Uk Housing

 General  No Responses »
Jul 112007
 

The UK government today announced tentative plans to encourage the building of low cost homes that would be affordable by ordinary people. The idea of affordable homes is definitely good in a country where most young people will probably never be able to afford a home of their own given that in many places average homes cost ten times an average salary.

However the interesting thing is not so much about homes, but about the failure of the capitalism system to provide a product at a suitable price point. Since WWII, the government has taken the lead in home building for the lower end of the market although the vast majority of government built homes were for rent (and in fact old council houses are still fantastic buys because of the build quality and relatively low prices). Since the early 1980s the government has pretty much left it to the private sector to provide housing. They have failed.

To demonstrate this, look at house price inflation … it vastly exceeds ordinary inflation. The Halifax House Price Index shows that since 1983, house prices have increased at a rate of 8% a year whilst ordinary inflation increased at 4.5% a year. Even more dramatically (and expanding on statistics given earlier), the ratio of house price to salaries has a long-term average of 3.5:1 whereas in 2006 this ratio was 6:1 and a later survey shows that in some areas 10:1 is being exceeded.

There are a variety of reasons given as to why house prices are so inflated including :-

  • Increased life expectancy means homes are released back into the available housing pool more slowly.
  • Greenbelt legislation means land for homes becomes more difficult to find and is more expensive.
  • An increase in the tendency of people to live alone means a greater increase in the level of demand for homes than would be suggested by the increase in population.

But the fact remains that the original Thatcherite theory that the market would provide has failed. In theory entrepreneurs would seek to find a way to produce homes in a quantity and at a price point to fill the gap in the market … cheap homes for first time buyers who could not otherwise afford to get onto the housing ladder. There is plenty of demand for such homes.

As an example, it should be possible to build much more densely in cities than is currently the case … not far from where I am writing, there are large amounts of land occupied by single-story garages and this in one of the most densely populated cities in the UK! Another example, why are there not property developers experimenting in alternate building strategies to produce homes cheaper ? For instance using pre-fabricated modules to provide a snap together set of prepared rooms would probably be cheaper than doing things as we currently do.

Not that I am covering all possibilities here … after all that is what the property developer is supposed to do. The one that comes up with a way to build cheap high quality homes in bulk will probably make far more money than the property developers who produce high value homes … “pile it high and sell it cheap”.

Women or Men Are Better At Parking ?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jun 202007
 

There has just been an item on the morning news about how good at parking men and women are and which ones are better. It may be entertaining, but is also so inane that I can’t remember which sex was supposed to be better. Lets suppose men were worse at parking than women. Why? Perhaps because they drive more than women, or perhaps they have a tendency to drive bigger cars than women. Who knows ?

Personally I believe whatever the reason for someone being a bad parker, it is very unlikely to be because they are a man or a woman. Whilst such surveys are entertaining and provide a bit of ‘water cooler’ discussion material, all too many people jump to the obvious conclusion. All such a survey shows is that men have a statistically significantly greater chance of having an accident parking than women (or the other way around).

It does not show that men are worse at parking than women. That may be the case, but the survey doesn’t show it … because it doesn’t answer other questions :-

  • Do people who drive more than an hour a day have more or less accidents parking than those who drive less than an hour ? Repeat for other time periods.
  • Do people who drive larger cars have more accidents parking than those who drive smaller cars ?
  • Does parking in deprived areas result in more or less parking accidents ?
  • Does street parking result in more of less parking accidents than in car parks ?

The list goes on, and then you have to discover the differences between how men and women park.

We are too quick to jump on apparent evidence that shows men are better than women, or women are better than men. In reality, if you pick a woman driver and a man at random, there are probably many differences between them that could explain different driving risks, and that the difference in sex is probably the least likely explanation of differences in the risk of driving accidents.

UK Gets Right To Breast Feed In Public

 General  No Responses »
Jun 172007
 

The UK government has done something sensible for once and given the right to breast feed in public without harassment … it is admittedly a sad comment on the state of Britain that such a law is necessary. It seems that some people think it is “disgusting” or something and object to it in public. Personally I find people eating decaying corpses in public disgusting, but I don’t make a big song and dance over it … because once someone has made the decision to eat meat it is none of my business (although a bit of gentle campaigning is not wrong … when they are not eating!).

If you are one of those odd people who find breast feeding disgusting, don’t look! After all it’s hardly polite to stare at someone eating anyway, and if you don’t look it won’t bother you. If you are in a restaurant and someone breast feeding is putting you off your food, go and eat in the toilet (which is where these nutters think breast feeding belongs).

This is a symptom of a more general problem … that people somehow feel they have the right to restrict the actions of other people, because they might be offended. In many cases these people just need to be told mind your own business; whilst we do have to have restrictions on what we can do such as when we cause (or potentially) direct harm to others, we should not be restricted because somebody might be offended.

I find the act of people eating meat offensive, but I don’t expect the law to stop them. I accept the fact that other people have different ideas. I dare say some people find the fact that I grow my hair long offensive, but just because there are a few who do doesn’t mean it should be illegal. It is not even something where the majority can rule the minority.

Media Inaccuracies: Attempted Attack on the Pope

 General, Media  No Responses »
Jun 072007
 

Just seen a BBC news report about the attack on the pope today, claiming that the attacker had gotten through the security cordon surrounding the pope. Quite obviously hype as during that claim, they were playing footage of the attack which clearly shows the attacker being pulled to the ground by the second to last and last line of defence.

So the attacker did not get through the security cordon at all! Not that this was not an important incident that the Vatican needs to investigate, but it is an example of how the media frequently seems to like making the news more serious than it really is.

Flashing Olympics Logo

 General  No Responses »
Jun 052007
 

There has been a great outcry of the poor quality of the new Olympics London 2012 logo, and the BBC has a huge number of comments about it. Well, probably whatever they came up with would have resulted in tons of complaints.

However it turns out that the animated logo breaches guidelines on avoiding provoking epileptic fits caused by flashing images. And has caused some fits. Perhaps it is time the Olympics committee returned the logo and demanded their money back, and pick a logo selected by popular vote.

After all a professional media company that manages to produce a logo that causes fits just was not doing their job properly and have come up with something that is “unfit for purpose”.

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