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Monday 21 November 2011

Len Freeman | 11:52 UK time, Monday, 21 November 2011

As the government finalises plans for the autumn statement, we'll take a look at what might be in it. There is talk of benefit caps, deregulation and help for the housing market. Plans have been unveiled to allow first-time buyers of new homes to borrow up to 95% of the value, with the government underwriting part of the risk.

Tim Whewell has been in Cairo's Tahrir Square all weekend. How close to the edge is Egypt? There have been more clashes overnight and the health ministry has confirmed the number of deaths has risen from 11 to 20.

Jeremy will also interview the novelist and commentator Umberto Eco about the state of Italy.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    What we need most is a permanent cut in the overall VAT rate to zero. It has to be funded which causes more pain making more cuts elsewhere; but logically, UK economy cannot recover anything with a 20% tax on spending in the middle of a depression.
    Same with stamp duty on housing - ask most families why not moving house - is because house prices not rising to offset the spectre of a huge stamp duty bill on moving house.

    If large companies sitting on cash reserves & not spending - then tax them out of existence & stimulate new small business to replace them.

    Sitting out waiting for Brodie-crat mandarins in Whitehall to grease the cogs & chains of anyone doing anything is govt is not going to stop UK economy declining & if this gathers pace will not be possible to prevent huge slide in UK economic position.

    Sad part is - all is avoidable with some simple common sense measures that will have instant impact and give much needed momentum & multipliers to the UK economy.

    Why or why don't the govt ministers & brodie-crats just get off their and just do it?

  • Comment number 2.

    "As the government finalises plans for the autumn statement, we'll take a look at what might be in it. There is talk of benefit caps, deregulation and help for the housing market. Plans have been unveiled to allow first-time buyers of new homes to borrow up to 95% of the value, with the government underwriting part of the risk."

    This would appear to suggest that the incumbent "Social Democratic"
    (Libertarian-anarchistic) custodians of taxes are proposing, once again, to force those who DO pay their taxes, to fund purchases of private assets which the feckless (largely the young progeny of the feckless and those they've imported as the rest aren't having many kids) could otherwise never afford to purchase given their impulsivity. And all in order to benefit the economies (pockets) of the similarly profligate vultures (namely banksters, solicitors etc) who benefit from such people buying what they can't afford.

    Deja vu? Or is the process still opaque? One finds the feckless at both ends. We have a problem with what we esteem (as self-serving ability).

  • Comment number 3.

  • Comment number 4.

    #2 brown-dog

    Richard Branson must be licking his lips at this latest Govt initiative!

  • Comment number 5.

    PUT "CREDIT TRADING" UNDER CRIMINAL LAW (is there an echo in here?)

    The more successful a business is and/or the faster its sales are growing, the more it must borrow from the BANK because of SLOW PAYMENT for goods, endemic in UK. Decades ago I proposed tight control of credit arrangements WITH BOTH PARTIES CULPABLE, UNDER CRIMINAL LAW, IF INFRINGED.

    Small companies doing good work, and delivering on time, would be FAR MORE SECURE and able to expand and take on staff. Now why might Dave and George not espouse this? Could it be that next election is not going to be BOUGHT with massive donations from small businesses? Might Britain be fundamentally CORRUPT? Quick - bomb somebody.

    Nuff sed

  • Comment number 6.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

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    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

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    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

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    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

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  • Comment number 15.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 16.

    REMEMBER BULLY? HOW ABOUT A CERAMIC BLOGDOG, AWARDED FOR "THREE IN A ROW"?

    I think I might go out an swear at a policeman (irony Blogdog) it's FREE AT THE POINT OF ABUSE! Boom boom.

    And it's goodnight from him.

  • Comment number 17.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 18.

    All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

  • Comment number 19.

    The housing market at present in the UK is a bit like having a wagon overloaded with racing pigeons, the only way to stop the springs breaking and the tyres blowing out is to keep bashing the body on the sides and hope that the pigeons will keep flying !

  • Comment number 20.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 21.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 22.

    WILL Mr BRANSON GET ENTHUSIASTICALLY BEHIND THE NEXT CON VICTORY? (#4)

    No prizes. When all is done correctly, and above-board, everything ceases to have a bad smell.

    Is there a great future for Deputy Nick? I saw him out with Dave on a hand-shaking photo-op. Nick looks reborn at PMQs, but he looked positively triumphant during hand-shaking, while behind him, Destiny Dave had none of his trademark bounce and glow.

    Long live democracy.

  • Comment number 23.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 24.

    A HOUSING MARKET ANALOGY TO DIE FOR (#19)

    Bro - I award you the Birdlime d'Honneur.

    Priceless.

  • Comment number 25.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 26.

    This might be blindingly obvious, but first time buyers could afford deposits on houses if the ludicrous asking prices weren't so high.

    If the housing market was allowed to correct properly via market forces then there would not be a housing or rental problem.

    Or is that too simple?

    David Cameron propping up the ludicrous asking prices of houses makes him no different to Gordon Brown / Ed Balls IMPO.

  • Comment number 27.

    'How close to the edge is Egypt?'

    Interesting the various degrees of slack various cultures, governments and 'forces' get cut by various folk who discuss, analyse and tweet on such things, often for money, all things considered.

    Seems the people are free to protest, but there are limits and it's often hard to define what they are until too late.

    A bit like speech, and closer to home?

  • Comment number 28.

    Its time for an honest debate about the housing market.

    Banks are already lending 5x salary mortgages, all the 20% deposit does is soak up a couple of multiples of the borrowers salary, in other words stops it becoming a 7x salary mortgage.

    So although this is being carefully spun as a return of the 95% LTV mortgage to 'help first time buyers onto the ladder' the truth has to be that if you lower the deposit you increase the multiple of salary.

    Is the real story here that the taxpayer is going to guarantee and underwrite 7x salary mortgages for the banks in order to put a taxpayer backed floor under over inflated house prices?

    I notice there is no opposition to this, all parties are in the pockets of the banks.

    But will the ´óÏó´«Ã½ scrutinise this properly I wonder?
    If we are guaranteeing up to 100,000 95% LTV mortgages does that give the taxpayer/media the right to ask the banks exactly what there lending criteria is, you'd have thought so but will it happen?

    Mervyn King was dead against the idea when the last government floated it in 2008 here is what he said..."most of our [US] colleagues for last 30 years have been pointing to the great dangers of offering govt guarantees to mortgages...it would be a very dangerous move to move to a situation where the government saw its major role as guaranteeing lending."

    There are real questions here about what we are getting ourselves into...I'll be interested to see if anyone in the media has the guts to ask them.

  • Comment number 29.

    Gordon Brown and Ed Balls let the house price to average earnings ratio inflate from the traditional 3.5 to around 8.5 and that deliberate 'house-owners-feel-good-treat-home-as-personal-piggy-bank' policy more-or-less got them re-elected twice.

    Given how the property marjket is currently behaving, you can probably accept that house-purchases are mostly a function of the availability of money.

    So, at present, given that most lenders have had sharp reality check over the past few years, they will not lend to allow the purchase of properties that they clearly now, given current market conditions, believe to be substantially over-priced.

    Therefore the Coalition find themselves lumbered with a moribund housing market that somehow must slowly deleverage without causing millions more people to fall into negative equity and thus be trapped in their current home.

    Maybe the only room for maneuver they have is with new builds, where they can manipulate the market to some extent and of course, flog off the remaining Council Houses (the tarnished family silver but beggars cannot be choosers).

  • Comment number 30.

    And that is the problem this blogger has with Ed Balls.

    If what he says at present was coming from any other Opposition mouth, then it would have some credibility, as there must be genuine concerns about the Governments 'growth' strategy - i.e. does it have one?

    But it comes from the mouth of Balls - who has no credibility at all with this blogger given his mostly disastrous pairing with Brown - well, you simply cannot airbrush these things away.

    If you or I foul up in a major way in our work, we are history - why should it be any different for professional politicians?

  • Comment number 31.

    '30. At 17:33 21st Nov 2011, JohnConstable wrote:

    But it comes from the mouth of Balls'


    And with that mental image averted, I think tonight's 'expert' 'guest' contributor is pretty much decided.

  • Comment number 32.

    People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

    Otto Von Bismarck.

  • Comment number 33.

    All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

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    All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

  • Comment number 35.

    JunkkMale @ 31

    Maybe NewsNight should employ our fellow blogger brown-dogg to vet the talking heads.

    Following brown-dogs careful DNA analysis to weed out the undesirables, we would probably only get very pointy-headed guests with a minimum IQ of 150 who would speak in an ego-less way, concerning themselves only with the allo-centric - with a few scatter-plots from the OECD thrown in for good measure.

    And, (the NewsNight editor will love this), brown-dogs carefully chosen guest will tell us why the Nazis were right all along and the American agreed with them (their defence at Nuremberg vis-a-vis eugenics).

    Well, its good telly innit - infotainment - thats wot we kidults want.

  • Comment number 36.

    All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

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    All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

  • Comment number 38.

  • Comment number 39.

    Looking forward to Jeremy's interview with Umberto Eco tonight :o)

  • Comment number 40.

    museV wrote: "Richard Branson must be licking his lips at this latest Govt initiative!"

    That and other matters (including abuse of Parliamentary protocol over the housing initiative released to the press over the weekend) have not gone un-remarked upon..



    At the same time, there's been a side-swipe of almost equally remarkable gall, as to who's been perpetrating (and benefiting from) the carefully nurtured self-centredness across the Libertarian world. There's No mea culpa, just someone and something else to blame as usual..

    It's classic, and it should not go un-remarked upon.

  • Comment number 41.

    muggwhump wrote: "Its time for an honest debate about the housing market."

    One can debate what one likes, but it's all but impossible to DO anything which is contrary to Libertarian House Rules, as that's an infringement of some individuals' economics freedom (self-interests).

  • Comment number 42.



    Suppose that the above probably urinates on the hot end of the " Peak Oil " eco-fascist high priests key fireworks !

  • Comment number 43.

    brown-dog @ 40

    Less can be more.

    Steve Jobs Himself recognised that.

    He saw that rivals smart phones were going to eat apple's iLunch/iPod so he set his minions to make the iPhone.

    One can envisage a time when the smart phone might be the only device you require, acting as GPS, recorder, music/film/picture player, social network and 'cloud' connector, electronic wallet and err, a phone.

    Note that although, in brown-dogg speak, the smart phone is highly ego-libertarian-centric-personalised to its owner, it also also allows the user to be highly allo-centric via social networks.

  • Comment number 44.

    "Having last week lashed Apple and Steve Jobs as symbols of a selfish society based on an obsession with material goods, Britain's chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks has turned out to be a big fan of the iPhone and iPad.

    Speaking at an interfaith reception attended by the Queen, Lord Sacks made unusually strong comments in which he developed the theme that consumer technology such as Apple's iPhone had become icons of self-absorption.

    "The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad one and iPad two, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTune, i, i, i," said Sacks.

    "When you're an individualist, egocentric culture and you only care about 'i', you don't do terribly well. What does a consumer ethic do? It makes you aware all the time of the things you don't have instead of thanking God for all the things you do have."



    Are you missing a point or two?

    Note that Lord Sacks made no mention in his speech of the Sacking
    (Jeffrey) of the former USSR,. nor that which seems to be happening to the recalcitrant Eurozone which does not appreciate the benefits of economic union?

    Are we about to see the end of Europe or just a more compact, free, one, without France and Holland?

  • Comment number 45.

    The US, with it's billion dollar elections, has been called "the best democracy money can buy". Here we do things differently, but not necessarily less subtly. I'm sure that past privatisations, selling voters shares in their own property on the cheap or "ten-pound notes for a fiver" will be regarded by history as crude electoral bribery. Subterfuge like that has always been around, and not confined to one party. it was Herbert Morrison who boasted that he would "Build the Tories out of London".

    In the modern UK, favoured companies are sold public assets at favourable prices, or are given public contracts. They then give money to the ruling party, or to the opposition if the ruling party is burned out. They also hedge their bets by sponsoring stalls at all Westminster party's conferences.

    When parties get money, do they spend it on informing the electorate? No they spend it on advertising, "created" by companies who never tell the whole truth except by accident, as in "NOTHING acts faster than Anodyne".

    The whole system would reek, if we weren't already inured to the odour.

    As a reincarnated Roman, Barrius Singletonius Cato might say:
    WESTMINSTERUM DELENDA EST! ;-D

  • Comment number 46.

  • Comment number 47.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 48.

    I've recently heard that a technocrat is a bureaucrat who knows how to use a computer to "*** *** ". Would that be right I wonder?

    I also heard that the replacemt for Berlosconi is a technocrat and a ** man...would that be right?

  • Comment number 49.

    The things you've got to do to get on here!

  • Comment number 50.

    JohnConstable wrote: "Note that although, in brown-dogg speak, the smart phone is highly ego-libertarian-centric-personalised to its owner, it also also allows the user to be highly allo-centric via social networks"

    You don't appear to have learned very much from reading what's been posted other than to run some of the terms together without much if any comprehension as it seems to have escaped your notice that most of Social-Networking is the epitome of self-centred behaviour.

  • Comment number 51.

    MALLOCH BROWN

    Never gives me the feeling he is a FORCE for anything. he seems to just say stuff.

  • Comment number 52.

    HOUSE BUILDER CASH FLOW - reprise of post #5

    PUT "CREDIT TRADING" UNDER CRIMINAL LAW (is there an echo in here?)

    The more successful a business is and/or the faster its sales are growing, the more it must borrow from the BANK because of SLOW PAYMENT for goods, endemic in UK. Decades ago I proposed tight control of credit arrangements WITH BOTH PARTIES CULPABLE, UNDER CRIMINAL LAW, IF INFRINGED.

    Small companies doing good work, and delivering on time, would be FAR MORE SECURE and able to expand and take on staff. Now why might Dave and George not espouse this? Could it be that next election is not going to be BOUGHT with massive donations from small businesses? Might Britain be fundamentally CORRUPT? Quick - bomb somebody.

    Nuff sed

  • Comment number 53.

    Priceless interview by Jeremy with Grant Schapps! Just get into MORE private debt and bring down house prices too :p

  • Comment number 54.

    From "greening infrastructure (!)" to "neo-Brown policies" it just got even better with Heath et al and Schapps joining in. If it wasn't real, it would be funny.

  • Comment number 55.

    GRANT SHAPPS - DEFENDER OF THE WESTMINSTER FAITH

    How depressing to watch a man field a range of questions, and NEVER SHOW A NATURAL RANGE OF RESPONSES. Only complacent assuredness.

    This is the hallmark of the consummate Westminster Creature.

    Nuff sed

  • Comment number 56.

    Excellent interview with Eco too :o)

  • Comment number 57.

    brown-dog @ 50

    You say that most of Social-Networking is the epitome of self-centred behaviour.

    However, I see younger people using networks such as Facebook to stay in touch and up-to-date with their friends and family, which seems pretty much like allo-centric behaviour to me, y'know - sharing.

    "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together"

    PS. If I'm a bit slow to grasp the deeper meaning of your pearls, it is simply because I jumped into the gene pool whilst the lifeguard was'nt looking.

  • Comment number 58.

    Interesting comment from the CBI guy about looking at the public and private sector balance sheets and seeing what could be done with the property market.

    For example, pension funds have lots of finance which needs to be invested such that it matches their liablities i.e. the pensions that they must payout, and one way is to use policy to encourage them to invest directly in building housing and then renting it out.

    This has been happening in the USA for decades via vehicles such as REITs (which were introduced here by the previous Government albeit in a hand-tied way)

    We English should make an effort to think about the art of the possible and the Coalition is showing some tenative signs of doing just that.

    PS. IMHO, Paddy Ashdown was spot on in his Times article today re: the euro ... one day we English will be grovelling to join (the independent Scots already having done so).

  • Comment number 59.

    Why are Labour so keen to appease the eco-fascists, their 2008 Climate Change Act is going to turn in on them and particularly Ed Miliband long before the next general election.

  • Comment number 60.

    brossen99 @ 59

    Far be it for me to intrude on private grief and although Neil Kinnock is happy to have their Party back, it is actually dying on its feet.

    And if the Scots really do leave the Union then Labours destruction will be complete.

    Better for the fellow travellors to jump ship now and join the Co-Op Party - which is more in tune with the zeitgeist.

  • Comment number 61.

    State-backed mortgages are not the answer to the housing market's problems

  • Comment number 62.

    DECISIONS DECISIONS (Today Programme)

    "This is what we elect politicians to do." (Retired Civil Servant.)

    Well - he sounded earnest and honest, even obsessively so. But has he not realised we DON'T elect politicians - PARTY MACHINES dupe us into electing rosettes; and the politicians slide in, under the petals, like crafty insects, to become CARD VOTE TALLIES for DELUSIONAL PARTY LEADERS? The whole sorry charade made possible by their supine acceptance of Whipping.

    His view went unchallenged. Are ´óÏó´«Ã½ interviewers fools or knaves; unthinking or complicit?

    DISMANTLE WESTMINSTER - DISMANTLE THE ´óÏó´«Ã½ - GIVE US A BREAK

  • Comment number 63.

    JohnConstable "You say that most of Social-Networking is the epitome of self-centred behaviour.

    However, I see younger people using networks such as Facebook to stay in touch and up-to-date with their friends and family, which seems pretty much like allo-centric behaviour to me, y'know - sharing."

    This shows you have not understood what has been said. Nor have you followed up the reference to the Harvard lab's work on this (which in turn just draws upon work done beginning in the 70s on different spatial reference systems using different anatomy of the brain in rats and other
    mammals)



    One is based on distal-distal relations, the other proximal-distal. It is a matter of association and the parts of the brain subserving this *behaviour* which includes language. Self-centredness includes the individual as a referent. One should note that science does not.

    "PS. If I'm a bit slow to grasp the deeper meaning of your pearls, it is simply because I jumped into the gene pool whilst the lifeguard was'nt looking."

    If you are going to write things like that, don't expect anyone other than those looking for entertainment to value your contributions - you seem to have a penchant for the theatrical. This isn't, supposedly, a blog for light-entertainment.

    Back to Brown-fill and "housing" - if one looks back to a Newsnight interview with the allegedly camera shy CEO of NEXT one should do so whilst also looking at the share prices of NEXT over the years of "recession" and liberation whilst giving "social-networking" some further thought with a view to its group politics and its origination. This is largely feminised, arrested developed behaviour.

    One should ask why Lenin referred to Social-Democracy (The New Left as we know it today) as an "Infantile Disorder"? (see the SDS in the USA in the 60s and 70s for a more virulent for than those we see in power across Europe) Who were its major protagonists? Why were such "politicians" rounded up in the 1930s in both Germany and the USSR? Social-Democrats are anarchists with a fascist centre. Democratic-Centralists they are not..

  • Comment number 64.

    CAMERON WISDOM: A LAND OF WELL HOUSED IMMIGRANT SMALL SHOP-KEEPERS?

    Denial Dave is quoted as saying: (home renting) "is inimical to the British character, which has been shaped over the centuries by the rights and liberties that have arisen from property ownership." Yeah right Dave. But more recently shaped by a massive influx of 'cultural diversity' - INIMICAL TO THE BRITISH CHARACTER - that seems to suit YOU down to your comical foundations.

    DISMANTLE WESTMINSTER - END FEUDAL POLITICS - INSTALL INTEGRITY

  • Comment number 65.

    "ONE SHOULD" (#63)

    Surely not?

    "This isn't, supposedly, a blog for light-entertainment."

    Then 'don't make me laugh' BD.

  • Comment number 66.

    JohnConstable wrote: "Far be it for me to intrude on private grief and although Neil Kinnock is happy to have their Party back, it is actually dying on its feet.

    And if the Scots really do leave the Union then Labours destruction will be complete.

    Better for the fellow travellors to jump ship now and join the Co-Op Party - which is more in tune with the zeitgeist."

    It that the Chinese Co-Op Party?



    The economic elite in the USA would never have allowed a viable Labour Party in Britain without fomenting regime-change through Social-Democrats, Militant Tendency and other vehicles of anarchistic 'pluralism'.

    Whilst good for entrepreneurs at the expense of low skilled consumers (both domestic and imported) one could look back to the institutions offering business and finance courses from the 70s onwards as running courses in human predation, which some nations (now subject to regime-change all over the globe) would have seen as the products of universities of crime. perhaps one has to be able to assess the evidence allocentrically to fully appreciate why?

  • Comment number 67.

    Mr Paxman should, perhaps, have asked Lord Malloch-Brown about his views as to whether the following:



    is prima facie evidence that there's an international political party which looks after its own (for its exclusive self-interest see banner at top) asking whether there are any other groups which operate in this manner with impunity, their own nation state, and where any criticism or even hint of normal human accountability is met with immediate sanctions levelled against its critics?

    If one really wants to know what happened to "rationality", "democracy" and "transparency" one need not look too far to see the answer - we gave it all away to the arrested-developed,

    Most people can't or won't see this, perhaps because there is a an unwritten human law to let the feminine-brained off certain things in exchange for other behaviours?

    Why isn't this more obvious? What could be made more obvious?

  • Comment number 68.

    barriesingleton wrote: "Then 'don't make me laugh' BD."

    Laugh or sneer?

    Reading and responding (accurately) to one's own (private) behaviours can be much more difficult than many imagine and is never perfected.

    It's precisely in this domain that those with self-esteem (identity or personality) issues have the greatest difficulties, perhaps through a relative failure of more objective relational analysis? Think of adolescence, schooling and selection for higher education by subject and gender. Adolescence is where most of the difficulties emerge and it's a period renowned for self-centredness and parasitic behaviour is it not?

    More amongst females than males perhaps?.

    Some never grow out of it

  • Comment number 69.

    In a nation which is a) ageing and b) indigenously depopulating because of below replacement level birth rates (which is also true across the EU and Far East Libertarian nations), one has to ask whether new builds of social housing is what's necessary or just an excuse for privateers to grab Public land at the tax-payer's expense once again.

    Once the ageing population begins to die off, the real problem will become even more obvious to than it already is to the banks and politicians I suspect. property prices will fall due to lack of demand.

    Immigration of Muslims and their conversion from riba via an egregious "war on (or_is_it_of?) terror" is surely not the answer?

    To govern, one has to manage, i.e regulate. It's what govern means. It does not mean abrogate to someone else. that's anarchism. Calling it "Big Society" is likely to fox those who DON'T watch the likes of Newsnight and who can't be educated, and of course, the number of those have been growing.....

  • Comment number 70.

    going long the taxpayer is the best game in town. Millionaire landowners get 4 billion a year merely for owning land. why not housebuilders? we have a free market with no moral hazard or where the public are forced to take on risks and so make big money for CEO's who are 'top talent' and deserve their telephone number wages.

    You don't need to be a top talent to make money out of a one way no risk bet.

  • Comment number 71.

    A heuristic question or two: "Households" and "Non Profit Institutions Serving Households". What are these classes technically in the Blue Book and EuroStat?

    When people talk about house buyers, are these commercial property development companies, or are they imaginary home-owners?

    If one just assumes one knows, one will probably never know. For some, that's very convenient, as who was it who borrowed lots of money for properties? Who actually owns the assets until they are paid off after 25 years of interest bearing loans (its like rent, and the buyers don't really own these homes for about 25 years). How did those assets impact upon the bank balance sheets and stock exchange equity prices, and how did the money "generated by" the Financial Service sector serve the interests of Social-Democratic Governments?

    Most don't ask, as most don't want to know what upsets them.

  • Comment number 72.

    Mistress76uk linked to "Today, there is a view that young people in their early twenties are somehow being denied their human rights if they cannot purchase a property. So the state is going to help them. Is this wise? "

    I suggest a helpful way to read this is as evidence of Government helping others to prey upon carefully nurtured/bred E N T I T L E M E N T.

    What's new is the increased numbers comprising this class of the arrested developed (and they find their way into politics too, and in droves). Think of a genetically deteriorating population for it all to make a most horrible sense.

    Can we fix it?

  • Comment number 73.

    jauntycyclist wrote: "going long the taxpayer is the best game in town."

    It's the Libertarian system. One does not get on within it without being a self-centred, arrested-developed predator. The exchange between Paxman and Shapps (he many even mean well for all I know) last night was classic. Paxman consulted his notes for security, but it was useless, although the Minister did hoist himself for what it was worth - he has over a hundred other initiatives (a blizzard of initiatives) to hide behind, of course...

    One can't fix the system as it's not broken. It's just that a lot more people came to see how it worked (for a while).

    It doesn't bode well for change of course, not whilst the alternatives (so long as they are little) are being subjected to regime-change everywhere else.

    It's always the way with bullies. They belittle, and they recruit side-kicks. Grown up men and women try to manage and to protect the vulnerable....

  • Comment number 74.

    THE TREND IS NON-DYING AND CARE IN THE COMMUNITY (#69)

    Dying by choice is still unlawful, and technology is doing awfully well. Is not the most likely future, rotting, senile piles, residing in low cost housing, attached to high tech machines, Davros-wise, till "Blown fuse do them part"? They might even be tended by robots. It would solve the language problem, for the few still in command of any.

    Oh Brave New World . . .

  • Comment number 75.

    barriesingleton wrote: "THE TREND IS NON-DYING AND CARE IN THE COMMUNITY"

    I take it you've noticed the celebrities and "cute little elderly puppets" hawking equity release etc on TV?

    Meanwhile, what little remains of the Public Sector teaching profession's voice tries to express concern about what's happening at the other end of the life-span.. but to whom?

    /news/education-15819369

    It's happened over and over again throughout history, and in the end, it gets ugly with people turning on the peddlers of freedom. That's what is coming unless we find a solution - but all one can do for now is name and shame, except, they are unreceptive to that - it's part of the problem. It only works on normal people. That's why it always gets ugly.

  • Comment number 76.

    Chief potential eco-fascist fraudsters at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ trying to play this down, more to follow later when today's blog comes on stream.

    /news/world-15840562

  • Comment number 77.

    brossen99 wrote about ClimateGate etc

    How much of this is really about a further attack on the state, i.e on privatising Higher Education and research given that the Freedom of Information Act applies only to the Public Sector not to the Private Sector?

    The politics would appear to be to put pressure on publicly funded research organisations and researchers to go private and to give the edge to Private Sector research and spin. That, in the end, curtails open access, and academic freedom, as those working in the Private Sector have less freedom to publish, and have to do what their employers want which means what their shareholders want.

    There is something rather valuable at stake here, but many won't see any of that as they are distracted by the vehicle (anthropogenic warming).

    There's long been a systematic attack on the Public Sector, and people should be asking why It's an attack on the regulators - on Governance.

    When it's all gone, you'll miss it, as the alternative is psychopathic..

  • Comment number 78.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 79.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 80.

    Never figured you as a closet warmist Mr Dog ?

  • Comment number 81.

    brossen99 wrote: "Never figured you as a closet warmist Mr Dog ?"

    You're right.

    It's an orthogonal point.

    I'm just suggesting that the entire issue is being abused for other political purposes which are potentially more dire. This is how this game is played in my view.

    It was not a criticism in any way of any of the points which you make.

  • Comment number 82.

    get down on your knees all you Brown/Balls haters and thank Brown for the greatest gift you will ever have and why you should be eternally grateful.......HE KEPT US OUT OF THE EURO......praise him ...and be thankful

  • Comment number 83.

    stevie wrote: "get down on your knees all you Brown/Balls haters and thank Brown for the greatest gift you will ever have and why you should be eternally grateful.......HE KEPT US OUT OF THE EURO......praise him ...and be thankful"

    Is that irony?

    He signed the Lisbon Treaty. His party created Regional Development Agencies (EU NUTS).

    New Labour disunited the UK and deregulated to the point of no return, whilst also hollowing out the Public Sector and bypassing the Civil Service.

    As a member of The Socialist International his party created this mess.

  • Comment number 84.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 85.

    monty python's Life of Brian...it was voted the funniest film ever...honestly....

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