A need for housing which is not being realised

The UK has an ever increasing problem. There simply are not enough properties to house the population. Probably one of the truest facts of life is, everyone needs somewhere to live. We all need a home. Without a home everything else falls apart. A roof over your head is everything, it also helps to have money to pay the bills and enough to warmth and comfort to satisfy the basic human needs. Food, friendship or family, adequate shelter.  When I say home I don't mean something which is temporary, it has to be permanent and preferably not rented from a private landlord. The best choice would be owned.

There are many reasons why the UK does not have enough properties.  The population is increasing every year.  This is not organically either, immigration is higher than net migration.  Over the last two decades or even more, the number of new build properties in the entire UK has not kept up with these population increases.  It has been pitiful no matter what government has been in power.  There has always been a proportional trend for citizens of the UK to purchase their own home, so once in ownership it will stay in ownership for many years. Families no longer live in the cohesive units they used to live in. They break up. There is not the social pressure for partners to stay together.  This is a good thing for those who want to get out of a relationship so they can do so.  Unless they happen to believe in a religion which sees marriage break ups in a poor light.  Individuals and organizations own more than one property, those excess properties are used as cash cows by renting them out, we see an ever growing set of entrepreneurs have developed in an ever growing buy to rent market.  There should be a maximum number of domestic properties any single individual can be allowed to own in the UK.

As people buy their own homes, it means taking out a mortgage and a number of years paying this back.  Home owners hope the valuation of their property increases every year.  Over time the actual mortgage level drops lower than rental values and they win out on two fronts.  For banks and for home owners there is an interest in keeping property valuations high and consequently there is also an advantage in more properties not being built and synchronized with the needs of a growing population.   In a catch 22 like situation, the fewer people own their own homes the better it is for those who do own their own home.  Property ownership is static wealth, those with high mortgages are tied to banks with their burdens.  The higher demand the higher property valuations but this comes at a caveat, if interest rates increase home owners may have difficulty in paying back their mortgage.  Those with interest only mortgages actually become the most vulnerable.  In a time of recession which has been more than a decade, being in work is also one of the most valuable factors anyone can have.

The solutions can only come from a multiple fronts.  Especially when looking at the interdependent link between banks, mortgages and home ownership, which is insidious to the entire country.  A nationally owned and nationally ran bank, not one of those which has been bailed out might  be an option, but is unlikely to happen.  More stringent regulations on allowing mortgages, interest rates, the even the failure of banking institutes should be considered.  In an ever chaotic financial situation it is unfair the tax payer has to bail out banks because they are too big to fail.  If they  really are too big, then they need to be broken up, their capital held increased and the culture of awarding massive financial rewards to the few ceased.  House builders should be forced to either sell back the land banks they have or to actually build on them.  Local Authorities should be given permission to purchase and to build their own housing again, their role has previously been central in stabilizing the housing crisis, but they have been shut out. A new rent regulation should be introduced, the maximum level of rent any private organization can charge is then capped. No matter where the property is situated.  Empty and abandoned properties should also be examined, with forced purchase orders come into play given owners had sufficient time to act. 

The introduction of apprenticeship schemes which are only a few weeks long are worthless to everyone. The definition of an apprenticeship should be defined with a minimum period and a minimum standard of education associated to it.   Universities and colleges must create courses centred on vocational skills should provide vocational qualifications and those who go on these courses given financial support. The agism of apprenticeship schemes should also be examined.  People of any age should be given an equal chance to go on these schemes. You are never too young to learn, if the retirement age is increasing it stands to reason older people need to be included higher in new workforces. The UK no longer produces goods in factories and through engineering to the degree it used, the entire field of private sector industry must be encouraged and supported. Through reduced business rates, increased financial support, tax breaks and long term R & D investment.  The future of the UK has to be considered beyond the term of one or two governments.  We now should be looking 30 to 50 years ahead.  This can only be done a little bit at a time.

More jobs for more people at a higher level of skill and education will ensure they are able to have a better standard of living and so purchase their own house or afford to rent.  However, the idea is to bring down rent levels and increase numbers of available homes. These are just a few ideas some of which have been mentioned in previous BLOGs.

Tragic and stupefying sale of Royal Mail

The sale of the Royal Mail (RM) is yet another instance of selling the crown jewels by this current government, it has been grossly undervalued. The initial public offering (IPO) has valued them at £3.30 per share and after just a single day the value of these shares has jumped by 38% to £4.38. As suspected by many sources the original valuation of this organization was grossly wrong. Vince Cable personally owes the British Taxpayer at least £1 billion plus. Not only this, the dividend yield of RM has been estimated at 6-7%.  The RM is a money making, profit making, public loved, public needed machine. The decision to sell it off is a typical short termism fix which a ridiculously inefficient, crazy government has done to try and reduce the deficit.  There should of been a public vote on whether the sale of RM should be allowed.  When you sell something you can only do it once this is so crass.  , not This is one of the worst back stabbing public to private sale to date.

So anyone in their right mind would ask why on earth sell it, I did say in their right mind. Whereas this sale is in the mind of Vince Cable and his Tory partners. At a House of Commons committee on 09.10.13. Vince was directly asked about the sale of RM being undervalued. His response was that the price of shares goes up and down. It was revealed also the prospectus weighed in at 440 pages long. The period of notice between offering and actual selling was so short no single body would of had a chance to read through this prospectus. It turns out RM was also 7 times over subscribed. Vince doesn't consider vast amounts of shares would of been bought by overseas investors.  These private organizations will for now make massive profits, massive. Vince says the shares will fluctuate but what he isn't understanding here is the IPO is now not one month or two months or six months, it is the current IPO pricing which has fallen exceedingly short of actual value. It is as though Vince has gone out of his way to give away money to foreign investors.  Vince has in no doubt lost the plot, he can not be allowed to stay in office or to remain an MP.  As Vince was asked how he came about the value of the RM he used the term "pilot fishing" and when questioned by MP Julie Elliott it was evident Vince had valued the RM by anecdotal, unrecorded discussions with investors.  The same investors no doubt who were about to buy shares. I suppose it didn't occur to him they might devalue the price so as to enhance their own profit. Again this is evidence of a man who should not be in government, a man who has made a billion pound mistake. When asked about the capital assets of the RM one MP advised the Mount Pleasants building in London to be valued at at one billion pounds asked if this was going to be offset against the pension liabilities the government had accepted for RM employees. Vince as ever hesitant in his reply dodged around the question, forehead with a troubled frown. It is as though Vince has not actually considered the repercussions of this sale, has not considered the real value of the business and just jumped on the Tory bandwagon of selling off assets for a doddle.

So who gets the useful idiot award for the Tories, Mr Vincent (frown head) Cable, who probably should be considering a retirement from office.  A long one, and as quickly as possible.

Fed up with the Tory machine

The last few weeks have been a living Tory nightmare, of publicity. I am beyond saturation point in seeing them on the news, if it's not Cameron it's Ozziborne, neither of them are fit to organize a piss up in a brewery let along run a country. And yet again I'll harp on to the fact Ozz has a degree in modern history not in economics so why the hell is he running the country's economy.  He can only get it wrong and get it wrong on a massive scale. I am fed up with every one of his budgets. He gives them titles like "this is the budget for growth" hell it was more like the budget of puke.  If you look at Ozz's early promises of where the country would be on it's deficit and spending they are all wrong, he has not achieved anything. The country has 1.2 trillion pounds of debt and as far as anyone in blue is concerned it's down to every person who gets welfare benefits in any form at all. They have removed laws which made employers take on disabled members of staff, they have villified those who claim benefits even though the majority of people who do are actually working and need them to subsidise their daily living costs. There has definitely got to be something wrong if the cost of living is so bloody high even people in work can not afford to pay their bills and feed themselves. It was with irony when Ozzy was asked by MP Teresa Pearce at a Public Accounts Committee meeting whether he knew how many times a family could go to a food bank, and he didn't. Ozzy thought because the Job Centre were advising claimants about going to food banks it was enough. The answer to the question was three times.  When Cameron was asked recently if he knew the price of a basics loaf of bread he mumbled a fictionally high price and then had the gall to say he owned a bread maker so they made their own bread. Bloody hip, hip, horay for Cammy it's good to know he can afford the electricity to run a bread maker, let alone own one. Because I don't know anyone who does own a bread maker.

The level of tripe which has been applauded from the Tory conference is outlandish as well. It is like there is a group of people living in some Utopia world on a hill in the middle of London who looks down on everyone else and doesn't have any insight about what it is like beyond their own hill. The Tory party are an insular millionaires club. Quite rightly Nadine Doris has described Cammy and Ozzy as upper class Eaton toffs.  Both these people need a lesson in humility. Take them out of their offices and put them on welfare benefits for two weeks, put all their politics on hold. Put them in the land of the unemployed, the working classes, those scraping together a living from hand to mouth. Of course they have to do this as actors and get dressed up in the part, add a couple of plane cloths minders in the wings to keep an eye on them as well.  Maybe, just maybe they would then understand the consequences of their actions, of their government, maybe they would learn some humility, maybe they would learn compassion even. Hell, I doubt it. To tell the truth it would be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle before these obnoxious suit wearing idiots ever walked across the road.

Another raving Tory scoundrel is the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre. He has gone so far as demonise a deceased second world war veteran, Ed Milliband's dad. For something he had written in a diary when he was 17 years old. It is like Dacre has no sense of decency, The Mail has gone to the pits and can not call itself a newspaper. I'll not read a copy ever, but I'll use it to wipe my arse after a good big dump, because that's where it deserves to be, flushed down the toilet with the excrement of life. Dacre unbelievably was also a member of the Press Complaints Commission, which I guess was from necessity because no doubt there have been a hell of a lot of complaints about the Daily Fail. Dacre believes in sensationalism and he follows the whims of public opinion in the truest manner of a fair-weather friend. However, with with the advocated belief he represents middle Tory Britian and the free market economy. I wonder if he'd say this were he in an NHS hospital only to get a hip replacement which had come via the free market economy of Rumania. What is it about Tories nowadays that they have to be bullies, Cameron acts like this when opposite Milliband at every PMQ, he ducks and dives questions constantly, it got to the point PMQs are farcical, nothing more than a propaganda machine and vilification of the opposing bench.

I have so truly had enough of the lies, and deceit of the Tory machine the more I hear from them the more a pressing need to speak out against them and to even consider active campaigning against them as well. .

Firefighter cyclist killed by sandwich eating motorist

Today another incident of death by dangerous or rather careless driving has surfaced.  Paul Brown, 30, hit off-duty fire-fighter Joseph Wilkins on a country road near Abingdon in May 2012. Now was during summer, the accident happened about 9 p.m. and Paul Brown was eating a sandwich while driving. He elledged the sandwich was already eaten and his attention was on the road but he somehow still hit Joseph Wilkins. In this case perpetrator Paul Brown got the sentence of 240 hours community service. This is such a cheap crime to have committed.

How can a life be so cheap? There is definitely something wrong with the British legal system to allow road death to be so cheaply punished. An advocate could of argued Paul Brown had murdered Mr Wilkins intentionally, that there may have been an earlier altercation between the pair of them and Mr Brown sort revenge. This could of been a possible explanation as well as the sandwich eating story.

It is heinous to allow death by driving such paltry punishment.

Death by dangerous driving is murder

I have just read an article of how two people were killed by a lorry driver, Ethen Roberts, this took place on the M62 in West Yorkshire, in 2012.  The sentence for killing two people with a lorry is apparently not much at all. Just a mere 5 years.  It is called death-by-dangerous-driving when in fact it should be called homicide-by-motor-vehicle. Time and time again innocent people are killed by motorists and the sentence is pitiful. In this particular case Mr Robers was reading a text while at the wheel, he lost control and his lorry jackknifed, it somehow fell and crushed to death Mr and Mrs McHale. She was a primary school teacher and her husband the owner of a beauty salon. No child will ever be taught by her again.

In some countries death by vehicle beings with the charge of murder, as the circumstances are revealed the gradually this is changed and reduced to a lesser sentence. Maybe the British legal system has some misguided belief road traffic accidents are just another form of accident and these things happen. So it begins with the predicate "it's an accident." This is totally and completely wrong. When an individual gets behind the wheel of an vehicle they become liable not just for their life but those of fellow travellers and certainly pedestrians. Yes there may well be occasions where certain deaths could not be avoided. But I am without doubt for this particular offence, responsibility and liability should fall first on the driver's shoulders. If a driver is distracted their distraction can cause death, if they are incapable of driving by being on drugs or alcohol then they to should be considered as responsible and liable.

This is very, very wrong. However I am sure there will continue to be stories in the press in years to come where the same thing happens. Had Ethen Roberts been aware of a law meaning he would be liable for murder would he of acted differently? It's hard to say, but he would of had the choice to not read his text, or to stop and catch up with messages when on his break. How lucky you are, at least you'll be breathing for the next five years, unlike the McHales.

Computers and Accountants lie

An accountant is someone who reconciles finances, a computer is a machine which runs programs, both have a beginning and an end in their task, even if the task is iterative. Both have a trait which is overlooked and denied. They both lie. A computer is only as good as the information and variables put into it, it is only as good as the programmers who input the code, a computer therefore is fallible. Either to the extent of it's creators or it's users. In the end what is churned out is then interpreted by a human (highly fallible). Accountants are interested in the bottom line only, the figures they are given and then the process of reconciling those figures. If you were to think there was only one way to add things up and to subtract them you'd be wrong. There are multiple ways depending on how they are to be interpreted. Which may have been something arising from a term called creative accounting. There is nothing artistic about it, rather it's about defining variables. 

The lie is in not knowing how the data was collected and the stories behind the data. Consequently the saying:

"lies, damned lies and statistics"

I know a lot about statistics, or more accurately, I used to know a lot about statistics. Their frequent use as a tool by politicians is like the double edged sword of discovery. Every new thing in the world which is made or discovered has at least two purposes of use. A use for good or a use for bad. Nuclear energy for example. As a source of energy for the population or as technology used in the deadliest of bombs. In this same way politicians pick and use specific statistics to make arguments which they generalise.  They bolster their own image of themselves and try to fool the populace into thinking things are going well. Sometimes it may work, but a lot of time politicians are now being understood for what they are, and it is not as saints. Yet when I pick up a newspaper and read it the paper will have a biased view of the world and also deliver articles leaning in the same direction. There is no neutral ground. When I've wanted to read pure news with less bias, I'd purchase a financial newspaper. Yes, it happens maybe once every couple of years. You can tell it's a financial newspaper because of it's orange colour. However, like accountants and computers financial papers fail to provide the human element. The story behind the figures, the story which motivates the figures.

Where there is human interaction fallibility exists and always will exist, but to believe there is such a thing as pure facts, such as those from a computer or an accountant is grossly ignorant. I used to read company reports. These were wonderful financial statements of loss and profit, the reports are always keyed to give the impression although the environment is tough the company is fairing well. There would always be a statement by the CEO to this effect. They can not give a pessimistic statement by their very nature, if they did then they would not be CEO for long, shares in the company would drop like a stone and it could then no longer exist. The reports are compiled by accountants, they are signed off as true and valid by qualified accountants. Yet there are companies who have given out glowing reports of their future and have become failures. A lot of story telling has taken place. It is only by knowing the human element a better Gestalt like view can be understood. The human element is always missing.

Politicians do not give speeches on how the unintended consequences of a law or action they took resulted in poverty of injustice.  They will elaborate on all the good points. Even if those good points are insignificant. A policy statement comes out and the repercussions for the country are enormous, yet two or three years pass and the policy has been ineffective. This is proof it was a lie from the start. But they would not of know it at the time. They hoped it would work and have the effects they hoped. Unfortunately hope is not a variable used by computers and accountants. Hope is an emotion or desire a human being holds. Something can therefore only be measured by the end result, but again only providing the figures for the end result have used all of the relevant and even some of the irrelevant details.  An interesting book called Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner gives examples where unplotted variables were plotted by an economist and how these unrelated items had huge end result effects.  They were not things which politicians had done either.  So it goes to say, you can not make sense of things unless you have all the facts. Accountants don't, therefore they should not be put on high stalls and kowtowed, or worshipped.

The MPs committe enquiry on Universal Credits

It was interesting to watch Ian Duncan Smith and his side kick croany Lord Freud take questions before an MPs committee on the development of Universal Credits. The video is on a government web site which makes democracy more open and viewable. The fact of the matter is UC is still in it's infancy and the software can only cope with simple claims. Their cohort is the easiest set of claimants possible. Those on Job Seekers Allowance, just clean simple no hassle claims. The committee panel had a variety of MPs from different parties which was both good and bad. It's going to be predictable a fellow Tory MP will support another Tory under pressure and not ask too many probing questions. They of course want to look good. IDS reminded the panel how they had listened to the last panel and decided on the pathfinder trial first before bringing in the full UC program. It was as though he was looking for praise and recognition in what is actually just a simple basic and logical thing to do.  The original plan for UC did not have pathfinders. It was in effect a Titanic which was going to be launched by the and immediately hit an iceberg. Fortunately for them they listened and fortunately for welfare claimants they did as well.

The answers from IDS's team were along the lines of software would be developed continuously over the next year or so. Agile development was in place. They would start simple and the numbers would increase, with an expected 1.5 million people predicted to be on UC by the end of 2014 or perhaps early 2015. Although I must say there wasn't a great deal of confidence in their answers. It was like they were even surprised by the questioning as the were surprised by the enormity of the task in front of them. Every single member was learning how playing with the Welfare benefits system is an incredibly complex and difficult thing to do. I noticed how Lord Freud used colloquialisms to try and describe the process, "niggling" and "clunky" were amongst the words. It was like they were grasping for a way to describe something which they didn't understand. Equally I thought the panel were not quite up to the job but possibly on the right tracks. The way IDS spoke was as if the numbers would suddenly accumulate in the transition process to UC at a massive rate. But as anyone will tell you the law of 80/20 states, 20 per cent of claims take up 80 per cent of the time to deal with. At the moment UC is trying it's best to cope with getting on board the 80 per cent and sod the difficult cases. One thing I thought they hadn't considered was the multiple changes of circumstances which can happen in a household. Claimant's are not just static and unchanging creatures, they are after all human beings and prone to change. The use of Real Time Information RTI is a feather in an IT cap, but it is not the be all and end all of claim assessment issues. The heavy manual labour comes in determining something which is complex and decision ladden to an extent a computer program is incapable of dealing with, especially the spirit and intention of law, which is rife in the Welfare claims system.

There was no explanation of how Local Authorities would be funded in order to provide local services for people who needed to see another human being. There is a great reliance on IT to do everything. IDS and colleagues stated the more vulnerable members of society would go onto UC last, they needed to get it right and when they did transfer to UC everything would be fine. Of course this is a story or fairy tale explanation they'd give. LA's are not expected to get funding to do what will be transferred to central government. It was as if the pathfinders were only just discovering what welfare benefits were about, they were excited and learning a lot, especially staff at Job Centre Plus JCP.  However, why did they not use people who already knew the benefits systems, people who could tell them of what the pitfalls are, these people already exist in LAs in every borough. Well those which hadn't tendered out their services. Ultimately UC is about central government wrestling back the purse strings of funding and cutting it at the same time.  It was Glenda Jackson who put IDS on the spot and asked him about the cohort and small sampling. IDS spoke over her, his tone was bullying, he was putting down her line of questioning. But it seemed clear to the viewer IDS and his acolytes have bitten off something way too big. I can certainly see Howard Shiplee (66 years old) lead for the delivery of UC holding a pretty big get-out-of-jail card. He'll simply retire when it all goes south, considering Lord Freud is also supposed to have retired (55) his role is also suspect.

It's a difficult job for sure, one which may lead to their entire downfall. God help the rest of the country with the fall out from it. Maybe next time they are asked a few questions they may even have some answers. Hey no, they are politicians after all.