Labour from 1997 to 2010 certainly didn't. Blair pledged 200,000 per year, Brown aimed for 240,000 a year (the number experts believed were necessary). Between them they averaged 185,000 in that 13-year span.Originally Posted by joecity
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Labour from 1997 to 2010 certainly didn't. Blair pledged 200,000 per year, Brown aimed for 240,000 a year (the number experts believed were necessary). Between them they averaged 185,000 in that 13-year span.
Blair's government are amongst the worst offenders in housing policy agreed. Governments have built homes before. I not going to believe that the private sector is going to fill the void. They won't. You know it, I know it. Government intervention is required. Who else is going to build affordable homes.
Labour failed on getting enough new homes built - but in other areas of housing policy the Blair/Brown government was light years ahead of what had come before (since the 1970s). The green paper in 2000 'Quality And Choice For All' was the first policy paper in over a generation that thought housing was about more than Right To Buy and interest rates. It set out to transform social rented housing (Choice Based Lettings, the Decent Homes programme and much more) and it also in its last couple of years freed up Councils to start building again (with the work on Self Financing Housing Revenue Accounts that went live under Cameron in 2010). Labour also produced the two housing ministers from the last four decades who cared about housing and knew what they were talking about - Nick Raynsford and John Healey. Governments since 2010 have rolled back to the pathetic stance of the Thatcher/Major years - using the financial crisis and cult of austerity as cover.
Well I know that you know youre housing policy from you're second hand caravan policy so I will take your word for it. I think now though that although the policies, papers and meanings were sound that we have a serious shortage of actual dwellings of a standard for people to occupy. You would think a Labour government would have delivered more actual quality and affordable dwellings. Actual housing stock. The financial crisis and the follow on austerity choice is indeed a useful tool for yet more hand wringing when it comes to getting housing stock built.
There is no bigger issue for me than housing currently. I can't see how it will improve under this shower of c#nts.
This where will the money come from lark. Surely a government that can borrow money at a record low rate, create jobs through constructing housing stock that will in turn generate income and become an assert improve health, criminal justice cots, related improvements in getting people back to or keeping them in work, save countless millions on b and b s, housing benefit rip offs. The wider benefits to society of well housed people. You could ask what will the cost be of not doing it.
That's basic economics. Austerity strangled the British economy and it has not brought about the savings to the public purse relative to the misery it has caused millions.
The UK government and every other government who issues its own currency doesn't need to borrow money with any interest attached because it can create any amount for itself at 0% - that's commonly known as quantitative easing, and the UK has magicked £450b of that into existence since 2008. Just 7% of that found its way into the economy, much of the rest lined the pockets of the usual suspects, the bankers.
UK debt to GDP is 90%. The government make out that's horrifically high as cover for swingeing cuts and the poorest have been in the crosshairs. What they never let on is it stood at almost 250% of GDP after World War 2. Britain recovered not by implementing austerity but the direct opposite. One component was building a million prefab homes in 7 years.
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