The election 2015

One thing he didn't do . wear easy to wipe shell suits like Saville did...so thats a plus for him

The point about Thatcher is interesting..there was no love lost was there?...even though in that Thatcher TV job they showed that in the late 50's Heath was a big supporter of Maggie..they were friends then when she was first getting into politics..the friendship clearly turned to something else during 60's and 70's..i assume it was the leadership election in the mid 70's that spoiled it?
 
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I think Peter Cook made an intererting joke/comment. This isn't refferring to Heath..he went to a grammar

When asked about his school days.

"What did you mostly do at boarding school?"

Cook replied.."Spent much of my time avoiding being buggered".

Its not really a good start in life for a lot of people is it?..even allowing for PC's humour..then again..would that sort of joke even be made about anything else bar public school... is that how we would want to see our schooldays?..it certainly isn't for me...maybe schooling in the poorer sector does have advantages. Not as higher standard of education possibly as in private domain but at least the old ring piece stays intact.
 
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marble said:
Kids Company creator said today her service was under pressure from rising mental health clients or users. This is an example of where the government is pushing everything, including vulnerable people, onto charities.
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It's more complicated than that Marb.

The government are certainly trying to off load services onto the third sector to save money (it costs more in the long run) but a lot of these charities themselves are equally guilty of soliciting it.

What happens is you get the full timers in their well paid jobs in London based offices lobbying ministers and making frankly outrageous claims for their capacity to deliver. You also get generic groups like the CVS trying to build their own empires up. Combine this with politicians who have very limited experience as to how these things will pan out on the ground outside of any rose tinted policy briefings, and it's a receipe for chaos. It's how you end up with completely half baked ideas like 'the Big Society'

To politicians it can all look very attractive though, but as I say, they never see what it looks like on the sharp end. Even on a sanitised ministerial visit all the crap is concealed for the day, which is why Cameron fell hook line and sinker for Kids Company and became besotted with their CEO

My own experience is that the third sector is not only poor and incredibly unreliable, they're also much more prone to corruption than any other sector operating. You honestly have to watch them much more closely than you would any private sector company that recieves a grant or loan from public funds.

Your typical project is local in nature and run by 1 or 2 dominant individuals who possess a much greater wealth of knowledge of what is going on within the set up than any nominal body of trustees with oversight responsibility. It's a reciepe for disaster. Far from being gallant angels, a significant minority of these third sector projects are personal fiefdoms run on the margins of acceptable accountability and practise, and often depend on some dubious patronage from local politicians to sustain their continual award of grant, on which they become operationally dependent
 
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Unfortunately there's a lot of truth in what you say, Warbler, and your point about the need to keep a close eye on charities is entirely right. There's also a tendency for charitable bodies to proliferate and duplicate because strong personalities prefer to set up their own organisations rather than work with each other.

On the other hand many organisations make a huge contribution.
 
I get your point, Warbler.

One of Andy Burnham's big policies is to link Social care with health care.
I was arguing they should work more closely at least 10 years ago at relevent conferences.

At that time the two services were miles apart, and it seemed a fair comment that the two should link more closely.

Now I get the impression our politicans see this as some massive new way to save more money.

I support things being linked up to improve standards of care, whereas of course some people want things 'linked up' to simply save money.

I'm not in a position to accuse Andy Burnham of wanting this yet, (although in truth his idea is 10 years old), but its a point worth making.

Its the same situation with the third sector I think. Linking with social services for example should be done to improve standards of care provided, first and foremost.

On a wider point, we have to accept, (and I'm sure someone who works within the EU like Grey would acknowledge this), that big public/charitable organisations get things wrong too, in the same way bankers did, but in different circumstances and for different reasons.

Just take the New Labour 'overspend' in the good years.
Coming out of a period of Thatcher domination, when your are spending billions to improve schools, hospitals, and public services, what is so strange about some of that money being overspent?

Surely better to have spent money improving things than to have never spent anything at all, which is what we now have with Cameron and Osbourne?

When spending billions central government make mistakes.
The sooner someone explains why this is the case to the public the better.

Otherwise this country is looking at an austerity package that is going to carry-on and be justified for a generation after it was actually required.
 
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I've no problem accepting some money gets wasted in the public sector, EU budgets included, Marble
 
Having worked for some years in the area of tax fraud in the charitable sector I can confirm that the amount of corruption and fraud in that area is massive. Crooks are well aware of the benefits of being associated with charities and the reluctance and reticence of anybody to question them let alone subject them to any sort of rigorous scrutiny.
 
Grasshopper said:
The calimitous global downturn of 2008-2009 is all the evidence you need that a runaway housing market will eventually correct itself, Arthur.
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Just been re-reading this thread and I think this is my favourite post in it. A global recession is an effective means of correcting increases in the housing market. Splendid stuff. The banks are in good hands. :)

A close second is the repeated refusal of the right to accept that paying out large sums of your monthly income on something constitutes a cost, regardless of whether the purpose of the payment is to (hopefully) make more money.
 
I've been trying to model something along this by way of investigation, but sadly have run up against the evasive ONS who are systematically concealing the data

Can anyone lay hands on a recent figure for the median fulltime incomes for young people (22-29) for London and the South East please. I can get figures by region, but they don't appear to then overlay it with age brackets. Also their spreadsheet doesn't present the data either. Finally they produce a bar chart, for age brackets but this is visual only with a scale long the x axis that invites you to guess

The other critical piece of info I'm after (and again the ONS conceal this) is the average private rent for a 1 and 2 bedroom dwelling in London and the South East. The ONS have obviously take data but rather than tell us what it is, they've converted it into a Z score and the present it as figure against an index of 100 (in other words they've got out their way not tell you what the actual figure is)

The chances are I might be able to get this second figure from an estates agents survey like the Halifax, but I tend to be mildly suspcious of when government's have deliberately gone out their way to ensure they don't give you data that they do so because it paints a very grim picture
 
Desperate Dan said:
Having worked for some years in the area of tax fraud in the charitable sector I can confirm that the amount of corruption and fraud in that area is massive. Crooks are well aware of the benefits of being associated with charities and the reluctance and reticence of anybody to question them let alone subject them to any sort of rigorous scrutiny.
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To a large extent it's about the public's perception of what the charitable/ 'third' sector is all about. The myth pedalled by politicians and media is that it's gallant volunteers manning telephone lines and standing in High Streets doing fantastic work in areas targetted at hard to reach communities. This isn't completely without foundation, but it also misses some vital things out. What the public don't see is the full time well paid staff sitting behind the scenes who are often creaming off very nice salaries operating their own personal fiefdoms, and in a very unregualted manner, and frequently out of the view of scrutiny.

There is also a massive (and I mean massive) capabilities issue in this sector. Organisations who rely on people to volunteer can just easily discover that the same folk decide to unvolunteer without any material loss, which means the tail can end up wagging the dog. Basically it becomes near on impossible to apply strategic management and disciplines to the groups focus. If people suddenly find they're being asked to do things they don't want to do, and to do them by a manager they don't like, they simply walk off the job leaving a massive hole behind them

In some cases though it can work, but this is nearly always the result of one or two high calibre individuals. The moment they leave the organisation it normally falls apart and degenerates into infighting (especially if it's a community project). There is another issue related to this that also causes problems, and that involves politicians misusing a mythical concept called 'best practise'. David Cameron was fond of quoting a community project from Balsall Heath, Birmingham in many of his speaches in this area, and name checking its leader. Now I know nothing about the legitimacy of this particular project, but I do know that these types of things tend to be cherry picked, and weeks of preparation is done in advance of a ministerial visit. Civil Servants and Local Authority staff go out their way to ensure that the politician gets an incredibly sanitised view. The danger then is that the stupid politician goes away inspired and starts to form the idea that this model can be rolled out nationwide (often at a huge cost). This is how Cameron came out with his ill fated 'big society' idea. More times than not however, you aren't witnessing best practise at all, but rather a high calibre indvidual(s) who've personally driven the success of a project. You could bottle the 'best practise' model and hand it to low calibre individuals and it will fail. Similarly, you could saddle the high calibre individuals with a poor practise model, and they'd still salvage something from it

Another thing that is often overlooked with this sector is that it's incredibly self serving. That is to say its primary focus is on funding rather than delivery. I've included this link for jobs

http://jobs.thirdsector.co.uk/jobs/

Just look at the percentage of jobs advertised as fundraisers, or bid writers etc. What this translates to in reality is the government (or EU) creates a pot of money and various raptors from the sector then submit an on going barrage of bids to access it. The weakness with this approach is that it isn't demand led. No one says 'what do you need', what they do instead is say this is what we're prepared to fund, and so the organisation then sets about creating a service to match the needs of the funder rather than the needs of the client group

There will be dozens of examples of these kind of projects which are being funded from the public purse operating in every UK local auhtority. In the case of Kids Company it is so called officials (civil servants) who red flagged it. As is normally the case however, a politician (Cameron in this case) intervenes to over rule them and sanctions the award of further funding. In my mind this often makes them culpable of third party corruption, as the reason for the over rule (especially in local authorities) is directly related to their own electoral prospects.

I've seen it happen loads of times. Poor quality projects with political patronage continue to get funded, whilst plenty of worthy ones are rejected. Monitoring Officers who are aware of what's happening are coerced, and at worst, threatened, about drawing the detail in for scrutiny. Instead they fund them, cross their fingers, and frankly hope that no one shines too bright a light into this sector and people start to discover what really goes on there. Invariably these projects are 100% grant fund dependent, and the moment that gets shut off, they close, usually (unlike a proper capital infrastructure or building programme) with no legacy
 
Warbler said:
I've been trying to model something along this by way of investigation, but sadly have run up against the evasive ONS who are systematically concealing the data

Can anyone lay hands on a recent figure for the median fulltime incomes for young people (22-29) for London and the South East please. I can get figures by region, but they don't appear to then overlay it with age brackets. Also their spreadsheet doesn't present the data either. Finally they produce a bar chart, for age brackets but this is visual only with a scale long the x axis that invites you to guess

The other critical piece of info I'm after (and again the ONS conceal this) is the average private rent for a 1 and 2 bedroom dwelling in London and the South East. The ONS have obviously take data but rather than tell us what it is, they've converted it into a Z score and the present it as figure against an index of 100 (in other words they've got out their way not tell you what the actual figure is)

The chances are I might be able to get this second figure from an estates agents survey like the Halifax, but I tend to be mildly suspcious of when government's have deliberately gone out their way to ensure they don't give you data that they do so because it paints a very grim picture
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Nonsense. There is nothing to hide and it simply does not matter because rents are market rate as they always have been.

In fact I would take a guess that there is more rentable property available in the se than before given the rate of conversions and small new builds in recent times.

you are trying to find something that simply doesn't exist.

also the "average" is meaningless. You can but property in Hastings for 90k and taht would be a annual rent on some one bed properties in mayfair

I think this a abolsutely pointless argument but the place next to us is rented. It's two bed and very convenient for ts station into London and it's a smart area we live in. It's chanegs hands quite a lot and has been heavily refurbished. We watch the rent when it's on the market with interest and it has barely changed in last 6 years. In fact it's about £1600 a month now and I think it was £1200 about ten years ago. That's probably in line with inflation but it's certainly less than property value rise . There is a lot of rental property about
 
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simmo said:
Just been re-reading this thread and I think this is my favourite post in it. A global recession is an effective means of correcting increases in the housing market. Splendid stuff. The banks are in good hands. :)

A close second is the repeated refusal of the right to accept that paying out large sums of your monthly income on something constitutes a cost, regardless of whether the purpose of the payment is to (hopefully) make more money.
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Hopefully? I am pretty minted through property mate. so is just about everyone I know . Quite a few mates worth over a million easily and never paid a fraction of that

I wonder what % of property owners have not made money in last 30 years?

There is a massive difference between a cost and an " outgoing". A pension contribution is a outgoing but to refer to it as cost would be absurd. I hope you are not sitting any accountancy exams soon

i used to remeber Northern acquaintances sneering about the cost of property and mortgages in Lundun ( as they say) back in the eigthties . who's laughing now . Fcking planks
 
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simmo said:
A close second is the repeated refusal of the right to accept that paying out large sums of your monthly income on something constitutes a cost, regardless of whether the purpose of the payment is to (hopefully) make more money.
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Unless you plan on living in a puddle, you are going to bear a cost no matter what. This is hardly being disputed, simmo.

You can either rent, and shell-out monthly for the privilege of having a roof over your head, with nothing to show for it........or you can buy, and shell monthly for the privilege of having a roof over your head, with the accrued value on the asset coming back to you when you sell.

There are no other options, other than the puddle.
 
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clivex said:
you are trying to find something that simply doesn't exist.
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Never have you spoken a truer word. The question I'm asking, is why doesn't it exist? It used to!!!

As regards your attack against the use of averages. It barely merits a comment so dim it is.

Think about it. You're saying that you can't use averages becauses data sets are made up of multiple different values - wow wee - you don't say!!! And yet with no sense of irony, you're happy to invoke your own next door neighbour as a proxy indicator instead (a sample of one) admittedly with no variation in the dataset, I'll give you that much anyway!

You have to start somewhere to try and get a picture Clive, and you're more than happy to invoke averages when it suits an argument you're trying to make, or are you introducing a new concept in quantitative analysis; 'the selective average'. Your argument about Hastings is of course superfluous and just an attempt to distract. Just to assist you though, I will help you by explaining how a fairer statistical investigation would approach that.

You would take the view that Hastings appears in the bottom decile (or research it to find out where it is using the SOA decile housing domain score), and therefore confine your search to the bottom decile for the corresponding salaries so as to ensure that you're comparing like with like. Your implied suggestion that we'd compare Hastings with Central London is simply bereft of understanding as how quantitative techniques are applied. In urban geography we have something called Super Output Areas which allows you to drill down to neighbourhood level, but you need an OCSI subscription to access it. So long as you're comparing like with like, it doesn't matter. Where on the scale you intercept it however does, although ideally you'd do so at each decile

Ideally you'd like to draw all the data from the same source, but this isn't going to be possible with the ONS as they're systematically refusing to present the housing data. As I've said, they've taken the averages and converted them into Z scores. This is a more lengthy process. They won't have done this for ease of collection and presentation, and they could easily have included the hard data in an attached spreadsheet, but they've systematically failed to do so. From the Z score they're introduced a meaningless index. It's a clear attempt to avoid presenting the bottom line figure, as the Z score is a product of the original data!!! They've clearly had it at some point to build the index

If you're so confident that "there is nothing to hide" perhaps you'll accept the challenge of finding it? I doubt you will somehow (I am sure it exists incidentally - or should be capable of being extracted) - but right now I can't lay hands on it

The opening sentance I posted in that post was

"I've been trying to model something along this by way of investigation" - basically if you were a fair minded and balanced indvidual (which you doubtless are) you would realise I don't know the answer and am therefore investigating it. I don't know what i'll find, but it would be a lot easier if the government weren't hiding behind Z scores and index's to try and conceal the figure

 
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simmo said:
Just been re-reading this thread and I think this is my favourite post in it. A global recession is an effective means of correcting increases in the housing market. Splendid stuff. The banks are in good hands. :)
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Taken out of context like only a muppet Yesser could manage. :D

Please refer to my earlier point regarding the requirement to put-up a minimum (usually) of 10% collateral before you will get anywhere near a mortgage. Seven years ago, the same organisations were signing-off on 125% mortgages.

That's self-correction in action, and it's happening now - long after the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
 
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clivex said:
Hopefully? I am pretty minted through property mate. so is just about everyone I know . Quite a few mates worth over a million easily and never paid a fraction of that

i used to remeber Northern acquaintances sneering about the cost of property and mortgages in Lundun ( as they say) back in the eigthties . who's laughing now . Fcking planks
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nice

of course people scoffed at London prices...anyone on an ordinary wage will have had to struggle very hard to pay those types of mortgages.

its all money with you Clive isn't it?..you judge people on how much they have..if you have little you are thick tw@t..if you have lots you are a very clever person. A very simple way of judging people i think..and ill judged imo
 
clivex said:
Warbler. Why would the authorties wish to hide rentals when they are on fcking zoopla?
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That's the question I'm asking Clive :lol: I take it incidentally that 'zoopla' equates to good? The payment of rent however is a flow. If they're good for someone, they're probably bad for someone else.

What they've done is convert them into a Z score, fail to attach the original spreadsheet (as they have done for plenty of other tables) and then finally, they've taken those Z scores to form the basis of their own index. The effect looks to have been to produce some largely inpenetrable table that has bunched the regional prices much closer together (and I mean much, much closer) than any industry survey I've ever seen. It's a deliberate attempt to conceal something.

I think the execrise should still be capable of being performed, but it's going to mean drawing data from different sources. It should present a broadly informative snapshot though

Incidentally, on the subject of averages, do you know who has the highest test match batting average in history? It ain't Don Bradman
 
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Grasshopper said:
Taken out of context like only a muppet Yesser could manage. :D

Please refer to my earlier point regarding the requirement to put-up a minimum (usually) of 10% collateral before you will get anywhere near a mortgage. Seven years ago, the same organisations were signing-off on 125% mortgages.

That's self-correction in action, and it's happening now - long after the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
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It is happening now, long after the 2008-09 crisis, as a result of the same crisis - as you well know. Our mutual acquaintance refers to it as "responsible banking" - I know, because I had to listen to their pish while I was taking my mortgage out. The context you used it in was as a rebuttal of the suggestion that there should be government intervention on banking activities. Which is hilarious.

As for clive's continued refusal to accept that a mortgage payment reduces the amount of disposable income that a person has, regardless of whether or not you call it a cost or an outgoing, I'm beginning to suspect that he hasn't shed his thick northerner roots as much as he'd like to think. No one was talking about accountancy, or macro-economics - the discussion was about the micro-economics of managing a household budget. I have one eye on the future with regard to my mortgage (still deciding the best way to release equity from it before death mind you!), but that doesn't reduce the payments that I have to make from my disposable income right now.
 
simmo said:
It is happening now, long after the 2008-09 crisis, as a result of the same crisis - as you well know. Our mutual acquaintance refers to it as "responsible banking" - I know, because I had to listen to their pish while I was taking my mortgage out. The context you used it in was as a rebuttal of the suggestion that there should be government intervention on banking activities. Which is hilarious.

As for clive's continued refusal to accept that a mortgage payment reduces the amount of disposable income that a person has, regardless of whether or not you call it a cost or an outgoing, I'm beginning to suspect that he hasn't shed his thick northerner roots as much as he'd like to think. No one was talking about accountancy, or macro-economics - the discussion was about the micro-economics of managing a household budget. I have one eye on the future with regard to my mortgage (still deciding the best way to release equity from it before death mind you!), but that doesn't reduce the payments that I have to make from my disposable income right now.
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thank goodness someone else has posted re what we were actually discussing..the realities of money in..money out.

there is no way someone aged 25 now faces an easier time than he did 1971 re buying an equaivalent property/lifestyle..and eating every week with whats left. Thats why the average age of people living with parents is something ike 33/34 now isn't it?

someone aged 33/34 in 71 would have been well into paying for his home by that age...a decent one too...not a fookin cupbard in some part of London..and have money to live on..even though food was more expensive
 
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