) Inheritance Tax threshold to be reduced back to its previous level of £375k or less. I would be personally 'disadvantaged' by this in the event of the death of either of my parents. I inherited a brain, a good education, and a good upbringing from my parents. I shouldn't need their money too. Large inheritances simply perpetuate ongoing class divides and inequality.
10) Tax System to be massively simplified. For a start- 'tax credits' will be abolished immediately, as paying one set of civil servants to collect tax, and then another set to pay it back out again is complete stupidity. Instead, your tax code will reflect your circumstances- single people will pay no tax on the first £6k-ish of their earnings as now, people with 1 child will pay no tax on first £10k etc. etc. Result should be considerable efficiency savings without noticeably altering anyone's overall taxation/benefit level.
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