Haven't got time to respond to all of that now but will try later. For the moment, I am not decrying people who sell up to give money to their kids. If you look at my earlier posts I'm saying that people should stop moaning that houses have become so expensive that their kids can't buy a house and do just that. Because I feel that they have gained from the system and should share their good luck. Note, I didn't spend the money on first-class world cruises ... then I would have been a hypocrite!!! The real hypocrites are the ones who sit in huge equity but moan about the system that gave it to them and complain that their kids are being priced out of housing. Yes, they are, by people like their parents! I have no issue with homeowners who think that's life and their kids should just suck it up by the way. I don't think the government should compel them to move - but maybe encourage them to via tax incentives and stamp duty holidays.
France is a huge country with a relatively small population As my ex-pat mates French neighbour told me,millions of French peasants/country dwellers moved to the cities because they wanted modern facilities,mains sewage etc. Two of the many reasons why there are so many cheap rural homes for sale en France Britain is small,land is expensive,a lot of rich city dwellers want to live in the country.
Actually France has about the same population as the UK, but yes, it is about 3 times the size of the UK. Very few people have moved from this country area to the cities as France only has a few very big cities compared to the UK. The nearest village to me is about 5 kms and believe it or not I have electricity, broadband, telephone, running water and a toilet. Okay the toilet is on a septic tank, but that is the same as it was in Norfolk where I lived before I moved here. Homes are cheaper here because there is no demand as people don't constantly move for investment and status purposes.
Mainland France is 2.27 times as big as the United Kingdom. United Kingdom covers 244,101 sq km and mainland France 551 700 sq km. Also the French people I know tell me that they and their friends are interested in spending their lives buying wrecks and doing them up to make a profit. They prefer to live life rather than always looking to acquire money. A Frenchman who stayed with me last year was amazed at the number of TV programmes here that focus on housing, so I assume they're not all over the schedules there?
The Conservatives were voted in because most of us were heartily sick of the country being held to ransom by the Unions,(various factions of working class people trying to enrich themselves by holding a gun to all the other working class people),and by the failure of the Labour Government to encourage investment in industry,amongst other things PM Thatcher was smart enough to see that a large number of people wanted to improve their social situations without State nannying,and a huge number of them did so,including myself. But lots of people owned,and aspired to own,their own place before she came to power,so don't blame her for that.if you are going to,then blame her for all the good things that happened during her time in office...you don't get to be the longest-serving 20th century Prime minister without being pretty sharp at what you do.... Not everything was great,because no one is perfect,but overall she was pretty good.So was John Major,but he didn't get the chance to shine because the voters wanted a change...and look how well that turned out... Stabbed in the back by that no-mark money shuffler Heseltine,a typical Tory establishment figure who thought he'd enjoy the glory that she'd earned for the party. The media like to portray her as a she-devil but if you weren't there,you don't know what it was like before...
west of Glasgow mate. i ken thatchers policy's fine, swapped one group of ransom holders for another. mostly funded by the black gold and financial dealings.
The housing issue cannot be addressed while we have open door immigration. Its got bugger all to do with culture or race or political prejudice. Its not a political point, its an economic and a practical one. Net immigration figures for last year topped 600,000. (Home Office figures). That's two cities the size of Coventry we have to build each year just to accommodate new arrivals. It cannot be done. We have nowhere to put ongoing development on such a scale and we cannot generate the power, nor produce the food to sustain that level of population expansion.
Really? Not according to the vociferous among the Ducati Forum membership! But seriously, are you including the Telegraph, Murdoch-owned papers and broadcast media, the Mail, Express and Star and ITV in that assessment? Only the BBC seems to decry Maggie's contribution to Britain these days - and then it's In very couched terms.
The Mirror,the Independent,(should be done under trade descriptions),etc,etc and every second TV political pundit that appears in the mornings.... They can hardly bad-mouth her when they asked for,and got,the Fettes-educated solicitor champagne socialist,which left plenty of egg on media faces
I agree about the Mirror but when I worked at the Independent it certainly wasn't as rabidly anti-Thatcher as the Sun and Mail were pro-Thatcher!! So I still think it's a bit rich to claim that the media generally was/is anti her. Quite the reverse I'd say. Though it could be said that because the antis are far more vociferous than the fors, especially in terms of mounting demos etc., they were bound to get more coverage in news stories. That is entirely correct because you can't cover a pro Thatcher demo that didn't take place. As far as pure comment was concerned though with the Sun, Mail, Express, Star, Times and Telegraph backing her if say the bulk of media was in her pocket. How else could she have been rejected so many times. The Sun destroyed Kinnock's bud to unseat her single handedly with a single clever front page the day before the polls. He was leading in the polls until then.
No too sure on that one, yes it is a popular topic amongst the great unwashed, but do the figures take into account those leaving? I think not. Close the doors and they close both ways, people like me would be heading back to the UK and wanting social housing and benefits because we can no longer afford to buy or rent in the UK. You would end up kicking out immigrants who work and pay tax to support those on benefits now, and getting back all the retired people who have gone to live in Europe who are too old to work. But I am not talking about independent countries that are part of a commonwealth, but territories that belong to France, are classed as a French department (Like a county) and are taxed by the mother country.
Surely you cannot be referring to the general election of 1992 - two years after Thatcher had left office?
I wonder whether there aren't enough people thinking outside the box in the housing industry. One of the things I have always loathed about the UK are the endless streets of endless little identikit houses, often fairly shoddily made. Cities in the UK sprang up in the industrial revolution to house people coming off the land to live and work in them. There was little incentive to build high-quality aesthetic homes. Then, post war, much housing stock needed to be built fast, with no money. Cue more crappy houses. Then modernist Le Corbusier-style architecture thought that faceless concrete towers would be a good plan to house people. Wrong. What you get in many European cities that weren't bombed to bits and which had a slower and less extreme industrial revolution, are many beautiful buildings of about 4 stories which all contain flats. This is higher density housing than you get in the UK and conserves land space. Sure, inhabitants only get a shared garden, or none, but then seeing as the inhabitants of the UK want concrete in front of their dwelling for their multiple vehicles, and decking behind it so that they don't have to do any gardening, I can't see why that would be a problem for most (esp the young, who have no interest in gardening). Cities could be densified advantageously in the UK and could become far more vibrant places rather than just an endless suburbia or grim little towns two stories high chock full of pound shops. I lived in rented flats in Switzerland until the age of 43. It's common to share a washing machine with the rest of the house. You get a bit of cellar and a bit of attic. It's not a living death - the flats were very nice. But in the UK, everyone thinks they should have their own front door, even if it's on some dead-end street. Seeing as many of the people who now need housing come from outside the UK, you'd have thought that this mindset would be dying out.
The reason you only ever hear the Anti's is because the Pro's are all working hard at making something of themselves,and haven't got time to waste on making themselves sound important... And please don't kid yourself that newspapers win elections: Kinnock was nothing but a windbag mouthing off on behalf of whichever Union had the most money at the time.The majority of the voting population can see the wheat for the chaff without reading the biased opinions of the media. And there's the rub: if Newspapers actually reported the news fairly and factually,without letting their opinion overpower the story,I'd have more time for them. But they don't. The story is always,"coloured",in such a way that it conveys the opinion of the paper.Simply put,if the writer feels someone is innocent he'll be,"Mr Smith,of Billingsgate,an Emergency Driver for the NHS",and if they want to infer guilt it will be,"Smith,a lorry driver from East London". I have personal experience of this kind of inferred bias from a so-called reporter...and also: My mother-in-law was once referred to in the national media as,"The Beast of Baldock",portrayed as some kind of foaming at the mouth Nazi witch:Her crime? That she politely asked Tony Blair to refrain from making a political speech at the rally of a strictly non-political organisation,(the Womens Institute). The Times was the only paper that interviewed her and gave a factual and accurate report of it....
People always enjoy hearing things which confirm their own viewpoint. They don't like hearing things which contradict it. Papers are commercial enterprises which seek to attract readers. They will target a certain market and continually tell them what they want to hear. It makes commercial sense. So the Torygraph keeps Conservative voters happy, and the Guardian keeps left-wing voters happy. The Independent sort of keeps voters happy who don't really subscribe to those creeds, more or less - but these people are also a market. You shouldn't expect objective truth in the written press (and objective truth is a very slippery beast in any case). And remember, papers are just entertainment. Proof: would you read a 2-week old one? No. Because it wasn't talking about anything much that mattered 2 weeks later. That's how useful they are. It's all pretty much drivel.
