Newsnight tonight: Housing

Thrugelmir

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Increasing house prices simply isn't the answer here. The populace (those that would be looking to take on the debt to buy) is pretty much saturated with debt. So something surely has to give, something surely needs looking at.

Yes people need to lend to save.

Not expect to borrow.

A fundamental change that will require a degree of pain to effect the change (i.e. over some years)

CLAPTON

the_flying_pig wrote: »

Was that an argument why BTL would cost the taxpayer less than state owned housing?

If so it was amongst the most risible contributions ever made to this forum, up against some fairly stiff competition.

I think you do protest too much.


But no, it was a proxy for the argument but

I assume therefore you are an admirer of the old PO/BT way of doing things? No nasty profits there (or indeed phones lines if you were in the 'wrong' area.

Or of the wonderful wealth and happiness the USSR gave its people? No nasty profits there.

Or of the wonderful Chineses revolution that brought such wealth and happiness too? No nasty profits there

yes basically the state is a very very very very inefficient provider of monoply services

Graham_Devon

CLAPTON wrote: »

I think you do protest too much.


But no, it was a proxy for the argument but

I assume therefore you are an admirer of the old PO/BT way of doing things? No nasty profits there (or indeed phones lines if you were in the 'wrong' area.

Or of the wonderful wealth and happiness the USSR gave its people? No nasty profits there.

Or of the wonderful Chineses revolution that brought such wealth and happiness too? No nasty profits there

yes basically the state is a very very very very inefficient provider of monoply services

Or you could look at how council houses worked before? Just a thought.

CLAPTON

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Or you could look at how council houses worked before? Just a thought.

how did they work before ?

the_flying_pig

CLAPTON wrote: »

I think you do protest too much.


But no, it was a proxy for the argument but

I assume therefore you are an admirer of the old PO/BT way of doing things? No nasty profits there (or indeed phones lines if you were in the 'wrong' area.

Or of the wonderful wealth and happiness the USSR gave its people? No nasty profits there.

Or of the wonderful Chineses revolution that brought such wealth and happiness too? No nasty profits there

yes basically the state is a very very very very inefficient provider of monoply services

What rubbish.

A BTL landlord essentially provides two services.

The first is maintenance, refurbs, and so on, which as per my post above could and should be provided privately even where houses were state-owned.

The second, and much more important service (accounting for the overwhelming lion's share of the total cost of BTL) is financing/borrowing, which is impossible to innovate on or do 'efficiently'. The state can objectively do it far more cheaply than any private individual or company. Right now it can almost borrow for free.

So there's just no scope for theoretical private sector super-efficiency to kick in.

With HB/BTL govt is basically borrowing money from private individuals, nothing much more. Only it's doing it at a vastly higher cost than it could through govt bonds. And into the bargain depriving itself of the benefits of ownership brought about by inflation.

ukcarper

CLAPTON wrote: »

I think you do protest too much.


But no, it was a proxy for the argument but

I assume therefore you are an admirer of the old PO/BT way of doing things? No nasty profits there (or indeed phones lines if you were in the 'wrong' area.

Or of the wonderful wealth and happiness the USSR gave its people? No nasty profits there.

Or of the wonderful Chineses revolution that brought such wealth and happiness too? No nasty profits there

yes basically the state is a very very very very inefficient provider of monoply services

The opening up of telecomms in this county has done nothing to make phones more available . At least when you had a fault in the past you would talk to well trained staff who new what they were doing. Unlike now when the rush for profits gives you the exact oposite.

ILW

ukcarper wrote: »

The opening up of telecomms in this county has done nothing to make phones more available . At least when you had a fault in the past you would talk to well trained staff who new what they were doing. Unlike now when the rush for profits gives you the exact oposite.

You are obviously not old enough to to have had any dealings with BT before they went private.

ukcarper

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Or you could look at how council houses worked before? Just a thought.

I think council houses worked very well and provided good accommodation for working people who could not afford to buy. Council estates in the 60s were reasonable places to live and mainly occupied by hard working people who respected their homes. Contrary to what some people think they were still in short supply and difficult to get.

But I really can’t see them coming back.

ukcarper

ILW wrote: »

You are obviously not old enough to to h
ave had any dealings with BT before they went private.

Not only am I old enough I worked for them before and after and I know there were lots of problems before, but I can tell you the level of training before was a lot better that now. If you think customer service is better now i suggest you take a look at the telecomms board.

the_flying_pig

ukcarper wrote: »

The opening up of telecomms in this county has done nothing to make phones more available . At least when you had a fault in the past you would talk to well trained staff who new what they were doing. Unlike now when the rush for profits gives you the exact oposite.

in real terms calls [especially] & line rental [perhaps not so much] are vastly cheaper than they used to be.

but telecom is a v misleading example of the potential benefits of privatisation since most of these cost savings were the inevitable result of technical progress [which mostly took place overseas] whereby pieces of kit that used to be the size of a house & need half a dozen blokes to operate, become, over time, the size of a matchbox & self-sufficient. a state-owned company would have been no worse placed than BT to buy the new kit off the shelf. of the former state-owned 'utilties' telecom is uniquely high tech & as such not v comparable with others.

social housing provisioon is just about the lowest tech industry imaginable. it's all about renting money to buy & develop land/property. the 'technology' never changes.

telecom service quality has indeed increased but that's really the result of competition rather than privatisation - important not to conflate two very different things. would a privatised monopoly have delivered the same improvements? i doubt it. the current model of HB/private BTL isn't 'competition' at all. the benefits of competition are driven by people shopping arouind to buy the cheapest, best, stuff. with HB the person who does the shopping around [tenant] is not the same person who picks up the bill [the taxpayer], meaning that the shoppers-around have no incentive at all to get the cheapest stuff. in fact we hear [possibly apocryphal] stories about tenants willingly colluding with landlords to increase prices! in other words there are no benefits of competition at all.