2024 Election thread

Unfortunately I think you may be right although in purely technical terms it shouldn't be. I suspect it is more of a mindset issue with those in power thinking 'this is how it was when I was trying to make my way so why should I change it now?' (you may have noticed us old people often take that approach!). I don't doubt that there are jobs that do need to be centralised and wouldn't claim to know anything about the world of global finance. However, it appears to me that someone like a City lawyer is probably working on deals all over the world so why couldn't that work be done from a hub office in Bristol or Leeds just as easily as a large central office in London then just go to London if necessary for those big face to face meetings in the same way they would fly to New York, Dubai or Beijing now? It would hopefully act as a catalyst to improve infrastructure across the country instead of shelving things everytime a Government needs to save a few quid. It would also potentially open up the talent pool with companies able to recruit those they maybe don't want to do the London thing.

Ultimately though things may get pushed in that direction. Living in London will become less appealing when in addition to being unable to afford the house you want you find all the services going downhill because essential workers have been driven out and you can't get a GP, your kids' school is unable to get sufficient teachers etc. or your office is a shit tip because there are no cleaners or maintenance workers.

There's all that wasted green space on the Barbican estate and the buildings could be much higher.

If your office is in London, there are around 15m people within commuting distance. If your office is in Bristol that number is a lot smaller. The consequence is that it is harder to find the right people to employ.

So have both, scale down the main office - I suspect quite a few people would move if they were able to do the job without being London based. It's a bit chicken and egg though, the people are there as the jobs are there and the jobs are there as the people are there. Rick's example couple from the other day said they were happy to live somewhere else if necessary.

Do they all have to be in one place?

Build them where people want them. I don't really want to live just around the corner from work, but also not 90 minutes away.

I did ask whether Colindale was sufficiently close to the jobs. Lots of building there.

Enough for 300,000 homes around London. An entire year's national housing target.

This is the kind of simplistic binary argument that gets trotted out a lot. As if the only alternatives are golf course and 'concrete jungle ' whatever that is. We've known how to do housing with plenty of greenery for the last hundred years at least. Probably improved biodiversity over a golf course as well.

Read my point above about repurposing them, which is what Lewisham council did with the golf course near where I used to live.

The more I think about this, the more I think that building more houses (given the reality of how long they take to build) is not the answer.

It is a pretty well established fact that house prices increase over time in areas where people "want to live".

Periods when house prices decrease historically can be measured in months - perhaps a couple of years and this has never been down to more houses being built as far as I know (which admittedly isn't much when it comes to this subject). House price increases over 5+ years is pretty much nailed on. Imagine for a moment what would happen to the number of house purchases should house prices be forecast to fall at the same rate as they have increased over a few decades. People wouldn't buy, lenders wouldn't lend, and, ultimately, the contracting market would mean that builders wouldn't build.

I'm sure I can't produce a graph to show this, but imagine a line showing house prices increasing over a period of time (not difficulat as this is and has been the reality over many years). On the same graph imagine a line showing the number of houses being built (OK, you'd need two x axes but stick with it . . .) the point at which house prices would start to come down would be the point at which the line of the number of houses being built approaches or crosses the increase in price line.

Surely the question is "can we build houses quick enough to outpace the rate at which existing house prices are increasing?" This may be possible in China (maybe) but here? I really don't think so.

I still think the answer lies to a large extent in restrictions on the amount of mortgage that can be borrowed (say, 4x annual salary) and limiting the number of houses a person or company is allowed to own.

Probably a load of bollocks but that's my thoughts

If you take the average size of an 18 hole golf course as 45 hectares and set aside 25% of that for green space (which would be an area half the size of St James Park in London) and work on a moderate urban housing density of 70 units per hectare that gives you space for over 2,300 homes.