From The Guardian
There once was a man called Motion
who had a homey devotion
"Build houses for the peasants?
That would be most unpleasant
Can't they just move their ghastly selves across the ocean?"
(which is still a better poem than anything he wrote)
Saturday 1 December 2012
Chief Homey Objects to building on the Greenbelt
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9 comments:
There once was a man called A Motion
Who was caught by a homey devotion
Build houses for peasants?
That sounds most unpleasant
Plebs should just move 'cross the ocean.
Do you even into metre, Mark?
RA, this was TS's post.
And your last line should read:
The plebs they should move 'cross the ocean
OK, missing words round:
The NIMBYs have started to splutter
"It's immigrants!" they darkly mutter
Now let me be blunt
About his little stunt
He is just a total and utter
Mark,
Genius! Replace mine with yours.
TS
To be fair to AM, he didn't actually mention the Green Belt. However, he is a paid-up subscriber to the FBRI. Mind you, the other guy is talking bollocks, too: there is no "housing shortage" it's just made-up gov't figures to help their developer friends. Not that AM points that out, although he does mention that the "housing shortage" could be solved by speculators actually building on the land they already have planning permission for.
TS, ta.
B, no, AM deserves no "fairness" whatsoever as he is a devious lying shit:
""On just about every level what he said was wrong. Start at the level of fact: he said 9% of our countryside is bricked over; by CPRE reckoning it is actually already more like 12%"
Well, various 'official' statistics tend more towards the 9% (some say urbanised is only 6%) but let's assume the 12% for 'developed' is correct (2% of the UK is roads, railways, pavements).
Of course, half the 'developed' is far from being bricked over, about half of all developed land is still gardens and parks and so on.
Bayard,
Mind you, the other guy is talking bollocks, too: there is no "housing shortage" it's just made-up gov't figures to help their developer friends.
Why would developers want to build houses if there's no shortage? Who are they selling to?
TS, the "developers" are actually land speculators.
If you were a land speculator, what would you rather have: Control of millions of potential plots, all exempt from tax while they are hoarded, to be drip fed onto the market at such a rate as to keep house prices high, because with high house prices come govt subsidies like "FirstBuy" and so on? Or the opposite, whatever that is?
TS, Developers don't need a shortage of houses to sell houses, any more than car manufacturers need a shortage of cars to sell cars, they just need people who want to buy a bigger, smaller, posher, faster, more economical etc. etc. car. There is no shortage of housing as such, because firstly there are plenty of empty houses around the country and secondly, all the people who want to buy houses are currently living somewhere already However, people will still be buying houses, because those empty houses are in the wrong place (mainly), too small, too large, too old, too new, too ugly or just not for sale and the places were the potential buyers are currently living are rented and they are desparate to "get onto the housing ladder" and "invest in property". In any case, we are not talking about building houses here, we are talking about getting permission to build houses, i.e. speculation. The object of the exercise is not to build more houses, because, as you say, there isn't really a market for them and developers are already sitting on huge amounts of land with PP on it, but to help the developers make money out of speculation and arbitrage.
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