UKC

... Can he please cancel HS2?

Unless he does one other (even more important) thing first, the Treasury may not have funds to pay for HS2 anyway.

Resign?

Why cancel HS2?

Scrap the 1991 planning act. It has lead to house prices rising so far younger people can't afford to buy a house. Rents have risen in line meaning a huge proportion of income is spent on the basic of putting a roof over your head. .... I wonder why food banks have become so popular. Communism didn't work, and the 1991 planning act introduced a communist style command economy into the housing market. It has failed, just like communism does! Release the free market to do is job!

Why?

I see it as an important step towards reducing carbon emissions from transport. We need to have an integrated high speed rail network across Europe to allow people to move from air travel to a greener form of long distance travel.

Can you imagine if even only the money spent to date on hs2 had gone to improving existing infrastructure for the northern rail area?

I might not agree with your solution but I agree with the concern. Read something recently that millennials spending 40% of income on rent will never be able to buy and then rent will be 80% of pension when they retire. 400,000 will not be able to afford that and will be homeless.

Retire to poverty or homelessness - a bloody stupid way to run an economy. 

Those are numbers I recall so maybe a bit wrong but numbers that sort of size.

The housing problem to me is too many rental properties and not enough owned. I admit I dabbled as a landlord for a few years but I sold the house to a local lass to live in for less than I had been offered by another landlord (sold to a friends daughter). It turns out on the entire street of 40 houses only 2 were owner occupiers (my friend and now his daughter) and the rest were rented.

Housing should be a basic nesesity and not a profit making business. 

We need much tougher legislation towards the condition of rented properties, much better tennents rights, fixed rents based on the area and type of house and increased taxation on landlords. These need to be brought in gradually to start encouraging landlords to sell up. 

We also need young people to take some responsibility for their finances though, other than certain areas where pricing is totally out of control young people can afford to buy but from what I see and hear they don't want to start off with a flat or a back to back terrace like a lot of us did, they want the 3 bed detached that they moved out of when the left home. They also don't want to save up. I lived like a monk in the late 80's / early 90's for a few years to save up my deposit. 

What on earth are you on about?

Do you mean the Town & Country Planning Act 1990, or the Planning & Compensation Act 1991? Neither of these introduced a command economy in to the housing market. You do realise that there are hundreds of thousands of housing plots with permissions, most authorities grant far more permissions than actually get built.

It was Thatcher, who f*cked the housing market selling off council housing and not allowing the money to be spent building more. So far from it being communism, it was privatisation that destroyed the housing market. the free market has only exacerbated the situation, with the government helping fuel the rise in prices through buy to let, and keeping interest rates artificially low.

But obviously Any land with permission is going up in value dramatically there is no real need to do much like actually building houses on it, it’s making money just by being there. The housing market in the UK has become almost like the diamond market in its lake of sense.

I think HS2 is a poor use of money and will provide little benefit to the north as it does the opposite of moving jobs up north - it treats the symptoms of the North South decide not the cause. However, if Johnson cuts this the money will not be spent on anything other than tax cuts for the well off so given that I'd rather HS2 than that.

Exactly this and also making an effort to make the less desirable areas more attractive by attracting jobs, better transport links to the places where there are jobs etc.

To go off on a tangent, can someone remind me why banks ask for a 15% deposit on a mortgage? Surely this is the biggest barrier to young people buying houses fir the first time? If you're paying hundreds of pounds every month in rent there's not enough left over to save £20K or so required to get a house.

Individual greed f*cked the housing market, not the Thatcher policy to bring some pride and ownership into the dreadful council estates of the time. Property became the new religion and every Tom, Dick and Harry suddenly became a property developer. I remember it well.

You mean free market speculation? The supply problem is definitely with the market, not regulation (planning).

Mixed housing in Urban areas, including social housing, minimum standards on size.

for many people the first rung of the ladder may be the only rung and the idea of a “starter” home has become a farce in some places. Imagine working your ass of for a place that has been built down to a price as far as space to prop up a dodgy model and inflated prices then contemplate bringing your kids up in this. The housing ladder is becoming s bygone myth from the 60,s and 70,s .

Im not buying the if only they bought less iPhones and avocado’s millennial snowflake argument.

As for Kirsty allsop, I’m sure a special place in hell is reserved for her, maybe a endless maze of badly painted magnolia ever shrinking series of MDF boxes . 😀

The environmental case against HS2 is rather strong, with ancient woodland facing the chop to make way for it. Cutting less than an hour off journey time between the north and London doesn't strike me as the best reason for the felling of ancient woodland and destroying other important natural places, or even a good one.

Get a haircut?

Most other tasks will be beyond him.

That's debatable, if we're to phase out mass market air travel we need fast continent connected rail.The capacity case is more compelling. The two together I think are quite strong, if anything the small-picture conservation argument is the problem making infrastructure investment impossible. Its not in my back yard thought so what do I know.

Jk

Plus 1 for why?

It's gone so far that it would be criminal to cancel it now, having spent such a large sum already. Trains are the future for travel in the UK. I'd rather see greater investment in the rail network, than expanding airports, or building more motorways.

Capitalism appears to have failed. 2008 on the line here for you....

So far we’ve spent about £4bn. During that time the expected costs have risen from around £30bn to £80bn. Sunk costs are really not that high. 

I would also like to see the public transport network receive investment and be more integrated, but this doesn’t seem like good value. It is pretty much the most expensive (per km) high speed train line in the world and some of it is over-engineered, it is only 400 miles from Glasgow to London, so there is little benefit in speeds above 180mph but it is being built to cater for 250mph. 

Improved connections for everywhere between Liverpool and Hull would be cheaper and more beneficial. The varsity line (though unpopular) also offers the chance to shift demand away from London. Rail connections to all the airports. And regarding the other topic on here, improving local transport from the towns around Manchester and Leeds might spread housing demand to cheaper areas.

HS2 will f*ck the country . The North will become a commuter zone for London.

What we need is trans-pennine electrification. Liverpool to Norwich. Leiceter to Newcastle. 

I think all conservation can probably be seen as either small picture or big picture, depending on the perspective one has.

Thatcher’s great crime with housing, wasn’t so much the sell off, that had been policy for many years before Housing Act of 1981, indeed my own Grandparents bought their Council house in 1971. It was the sequestration of the revenues and outlawing of reinvestment.

The rental market seems to work okay in other countries (e.g. Germany).

Why is it that rental costs are so high in the UK?

The dreadful council estates are still dreadful council estates. All that happened was the decent council estates, or the decent parts of the larger estates, were given away at rock bottom prices. I suspect the aim was to create more Tory voters. There was absolutely no change to the 'pride' in my old estate, just a load of new front doors and windows. The only council house left on my old street, (up until five years ago), was my Dad's, as he absolutely refused to buy as it was removing affordable housing for people who needed it.

HS2 is poorly named and has been poorly explained, as it’s not anything to do with making the journeys faster (although as I understand it will allow for faster trains in the future), it’s about adding capacity to the network. The local, slower, frequently stopping trains will keep using the current tracks and the faster intercity trains the new lines.  This is why it (or something very like it) is required if we rail travel is going to become more attractive over driving.

Because the UK market is too "short term" - the standard rental period is 6 months, which is, speaking as a landlord, not much use if property is a long term investment, and a bloody nightmare for tenants looking to put down proper roots, make a home etc.

Also rents are a function of purchase price; house prices in a lot of the uk are just stupid, hence high rents required to give a decent return on capital. Too much is made of appreciation of house prices as being a good thing. And of course, we just dont have the right levels of housing stock available at the right levels in the right areas, for many reasons, most of which have been explained upthread.

My question was meant to be rhetorical...

Most of the problem lies in inadequate regulation.

More regulation might fix some things (although better enforcement would be more beneficial as its no point increasing regulation that makes things uneconomic for for decent landlords but are merrily ignored by slum barons) but your original post only mentioned rents being too high and there's no regulation that'll fix that. 

That can only work if you have a lot of social housing (which is a good thing but now seems unlikely) because what you suggest is designed to make it uneconomic for private landlords to rent. Fair enough but there will be a significant number of people (35% of households? What's the highest rate of home ownership ever achieved by any developed economy?) who will need to rent and if there is insufficient social housing and you've introduced a load of measures to make it uneconomic you have now created a different problem. 

HS2 is a vanity project totally innapropiate for an overcrowded part of the world like SE England/the Midlands. The best we can do is smaller incremental projects - a new tunnel here, electrification there,  additional track where necessary, and enhanced mass transport systems in city centres - and we'll be fine.

Err... yes it could; it just depends on the nature of the regulation.

Sell to who, exactly? The very people who are either renting because they cant get a mortgage / deposit? or those who dont want a millstone round their necks that might lose them a shitload of money?

I'd agree wholeheartedly that regulation is inadequate (and indeed that some of the regulations in place are counter productive at best, and damaging to the housing market at worst), but not that is most of the problem; as with anything, its consistent enforcement of the regulations.

Step 1 sell to the government who turns the ex rental properties back in to council houses at rents people can afford.

Step 2 maintain right to buy. 

Step 3 re invest the money from right to buy in to building more affordable housing. 

Never happen though, too much of our economy is built on the housing market. 

Maybe stopping any form of future by to let mortgage would help, stopping the formation of new companies buying and letting houses and maybe ultimately housing stock being sized by the state.

I find it very wrong that all but 2 of the houses on my old street are rented. These are the back to back starter homes worth (current market value) 80k with only a 10 minute bus ride in to Leeds center. Perfect for people starting out in life but they can't buy them because the landlords won't sell. It's not just my old street, it's the entire estate of thousands of houses. When I decided to sell I looked up the recent sales to get an idea on price and there hadn't been any sales for 4 or 5 years. 

Housing should not be an investment opportunity. 

But gewtting back to HS2 from the rental market, stopping HS2 (at least in its current form), would be a massive help.

I dont need the government to spend however many zillion the latest estimate is on a new way of getting me to london 30 mins faster, when i have a service that will get me to london in 2 and a half hours with one train running at least every 20 mins........oh, and it looks like i'll have to change in leeds. Why noe upgrade the Edinburgh (or indeed aberdeen / inverness) line instead? It might be disruptive in the short term, but then again they spent 7 years widening a 40 mile stretch of the A1M through N Yorks......

How did council hosing become an area available to individual greed?

There was room for both, she could have sold off the council stock to those that wanted it, but allowed the council to build more houses with the money the raised from the sales.

She prevented this, so no councils are reliant on private individuals / companies to provide council housing, it's not like the need for council housing went away, is it? So now OUR money, in the form of council tax, is leaving the council coffers and going to individuals and private companies, the very problem you allude to in your post above. If councils had some skin in the game, they'd also have some influence on rents being charged, it's not hard to understand, being held captive for something you NEED to provide is going to cost you.

Exactly this ^^, the whole HS2 argument is all about servicing London, not creating a better infrastructure, if they wanted to do that, they'd start in the north.

It's about getting people in and out of London, to do all the shit jobs, while those rich enough can afford to stay there and not travel.

I'll agree that the UK housing market is all over the place, but you can't solely blame one person who was elected 40 years ago and there have been 5 PMs since, soon to be 6. 

Greed is all it's down to. Everyone wants more for less. It's culture and society. It could be buying cheap housing purely to rent out, or buying cheap goods from tax dodging amazon..  both without a thought about the impact on the wider society. We are all guilty in one form or another. 

Boris's one thing, 1% on the lowest base rate of tax and start funding state services better. 

If the housing stock was i the hands of local authority, then how can greed come into it?

I'll grant you, there were opportunities to try and reverse some of the problems her housing policy created, they (The Tories) have finally let local councils spend on council owned housing, but this is very recent and might well be closing the stable door a bit late.

That's what is needed now, today, the question is 20 or 30 years down the line. There is likely to be more travel for leisure, less for work. It needs to be 3 pronged, better fibre/4g/5g nationally especially rural areas, a quick fix for trains now and a long term investment for transport in the more distant future(2030 omwards). I expect none of it will happen in any meaningful measure.  

And how will that happen. You can only work from where we are now. 

There were 3 terms Labour in between.  

Crossrail £15+ billion, Crossrail2 £40+ billion, if Boris cancels HS2 he can start work on Crossrail 3. After all as or Boris knows all too well the earth is flat and the M25 marks the edge of the world.

I didn’t say that it did. Individual greed was a totally separate issue.

'Greed is all it's down to.'

I don't think it's quite as simple as that. Our interest in owning our own homes seems pretty rational to me. 1) It's an investment that we can all develop some expertise in, and make our own judgements. 2)It's an investment we can add value to, by maintaining and enhancing, and taking an interest in and responsibility for the neighbourhood and environment. 3) Given the supply constraints it is almost certainly an investment that will increase in value over time. 4) It's a good place to invest money while kids are growing up, which leaves all sorts of options open once kids have left home - downsizing, equity release, redevelopment. And 5) It's an investment we can live in!

This seems eminently more sensible than the US habit of 'investing' spare (or not so spare) money at stocks and shares, which  unless you really know what you're doing (and most investors don't) is better described with a different word - gambling.

It's also not so easy to tweak the BtL market as this does provide a privately funded important resource for those who need to rent - students, people moving for jobs, people who don't want to be tied down etc.

An issue is that new builds tend to be at the upper end of the market, as that is what generates the greatest profits. Also there seems to be an expectation that  you can achieve your 'dream house' pretty early on in your housing career, and anything less won't do. Surely it would be possible to insist on building more smaller houses as starter homes? I bought some pretty rubbish houses in my 20s, and was happy to rent a room out as well do offset costs. Are people still prepared to do that?

There are obsessions within it though. Ownership is like status thing, has to be a house, detached ideally, number of bedrooms are more important than m2 etc. Why up and down size, what's wrong with 3 or 4 generation households etc.

UK private pension? 

I agree. More 2 beds, affordable housing should be based on local wages, not just 20% below normal market value. 

I think the main target for building in the UK should be highly desirable homes for pensioners. A recent stat I heard was that there are now more bedrooms per person in the UK than ever before, so a big problem is smaller households than previously, and people living in over-sized homes.

There are well over 10M pensioners in the UK, so probably 5M households with only 1 or 2 pensioners living in them. At one end you have millions of well off people who would only want to downsize if the new property is an improvement in some ways over their family house. At the other extreme, you have over 1 1/4M pensioner households on housing benefit. Well-designed properties for these households could be much smaller than a family house, and free up millions of properties, but only if it is done well.

Are you sure? >>"Individual greed f*cked the housing market, not the Thatcher policy to bring some pride and ownership"

Not sure if you are being deliberately obtuse, but just in case. If the councils had reinvested they money from house sales in more housing, that would have prevented ALL the council housing stock ending up in the hands of people who were motivated by greed, and would therefore have had some control of the market direction.

That wasn't the question I was answering. But even so, we could build more council housing, the rents from which go back to the council, so it's not impossible.

And you wonder why people are looking towards Corbyn as a way to change things?

Agree with all of that.... but that would take a complete u-turn on pretty well all housing policy of the last 40 years (as i suspect you are completely aware).

The btl mortgage market is an odd one, and one i have been reluctant to get involved with. All my properties have been cash purchases for savings / inheritance, but I must admit i am looking at btl.

Or is it that people dont want to buy because they are now seen as rental areas? Up in the real north, waaay beyond you midlanders in leeds, i can, and have, bought some really nice large 2 bed terraces for approx £45 - 55k, that would be brilliant for 1st time buyers, but there is such a reluctance caused partly by current general economic uncertainty, nobody wants to be tied down. I had no trouble at all finding really nice tenants within literally 3 days of putting the house on the rental market who could quite easily have saved a deposit in a well under a year and bought it themselves on a 15 year mortgage. Would have been an earnings multiplier of well under 2 (both on just above min wage) and easily affordable, but they just dont want the commitment yet.

Investment shouldn't be the reason for such a purchase, you are right, but for me, its the only way i can rely on a decent pension, being a private sector wallah (semi self employed).

Obtuse? Sorry no.

I was just injecting a bit of balance into the history lesson aka krikoman. Which is skewed by your dislike of conservatism. I suffer no such allegiance to any particular ideology so my thinking isn’t as hamstrung as yours.

Rent goes back to the council, you mean profit or just covering the cost of construction and on going maintenance? 

Many of his MPs were there under the 3 terms of Blair etc. Plus he isn't in office and isn't ever likely to be pm. We are passed peak Corbyn, many of those who pinned some hope on him have seen through it and jumped ship to other parties. 

It's got nowt to do with being hamstrung, it's about the truth. Thatcher introduced selling off council houses, she stopped the money being used to build more, it could also be said that she introduced the "greed is good" mantra, though we can leave that to one side. Once the housing stock is out of the control of the councils, of course greed then takes over, but the precedent and initial disposal was all Thatcher's fault.

Trying to "balance" history by ignoring the facts, or insulting someone, doesn't change those facts.

This is the problem, investment, investment investment its  a HOME first. if it’s an investment it has to increase in value above the rate of inflation or you have to charge rent over and above the cost of your mortgage , if it’s increasing above the rate of inflation and it’s  above the rate of wage increase then each year a few hundred thousand people will drop of the ability to get onto the housing ladder with few options open to them other than to pay someone else’s mortgage for them.

its completely unsubstantial, we’ve created a pyramid scheme, no political party has the balls to put the genie back in the bottle.

If good quality old school council housing were to be built on a large scale then all those cheap nasty starter homes are going to start to be seen for what they are. All those cheaply converted MDF riddled flats will be shunned.

the trouble is far to many people have “invested “ in these types of properties  so if we were to distort the “market”  by solving the problem we create another problem for the investors.

i think the last thing the housing stock in the UK needs is another round of Kirsty Allsop DIY “investment”

I guess she infected scargill too. As he took advantage of the scheme and bought his London flat for peanuts. He did already have a second holiday home too, even when he was forcing the miners to live off nothing for his socialist dream. 

Balancing will show that politicians of other colours are no better. How many houses does Blair now own... or the Labour chants against private or independent schools whilst happily sending their kids to them. 

Don't be fooled, they are ALL hypocrites. 

Good quality construction costs, are you happy with higher council rents to cover this, or just increase tax? 

I'd suggest there is no such thing as a free lunch, i'd happily vote for better cheaper housing for the vulnerable, but it needs funding too. 

I’m strongly against loss of proper woodland.  The point with HS2 is that’s it’s not about cutting half an hour off journey times, it’s about adding capacity to a maxed out network ready for the next 100 years of neglect and underinvestment...

Calling it High Speed 2 and not “Desperately Needed Capacity 1” does rather derail focus on the real problem it solves.

I’m increasingly of the view we should instead use the money to decarbonise road transport and reshape the nation - in terms of buildings, infrastructure and social attitudes - to need less transport rather than building more.  Also, invest in lowering the cost of tunnelling.   

Such as? I know a massive public house building scheme to replace all/most private rented housing would do it, as would a govt seizure of all BTL but these aren't really a 'change of regulations'

I don't buy the argument about capacity - it's a not very honest post hoc justification.  As you note, the name rather gives the game away. If it was about capacity the solution would be to build a new freight line for low speed trains, and focus on reducing emissions.  As it is, what is planned is an unnecessarily high-speed line which a) will produce high emissions as a direct consequence of being high speed, b) further produce emissions from the need for more material, particularly concrete, in it's construction c) damage numerous wildlife sites that are irreplaceable.   The facile argument that it will allow for a wildlife corridor is equally dishonest given that network rail are currently clear-felling miles of line-side trees.  If they are  unacceptable on normal track they clearly won't be on high-speed track.

From the interest in the house when I put it on the market I think there is plenty of interest in buying, I had people try to gazump the lass that was buying it from me. 

Yes there is a need for rental properties. What's the work situation like there? Loads of work round our way hence more money for what sounds like the same sized house. 

Same here when I did rent it. Inundated with potential tenants whenever it came empty. Without fail each tenant told me they would love to buy but couldn't afford it despite having a nearly new car outside and all the trappings of modern life inside. 

That was my aim too but the combination of feeling like I was living off other people and the extra stress on top of running a business was my reason to sell it on. 

Home ownership isn't down to greed, it's more to do with security. 

If you rent you rent for life and need enough money to rent for life. I turn 47 later this week, let's pretend I'm fit and healthy enough to life until I am 87. That's 40 more years of paying rent, taking money out of my pot and putting it in to someone else's pot. As it happens I paid my mortgage off 2 weeks ago so as long as I don't move all I need to pay for is maintenance for the next 40 years and that is a damn site cheaper than the cost of renting. My house would be about £600 a month at the current rate. I bet I don't spend £600 a year on maintenance. 

Replace rental flats with pubs? Great idea

WTF are you talking about?

The discussion is over whether Thatcher’s privatisation of council houses was a good idea. Objecting to the suggestion that it wasn’t by complaining that some Labour politician owns more than one property is the most ludicrous whataboutery imaginable.

jcm

It would be interesting to know more about the French housing market. AIUI many more people there rent without the same angst about it.

jcm

I'd rather he had a heart attack  (before anyone takes offence my family has a history of heart problems with my father and his brother both dying early at 61 and 59 respectively)

Are they? When did Tony Blair ever say he was against anyone becoming wealthy, or owning more than one property?  And seeing as he was privately educated himself I can't imagine he came out too strongly against private education?  

It's a classic right wing press tactic to highlight left wingers trappings of wealth and success and call them hypocrites (remember two jags), but any fool could tell you that modern socialism is not mutually exclusive with individual wealth.  Indeed, individual becoming wealthy is of huge benefit to a socialist system as the higher rate of income tax those individuals pay will aid the less well off.

It's a deliberately obtuse tactic, like claiming climate change campaigners are against sunlight, but one that keep on coming round again and again and again.

A slightly chilling 'what if?' thought is how much angst and pain we would have all been spared had Farage had a heart attack just 3 years ago.

True. But some are laying the sole blame on what happened 40 years and 5 prine ministers ago. I'm pointing out there are plenty governments since who have done nothing beneficial towards resolving the problem too. If anything under Brown, who on the surface does quite a lot still for the vulnerable, caused many of the problems, as he was chancellor right through the credit boom, 100% mortgage etc. When a cast number of property entered the rental not ownership market. 

The 100+% mortgage market started in the late 80's, long before Brown got anywhere near No 11.

Are you utterly and completely incapable of entering any type of debate without slinging mud in labours direction?

If so, then please do so sometime. And get your facts / timeline correct before said slinging. Makes you sound like Boris's mail order kipper........

But it's acceptable to blame all woes on a tory who was in office nearly 30 years ago? 

The difference that occurred with Brown was the number of people accepted on 100% multiple mortgages. What proportion of people got a 100% loan in the 80s compared to the 00s. Of course it was helped when Brown ended boom and bust.

Kipper hardly, i wouldn't vote for them, Boris or any of that ilk. To me only the lib dems acknowledged things need paying for and haven't promised to plant multiple magic money trees. 

Odd, but symptomatic of a nervous market - I bought the last one in tip top condition at auction.....and our next door neighbour had a sale fall through twice because the buyer couldnt get a mortgage. Houase over the road in broadly the same condition (ie nearly perfect) went for next to asking price in two weeks.

Work situation is generally good if you have a skill or trade. Shit otherwise. If you are an engineer or in the building trades, decent jobs are always available (so we havent lost as many east europeans, as there is still the demand for good tradesmen). HUUGE new amazon ware house opening in Darlo soon; the only black cloud is Brexit and the car industry. And it is (rightly) a massive black cloud.

Sounds familiar......mind you, one tenant will be moving next year - they moved in together for the first time, both in excellent jobs and could each buy the house on their own no problem, but will be getting married early 2020 and looking to buy somewhere nicer / bigger at that time - planning ahead, big tick there. Other tenants are married, in decent jobs, christ knows how much their telly / car / computers cost, but hey-ho, its their life, and at south west durham costs, they have it fairly easy. third one is a bit of a waster, divorced, late 40's, in and out of agency jobs, but always pays on time and keeps the place decent. I'm desperately trying to avoid a "4 yorkshiremen" scenario here with how we first did things......but times move on.

100% reduced dramatically in the early / mid 90's after the first property crash. Before labour got in. Mind you, looking back, you'd have to look hard to fing any real difference in the policies of either party around that time.......real pity imho that John Smith didnt make it - real old school pragmatic socialist. And honest.

I know many folk in darlo and do find it interesting how they can complain about how the town centre is dead or dying, whilst celebrating the arrival of an Amazon warehouse. 

Blair, Brown, straw etc.. all really just Tories with a red rosette.

Now there I'll fully agree with you. 

Thats not just Darlo - everywhere is seeing a change in shopping habits from high streets to online / out of town - we are trying to reduce hydrocarbon use, while designing our lifestyles to suit only cars! - but yes, the lack of apparent willingness to walk a few hundred yards to go shopping does seem a bit strange.

And a "shake head in disbelief" moment from the local council, who have been crowing on about the number of jobs coming to Darlo on the back of Amazon - they are now advising people to "buy a scooter or borrow one from a friend" to help minimise congestion around the site (which happens to be almost adjacent to The Student Loan Company (1300+ employees) and within a mile of Cummins Engines (500 ish employees).

I was more entertained by the local council trying to avoid admitting it approved a contractor to concrete lots of electrical cabling and junction boxes in the shopping area, which are now malfunctioning and proving a little tricky to access. 

It wouldn't. If you are going to build a new line, you might as well build a decent track. Getting the land for a new line is a major hassle and expense, it makes sense to use the new line for faster passenger rail and put freight and local on the old one.

Capacity is and was always the issue. The problem is some politicians or lobbyists decided that that was too boring a project to sell to the public so it was sold as high speed, then they carried away with that aspect. 

Building a line for operational speed of 155mph would be fine for this country, which is the service speed of the New Pendolino. Those trains could use older parts of the network at a lower speed, so less track would be required.

The other problems is parochialism, people don't see the bigger picture and politicise it as a north south thing.  I'm a northerner but I can look at a map and see were lines from the UKs most populous conurbations converge, and it's those bottlenecks that need sorting. The knock on affect of a problem around Milton Keynes can affect local service in Cheshire. 

So to summarise, new high speed track is required for the west coast mainline, but not that high speed, and not as much as is planned. Electrification and upgrade of the Midland mainline would be a much more cost effective and perfectly good way to improve services to Yorkshire.

That's as maybe, but we WERE talking about a specific issue and there's  no changing the facts, no matter what Scargill did or how many houses Blair has.

Holding Blair up as some sort of measure of socialism, is simply stupid. If you, and we've been through this a few times, need to see where Corbyn support comes from, it's from people who had been in a wilderness, precisely because of what Blair had done.

the very fact Corbyn is labelled as "far left" shows you how far they've moved.

Now you can come back and tell me all the good things Blair did and how he won three elections, if you like!

All of that isn't the point, the point was why are we short of housing and how did it become an investment, which I've answered.

British trains have a different gauge to European trains. I think the track widths are identical, but European trains are wider and taller. Tracks, platforms, bridges and tunnels would need to be changed. 

It's always been an investment. I recall listening to my grand parents who were born during ww1 tell me how they worked, saved, grew or reared lots of their own food, never had holidays or went to the pub, through the 30s so they could afford to buy their own home as a life long investment,. They started on a 2 bed terrace, worked up then down sized in their early 60s back into the 2 bed terrace they first bought and used the cash from their investment to top up their retirement.

I think many people these days think they can live wild from 18-25, drink, do £100 festivals, holiday abroad, expensive phone, own a nice car, perhaps a multitude of expensive sport kit... then when they hit 30 they want a nice big house... 

The reason many baby boomers and older could afford a house was because they did bugger all but save for years. 

Yes people bought council houses, but it doesn't matter who owns It, it's the ratio of people to property that is low and the desire for everyone to own their home, even couples. Live in one, rent the other out. Holiday homes sitting empty for months. Housing companies sitting on land. Planning regulations. Population growth. There are a multitude of reasons why it's tough, not just one government policy 30 plus years ago. 

Read something a long ago about when rail companies were just regional... 100 years or more ago. Many ran on different guages, as it grew it was decided to standardise and through political influence this current size won, not because it was the most practical in engineering terms of having wider, faster, more stable trains. 

I've stopped reading his posts. Why waste your life?

​​​​​​No Yorkshire men here (well I am but you know what I mean. I had some great tenants who always paid on time and left the place in good condition. The only problem was renting to family who left the place a shit hole but that's family for you. 

My only "angst" is why would I want to pay rent for 60 years when I could pay the same or less per month for 20 years and get 40 years free. 

This is my situation, father, grand father and great grand father all had sudden and fatal heart attacks between 59 and a half and 60 and a half. I may only have 13 years left. In the plus side though if I shuffle off at that age because the house is paid for the Mrs will be okay. 

If Johnson does just one thing....

... he should avoid the USA drawing us into a war with Iran.

That will involve engaging fully with EU diplomatic efforts with Iran. We have to try harder than everyone else with this because of our less than honourable history with Iran. That has resulted in everything that goes wrong in Iran being the fault of the damned British. It will be hard work shaking off that reputation. Probably a good way would have been to not go against EU policy by taking an Iranian oil tanker. 

Even if we avoid direct conflict, not engaging with diplomatic efforts and continuing to support US and Saudi aggression means endangering every person in the UK. 

Typical backward looking rose tinted bullshit. Home ownership peaked in the early 2000's and since then has declined in line with ridiculous house price inflation we saw leading up to that point and for periods since. So what about all those feckless boomers in the 70s still in rentals (similar numbers to today), were they also pissing their money away on mobile phones and avocado toast?

Don't waste too much time worrying about it as I am now on borrowed time!  I can look back at my "younger" father.   When I have a great day in the hills or climb the Inn Pin I count the blessing of doing things past the age he died

Try this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge#Standard_gauge_appears

Original is best!

That's not the entire picture, is it? In 1963*, my parents bought a house for £7k, with a mortgage they could afford on one salary. With inflation, today, that would be worth £103k:

https://www.moneysorter.co.uk/calculator_inflation2.html

The house in question is probably worth £450k today, looking at rightmove, and allowing for the lack of extension.

The value of property has risen well above inflation; in this case, by a factor of 4.4.

* admittedly, they are 15 years older than 'baby boomers', but 1963 would probably be the earliest a 'baby boomer' would have been buying a house.

But Broad Gauge is bigly betterer!

I understand that, and that's what they did in Switzerland, they managed to do it without disrupting the networks, somehow. But we're an engineering nation, surely it's not beyond our remit to do the same. I realise it's not free, but neither is HS2 and what does HS2 give us in respect of capacity?

Gauge is the track width, and Europe and the UK run on "standard" gauge 4' 81/2" (1,435mm in new money)

55% of the worlds railways use standard gauge.

I meant the loading gauge (and by association the structure gauge) rather than the track gauge. But yes, like I had said, in vague language, the track gauge is the same but our loading gauge is smaller. 

I know double decker trains have been proposed as part of HS2. Not sure if they have got the go ahead though. I don’t know if anyone has costed making existing lines bigger, but this would be much more disruptive.

I have heard (not verified myself) that if all the train tracks in Switzerland were moved to the UK, there'd be nearly enough to replace all the tracks in Kent, which would make their upgrade works a lot more manageable.

I'm guessing you've  not been to Switzerland then? They have an astonishingly dense rail network.

You were vagueness free from where I'm sitting.

So move more people. OK, today that makes sense, but what next? 

We all buy more from home and expect it delivered  now, overnight, "prime" service. This trend will only intensify as companies work out more ways to sell us all more and more and deliver it to us.

Instead of moving more people how about move fewer people but give absolute priority to moving more "stuff" by rail?

In 5 years only allow electric vehicles on motorways and only allow hgvs and delivery vans to drive 100 miles per day. All rail traffic between 2000 and 0600 devoted to freight. 

Nope, never work. Just another silly idea. 

Anyone got any other ideas, sooner or later one of them is bound to be less silly?? 

I don't, what will be will be. I'm just happy that if it happens my wife will be okay. Until then I will carry on doing as I have always done and you are doing, living life and enjoying it.

Edited to add. On My mums side of the family the women all go young but the men all lived well in to the 80s and 90s. It's not all doom and gloom. 

The UK needs more freight capacity not double decker trains. In a high tech world folk will travel less for work. But so much more freight could be shifted off UK roads. 

Thats been the claim for two decades.  Reasonable broadband is now common but home working isn’t...

Cultural, lack of trust... maybe.

There are obvious incentives in terms of office space etc even just a reduction in the number of days in an office and have hot desking, rather than folk constructing little home from homes where they sit. 

As you'll know those living rurally with the longest commute still have the worst broadband. 

Ok just googled.

Switzerland has 5200km

Network Rail has 16209km, of which 3200 are for SE so there would be enough for Kent. 

It's also probably not as simple as just measuring track per capita. 

It's a question of where they go to and from. Are they linking residents with their work places, do people need to drive miles then pay for parking, punctuality, cost, do they run at the right times ie a coordinated network of connections with buses/planes, can you take a bike, find a seat etc. And then there are all the industrial freight options to consider. 

A country could easily have much less track but provide a better service. 

In IT it is but as soon as a job becomes possible to do from home it is off shored so most people left in the UK do still travel as they only reason they still have jobs is because they are needed on site or in front of a customer.

Krikoman's point was in respect of replacing the track, not about who has the best service.

Sorry i should have made it clearer I realised that.

Yes that might be true, but I was only pointing out an option for HS2 not replacing the whole network.

What's more the upgrades they did went through mountains and over bridges, all of which they seemed to alter without disruption to normal travel. It sounds almost impossible to me, but the article I read about was very impressive.

That simply isn’t true. Housing was relatively much, much cheaper in relation to earnings and could be bought with little or no deposit.

Using my own family as an example, my own  parents bought a 3 bed semi detached at aged 22 and 20 on the income of an insurance clerk and a part-time (and pregnant) nursery nurse. Recently married and recently graduated from university in my Dad’s case, they had minimal savings and only the most modest of support from family.

I did also say it was also down to the volume of housing, number of holiday homes, housing companies sitting on land, building and planning regs. What constitutes affordable housing doesn't usually correlate with local wages. 

I still think many people expect to just have a big house and housing companies pray on this. You have new 4 bed houses selling for say £250k when an old fashioned 2 bed often has nearer enough the same sqm for a lot less money. And people buy them. There is also a stigma against good quality apartments.

For my parents, that wasn't at all the case, quite the opposite. They bought their first house because they could afford the mortgages on their 'first proper job' incomes after leaving university (no loans to pay back), and did it up before wanting to live somewhere else, and sold that home for a profit and bought the next one, and they happened to be born and working at the right time to be able to keep moving to nicer homes as their lives and family grew. If you were a graduate in something pretty useful and starting your career in the late 60's, it was a time of opportunity to do with house buying for quite a lot of people. 

Graduates in the 1960’s made up less than 10% of the population.

Possibly closer to 5%.

Which is why I wrote this bit. '' If you were a graduate in something pretty useful and starting your career in the late 60's, it was a time of opportunity to do with house buying for quite a lot of people.''. 

I guess I meant proportionally speaking for the graduates, by 'quite a lot of people'.

It was the case for mine. My dad worked 7 days a week and my mum stayed at home to look after my brother and me. In fairness though their first house was a new build semi detached but every penny of spare money went on the mortgage. I don't remember but apparently during the 17% interest days the pantry would often be down to the last potato and if it wasn't for my dad's guvvie jobs they would have gone under. 

They came out of the other side well placed though and my mum is sitting pretty in a nice detatched house with plenty in the bank. 

HS2 or as said above "Capacity Expansion 1" is massively needed to service the commuters into and out of London, it has very little to do with bridging the divide as the time saved doesn't make too much of a difference although a nice bonus.

I use that line daily and its a nightmare, trains can't get longer and the timetable is so packed that more trains can't be added and if one train is a minute late then something gets cancelled due to the knock on impact.

The main problem with HS2 is the build duration. By the time it's completely finished (accounting for mandatory delays) the way we move around the country will be drastically different, there will likely be more flexible working arrangements, electric cars powered by sustainable energy generation will hopefully be the norm and self driving vehicles will drastically increase the capacity of roads by reducing/eliminating stopping distances.

So on a single salary, they bought as a first home the kind of house you're now saying that it's unreasonable for young people to aspire to? Sounds like they were pretty fortunate in spite of their privations. Certainly, it would be very difficult for me to do the same, in spite of earning well above the regional average, 17% interest rates wouldn't be difficult to deal with, they'd be utterly impossible.

edit: just to point out that I (as with every other first time buyer I've ever met) dealt with this and bought the house they could afford. This idea that most people are desperate to move into unreasonable accommodation never rings true to me.

Or, increase demand on the roads causing total gridlock that noone minds too much about because they can get on with other things whilst they wait.

Or, they won't happen except in private hire and taxis. Cheap, on demand taxis means car ownership falls and rail is used for most intercity.

Or, electric vehicles never achieve the range needed for convenient long distance travel but environmental concerns mean petrol is phased out anyway. Long distance rail passenger numbers increase.

Or electric aviation is rapidly adopted and everyone goes everywhere in their own passenger drone.

Or pandemic Ebola wipes out 85% of Earth's population and we revert to subsistence farming.

Predicting the future is FUN!

They bought a house on a single sallery because my dad was working 7 days a week on 12 hour days. His plan was to work his arse off whilst young to set them up for later life, unfortunately he didn't make it to later life but at least my mum is okay. Their only outgoings were mortgage, insurance, food, council tax (or whatever it was called back then) and clothing. 

No phones, cars, luxuries of any sort. I think I was about 10 before we had a holiday. This was also in Leeds not London. Of the 4 under 28's that I employ 2 own their own homes on modest wages and the third is looking to buy but waiting to see how Brexit might effect things, they have achieved this through saving and living within their means. I know there are some areas where this just isn't possible but there are plenty of areas where it is. 

My mam and dad bought theirs in the late 60's a brand new 3 bed semi, it was roughly 2-3 years wages for my dad. Nowadays your looking at something over 5 years at least.

Thats not predicting the future, it’s ignoring the present.  

the Jonathan Pie take on HS2

youtube.com/watch?v=lQUglnEmhOc&