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UK politics general discussion

Matt.GC said:
The polling itself is easier as you're not predicting what "don't know" means, the interpretation of the results I would argue isn't.

Say you're being told that your policy is too expensive, and the reason for that is that people cannot see where the money is coming from or understand how the investment will pay back, unless the pollster, who then has to conduct themselves identically to their colleagues elsewhere, sits in a participants living room all day probing for hours on end, you'll still get a data set that requires a lot of analytical interpretation.

Even after that interpretation has been decided on, you then have to look at what the groups of people you are targeting are saying and assume that you are right about that strategy as well. Although it can provide far more data and deep insight than binary "will you vote for us, yes or no?" polling, it's still very much routed in approximation and characterisation.

It's pretty clear the country requires a new government, and that both main party leaders are not popular. The length of time those numbers have been available for shows consistency. I would argue that it's about time they started being a bit daring this close to a GE, stick to some policies, create larger dividing lines, and defend them vigorously. Unless of course they've not convinced themselves on some of their own policies, hence why I think this is more to do with Reeves as much as it may be with any focus groups.
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You are working backwards from how polls actually work, you don’t collect the data then work out what it is you want to know and whether you asked the right people. You model the questions on what it is you want to know and model the sample population to match the people you are interested in.

If you have an agenda you can manipulate a poll to come to the answer you want (fantastic example in an episode of yes Prime Minister), but that’s a deliberate act (usually done by think tanks to push an agenda). Political parties do not want their polling distorted like that as they actually want to know what people think (hence why it’s a secret poll, they don’t want it leaking if it turns out bad for them).

As I say it’s been badly managed but I think the error was giving a number in the first place.
 
To be fair to the Conservatives, they’ve done their best to keep on pumping up the housing bubble, so we can carry on growing our GDP. It’s just very hard to grow the economy when you’ve run down British industry, left the common market, allowed rich people to hide their wealth off shore, sold off public services to multinationals, allowed multinationals to buy up British businesses at knock down prices, and forgot to invest in training people for the skills the economy needs.

But to give them their credit, they are doing their best to pump up the housing market to compensate for all of this. Some kind of looney left party would be trying to regulate developers, builders, landlords and letting agents, but the Conservatives understand that the only way to carry on growing the economy is to keep on pumping up the housing bubble. What a bunch of legends.
 
Ban 'Buy to Let' mortgages starting from now. Ban foreign buyers from buying up British property as investments. Ban hedge funds and corporations from buying housing stock. Stop 'Right to Buy' as that just doesn't make sense when councils already don't have enough homes to house people. Start a massive push to get young people into the building trades. Substantial funds from government to create their own nationalised building service (then taking on the newly trained kids) to build a massive amount of truely affordable starter homes every year. Numbers to surpass anything ever seen before. This will also require a real (but sensible) relaxation of planning laws and some compulsory purchase of land. Also, more funds to councils to build new council homes. Some kind of regulation on maximum rental prices per month. The only answer is to meet the demand by creating the supply. All of this help to buy, cuts to stamp duty and all of the other rubbish only serves to increase prices as more potential buyers are able to enter the scrum and bid for the same low amount of houses. Homes for living in, not for profit or for a private pension fund. Feel free to add anything I've probably forgotten.
 
Get these Tories out now. We're paying more in tax for less services. Economy in ruins.
 
BarryZola said:
'Right to Buy' as that just doesn't make sense when councils already don't have enough homes to house people.
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Right to buy could be a brilliant programme that should be expanded - with one huge caveat. Any money raised by local authorities from the sale of property MUST be used to construct replacement (and additional) housing.

Enabling long term tenants to purchase their home helps increase personal and generational wealth and therefore social mobility and economic activity.

In turn the additional homes built helps solve the lack of houses and provides skilled jobs in construction, and the cycle continues.

It’s just criminal that the money raised over the years has been squirrelled away and not spent on new housing stock.
 
Fair point in many respects. However, I have a major problem with the discounts given to people who buy their council houses (at this time of crazy prices particularly). You've got a situation where someone could have had the privilege of (almost certain) lower rental prices when living in their council property for many years when compared with someone who has had to rent privately. So they're already unfairly better off financially in that regard. Then they get to buy their property, sometimes at a massive discount, whereas the person in the private market would not be able to do this. This is just simply not fair. There are cases where people in London have bought their homes through Right to Buy at a fraction of market value and then sold for over a million quid and moved out to the countryside. Generational wealth, for sure! It's mental.
 
This shouldn't really be a laughing matter, but when he announced his "5 pledges" at the beginning of last year, he was widely criticised for them being easy to achieve and lacking ambition. So let's see how he's doing:

1. Halve Inflation - Mainly the remit for the Bank of England and virtually nothing to do with anything the government have done. Technically achieved, but how many of us can celebrate prices still rising at double the rate of the 2% at 3.9% from an eye watering 10.7% a year ago? Thank you for giving us a dead arm rather than kicking us in the nits.

2. Grow the Economy - Another recession. Thanks guys.

3. Get debt falling - Was 85.1% of GDP in January 2023, rose to 88.3% of GDP in just 11 months, predicted to be 93.2% of GDP in 2027/28. Just cut taxes, plan on doing it again, plan on cutting more spending (but won't tell us where), continues to give hundreds of £millions to the Rwandan government for a vanity project that won't ever happen for no good reason.

4. Cut waiting lists - 500,000 people higher in a year. 12 hour A&E waits. Higher mortality rates among people waiting for treatments. National Insurance just cut, maybe cut again this year. Some large towns no longer have GP surgeries, people having to travel up to 30 miles to see their dentist, queues snaking down the street in Bristol to register with one.

5. Stop the boats - 30000 arrived in 2023.

The sixth pledge was "hold my government and I to account on delivering these goals" (Rishi Sununk, 4th January 2023, at the press conference to launch his 5 pledges) - Over a year later, refuses to let anyone hold them to account. Won't hold an election, hanging on until the bitter end to scorch the earth by spending more money we don't have on vanity projects, whilst cutting taxes, continuing to surpress public sector pay, hiring huts to educate children because their school is falling down, allowing councils to go bankrupt and selling national infrastructure.

This really has been the worst government in my entire life time. Apart from gay marriage and the Apprenticeship levy, I can't think of anything else they've improved since 2010. By almost every measure of good governance they've failed. This even extends to how they've behaved, disrespecting institutions, international agreements, and having 2 Prime Ministers guilty of breaking laws they've signed onto the statute books themselves.
 
AT86 said:
Right to buy could be a brilliant programme that should be expanded - with one huge caveat. Any money raised by local authorities from the sale of property MUST be used to construct replacement (and additional) housing.

Enabling long term tenants to purchase their home helps increase personal and generational wealth and therefore social mobility and economic activity.

In turn the additional homes built helps solve the lack of houses and provides skilled jobs in construction, and the cycle continues.

It’s just criminal that the money raised over the years has been squirrelled away and not spent on new housing stock.
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I'm not a fan of local authorities generally, but I do feel that some slack needs to be cut. There has been an explosion in costs, specifically social care. The proportion of council tax spent on this rose (on average) by 16% between 2010 and 2017. So for every £1 spent on Council Tax in 2010 £0.41 went on Social Care. In 2016/17 this was £0.57.

The problem we have is there is more we want money spent on, but only a finite coming in. Many local authorities used the R2B money to shore up massive funding gaps... the ridiculous thing being that it was all short-termism. how much is being paid out to private organisations to paper-over the gaps left behind?

Right 2 Buy was a fundamental mistake, which was enacted with no requirements upon the local authorities. It was a typical Tory promise of 'getting everyone on the housing ladder' but in real terms actually forcing people into homelessness.
 
ScottishChris said:
I'm not a fan of local authorities generally, but I do feel that some slack needs to be cut. There has been an explosion in costs, specifically social care. The proportion of council tax spent on this rose (on average) by 16% between 2010 and 2017. So for every £1 spent on Council Tax in 2010 £0.41 went on Social Care. In 2016/17 this was £0.57.

The problem we have is there is more we want money spent on, but only a finite coming in. Many local authorities used the R2B money to shore up massive funding gaps... the ridiculous thing being that it was all short-termism. how much is being paid out to private organisations to paper-over the gaps left behind?

Right 2 Buy was a fundamental mistake, which was enacted with no requirements upon the local authorities. It was a typical Tory promise of 'getting everyone on the housing ladder' but in real terms actually forcing people into homelessness.
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Right to buy was brought in during the 80s, they've had 30 years to keep building council houses and haven't done enough.
 
2 more by-election victories for Labour, with previous majorities being 18'000 and 11'000 odd.

Dickensian villain Jacob Rees-Mogg blaming a low turnout and that Sunak's leadership is "solid". Give that man a gold medal for mental gymnastics.

Only worrying thing is that Reform also saw a decent increase in votes. Though I imagine that's the split between the voters who are floating or right-wing protesting the Tories.

Still, another bad day for the Tories is good news to wake up to. A vote share drop of 37.6% is staggering.
 
rob666 said:
I can only guess that any chances of a spring election have pretty much vanished.
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Hope so, I have already got election duty for a combined County Mayor and Police Commissioner in May so I don't want that scuppered or another one near to it.

Autumn will be perfect. A nice bit of extra cash this year :) , although the Mayor and Police election will be like watching paint dry for the day, hardly anyone bothers to vote in those. Not sure why they need to have an election for those. Just pick someone , nobody really cares.
 
rob666 said:
I can only guess that any chances of a spring election have pretty much vanished.
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You would assume that's the case, but if the Conservative strategists crunch the numbers and find they'll lose more seats if they wait longer then they might proceed with spring after all. For example, it doesn't seem too far fetched to imagine the state of the economy will get worse, NHS waiting times will get worse, there will be more boat crossings over the summer, etc...
 
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jon81uk said:
Right to buy was brought in during the 80s, they've had 30 years to keep building council houses and haven't done enough.
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It might have helped if the funds obtained through R2B were directed to build more social housing, instead of the ban on them being used for that purpose which the Thatcher government put in place (and in fairness New Labour did nothing about).
 
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