Do you know what I'd like to see?

chewmylegoff

michaels wrote: »

An interesting conceit.

At work the BBC news website does not work (only the UK govt still has ie6) so I am forced to look at the torygraph website and notice they are offering a prize for an essay on how to solve youth unemployment and was wondering if as a board we could crowdsource a winning entry and split the prize money...

Piece of p1ss. All we need to do is redefine the word "youth" (redefining "unemployment" has been done already).

chewmylegoff

danothy wrote: »

As this seems to be turning into a dry run, lets keep it arbitrary but rational, lets say the district levels get a proportional share of the 1.5 million target based on population.

Surely it should be based on population growth rates not current population. No point building new houses (except to replace ones that have fallen down) where the population is likely to be stable or shrinking.

danothy

globalds wrote: »

I think the time frame would have to be over a decade or even more maybe 20 years ..

Again, this asserts a condition, it doesn't evaluate the consequences. Maybe I have it all wrong, but as I understand it a thinktank doesn't wax lyrical about the best way to do things, it works through a possible counterfactual that is set. If the suggestion is that we need more homes then a thinktank would analyse the results of a government edict to do such a thing.

vivatifosi wrote: »

There's a little part of me danothy, that wonders if you are an evil social scientist sitting with your clipboard taking notes of the lunatics playing in their asylum. Mwah, ha, ha...

Hell, if I thought sociology or economics were legitimate sciences I would kill for a job like that.

BobQ

danothy wrote: »

Again, this asserts a condition, it doesn't evaluate the consequences. Maybe I have it all wrong, but as I understand it a thinktank doesn't wax lyrical about the best way to do things, it works through a possible counterfactual that is set. If the suggestion is that we need more homes then a thinktank would analyse the results of a government edict to do such a thing.

Hell, if I thought sociology or economics were legitimate sciences I would kill for a job like that.

The trouble with think tanks is that they are composed of people who never understood Schrodinger's cat.

globalds

OK ..So if you chose not to spread it evenly but built on the new town model a couple of medium sized towns.

I can only think they would be south of Oxford or no one would want to relocate as a load of homes with no jobs would just be pointless ..Could you find another Milton Keynes... twice ?

danothy

globalds wrote: »

OK ..So if you chose not to spread it evenly but built on the new town model a couple of medium sized towns.

I can only think they would be south of Oxford or no one would want to relocate as a load of homes with no jobs would just be pointless ..Could you find another Milton Keynes... twice ?

Is this some other scenario you want to reason out?

globalds

danothy wrote: »

Is this some other scenario you want to reason out?

I thought we hadn't got very far down the road ..This question of whether to split the build or stick it all in a couple of places ..seems to be but quite an important consideration for any further thoughts.

danothy

globalds wrote: »

I thought we hadn't got very far down the road ..This question of whether to split the build or stick it all in a couple of places ..seems to be but quite an important consideration for any further thoughts.

The scenario I suggested was that a government edict was issued for a volume of built housing on rush (1.5 million by August 2014) spread over the local authorities (number of houses weighted to authorities by population arbitrarily, since someone asked for how it was spread over them).

I'm not emotionally attached to that scenario, but I've also got no interest in refine a starting point backwards and forwards to meet some potential desirable outcome. The idea isn't that we sit and debate to come up with some great idea, we start with something (good or bad) and work out its consequences.

If there's some other scenario that would be worth reasoning through the consequences then I'm open, the one I came up with is just an example to see if it could be done. And by that I mean if people here could actually put their heads together and not have the process collapse.

GeorgeHowell

danothy wrote: »

Seems that people are more interested in pointing out why any starting situation wouldn't work rather than running it through to its potentially glorious or ugly end. I guess any sort of thought experiment is scuppered and I was right that there could be no HP&tE thinktank.

I think that's the point, a think tank has to think. To dismiss vital issues like where 1.5 million homes would be built, or as others have raised, within what time scale, to me isn't thinking at all.

danothy

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

I think that's the point, a think tank has to think. To dismiss vital issues like where 1.5 million homes would be built, or as others have raised, within what time scale, to me isn't thinking at all.

But in the same vein, that kind of planning isn't what thinktanks do. I'm talking about running through a scenario as incepted from a (fictitious) government instruction to find the most likely outcome from its issuing, not debate what would be the most sensible instruction.

The idea is that it's not a vital issue to be decided, it's a consequence of the instruction.