-:Undertaker:-
05-01-2011, 05:49 PM
Original article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/04/take-housing-fight-wealthy?CMP=twt_gu
Posted article, with commentary (see below):
http://www.indhome.com/2011/01/monbiots-socialist-utopia/
IndHome: Moniot's Socialist Utopia
George Monbiot, a curious creature, has written an astonishing piece on Comment is Free where he takes aim at wealthy home owners with more bedrooms than they require (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/04/take-housing-fight-wealthy?CMP=twt_gu). This is, apparently, some kind of social tragedy that must – simply, must, you understand – be addressed at once.
There are two housing crises in Britain. One of them is obvious and familiar: the walloping shortfall in supply. Households are forming at roughly twice the rate at which new homes are being built. In England alone, 650,000 homes are classed as overcrowded. Many other people are desperate to move into their own places, but find themselves stuck. Yet the new homes the government says we need – 5.8m by 2033 – threaten to mash our landscapes and overload the environment.
My God, is the Moonbat about to support immigration controls? Considering immigration is projected to account for 2m of these 5.8m homes (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333540/Two-million-The-new-homes-Britain-needs-build-cope-25-years-immigration.html) it would surely be a good start? But no, he doesn’t say that at all.
The issue is surplus housing – the remarkable growth of space that people don’t need. Between 2003 and 2008 (the latest available figures), there was a 45% increase in the number of under-occupied homes in England. The definition of under-occupied varies, but it usually means that households have at least two bedrooms more than they require.
Gosh. I better not let George see my wardrobe. He might think I have too many shirts. What should my allocation be, George?
This appears to leave just one likely explanation: money. My guess, though I can find no research or figures either to support or disprove it, is that the richest third of the population has discovered that it can spread its wings. A report by the International Longevity Centre comes to the same conclusion: “Wealth … is the key factor in whether or not we choose to occupy more housing space than is essential.”
Double gosh! If you have more money you are more likely to want to buy more living space for yourself and family?
While most houses are privately owned, the total housing stock is a common resource. Either we ensure that it is used wisely and fairly, or we allow its distribution to become the starkest expression of inequality.
Er, not sure his understanding of common resource is the same as mine. Yes, housing is a permanent resource which is traded and exchanged between individuals and generations, but it is not held in common ownership by ‘society’.
The UK appears to have chosen the second option. We have allowed the market, and the market alone, to decide who gets what – which means that families in desperate need of bigger homes are crammed together in squalid conditions, while those who have more space than they know what to do with face neither economic nor social pressure to downsize.
Let’s deal with the second part to begin with. “No economic…pressure to downsize”? What? Apart from the higher council tax, electricity, gas, oil bills, households insurance, maintenance and mortgage interest that go hand in had with a bigger house, you mean? Oh right, yeah.
As for “social pressure”, give me strength. I want to live in the nice big house, I bought it, I paid for it, It’s mine, leave me alone.
The only answer anyone is prepared to mention is more building: let the rich occupy as much space they wish, and solve the problem by dumping it on the environment, which means – of course – on everyone. I think there’s a better way.
Oh goody. A better way. This is brilliant. Wait for it…
… I suggest a new concept: housing footprints. Your housing footprint is the number of bedrooms divided by the number of people in the household. Like ecological footprints, it reminds us that the resource is finite, and that, if some people take more than they need, others are left with less than they need.
Yes that’s right folks. State administered housing allocations based on a bureaucrat deciding what we need. Wouldn’t life be just grand if we all got allocated only what we need and no more? No place for aspiration, desire, self betterment, indulgence, extravagance, gluttony. Heck, let’s just skip the intermediaries and abolish happiness altogether!
The provision of housing equality and state allocation has been tried before and it produced identical miserbale tower blocks. No thanks George!
Well i'll go onto the topic or suggestion next, but it does make me laugh how when I post an article from the Daily Mail all I get is grief over it 'Daily Mail awful, Daily Telegraph terrible etc' yet this is the kind of tripe that gets published in the Guardian, the same newspaper that the accusers read. (full article link is via the Guardian link I posted at top of the thread).
Anyway as for this suggestion, as Harry Aldridge notes; are these people living on the same planet? this guy is proposing that the government dictate what houses we live in based on the number of bedrooms all no doubt administed by a large government office full of overpaid staff with all our details on a government database.
If the housing crisis is such as problem Mr Monbiot suggests (and yes there is a problem especially down south), then the simple solution is to limit immigration!!! - but sadly the blindly obvious doesn't apply to these people so I conclude; yet more dribble from another champagne socialist, one which believes (like the rest of his lot) in global government, global warming and along with telling all of us how to run our own lives..
..but dare nobody tell him how to run his.
Thoughts on Mr Monbiot's suggestion?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/04/take-housing-fight-wealthy?CMP=twt_gu
Posted article, with commentary (see below):
http://www.indhome.com/2011/01/monbiots-socialist-utopia/
IndHome: Moniot's Socialist Utopia
George Monbiot, a curious creature, has written an astonishing piece on Comment is Free where he takes aim at wealthy home owners with more bedrooms than they require (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/04/take-housing-fight-wealthy?CMP=twt_gu). This is, apparently, some kind of social tragedy that must – simply, must, you understand – be addressed at once.
There are two housing crises in Britain. One of them is obvious and familiar: the walloping shortfall in supply. Households are forming at roughly twice the rate at which new homes are being built. In England alone, 650,000 homes are classed as overcrowded. Many other people are desperate to move into their own places, but find themselves stuck. Yet the new homes the government says we need – 5.8m by 2033 – threaten to mash our landscapes and overload the environment.
My God, is the Moonbat about to support immigration controls? Considering immigration is projected to account for 2m of these 5.8m homes (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333540/Two-million-The-new-homes-Britain-needs-build-cope-25-years-immigration.html) it would surely be a good start? But no, he doesn’t say that at all.
The issue is surplus housing – the remarkable growth of space that people don’t need. Between 2003 and 2008 (the latest available figures), there was a 45% increase in the number of under-occupied homes in England. The definition of under-occupied varies, but it usually means that households have at least two bedrooms more than they require.
Gosh. I better not let George see my wardrobe. He might think I have too many shirts. What should my allocation be, George?
This appears to leave just one likely explanation: money. My guess, though I can find no research or figures either to support or disprove it, is that the richest third of the population has discovered that it can spread its wings. A report by the International Longevity Centre comes to the same conclusion: “Wealth … is the key factor in whether or not we choose to occupy more housing space than is essential.”
Double gosh! If you have more money you are more likely to want to buy more living space for yourself and family?
While most houses are privately owned, the total housing stock is a common resource. Either we ensure that it is used wisely and fairly, or we allow its distribution to become the starkest expression of inequality.
Er, not sure his understanding of common resource is the same as mine. Yes, housing is a permanent resource which is traded and exchanged between individuals and generations, but it is not held in common ownership by ‘society’.
The UK appears to have chosen the second option. We have allowed the market, and the market alone, to decide who gets what – which means that families in desperate need of bigger homes are crammed together in squalid conditions, while those who have more space than they know what to do with face neither economic nor social pressure to downsize.
Let’s deal with the second part to begin with. “No economic…pressure to downsize”? What? Apart from the higher council tax, electricity, gas, oil bills, households insurance, maintenance and mortgage interest that go hand in had with a bigger house, you mean? Oh right, yeah.
As for “social pressure”, give me strength. I want to live in the nice big house, I bought it, I paid for it, It’s mine, leave me alone.
The only answer anyone is prepared to mention is more building: let the rich occupy as much space they wish, and solve the problem by dumping it on the environment, which means – of course – on everyone. I think there’s a better way.
Oh goody. A better way. This is brilliant. Wait for it…
… I suggest a new concept: housing footprints. Your housing footprint is the number of bedrooms divided by the number of people in the household. Like ecological footprints, it reminds us that the resource is finite, and that, if some people take more than they need, others are left with less than they need.
Yes that’s right folks. State administered housing allocations based on a bureaucrat deciding what we need. Wouldn’t life be just grand if we all got allocated only what we need and no more? No place for aspiration, desire, self betterment, indulgence, extravagance, gluttony. Heck, let’s just skip the intermediaries and abolish happiness altogether!
The provision of housing equality and state allocation has been tried before and it produced identical miserbale tower blocks. No thanks George!
Well i'll go onto the topic or suggestion next, but it does make me laugh how when I post an article from the Daily Mail all I get is grief over it 'Daily Mail awful, Daily Telegraph terrible etc' yet this is the kind of tripe that gets published in the Guardian, the same newspaper that the accusers read. (full article link is via the Guardian link I posted at top of the thread).
Anyway as for this suggestion, as Harry Aldridge notes; are these people living on the same planet? this guy is proposing that the government dictate what houses we live in based on the number of bedrooms all no doubt administed by a large government office full of overpaid staff with all our details on a government database.
If the housing crisis is such as problem Mr Monbiot suggests (and yes there is a problem especially down south), then the simple solution is to limit immigration!!! - but sadly the blindly obvious doesn't apply to these people so I conclude; yet more dribble from another champagne socialist, one which believes (like the rest of his lot) in global government, global warming and along with telling all of us how to run our own lives..
..but dare nobody tell him how to run his.
Thoughts on Mr Monbiot's suggestion?