Tuesday 4 February 2014

The Sun finally identifies the cause of Britain's "housing crisis"

It's bloody Bob Crow!

All because of him, his wife and daughter, there are 14,000 families on the waiting list in his area! The complete and utter heartless bastard!

If he'd only move out, that'd get it down to a manageable 13,999, which is a sort of tipping point and the rest of the problem would sort itself out. There'd be no need for the government to build another single unit. Ever.

The downside of him moving to somewhere more commensurate with his salary would be that he'd price 14,000 high earners out of the market in the same way as he has condemned 14,000 families to eternity on the waiting list.

The fact that he pays nearly £100,000 a year in taxes and rent to the government, sufficient to build one new home per year, and the fact that he didn't cash in on Right-to-buy and/or Buy-to-let (aka Right-to-let) and has not made a single penny in untaxed windfall land price gains over the past ten years is completely lost on the Homeys at The Sun and The Mail.

9 comments:

Bayard said...

The fact that he didn't cash in on Right-to-buy and/or Buy-to-let (aka Right-to-let) and has not made a single penny in untaxed windfall land price gains over the past ten years shows that he's obviously a Commie and therefore fair game for the Homeys at The Sun and The Mail.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, that's the funny thing, in interviews he claims to be a Commie, but as we well know, the definition of a Communist is somebody who owns at least two houses.

Tim Almond said...

Not a big fan of Crow (although I have to concede he seems to do a good job for his members), but if he wants to live in his council house, fine.

And the idea of passing a law (which costs tens of thousands of pounds to do) just to kick Bob Crow out is ridiculous.

Mark Wadsworth said...

TS, as a London commuter, I am not a big fan of Bob and his antics at all. That's a separate issue to criticising him for not being a land speculator.

There was a silly 'debate' on Channel 4 News this evening, and on the facts, Boris made fair points (in his usual flippant arrogant but well informed fashion) and Bob was just waffling.

So what? Boris has still wasted a hundred times as much money as Bob is asking in extra pay for his members. Boris has cost the taxpayer a hundred times as much as Bob, so who's the real Socialist (in a bad way) here?

DBC Reed said...

Forget about this sideshow. Did you see Keiser last night ?They came up with a killer argument we can use over Bishops Avenue.They pointed out that any rich bastard wanting to park £50 million could buy bullion but would have to pay 1% storage fees .Buy a house on Bishops Avenue and you would get the same level of protection and pay zilch percent in council tax while your investment is guaranteed by the financial terrorists who run everything to appreciate hundreds of per cent.We should be renaming mansion tax the land/bullion tax or landed bullion tax.

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, MBK emailed me the link, and Stacey didn't say gold bullion storage costs 1% a year, she said 2%, which means that a £35 million plot on Bishops Avenue ought to be paying about £700,000 a year in Mansion Tax.

A columnist in the FT said exactly the same thing yesterday:

"For evidence of London’s crazy housing market, look no further than The Bishops Avenue near Hampstead Heath, known as “Billionaires’ Row”.

A third of the mansions on its most prestigious stretch are empty and rotting, rarely visited by their overseas owners, yet have risen markedly in value.

Some have water streaming down walls, collapsed ceilings and pigeon skeletons on the decaying carpets, according to an investigation by The Guardian newspaper.

Many upmarket London properties are bought for investment but only sporadically occupied.

Councils can charge a 50 per cent local tax premium on properties empty for two years, and some people want to go further. This surely also advances the case for a land value tax or a mansion tax."


Said is said.

DBC Reed said...

Not another land taxer on the FT!
Incredible that a pillar of the establishment like this should be infested with trouble makers no better than us.
However Groom is not making the comparison with bullion storage which is the new angle. We need to come up with some snappy re-branding: Land Inflation Deterrent (LID); Hot Money Parking Charge; etc.

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, what snappy rebranding?

The Homeys think that land price inflation (i.e. wage deflation) is A Good Thing. And they hotly deny it's "hot money", that's just somewhere to live, which costs them money, they don't seek to make a profit from it, they just want an asset to pass to their children etc etc etc.

My preferred name is "Domestic Rates", actually, but everybody else says LVT so I'll stick with that.

DBC Reed said...

I did n't mean snappy rebranding just from me : it was supposed to be a group enterprise."Domestic rates" = not really trying.
The hot money moniker applies to dodgy abroad geezers like Russian Mafia not homegrown simpletons who cannot see they're doing anything wrong.Branding them with "inflation" which they connect with commie union members "holding the country to ransom" by working for a living, might knock them from their high horse .
For the Stacy Herbert situation of land better than bullion suggest Hot Money Parking Fine or Money Circulation Improver.. It was supposed to be a rebranding of Mansion Tax not LVT.