Duncan Stott left a comment on Shapps challenges housebuilders to embrace corporate suicide:
There's a bit more to it than this... The Tories are also proposing that 'central' government will offer a wedge of cash towards local services for every development that is approved. So not as de-centralising or free-market as they are making out.
Shappsy ought to know that eighty or ninety per cent of 'local services' are paid for by central government out of general taxation, whether as direct grants to local councils, or by funding schools and hospitals - Council Tax is but a small local top-up. But he's probably gambling on most people not realising this.
As these grants are, broadly speaking, allocated on a per capita basis (plus and minus a lot of mucking about like the Barnett Formula), we already have a system whereby central government offers a stream of future grants towards local services for every development that is approved (assuming that people move in).
So his plan is not new and fails for mendacity.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Grant Shapps: thinks we are stupid.
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10 comments:
Paul W talks about the "the rights of local people to refuse extra development." In my experience, local people, who were born and bred in a community, are usually pro-development. It's the "incomers" he alludes to in the next sentence, who moved to the area on having children or retirement, that are the NIMBYs.
Bayard: Is that because the ancient locals know explicitly how more people equals more wealth delivered? And the NIMBY's do not ? (so long as the infrastructure is delivered, which it only ever is partially contrary to the law)
I spoke to Shapps about this at the last Con conf. He implied there would be no significant change to the general policy on housing. Minor vote winning tweaks ? Of course!
RS: I think it because the "ancient locals" think development is a good idea (houses for their children, better for the shops, schools etc), whether rightly or wrongly (new houses tend to go to incomers who shop in supermarkets etc) and incomers want to keep the town or village exactly how it was when they arrived. There is a fair chunk of opposition to development in the countryside that objects more to the aesthetics of something they are going to have to look at every day than to development per se, but the rest are pure NIMBYs.
So Shapps is cashing in the general public ignorance of the block grant?
And there we were believing the Tories were going to be less disingenuous, eh? (actually, I don't think we were, were we?).
Back on our heads for the next 5 years, then.
B, who's 'Paul W'? Further, are there any people who are not 'local people'?
RS, keep up the good work.
B, RS, do you really think that newcomers are more NIMBYist than people who have lived somewhere longer? It may well be true, but I'd never noticed it or thought about it.
DP, yes, Shappsy is peddling the Home-Owner-Ist lie that 'Council Tax pays for local services'.
To be fair, Labour have taken the piss as well - they boast that Labour-run councils have much lower Council Tax than Tory-run ones (which is true, actually) but neglect to mention that this is only because Labour-run councils get more from the block grant.
This paints the hardcore Home-Owner-Ist Tories nicely into a corner of course - the Tories never defended themselves against this claim because to do so would be to expose one of the Home-Owner-Ist lies as a lie.
Dick: No we never thought the cons would change anything.
MW: I was clarifying Bayards logic. I have no opinion on it yet. Except that more people = more wealth = more rent. All good! Its just the distribution of that rent and production that is *ucked up adn killing it all.
Mark: Paul W wrote the article you quoted from. "Local" is a term I have heard widely used to mean "someone who was born and bred here" as opposed to "someone who moved here in the last twenty years" who is an "incomer". Yes, my experience of living in a small market town is exactly that all the NIMBYs were incomers. Basically, they want to keep everywhere the same as when they moved there because the way it was was what attracted them in the first place. Locals, however, are aware that there's no work for their children and no housing they can afford and lots of empty shops in the towns and want to do something about it.
bayard: Your illustration is significant. Especially about NIMBY's wanting to keep the place the same as when they moved in. I hear this all the time from local residents associations. Even so I support them because they are powerless otherwise in the face of the big power in the developers and the smaller power in the planning authority. There are other reasons NIMBY's object including stopping poor people arriving, protecting the value of their home(stupid cos it will go up) and depreciation of life quality which is true when developers do not supply funding for new devs. Locals also must bear the burden of proof. They never make it clear what it is they want and rarely want change. And locals are the more prejudice of the 2 groups in terms of race and wealth. IMHO both are as bad as one another.
In the end an outsider becomes a local after a generation anyway. And this is probably why both classes behave so irrationally.
I'd be more convinced by your concern if UKIP actually had a candidate to stand against him.
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