Housing: creative solutions

  While economists clutch their spreadsheets and politicians claim "steady growth," the real economy is screaming warnings that almost nobody wants to hear. The signals are there, hiding in plain sight: in the cardboard boxes piling up at recycling centres, in the lipstick tubes sliding across checkout counters. And they're both pointing toward the same grim destination—a housing market collapse that will make 2008 look like a dress rehearsal. UK house prices fell 0.3% in September, erasing August's gains and bringing the average home to £298,184. The Halifax tries to spin this as "broadly stable," but stability is precisely what we don't have. What we have is a market teetering on the edge, propped up by nothing more substantial than collective delusion and the desperate hope that somehow, this time, the fundamentals don't matter. Here's what does matter: the economy that underpins housing demand is crumbling, and the establishment indicators y...

Khan is right - Tory voter ID plans gag the poorest. But it’s not just in London. Here's what we can do about it ' On New Years’ Eve, Sadiq Kahn warned that a new wave of hard right populism could see Susan Hall in London’s City Hall. And the new requirement for voter identification at the ballot box might accelerate this trend. He’s right, but it’s not just London that is affected.  The voter identification requirements deliberately make it more difficult for those who traditionally support Labour, to vote.  After the 2019 General Election, IPSOS estimated how voters voted. Their results came as no surprise, Labour had a 43 point lead among voters aged 18-24, but the biggest change was among 35-54 year olds, who saw a three point rise in the Conservatives’ vote share and 11 point fall for Labour. There was a gender gap, with the Conservatives ahead of Labour by 15 points among men, and by nine points among women. Among BME voters, Labour led the Conservatives by 64% to 20%...

  Eric Pickles has been in the news again. He’s a busy man. Almost exactly a decade before his reappearance, I attended ‘Herefordshire 2020: A Vision for the County’, a half day conference in Hereford. It was a brave attempt to demonstrate how the private and public sectors could work together for a positive future. The star of the show was the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who gave a bizarre and disturbing performance . The theme of Eric Pickles’ speech was that we need to get away from the central control of policy; we need to deregulate and stop the tick box mentality where there are regulations for everything. Make government officials with clipboards get a sense of perspective. On entering his department, he proudly told us, he gave his civil servants his three priorities; localism, localism and localism. “Localism will support growth and growth will support localism”. His confidence grew. To a Parish Councillor trying to achieve change he chided, “...