- Ownership is popular. It is a crucial foundation of a free society. It lies at the heart of Conservatism.
- Socialists try to take property away from people on grounds of inequality. Conservatives want more people to own property.
- Politicians should harness the popularity of ownership and private sector investment to develop policies which give the public a greater sense of pride and security
- From housing to employment, industry to culture, my new pamphlet sets out ways to launch an ownership revolution
Ownership is a core dividing line between left and right and the Conservative Party should facilitate wider public ownership in order to boost security and wellbeing,.
‘The Power of Ownership’, written by Sir John Redwood MP and published by the Centre for Policy Studies, builds on the themes of his book ‘Popular Capitalism’, to explain how important ownership is to democracy and a free society and how it can be advanced for many more people.
The report outlines a number of ways to boost ownership, including:
- Support home ownership by supporting self-builds, selling off government- or council-owned rundown properties to bring them back into use more quickly
- Compensate those living near new housing developments to discourage NIMBYism and increase housebuilding. New towns and villages may be better than trying to cram more buildings into an existing village or town.
- Infrastructure should be delivered prior to new homes being built to reassure the settled community and to be ready for the new residents when the homes are sold
- Raise the VAT threshold to ÂŁ250,000, boosting the capacity and growth potential of the small business sector
- Gift licence fee holders shares in the BBC, allowing them to appoint the Board and Director General, with the ability to sell new shares to raise capital in the future
- Selling off the remainder of government holding in NatWest in a single major transaction
Sir John Redwood MP, author of ‘The Power of Ownership’, said:
‘There are still too many people with too few assets. People cannot be expected to be capitalists if they are denied access to capital, and the ownership and security that comes with it.
‘Whether we look at housing, industry, employment, or culture, the Conservative Party should be promoting ownership at every turn – empowering the public and delivering for the economy.’
The pamphlet is available through the Centre for Policy Studies website.
â |
September 12, 2023
Good morning.
All very well and good. But we no longer have a Conservative Party that believes in such things. Quite the opposite in fact.
September 12, 2023
Ownership of the current Conservative Party has been sold to Labour and Lib Dems for nothing.
September 12, 2023
Well said Mark. Perhaps JR needs to understand what Gove and others are about.
Only a couple of days ago the minister answered JRâs question about cars and house heat pumps by saying there would be a new model of ownership! Welcome to his partyâs new dawn of communism.
Sunak and Hunt are making sure the globalist agenda of transferring wealth from west to east is sped up, nor do they not want to be competitive with EU either.
The son-in-law of India not raising or mentioning the 400 incidents of persecution of Christians in India where the PM has actively ensured nothing has done to stop the persecution of Christians! Nor does Sunak insist India close its coal fired power stations, or stop building them! Nor did he condemn India for continuing to support Russia! Sunak was photographed on bended knee for an Indian signatory.
JRâs blog should have included why his party is deliberately closing manufacturing, industry and jobs and moving them to China (enemy) and India (who do not share our views or culture). However, happy to accept vast amounts of students on visas to steal our ideas and secrets and take them back âhomeâ to be developed for their national interest.
September 13, 2023
Hope: “Perhaps JR needs to understand what Gove and others are about”
John Redwood is little more than the slaughterhouse Judas sheep, his job is to keep rank and file Tories calm and orderly as they are led through the doors of the slaughterhouse.
September 12, 2023
What’s the point of home ownership when soon you will be criminalised for not having a useless heat pump or inadequate insolation.
Why get rid of your efficient petrol car to buy a useless EV which may spontaneously combust whilst charging.
Your government is doing everything possible to reduce demand for net zero so stop being a silly Billy.
September 12, 2023
+++
We could all build shacks with log burners and grey water systems and a large solar panel on the roof. (All built on land that no one else would get planning for). Govt. would not be able to touch us.
Makes me think that all those eco dwellers (prob with nice rented semis elsewhere) knew exactly what was coming down the track!
After all they are the foot soldiers for all this.
September 12, 2023
Nobody doubts you JR, but your party is another thing as evidenced here. A vote by an MP seems to be worth nothing at all now in face of the ‘blob’ of civil servants and MP’s except where it seeks to oppress us.
September 12, 2023
I OWN my house. No mortgage, no debt of any kind, I OWN it.
Your disgraceful Party just created and voted for an Act to criminalise me if I decline to to have a piece of technical equipment which would allow a supplier of electricity to cut my power supply whenever it chooses. Or if I make a decision about how I would like to heat my house, which the Eco Nutters don’t like.
You may support private ownership Sir John, but the Party you represent no more supports private ownership than it does low taxes and restricted immigration.
The Sunak/Hunt Junta are puppets of the WEF and we are well aware that the aim is “we will own nothing.”
Reply I voted against that Bill. Opposition parties all supported it and wished to make it worse.
September 12, 2023
Indeed. The energy bill is truly appalling, that only 19MPs (I think) voted against it shows what a truly appalling bunch of MPs and parties we have in Parliament and what appalling ministers and party leaders.
September 12, 2023
Give it a year and we may all be doing this blog from our prison cells.
Free porridge though .I suppose?
OhâŠmaybe a load of MPs will find it impossible to comply and join us?
After all as JR pointed out some properties just CANâT have a useless, noisy heat pump.
Can one make electricity I wonder? Edison did?âĄïž
September 12, 2023
Morning,
Today, I had a government contracted heating inspector/engineer to visit, asked him about heat-pump central heating. His comment – not suitable for (most of) our houses and climate. We need better house insulation, not new heaters. Government is addressing the wrong issue (have we heard that before?). If government redirected heat-pump grants to professional, Scandinavian levels of insulation we’d use a lot less energy.
Government KNOWS THIS, but dogma on Net Zero policy is wasting our money.
September 12, 2023
++
Hope your heating passed/got repaired.
I wonder whose relatives/buddies manufacture (in China?) the heat pumps?
Thatâs what this is all aboutâŠ
Making money by changing things that did not need changing.
And getting a government contract to do it.
September 12, 2023
Peter Wood
They have now put housing on a par with the roads. Too many older properties are not suitable for increase insulation values because of the orginal design. Solid brick walls and ground floors in concrete on earth.
All this added expense and for what? Just as our roads are falling apart with too many potholes they are rapidly coming close to the point when new complete replacement would in the longer term be cheaper and more effective.
With homes now being built in factories it would cheaper to demolish older properties and replace them with these new build units utilizing every modern energy concious designs.
The revolution will come when people who have done their best out of their own pocket to meet insulation and heating standardsare going to be hammrered again to take on boards power units totally unsuitable for their properties. Still the politicians dont listen only to the CCC and others. You cannot make silk purses out of a sows earhole, but the reality is that they think they can do it. For Gods sake give us a government with common sense and knowledge in what they are trying to achieve is totally unsustainable. You can only eat the big apple small bites at a time not whole as they want us to. Too much, too soon , too expensive. They are fighting on too many fronts and losing on every one of them.
September 12, 2023
Reply to reply. I know you voted against it, alone with about 5 of your Parliamentary colleagues. The vast majority voted in favour, including the person masquerading as a Conservative who represents the Constituency where I live.
I’m afraid the old line “the others would be worse” isn’t going to wash this time.
September 12, 2023
+1 the alternative will indeed be even worse but the Socialist, Climate Alarmist, tax, borrow, print and waste Sunak (surely a globalist shill ( as Lawrence Fox put it) and his fake Con-socialists will surely now be destroyed after his leadership coup against Truss and against the party membership – so that a new sensible party can perhaps eventually emerge.
We can judge him on his 5 promises as he suggests and he his failing on all five. On inflation he caused it in the fist place anyway! His period as Chancellor was a total disaster in economic terms.
September 12, 2023
” the alternative will indeed be even worse”
Hard to see how.
September 12, 2023
+1 Donna
This bill is pure Marxism.
September 12, 2023
Yes. âAn Englishmanâs home is his castleâ – another, perhaps the most important, aspect of the English way of life, now firmly abolished by this disgraceful government.
September 12, 2023
An Englishmanâs home is something for the government to tax and regulate to death and take 40% of it on the owners death. Planning controls, heating, lighting, safety certificates, landlord licensing, building controls, tree protection orders, TV licensing, council tax, controlling your heating, your window environmental area appearance, insulation, water run off controls, parking restrictionsâŠ
September 12, 2023
Similarly, I own my car. In 2021, this government enacted a deeply sinister measure within the Environment Act that gave the state powers to “recall” – aka confiscate – my car and everyone else’s car if at some undefined future point it was deemed not to meet “relevant standards by reference to noise, heat, vibrations or any other kind of release of energy or emissions”. This gives future ministers the arbitrary power to confiscate e.g. all 4x4s manufactured before 2016 with an engine size of 3000cc or more, or all pre-2015 diesels, or all ICE cars that have done over 100,000 miles. What tangible positive goal would that serve, when balanced against the tangible negative outcome whereby drivers have to pay for a replacement for a car that may be in perfectly good order with many years of life still to come?
September 12, 2023
Sir John, your vote against this measure, as with opposition to a number of other individual matters put forward and promoted by your Conservative ( Destroyer of England ) party is not enough. It knows you will support them in a confidence vote should there ever be one.
You are a member of and always help a party which is no longer conservative, but you don’t have courage as others have shown to break away and show some principle.
We need some new leadership.
September 12, 2023
Breakaway to what, obscurity? We lost good MPs to this so-called ‘breakaway’. The problem is the central office’s selection of so-called conservative candidates who repeatedly give us fake tories, Lib Dems like Rory Stewart and Antoinette Sandbach.
When John votes against his own party, he is seen and heard. Reform or whatever they’re called, will just succeed in giving us a Labour majority ask Michelle Dewsberry what happened in Hull the majority wanted brexit supporters they split the vote and got a Labour MP.
September 12, 2023
Sir John is not the only one. Other big names eg. Iain Duncan-Smith could be another but they all prefer their party comforts and still fool themselves that the party listens and will follow them if only they could – tosh.
September 13, 2023
And how frustrating must that be to them, men who have dedicated their lives to conservative politics. However, where did it get Mark Reckless in ‘An abolish the Welsh assembly’ party that lost both seats, Douglas Carswell is living in Mississippi! At least John still gets a hearing. Neither of these renegades have any sway now.
JR, IDS, and others must form a stronger alliance for growth and positivity.
September 12, 2023
Uni party are one collective not separate entities ATracey. Look at Tory MP local selection procedure, you can have a choice of one from three clones! Same for the uni party. JRs lot have shown they built on Labourâs âMarxistâ energy policy as Cameron called it! Rhetoric to get elected, nothing more. Keep banging your head against a wall, you might find it still hurts.
September 13, 2023
Hope, I’m not a party member, I would find it far too frustrating to have no say on who gets picked in my area, We were given a deceitful LibDem from the central office. There are a lot of Reform pledges I don’t agree with, and I don’t believe are deliverable. My area elected a renegade group recently and they’re falling apart, internal bickering, realising they can’t do what they thought they could do but I admit they are better than the labour party were. Our town is going downhill fast since Labour took over the County, their landscape teams do the bare minimum now, roadsare getting worse, projects delayed and not costed properly, new homes being built without getting the builder to fix up local pavements and the roads to those new estates, its all just pathetic.
Even this group of Tories are going to be better than Labour though, people will learn when they split the vote especially if they lose the likes of JR, why Reform put up people against John I don’t know! Business people aren’t spending and investing because they’re battening down the hatches getting ready for a pro-big business, pro-unionisation of everything and everybody, big spending promises on all public servants and overblown promises it seems at business and people who are builders and doers expense.
September 12, 2023
Reform or whatever theyâre called are the only party that might help break the existing deadlock. Your defeatest attitude will just result in more of the same. Perhaps that is what you want.
September 12, 2023
I looked down the list of MPs who voted for the energy bill… and was horrified!
I can only conclude that the shortage of time given to read it meant that most MPs didn’t realise what they were agreeing to!
Were they given a mis-leading verbal prĂ©cis that prompted so many to vote for it? Whatever, it’s not good enough!
After the way ministers were mis-lead over Covid I would have expected a bit more caution.
What ever happened to “if in doubt, don’t?”
Reply There has been plenty of time to read it.It has been through Committee for detailed scrutiny
September 12, 2023
And so it begins. Iâve just had this email from my energy provider:
“We’re obligated by the Government to install smart meters in our customers’ homes
Please book your installation appointment today”
I don’t want or need a smart meter. I never waste power and keep my bills to a minimum. I fear that I will be fined or imprisoned for not complying but I will hold out to the bitter end.
Reply You do not have to accept a smart meter
September 12, 2023
I pay for my energy by direct debit. It was ever thus that every three months a bill would be generated and money taken from the balance accrued. Every six months the direct debit checked against consumption and adjusted if required. My recent electric bill showed that my energy provider randomly charged and collected a week worths of electric during the billing period. When I asked why this was so, particularly as it was a small sum. I was told the anomaly was because the Smart metre took a reading and billed and took my money because of a step change in consumption that week!
The Energy Bill that has gone through parliament shows me we do not need 650 MPs- another broken promise by Cameron to cut the number, proper right to recall etc. If they blindly act in lockstep, like a central controlled smart meter, we should sack the lot and just have dictator Sunak and a small handful of comrades for appearances.
September 12, 2023
Yes, they are obligated – you are not. Don’t be fooled by deceptive marketing.
September 12, 2023
Donna, what you are really pointing out is that step by step the Governments, one after another, are gradually restricting what we all thought we had – that is FREEDOM.
You, an owner or possessor of nothing much, is finding the message ‘NO, you can’t’ about every little decision you had thought was your unquestionable right. Can you park here? No! Read the small print notice. Can you visit this leisure place without a smart mobile? No! Can you buy a gas CH boiler after 2030? No! Can you sell your house without some statement of insulation, green evaluation or whatever? No! Can you rely on the contract you have with an electricity supplier to maintain it and not allow them to choose to suspend service to you? No!
September 12, 2023
Reply to reply
But your party created it
September 12, 2023
John
Please recognise that there is no longer any point remaining in the so called Conservative party.
Please join Reform and campaign for a true change of government.
If not our children and grandchildren have a poor life ahead of them.
September 13, 2023
Donna: “I OWN my house. No mortgage, no debt of any kind, I OWN it.”
Huh! Just refuse to pay the council tax, see how long the fiction that you own your house lasts. And by raising interest rates, energy costs, food prices, they make it more likely that as a law abiding citizen you will default on one or more of the obligations the government has imposed on you. Now, what asset do you have that can be seized in settlement of your debt?
This is the Tory party. One step forward on property rights, then two steps back. During the last decade the ‘Tory’ party under the WEF placemen, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak. With the possible exception of Truss, who was deposed in a coup d’etat, are all world government puppets. They don’t give a damn about British people
September 12, 2023
Exactly, but Sunakâs currency socialist government has delivered the highest taxes for 70+ years (still increasing due to inflation & combined with dire and declining public services too), they have a war on landlords (thus hitting tenants badly as landlords are forced to leave by government policy) and even taxing them on profits they have not even made. So how are they expected to pay these, it is clearly an asset theft. His energy bill is truly appalling, it is a huge attack on property owners, the economy, business owners and private wealth (yet only 9 Tories were sensible enough to vote against it). He still retains IHT that robs people of 40% of their assets over just ÂŁ325k on death. The ÂŁ325k is now more like ÂŁ200k in real terms now and is still declining by the day due to Sunakâs QE caused inflation. This is one of the very highest death taxes in the world.
As I have pointed out before the UK tax regime can easily steal 90%+ of your wealth off you over just 20 years. This without even needing a extra wealth tax that Gove seems to want.
Laurence Fox said yesterday Sunak (and Hunt I assume too) were forced unelected on to the country in a coup and he is a globalist shill. It is hard to disagree. The betting odds on a Conservative Majority suggest less than a 10% chance of this. This despite the fact that the Labour/Starmer alternative is clearly an even more appalling prospect. First past the post gives voters the dire choice between the Socialist, climate alarmist, globalist shill Rishi Sunak (who caused most of the current problems as Chancellor or socialist, climate alarmist, globalist shill in spades one Kier Starmer plus his even more appalling âfriendsâ the Labour MPs and candidate most of whom struggle to form full or logical coherent sentences.
September 12, 2023
Had errant Conservative MPs not stitched up Penny Mordaunt to block her from being elected as PM her leadership by now would have had much time to restore goodness into government.
September 12, 2023
Touching faith in Mordant.
September 12, 2023
so who would you have gone with?
September 12, 2023
I object to the rubbish shortlist. The Parliamentary Party is inept and must be stripped of its power to castrate the membership. Members must be able to vote for any of the qualified people, I.e any MP.
I would have campaigned and voted for Redwood. Bluntly unless we get the politics that he represents we are done.
PS I also object to Central Office providing a rubbish shortlist of those it will allow to become MPs. It is their fault that the Parliamentary Party is so poor. Constituencies must be able to freely propose and select their candidates.
September 13, 2023
Lynn – thank you for responding. Sir John has indicated for years that he would not want to be PM, and I wouldn’t want the pressure on him. So, thats him ruled out.
I do however, agree with your points about the Parliamentary Party and Central Office.
Perhaps after the Party is decimated to an also-ran, serious ‘root and branch’ (remember that?) culling needs to strip it back to traditional Conservative representation.
Little chance?
Reply I tried twice to be Leader of the Conservatives. The first time that would have made me PM. In recent years I ruled out standing again because I did not think I had enough support to mount a challenge when there was a leadership election called.
September 12, 2023
You have more faith in Penny Mordaunt than I do. She seems to be a left-wing liberal to me.
September 12, 2023
Christine, ++++++
I have no reason to have faith that Mordaunt would be the answer to anyone looking for conservative policies.
September 12, 2023
Mordaunt another cultural Marxist who believes a man can be woman! Good grief.
September 13, 2023
Christine: “She seems to be a left-wing liberal to me.”
Look at the voting on the so called Energy bill. 218 for, 19 against. That means there are only nineteen sane MPs in Parliament. By the way Andrew Bridgen expelled from the Tory party for having a concern for the welfare of his constituents ( which other Tories don’t appear to share ) voted against the bill. We appear to be better represented by the Democratic Unionist party.
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3311/stages
September 12, 2023
âBritain needs China to hit net zero, says Kemi Badenochâ
Kemi, we may well need China for some things but we certainly do not need to his our ânet zero targetsâ in the UK – and we will not hit them anyway. What the UK does is irrelevant to the world climate and CO2 is not even a serious problem anyway. Indeed and on balance a bit more is actually beneficial. Plus the CO2 saving technology being pushed do not really work anyway even to save sig. CO2.
China clearly do not give a damn about net zero (other than for selling batteries, solar cells, EVs, heatpumps and wind tech. and will increase their coal burning far more than make up any slight difference the UKâs idiotic self harming net zero policy might make.
It seems she read Computer Systems Engineering at Sussex Uni. So surely she should be able to do the basic sums and logic here?
September 12, 2023
I lost faith in Kemi Badenoch when she attended the WEF meeting in Davos. Another MP who has sold her soul to the devil.
September 12, 2023
Same for India. Climate scam is the redistribution of wealth west to east. Sunak on bended knee accepting what he was told to do by Christian persecuting India! I wonder if he would pass Tebbitâs cricket test?
September 12, 2023
China hopes Britain will hit net zero – and Iâm not speaking of CO2, Iâm speaking of suicide.
September 12, 2023
Reported in the Guardian today.
One in three medical students plan to quit the NHS within two years of graduating, either to practise abroad or abandon medicine altogether, according to the largest survey of its kind.
Poor pay, work-life balance and working conditions of doctors in the UK were the main factors cited by those intending to emigrate to continue their medical career.
I am not remotely surprised, a relative of mine is doing his first year working as a doctor in central London, his pay after tax, NI, rent, student loan interest, commuting cost, council tax & comp. professional fees leaves exactly zero left for food, clothing, electric, gas, fun⊠his same age flat mate works at a bank and gets 3 times his salary and has half the student debt and rather less stress. The Doctor will never be able to buy a flat or house in this area of London unless he either marries very well, his parent buy him one or he changes career. The NHS abuses their doctors and medical staff using the virtual monopoly and fails the patient too.
September 12, 2023
LL,
Universities full of Chinese and Indian students stealing our ideas to take home!
September 12, 2023
Been saying it for years…does anybody listen? No!
September 12, 2023
This is so disgraceful. Medical school places have been artificially constrained so that competition for places is immense and the examination system has been so degraded by allowing for profit examination boards to set and mark exams so that universities have to resort to criteria other than exam results to select students. Close down the rubbish degree courses, ie most of them, and focus on educating the next generation of professional people and pay them according
what know and how they can serve the community. Return the setting and marking of exams to
the elite universities and take that away from the rest, including graduate exams.
September 13, 2023
Lifelogic: “Poor pay, work-life balance and working conditions of doctors in the UK ”
Back before the cursed Blair, with the EU WTD, trainee medical staff were expected to work hard during their training. It may have been tough, but it gave us doctors who really, really wanted the vocation.
GPs are pretty damn well paid. The problem is the Sunak caused inflation. Basically, everyone is asleep with inflation at 2% or 3%, but thanks to Rushi Sunak, ( talk about failing upward ) we’ve now had inflation over 10% for a prolonged period.
And when the government trumpets that inflation is coming down, they may be correct, but what they don’t say it that inflation that’s been baked into the cake, never goes away. You lose the purchasing power of the currency permanently.
September 12, 2023
The globalist shills are intent on a capital gains tax grab without indexation and allowances removed. They analysed any remaining value in investment by the small BTL sector and decided to implement the WEF/ UN agendas of ownership by the corporate state. By legislating on HMOs, certification, licensing, energy, permanent tenancies and criminal prosecution along with increased mortgages and taxing unreal profits, they are forcing sales and taxing unreal gains. The banks and finance houses are buying up from small landlords at forced lower values and they will collect billions while removing private ownership.
September 12, 2023
It’s nice to have assets, but increasingly governments are putting restrictions on our use of them (e.g. ICE car) or threatening to take them away from us (e.g. gas boiler). If digital currency comes then that will be the end of it, not even inflation-eroded savings will be safe.
Unless we can get away from “you will own nothing and be happy”, assets look increasingly vulnerable to plunder by the elite.
September 12, 2023
Not just âniceâ but vital for a successful & wealth generating economy.
September 12, 2023
Have iPads and EVs been the beginning of it?
In various ways we donât really have complete autonomy over them even though we bear legal responsibility for them and have paid through the nose to have them.
September 12, 2023
This is very true and is being extended to other products, cars, washing machines, smart speakers, boilers, security cameras, smart meters often build in redundancy or enforces servicing schedules using chips and often sealed in but short lived batteries too.
A good monologue by Rees Mogg on the courts absurd ruling in the sad case of the 19 year old, this to try to mute criticism of the NHS it seems (on GBNews). In it he lists some of the very many NHS disasters Shipman, blood contamination, North Staffs, Pimodos, Thalidomide⊠but strangely he omits what seems to be the largest of these the coerced net harm Covid Vaccines this especially for the young. He surely must know this but perhaps he fears an Andrew Bridgen style loss of the whip for telling the truth?
Not like Mogg to be so lacking in backbone and honesty.
September 12, 2023
Indeed not only that they can force you into unfair contracts ones that keep changing and updating their terms that few can possibly read or understand or by constantly asking you again and again do you accept X until eventually you or someome else on you computers accidentally clicks the wrong button in error. Or do you accept this X yes or other options (which are not clear and take a very long to answer or understand in practice).
September 12, 2023
+++
Agree with both comments.
The you will be happy thing WAS originally said about the concept of hiring everything.
Well I WONâT be happy when my washing machine rats on me for using too high a temperature too often! And is then switched off centrally!
September 12, 2023
Yes, I’ve noticed that many links have removed their “reject all” button and to read the article you have to reject each company’s access to your data. One article, from a well-respected publication, I clicked on recently, had thousands of companies who would be given my data. I didn’t read the article.
September 12, 2023
What govt.s have done to landlords is shameful beyond disgusting.
Lured, encouraged, aided and abetted and then trapped big time.
How does one sell a rental at the moment? How does one afford council tax on an empty property?
And how about those veiled threats about giving the property over to the tenant?
September 12, 2023
Indeed
September 12, 2023
I am an over 50 year old landlord and Iâm terrified. Iâve mortgaged properties that are worth less than the outstanding mortgageâŠyes there are areas in the country where values have fallen over the last 20 yearsâŠyes, it was a mistake to go interest only but the tax situation at the time made senseâŠIâve always kept rents low to help the tenantsâŠand Iâm now having to pay tax out of my already taxed income to cover the tax on the profits I donât makeâŠsometimes I wonder whether I should just go bankruptâŠ.only pride stops me. Iâm not looking for sympathyâŠjust fairness.
September 12, 2023
Assets weighed down by even higher liabilities are worthless.
September 12, 2023
We, the people who believe in freedom of expression and to object and be respected, must take to the streets. Sir John won’t help of course there but is all that is left.
September 12, 2023
Geoffrey Robertson has a good article today in the Telegraph on the death of freedom of speech in the UK.
JRâs Pamphlet has an excellent agenda but clearly is is the complete reverse of the Sunak/Hunt Con-socialist Party.
The reason to leave capital with individuals is very simple they use and invest it far better than governments and civil servants do this especially after all the cost of collection and the damage done in this process. Also capital is attracted into the country is not encouraged to leave. See Milton Friedmanâs four types of money.
September 12, 2023
I think that belonging is probably as important as owning.
Those in charge have for years chipped mercilessly away at that.
The mushroom field down the road where countless summer fĂȘtes were held and autumn walks taken is part of that. Build on it and you not only take that away but you bring in people who do not belong.
The cry is âTread softlyâŠ.
How can money make up for that?
September 12, 2023
While I agree with almost everything you say SJR, this is not the age of Margaret Thatcher. The current government are not just wet they are marinated consocialists. The gap you talk of between government and labour is not the fundamental gap between Conservatives and Labour, there being very few Conservatives in the Parliamentary party, they are only existent among the electorate.
You are right to emphasise the creation of new villages and towns, rather than adding to existing communities.
I am all for offering more opportunities to small builders where you are adding to existing communities, but to achieve the impact necessary you must first only give building permissions to the effective monopoly of big builders for one year, after which there would be compulsary repurchase that is of no profit to the builder.
You must the build houses in factories on computer controlled production lines with all the flexibility of design you find in the car industry. The so called building industry would put in foundations and services or you would contract specialists to do the work. It is fhen only a matter if erection. It is the one sure way of reducing prices and putting quality back into the housing market.
Shares in the BBC would result in the Chinese French or Gemans owning it, just like all our other utility companies. Ir is desireable that the BBC is no longer a taxed service. Let them swjm in the commercial World.
It is too late for this government and too implausable for a manifesto, so best leave it to Reform.
September 12, 2023
The Tory Party have morphed into a socialist authoritarian nightmare. Bringing in more and more draconian legislation and regulation to force green backward ideology and mass immigration. When are the people going to wake up and remove all the legacies. They are wrecking all our quality of life, values and culture.
September 12, 2023
The mass ownership thing worked ( I think) very well for Mrs T. In terms of votes but it was not fair.
Why were some given thousands from the public purse in the form of council houses?
Did she realise that the houses would be immediately sold and that those suddenly deracinated folk would seep noisily into the larger community taking house price inflation with them? And destroying the culture of those who had to work for their possessions.
And I have no idea, but what effect did that democratisation of shares have? Are we partly paying for it now?
September 12, 2023
Everhopeful ,
Newly bought council houses were not immediately sold. Doing so would not make financial sense.Where would these cash rich sellers live, Portugal !!!
Near where I live they were enhanced and decorated and are now valuable assets. Appart from the law courts they are the only place you will find Palladian facades
It was the newly privatised shares that got sold so that most of our utilities are now in foreign hands.
September 12, 2023
In 1980 we, for our sins, moved onto a new housing estate in a village.
People at that time spoke to their neighbours and probably 90% of the purchasers had bought and then sold at profit their council houses. And then bought a brand new house.
Do you realise how cheap said council houses were? And how steeply and quickly house prices were rising then?
And that some people were just offered cash by the council to get out.
How do you know that the original buyers enhanced the houses near you?
September 12, 2023
Actually.
If you want ownership.
You need JOBS. With fair wages.
And NO immigration.
Both would be super easy for govt. to achieve.
Oh! If it hadnât shut down our main route to industry. Coal.
Ownership is NOT being given endless handouts.
It is NOT random elevation.
It is NOT spitefully giving some the life of a landed gentleman for free.
Nor is it taking from some and giving that to others.
Again the socialist interpretation of Christianity guilt trips everyone.
Ownership is not a gift of government âŠit is the fruits of labour.
September 12, 2023
Everhopeful, what would fair wages look like?
What would your minimum wage be? Would it be the same in every region, every postcode?
How do you rate people above that level? By paper qualification?
Or what chargeable work they produce as a unit?
Or by how efficient the service is that they offer, how would you rate that? For example our Council leaders are on fantastic money some much higher than the Prime Minister (ridiculous), yet have failed, are failing, and their clients aren’t happy but no matter who is elected they are imoveable.
September 12, 2023
I canât think that you donât know what a fair wage is.
September 13, 2023
I would like to know what minimum salary you think is fair.
If the current nlw = ÂŁ21,819.20 for minimum skills at 23 years of age 40 hours per week.
What do you think it should be ÂŁ25,000, ÂŁ30,000?
September 12, 2023
I was reminded, at the passing of this rotten Energy bill, of MP’s laughing and joking as they waived through (again) the draconian Corona Virus legislation.
We have moved on from government to The State, and it will take everything from us, as it dutifully follows WEF instructions.
September 12, 2023
And not forgetting the new, improved method of increased ownership – import people and give them subsidies.
September 12, 2023
The buying up of houses by councils to house refugees & others as priority is just another thing which angers & concerns people. Consider just one example, of Langtoft in Lincolnshire, a small rural community. Mixed reporting – headlines from BBC / D Expr (+DM) ( 16/18 Aug ) ” Council Leader defends new homes for refugees” and also ” Fury at plans to give homes away to refugees on new ÂŁ1.8m housing estate” but basically local people left at the bottom of the list as new homes not available until refugees housed.
September 13, 2023
Then they best vote that council out at the next opportunity.
September 12, 2023
Sir John, you say ‘The Conservative Party should facilitate wider public ownership’. Are you sure? The term ‘public ownership’ has traditionally meant nationalisation. Or is this a clever way of redefining an attractive sounding idea so that your adversaries can no longer use it?
Reply I mean ownership by the public, not state controlled or independent Board controlled state corporation.
September 12, 2023
‘the public’ are pretty poor at choosing who to run our assets. We have no choice, the head of the NHS isn’t elected, and she can fail time and time again without recourse and isn’t even questioned on our news.
September 12, 2023
Reply to reply. But what will the new BBC shareowners do with their shares, Sir John? Perhaps many will be sold to big corporate investors, as I believe happened with BT shares when Beatty and her like needed to raise some cash. We would then have even more complete corporate ownership of the media.
Just decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee, and you’ll quickly get the collapse of this ugly censorious ideologically obsessed institution that is so long overdue.
September 12, 2023
Meanwhile your party introduces legislation clearly designed to steal people’s homes using the green con Energy Bill. I’ve said it many times but I’ll repeat – politicians and government are at war with the people and all their posturing and faux concern for us are just a smoke screen.
September 12, 2023
I’m not a NIMBY, I don’t want the development in anyone else’s back yard either.
I want trees, and to restore our temperate rainforests.
September 12, 2023
How old is your house Dave, your families homes? Mine is 34 years old it was built on a field in a town designated for a lot of new housing, a new town, I find it ironic now that neighbours try to stop development that was planned 35 years ago and put on ice by the builders in the 90’s crash.
The places in town with the most green land and trees around them are the housing association areas, they are the least looked after, the least used and frequently suffer from anti-social behaviour from smashed glass to dog waste. The worst buildings in town are HA owned and council owned allowed to go to rack and ruin (save us from public ownership, we effectively own them (or the banks that bank roll the HA do, or is it financial institutions that own these HAs, but the people now entrusted with them are failing).
September 12, 2023
Fields were built on largely due to the silent immigration into cities.
âOverspillâ they called it when the natives were shunted out.
And having been silenced and dispossessed the indigenous city dwellers were glad to go to new towns.
For anti social behaviour you need to look to the inhabitants ( now unleashed in all areas taking their ideas and behaviour with them ). They were woefully let down by the system. Ill-educated and badly brought up.
Levelling down might describe it.
September 12, 2023
That’s another piece of nonsense that trees will solve all our problems. There are far far too many trees. They in most places destroy the visual and usable environment. In towns and villages they cut out sunlight and air circulation, they cause dampness and alongside roads are dangerous.
September 12, 2023
Of course your premise is correct. Now consider what the State, Monarch and the CofE own – then you can see the raw power they assert over and against so many.
Why do they own it – they pay no taxes.
I see many huge estates coming on the market for the first time in many hundreds of years, like the Rothbury Estate @ ÂŁ35 million. So the decennial tax is beginning to bite.
We need a 180degree turn back to the politics we used to have in this country and which John Redwood espouses every day.
September 12, 2023
++
Agree.
They got rid of the aristocracy using both WWs.
Acquisition of houses and land, death duties and deaths of sons.
Now theyâve learned a new trick. Or several.
September 12, 2023
Oh none of these noble families pay death duties. Everything is owned by trusts. But the decennial tax is a tax on those trusts. A friend owns a golf course and a young member of the local noble family came to play golf. He paid by cheque drawn on the âmiscellaneous account of the 9th Dukeâ – the current Duke is the 12th!
September 12, 2023
I think that aristocratic families have been very badly hit by death duties in the past.
Especially just after WW 2 when the Labour govt. vastly increased those taxes.
September 12, 2023
Certainly there are material threats to secuirty and wellbeing (pride and freedom) when ordinary middle-class jobs do not pay well emough for matching lifestyles, when the prospects for the majority of the young look so bleak and when the establishment cannot help through ignorance and indifference.
September 12, 2023
You know I’ve got to be honest I just don’t see it formula, amongst my kids and their friends, if they couple up and marry their lifestyles are better than those in the 1980s and 1990s and a lot better than in the 1960s and 1970s when people were trying to get by on one income.
There is a lot we could do with childcare help. Even people that I know that have never worked a day in their lives are running cars, 3-bed homes, one even has a large pool in her garden and bbq.
September 12, 2023
Off topic, here we go again:
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/uk-and-eu-emissions-trading-schemes-drifting-in-different-directions/
“The only route towards a full exemption from CBAM obligations is via the full participation of the EU ETS (as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway have done) or full linkage to the EU ETS (as Switzerland did). This means that, without linkage, UK exporters of CBAM-covered goods will face new administrative hurdles when selling into the EU, potentially reducing the appeal of their products.”
Of course we mustn’t mind about erecting administrative hurdles when selling to the rest of the world.
” CBAM also potentially creates distinct problems in respect of Northern Ireland. These could be made even more complicated if the UK implemented its own CBAM scheme … ”
Step by step we will be dragged back in to the regulatory orbit of the EU, and nobody is resisting.
September 12, 2023
Correct. They are aligning us to the planned terms for the “Associate Level of Membership” of the EU – outside the Eurozone.
It is to include Turkey, the remaining EFTA nations and Ukraine when the war ends.
That’s the plan Cameron put to Merkel before the EU Referendum, which she refused because she didn’t think we’d dare vote to leave or, if we did, ever get a Government which would permit it.
Macron revived the proposal about a year ago. It’s why the Treacherous Tories have refused to do anything to deliver benefits from Brexit and why Starmer can say with a straight face that Labour will not take us back into the EU.
September 12, 2023
If England was devolved too, could it decide its own path?
September 12, 2023
No because there would be no British Constitution and no Parliament to administer the same. So we would Chuck out 800 years of fighting for the greatest constitution of all time and give these pygmies the chance to âwrite a new oneâ. They have admitted that it would include âbeing a member of the EUâ.
Brilliant idea. Get the slaves to call for their own execution! Then oblige.
September 12, 2023
I’d like to think so, but with the present representation would we be any better off?
September 12, 2023
Denis yes of course it’s bound to happen Uk will have to rejoin the SM and the CU.. there is nothing else out there to compare and Britain badly needs trade with a large entity.. however there will be a cost from various quarters probably an irish demand for unity especislly since the DUP sre not performingb and then I wouldn’t be surprised if the Spanish might demand return of Gib – the unintended consequences
September 13, 2023
James 4, being short of time I will simply reproduce what I said in April:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2023/04/29/which-inherited-eu-laws-should-be-improved-or-removed/#comment-1385237
In 2022 the biggest market for UK producers was the UK domestic market, 64% of GDP.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02815/SN02815.pdf
Without taking into account various distortions exports to the EU made up 15% of GDP, only a quarter of home sales, while exports to the rest of the world made up the remaining 21% of GDP.
Before the referendum I used to say that 12% of GDP went as exports to the EU, so any idea that our exports to the EU have collapsed since we left the EU and its Single Market does not hold water.
We could do what Theresa May wanted and adopt EU standards for our domestic market, which would then apply to about 79% of our production. Alternatively, as about a third of our exports to the rest of the world go to the US:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7593/
we could adopt US standards for our domestic market, which would then apply to about 71% of our production. Exporters to the EU and to other countries around the world would have to be allowed to meet the requirements of each of their destination markets; in fact they should be required to do so by UK law, not just by the laws of their destinations or by any applicable WTO rules.
Of those two alternatives â align our regulations with the EU, or with the US, the first would cover 79% of our production while the second would cover 71%, so clearly the first would be slightly preferable, but much better would be to have the 64% covered by our own regulations under our own democratic control and have the rest required to meet the requirements of each of their export markets.
There could be rare cases where the UK could not accept some of the requirements of an export market on ethical or political or practical grounds, and then we should simply not export to them.
September 12, 2023
Sir John
âBritain needs China to hit net zero, says Kemi Badenochâ unbelievable headline in today media
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/11/britain-needs-china-reach-net-zero-says-kemi-badenoch/
Really! That means the UK needs China to exponentially pollute the World, so more UK jobs are lost so the UK can be the sole resolver of a World Wide hysteria, all the while more UK wealth in transported abroad in order to maintain the decline of the UK. – Nothing to do with NetZero, just anti UK by the Solcialist Party in Government
Net Zero, a UN concept is according to them a world wide problem. Stoking the fires literally and metaphorically in one part of the World, does not at any stage improve the prospects of any sort of NetZero.
September 12, 2023
@Ian B – Spying is a separate subject to NetZero and shouldnât appear at the same time. Hopefully the UK is spying just as much in China as they are here.
All that is needed is some reciprocity, trade with China or with any Nation for that matter, it should on an equal basis. What ever China wants from a UK company active in China should be reciprocated this end. Also transparency is needed generally, British Steel is not British it is Chineseâs(so why the use of British) and because the Conservative Government has lavished giveaways of UK taxpayer money on Indiaâs steel industry the Chinese now want the same.
But this UK Conservative Government wont just âgiveâ UK taxpayer money to actual UK Companies â who are they working for?
September 12, 2023
It’s odd that even those high nosed socialists that condemn the Tories so often, take full advantage of the right to own their own homes.
I’m not sure the Tories gained much from this policy, certainly it hasn’t converted any one.
As regards homes and so forth being taken away, the recent Energy Bill has all the answers — At a whim ministers will be able to add a new law to do anything they wish – Parliament will not bother to scrutinise any of them, they simply wave through such instruments.
Our homes are not safe at all – HMG will find ways to take them away if they feel we are not compliant.
Remember the WEF mantra – “You will own nothing and you will be happy”
September 12, 2023
– generally agree with your points but I do think all money from the sale of council houses should only be spent on building new council houses thus increasing the overall housing stock.
September 12, 2023
So, for every current council home sold, how many new ones could be built ( in the same area)?
Two, three? Half of one? Quarter of one?
September 12, 2023
Sir John
You always lucidly expound Conservative ideals and remind us of what Conservatism is 100% about.
By a long margin I would suggest the majority of the UK population are Conservatives â certainly those that work for a living.
That then begs the question were do we get a Conservative Government and Parliament? We all know to a man/woman this pretend Conservative Party is not Conservative, it just about a group of buddies that lied by suggesting one thing then ensuring the opposite is the result. These are 100% control freaks frightened by the people, hence the reason for the Chinese Communist control of the population.
The point missed by this WEF Socialist Cabal, is they are elected and paid to serve. If they were Conservatives they wouldnât dream of this dictatorship of cancel, punish and control. They would be freeing the people from the shackles of totalitarianism, they would be defending democracy and free speech. â In essence they would be standing back and allowing the whole nation to achieve its full potential by the removal of this weird as you have in part suggested before, yoke of Napoleonic style Laws and bureaucracy. We need âEnglish lawâ as practised by free sovereign democracies world wide, we need a real Conservative Government.
September 12, 2023
Is it unfair to question what goes on in your moderating mind. I ask because it is now 10.00 BST. I posted about an hour ago but so far nothing has happened. And yet our friend Lifelogic is currently sitting with seven, yes 7 contributions moderated. It begs the question, is Lifelogic your alta ego pen name.
September 12, 2023
No, I just woke up early today, try to say sensible things and I am careful not to libel anyone.
September 12, 2023
We can have no idea when Sir John can spare time to go to this site, and moderate.
In reality I share frustration, but prefer he stands up and voices what many here want to see happen, rather than cool my writer’s angst!
September 12, 2023
Opportunity for all!
Self Determination
Should be a Conservative guiding principles!
Glad to hear you restate them, during these Marxist times we are living through, lets hope Biden is Voted out next time!
Not that I think Trump is electable (A split GOP vote will bring the Demo back in, Marxism back in, to us)!
Ron Desantis would bring balance to the world, even if he is focused on the USA!
BR
RDM
September 12, 2023
Now come on John, get with the message.
You will own nothing and you ‘will’ be happy.
Our leaders have spoken. Even King Charles though to be fair he was simply someone previously known as Prince when he broadcast via the BBC the need for a ‘Great Reset’ (July 2020).
Not sure if Charles has taken the ‘own nothing’ part on board yet?
September 12, 2023
Of course he has. But he knows it won’t apply to him – or any other in the UN/WEF Eco Tyranny lobby.
September 12, 2023
Letâs have him go first. Well second now as Harry has gone first.
September 12, 2023
How many illegals could be housed in just 3 or 4 of his inherited palaces?
It might do his credibility a lot of good.
September 12, 2023
While your Thatcherite thoughts on more ownership are good there is not much left to sell, the shop is empty, and your party does not have the mindset to do it anyway.
Here is something you could achieve before Christmas. Our semiconductor designers are probably as good if not better than most in the World. However we seem incapable of setting up to manufacture them. In Taiwan there are at least ten companies with a combined annual sales of in excess of $100.00 Billion. Go talk to them with a view to setting up manufacture in the UK. Ideally in one of our Freeports, assuming you can find one in the long grass of politics. At the end we would have a means of capitalising on our creative talents, great export potential, security of supply for ouselves, and security from those who would flog off our assets at the first opportunity. Something positive for Badenoch to do, or just send Liz Truss as a special envoy as she has real experience. You need to get lite on your feet.
September 13, 2023
agricola
Your first paragraph rather hits the nail on the head.
They have sold just about everything. They already sell our personal information. Next will be our road network, as soon as pay-per-mile is introduced, and then the BBC and Channel 4.
Once pretty much everything is gone then they will turn on us. This is already happening to private small scale landlords.
We are being run by a bunch of Carpetbaggers.
September 12, 2023
Ownership is linked to wealth and that attitude of mind that creates initiative . I was born many years ago into a relatively poor enviroment where aspiration was a keen motivator . I was obliged to compete in a world of many challenges both here and abroad . Each corner turned meant rising to all sorts of challenges and keeping to a determination to succeed ; there were always obstacles of course . One of the results was I never had a mortgage or any sort of financial assistance . Today the political / economic climate is a different matter and motivation is seriously lacking ; the public are desperate for opportunity and change . Donna and formula57 ring the right bells .
September 12, 2023
Ownership indeed! Ownership of our lives has just been handed to faceless fascists in large corporations who will micro manage everything in our daily lives. We will soon only be able to buy smart appliances which will require an authorisation signal from Big Brother to carry out their designed function. Buying these devices will be pointless. The same goes for electric cars which will only charge at times convenient to the energy supplier.
We are heading back to an extreme form of the 1950s. No washing machines, no dishwashers, no cars, no central heating. The Conservative Party has made them all pointless.
The Conservative Party has just âunleashed the power of authoritarianism to destroy security and wellbeingâ.
September 12, 2023
Donât spend your life paying a mortgage to buy your own home when this thieving government will take it away from your family when you die or go into a care home. Just live for today and spend your hard-earned money on enjoying yourself, taking holidays, and eating out whilst they still allow it. The Thatcher days of benefiting from owning assets are long gone with this government’s constant taxing of the strivers and pandering to the feckless. The Conservative party has been infiltrated by left-wing Marxists and nodding dogs through their candidate selection process. Maybe the WEF is correct with its âyou will own nothing and be happyâ.
September 12, 2023
Perhaps we missed a trick and really should have enjoyed the full income and lived it up, all that security and passed on inheritance might count for nought before very long. State confiscation here we come!
September 12, 2023
The new Energy Bill is a direct contradiction to your comments today. Are you the only conservative MP left? What do your colleagues say when you talk to them? Do any of them read and agree with your diary? If you, as an MP presumably with access to the PM and Chancellor, can’t influence them, what chance do we have?
Has the quality and intelligence of our MPs ever been lower? We urgently need a proper recall system for MPs so they cannot just ignore what their voters want. Has any government ever been so opposed to what most voters want? No tax cuts, says Jeremy Hunt again and again, but why does he not take an axe to the spending of the government? What is the point of a Chancellor who just drifts along, making no effort to cut the cost of government, why is he there if he just accepts the status quo?
reply I do of course put my views to Ministers as well as publishing them here. The ownership views are popular in the party.
September 13, 2023
Reply to reply:
They are not much use for us though are they when your leadership does not go with it and in the main opposes you and the others.
Your mind remains entirely closed to revolt and change. Just carry on with the party comforts.
September 12, 2023
So all that hard work at some ungodly hour in the morning went to waste?
Not much point in commenting
Too near the bone for comfort?
Youâve already said that
Not Allowed pride in our past achievements because it shows why a mediocrity weâve become?
Has to be the reason as a friend agreed
NO I HAVENâT. SAID THAT BEFORE
Is this the latest method of censorship
September 12, 2023
Lester, seriously don’t comment then.
John Redwood puts this blog together in his own valuable time, he is sharing his views and thankfully allows us to comment, don’t you ever wonder why he does it day after day after day, including weekends? Getting insulted because he isn’t moderating fast enough, are you paying for this? NO.
You’ll be sorry when he stops, and your views aren’t seen at all by anybody. Now please stop and go elsewhere if you don’t like it.
September 12, 2023
A-Tracy
Great idea!
You have no clue about what the missing piece contained but you feel qualified to comment
Are you after brownie points, nothing Mr Redwood letâs through is permitted to upset any of his colleagues and none of the topics he mentions are ever acted on, or hadnât you noticed?
China is probably more liberal
Off to TCW, where people are free to post almost unlimited views
September 13, 2023
He stops my stuff too, Lester. I just speak as I see it, I don’t need any favour from anyone. If I didn’t like it here, as I stopped enjoying posting on ConservativeHome I just left.
John as an MP is in a much more difficult position on what he puts through than an independent site, as far as I’m aware it’s not run my any MPs.
September 12, 2023
I think there was a problem with the site as the whole post disappeared along with all the comments including mine. It then reappeared this morning minus the comments.
September 12, 2023
Christine
Yes, funny that, isnât it
Keeps happening to many would-be budding commentators
Freedom of speech or something?
When you mention subjects which are best avoided
September 12, 2023
Christine
Yes, funny that, isnât it
Keeps happening to many would-be budding commentators
Freedom of speech or something?
When you mention subjects which are best avoided
And NO I havenât Made that comment before
September 12, 2023
Christine
Yes, funny that, isnât it
Keeps happening to many would-be budding commentators
Freedom of speech or something?
When you mention subjects which are best avoided
And NO I havenât Made that comment before
And NO I havenât made that comment before
September 12, 2023
My friend agreed, too near the bone for comfort
Canât possibly admit the truth
He says that youâre up to your old tricks and the new look of honesty is built on a sham as we all suspected
Leopards donât change their spots
September 12, 2023
There is another aspect to ownership, of course, and that is, in the modern parlance, the âownershipâ of something you have done. With the statistics quite clearly showing massive increased excess deaths highest in the most jabbed populations, I wonder when governments or supranational organisations will deign to start looking into this?
September 12, 2023
Some things that we now accept, might start out as being well-meaning, but do in fact punish those that try to stand on their own two feet. We finish up with a blurring of the ownership intention.
Using State Pension as an illustration, but acknowledging the need to help and I donât have a real answer. You need to contribute for 30 years to qualify for a State Pension, meaning each week money leaves your earning to fund your future. However, if you fail to make the payments for what ever reason, the taxpayer then steps in and funds tax credits to make up the difference. So is that fair on those that contribute and the taxpayer?
As I said I donât have a real answer, but clearly there is a miss step, a disincentive throughout this Socialist Country called the UK where the reward for not playing a part, not contributing to any part of Society is to receive the same as those that do. I guess this is this version of Conservative Governments meaning of entitlement, if someone somewhere has worked hard, toiled to achieve something everyone else entitled to the same. What happens when everyone cottons on and sits back knowing they will be rewarded regardless? Who then is creating earnings and wealth?
September 12, 2023
But you havenât approved my original post
Very patriotic and respectful, harkening back to the days when our Country was respected throughout the world
When the sun never set on our Empire, the inhabitants didnât resent us, highlighting the deeds of our brave troops
Back to the time when we could build Battleships not little rowing boats with a little pop-gun, the sight of which instilled fear in our enemies?
Would King George have approved of the second highest award for valour, The George Cross being awarded to a bunch of TicTocktocking nurses?
Once upon a time you had to have defused one of the heaviest German bombs. A 1000 kg bombs, (a Satan) from a 25â hole in front of Westminster Cathedral
Iâm surprised that Her Majesty agreed to go along with Johnsonâs publicity stunt
He always had a deft touch for the most tasteless of publicity stunts
September 12, 2023
I have read your pamphlet over lunch and taken my time to digest it.
Who will back these employees and managers for owners to sell out to John? Who are you suggesting guarantors them and their overdraft? Banks are very wary of being burnt too often.
HA’s selling off 1,500 homes in 20 years didn’t build one replacement. It just doesn’t seem to happen in non-profits; the profits are too busy getting used for pay and benefits. I bet the managers now are on much more than they were, with an extra 1,500 homes to look after.
The homes that new builders are forced to build ‘affordable’, and ‘part-own’ are all tiny in the worst part of the estate (one in a regularly flooded area); they are built hastily and shoddily already have peeling paint on the bricks they painted over! They don’t seem to be owned now by the council, government or local HA but by another HA, Just what is going on?
September 12, 2023
Property Ownership. Mrs T started this ball rolling way back in the last century when she allowed long term council house tenants to buy their homes. However, she made the mistake of preventing the local council to use the income from those sales to build the required new council owned residences since the available numbers would be reduced by those buyers. Nevertheless, home ownership became an important achievement to many families.
It’s fair to say Conservatives started this ‘property ownership’ ambition but also are to blame for disabling the easy process. Tax gathering became the policy in the ConLibDem ‘twenty teens’ with Treasury ‘gifts’ like “Help to buy” and ‘Shared Ownership’, et al, for they increased the numbers of sales and thus Stamp Duty gains for the Treasury.
Unfortunately and clearly not considered beforehand, was the naked supply and demand product that grew with those sales and falling numbers of stock. Together with low interest rates and ultra low mortgage rates with less houses available to be bought, prices soared, to eventually be priced out of the market for too many people. Property sales stalled.
Now that rates and mortgages have risen, many of those who bought late are going to find they are in negative equity over the next few years and they are going to suffer as did we in the 80s.
So what will the Government do about that new fiasco? Just borrow more to help those in trouble? When the original plan was to pay down the debt!
Labour Minister John Reid once declared that the Home Office was not fit for purpose. I now wonder if that should also apply to Downing Street and the Treasury.
September 12, 2023
In my experience run-down properties are very likely to be from Tory council house sales where the original owners have moved on and nobody else wants to buy as they are in the middle of council estates so they are bought by landlords whose upkeep is manifestly worse than the Councils’.
The rentier economy does not deserve support and Tories that sell off public property for doctrinaire reasons don’t deserve support either.
September 13, 2023
Wouldn’t you think the Council or the HA would buy them back.
September 12, 2023
Sir John, Water capacity isnt even considered in planning. New builds in the southeast are in areas with frequent drought orders and no sewage capacity either. Then there is the built infrastructure promised by developers that never actually turns up. For instance near me there will be a super new GPs but all of us in the current village will have to taxi to it instead of walking. The promise of a new school has already gone. Also where are the jobs and transport for all these new people?
September 13, 2023
Why do you expect to actually visit it? The experience for how long is it now, 3 – 4 years? is that a few nurses work there, but GPs are at home on the dog & bone, if you are lucky.
We have a 3 storey palace in Wokingham where there is no need for cleaners – most of the rooms are never used.
September 12, 2023
Sir John Ireland is extraditing Ukrainians who have fled from the conflict in their country. Germany has just announced it is refusing to extradite Ukrainians seeking refuge in Germany. I canât find out whether we will afford these people asylum or not.
It is critical that they are spared else there will be no able bodied to occupy that country after the war. 77,000 have been killed since 4th June, this cannot continue!
September 12, 2023
Having reflected hard on this blog, I have become convinced there is a sharp distinction to be drawn between ‘personal ownership’ and ‘notional ownership’. Though they both entail the umbrella term ‘ownership’ they are very different things both in practice and in theory.
Personal or even family ownership, say of a house, a car or even a pet can (indeed generally does) cause emotional affection and is certainly valued and can have a considerable impact on somebody.
By contrast if one owns some company shares along with very many others, that is merely abstract and has no real impact on most people. If one owns some shares in say Tesco, or is a Member of the Nationwide or even a much smaller Building Society that has no emotional impact and is merely a financial investment.
Personal ownership is very good. For instance home ownership should be encouraged as people usually feel proud and happy to be homeowners and feel they have a greater stake in the wellbeing of both their home and their neighbourhood.
By contrast the real virtue in private ownership (rather than state ownership) of industry and services is not in a widespread popular capitalism (which was popular mainly in the 1980s as millions of people made money out of it from selling their shares) but through the financial discipline that private ownership brings. It ends the inherent inefficiencies of state ownership wherein managers don’t personally gain by efficiency (nor lose their jobs through poor financial management) and consequently mostly make big losses for taxpayers, usually without meeting real market demand.