On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 17:12:48 +0000 (UTC), "Cast_Iron"
wrote:



He didn't say "commute by car" (see for yourself - it's
reproduced above, courtesy of your good self).

Perfectly true, I added " by your favoured mode" which until now GH has not
disputed.


Oh really ? What part of


"What are you wittering on about ?"


are you having problems with.



greg


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In article , Purditer
wrote:
I was always surprised by the sudden increase in value of
these houses, who in their right mind would want to buy a
house on a council estate unless the price was artificially
low.

There are council estates and council estates. In the LA area
I used to work in there were lots of very acceptable houses
built in the 1950's - larger and better designed than many
spec-built houses. Of course these were the first to be sold
off, whilst in earlier times they would have been offered to
good tenants of less good housing or what are now called key
workers.

ISTM that the big problems with allowing RTB were (1) that
councils were not allowed to use the money to build
replacement stock and (2) the discount was a lottery: if you
had been lucky enough to be housed in the sort of house
described above, you took your discount and when you sold did
very nicely. If you were on a sink estate you'd have been
stupid to buy or if you did, it wasn't going to make money.
IMO the discount should have been worked out on the basis that
if we give you 25% discount we get 25% (perhaps diminishing by
1% a year) of any gain when you sell - IOW if you've only
financed 75% you only get 75% of the gain, thus making a lot
more money available for replacing housing stock.

--
Tony Bryer

MeatballTurbo wrote the following
in:

In article ,
says...
"Tim S Kemp" wrote the following in:


The richest people in this country are Estate agents and
Lawyers, and they get rich by screwing other people.

Can you count prostitutes in that description?

They don't usually get rich, do they?


The good ones do.
Not the smack head back alley/railways arch types.
The really good ones even have bluechip level accountants to make
sure that they are paying proper tax, and investing their earning
to cover for when they tits sag.

It's just that in the documentary series about an American brothel in
Nevada (where it's legal), they don't seem to make all that much money.

Someone told me it's legal to be a prostitute in the UK as long as you
don't solicit on the streets and as long as there aren't more than two
people working in the same building. Is that true?

By the way, nice choice of car (I drive a Felicia).

--
message by Robin May, but you can call me Mr Smith.
Enjoy the Routemaster while you still can.

"Handlebar catch and nipple."

wrote:

JNugent wrote:

[ ... ]

The RTB was introduced under Edward Heath, but with a
(major) flaw - councils didn't *have* to comply (they could
adopt a policy of not selling). Of course, this was still
better than the previous situation, where a council
couldn't sell even if they wanted to. In effect, it was
mainly Conservative councils that allowed their tenants to
buy under the Heath legislation. Changes in council control
could mean a change in sales policy (either way) - very
unsatisfactory for tenants wishing to buy. That flaw was
corrected under Thatcher, but the RTB was first established
under Heath (and believe me, the Labour Party squawked
enough about it at the time).

So there was no "right to buy", merely that the council could sell if
they so chose.

Before then, there was neither a right to buy a council house nor a right to
sell one (even if the council wanted to sell).

and (b) only applied to council houses - and
certainly not to tied cottages on farms.

Your evidence is from?

Re-read your own citation - you will see (if you read it)
that it applies only to council properties (there has never
been a right to force a private landlord to sell -
leaseholds of certain blocks of flats excepted). Even
housing association tenants find that the RTB (rather
unfairly, IMHO) doesn't apply to them.

Why should people in Council or other housing have the right to buy
and preclude someone else who needs a low rent place to live from
have the advantage that the buyer has had? Why not create a scheme in
which long term council tenants can get assistance to buy a house on
the open market?

A good question.

At the micro-scale it is, IMO, a telling question.

At the macro-scale, things look very different. It has been argued about
many times in (say) uk.politics.misc.

Try a Google Groups search in that NG for "RTB" and "council tenants".

In article ,
says...
"Silk" wrote in message
...
Conor wrote:

Dairy.

Except the bit about making hay for the cattle to eat in the winter,
that is.

If the cattle were having grass and hay rather than
feed/concentrates, which season is for hay making?

Same as silage, which is what they tend to feed cattle round here.

Pete.

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"Pete Smith" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
"Silk" wrote in message
...
Conor wrote:

Dairy.

Except the bit about making hay for the cattle to eat in the winter,
that is.

If the cattle were having grass and hay rather than
feed/concentrates, which season is for hay making?

Same as silage, which is what they tend to feed cattle round here.

Which season is for cutting to make silage then?

JNugent wrote:

wrote:

Greg Hennessy wrote:

[ ... ]

If you were to believe the CPRE, the SE is currently like
downtown Hong Hong during the rush hour, when the reality
is that approximately 15% of the land within 1 hours
commute of charring cross is built on.

A one hour commute by your favoured mode is only about ten miles at
most. Are you suggesting that there are open fields within that area?

He didn't specify the mode, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that he
meant by train. Even people whose favourite method of getting around is
by car would think twice about using it to commute to Charing Cross.

A one hour journey by car can take one (easily) up to 60 miles (probably not
a lot more, unless one lives adjacent to a motorway interchange).

So what are you talking about?

You can commute a lot further on a jet aircraft (from LCY airport)

So what are you talking about??

[Yes, I know that completely misses the point of JNugent's question, but
his missing the point of the previous question is my real point]

Mikael Armstrong wrote:



No, I am completely familiar with it. I was pointing out that unlike the
housing market where every house except those ready for demolition have
appreciated in value. On the other hand, it is only the cars that people
deem as "classics" that generally ever appreciate given a few exceptions.
This means that the average person can still afford to purchase a car, which
is not the case in the housing market. If the only cars people could buy
were MK1 Cortinas, and no new cars were being built, I would imagine that
the cost of them would have gone even higher!

AIUI there is one country where the supply of cars has been almost as
limited as the supply of British houses.

Does anyone know the price of cars in Cuba these days?

Cast_Iron wrote:
"Clive George" wrote...
"Cast_Iron" wrotem...

Given the that the increased road congestion in Friday and Sunday
evenings is caused by many people going and from to their country
cottages for the weekend, isn't it time that second homes attracted a
punative rate of council tax?

Less controversially, isn't it time that second homes attracted the normal
(ie non-discount) rate of council tax?

ISTR they were changing the law to allow that to happen. Maybe they
could even use some of the extra revenue to build more council houses,
thus removing one of the problems that has kept this thread going for so
long...

But if I had suggested that we wouldn't have had this interesting
conversation I suspect,

IMNSHO most of this conversation has been rather dull!

unless someone wants to prove me wrong?

You have phrased the original question in such a way that plenty of
people want to prove you wrong. Unfortunately, in their haste to do so,
they have focused entirely on your objectionable method, and completly
ignored the stupidity of your purpose: Reducing congestion on
uncongested roads but having no effect on those same roads at the times
when they really are congested.

Conor wrote:


Apart from a few roads in city centers, are any roads really congested
at night? And are any likely to become so in the next ten years?

The M6 northbound in Birmingham tends to be when they're doing night
roadworks.

But they've just built a brand new tollway to solve that problem!