[toronto353]

(Original post by stanlas)
Don't panic, the second reading has been costed at just over a billion pounds.

At that cost I am. Have you actually costed it in terms of how we raise that money as well?

UK bonds yields in RL are currently very low, at under 2%; we can assume that TSR ones will be at the same level (or perhaps even lower). We have room for manouvere.

Yes, but £70 billion isn't exactly room for manoeuvre. Your use of that phrase is rather hilarious for this kind of money.

Obviously, thats a matter of perspective. Not sure if the socialists agree with you on that. Or Labour, for that matter.

Well no, but that's mainly because the left wing has some magical money tree in the land of elves and pixies that they're using to fund all these wonderful projects and that they won't share with the real world. The Socialist viewpoint is one of economic ruin.

Certainly, there may be protests in specific areas. However, the 1 million houses are going to be built over some 15 years and in a country with over 200,000 km squared of land; I'm sure there is space somewhere. Our population density may be high, but its certainly not the highest in the world (or even in Europe).

Well you haven't answered my question (again). Where do we build 1 million homes? Give me some locations that you feel won't upset residents and will be easy to access. Because if you build these houses in some of this 200,000 square kilometres that is currently quite inaccessible, you need to build roads and local amenities. You know as well as I do that a lot of that land is probably too far away from major roads which are needed for the companies to bring building equipment to the sites. It probably isn't 200,000 square kilometres. For example, the Highlands. Are you including that in your total? If so, that's a bit misleading to say the least isn't it?

The rest of your questions were about other sections, and I'm afraid that I can't answer those fully as I am only really familiar with section 4. I'm sure one of the socialists will come and answer them soon.

Of course, much like their swift response in the first reading (oh wait, my questions were ignored there).

[internetguru]

This is a horrible bill which aims to hurt everyone. It attacks the working class by removing the right to buy scheme. It attacks the middle class by borrowing money which they will largely be paying back in the future. This bill only aims to house the growing underclass.

[MacDaddi]

Costings?

[Lipvig]

No, I just would not feel comfortable ever repealing the right to buy scheme unless something happened in the future that would be vital for it to be removed. This is not the case, and I very much doubt there ever will be a case I can fully agree with.

Also, you say that local citizens will be given one extra vote, but how will that work if say, councillors were split 50-50 in favour and local people split 50-50 in favour?

[toronto353]

(Original post by MacCuishy)
Costings?

Oh no you see, the Socialists and the other backers of this Bill clearly don't feel that this needs costing at all. They'll prune a couple of branches from their money trees to fund this.

[paperclip]

(Original post by toronto353)
Oh no you see, the Socialists and the other backers of this Bill clearly don't feel that this needs costing at all. They'll prune a couple of branches from their money trees to fund this.

It says a lot that the majority of criticism the right can come up with rests on costings. Yawn.

[Left Hand Drive]

YES

[toronto353]

(Original post by paperclip)
It says a lot that the majority of criticism the right can come up with rests on costings. Yawn.

I have numerous other criticisms, but your party doesn't seem to like to address my criticisms (see first reading). The costings issue is one of my concerns though. Why is it that the left aren't fiscally responsible?

[Abiraleft]

(Original post by toronto353)
I have numerous other criticisms, but your party doesn't seem to like to address my criticisms (see first reading). The costings issue is one of my concerns though. Why is it that the left aren't fiscally responsible?

What questions from the first reading remain unanswered? I did my best to cover all of them in the thread for the second reading. I specifically remember apologizing, digging up stuff from the first thread and asking you if that was all.

[paperclip]

(Original post by toronto353)
I have numerous other criticisms, but your party doesn't seem to like to address my criticisms (see first reading). The costings issue is one of my concerns though. Why is it that the left aren't fiscally responsible?

Who the **** gives a ****? I really couldn't care if you want to argue "the left aren't fiscally responsible". This is a model house of commons for ****s sake, can we not just debate a bill based on its merits and flaws, rather than costing every single bill. That would just become incredibly boring and tedious. We've had the debate about a budget before, and we have decided that it is just too much to ask. Quite frankly, i couldn't give a rats arse if the sum of your criticism is to do with balancing a budget, if it were something insanely ridiculous, like giving free cars to everyone, then i'd understand. But this is quite clearly a principled bill and the debate to it really can be approached in a more meaningful way. Moreover, the bill doesn't say that every house will be appropriated, it devolves such power to local authorities and mentions no increase to budgets for LAs, therefore, they can make that decision - why do you want central government to impose all these measures on LAs, they can make the decision whether they want to make use of it. I've got a ****ing brilliant idea of where the money can come from, we can stop MPs expenses scandals, we can stop writing of the tax bills of massive multi nationals over dinner, or we can stop paying the CEOs of state owned banks so ****ing much.

Every ****ing bill for gods sake. If you've got nothing better to do with your time than estimate where every penny comes from for every single legislation then i really couldn't care less. I'm trying to have some fun and debate what i would do with a country, yes it may be slightly unrealistic but you don't see Halo fans complaining. Get a life.

****ing tories.

[tehFrance]

(Original post by paperclip)
****ing tories.

****ing Socialists

In all honesty this is a bill that will never have support from the right and those that do support it on the right are not right wingers and should leave.

[paperclip]

(Original post by tehFrance)
****ing Socialists

In all honesty this is a bill that will never have support from the right and those that do support it on the right are not right wingers and should leave.

Precisely. But why can't we just discuss the legislation for its pros and cons? To be honest, i couldn't give a **** how the right votes. Labour, Socialists and Stanlas make up about 23 MPs, if you guys really wanna start going into costings i won't even bother debating and encourage my party to send this straight to a vote. If the few of the lib dem lefties are really persuaded by your costing argument then more the fool them. The reason we didn't just do this because it is fun to debate, but i guess the right just live such dull lives that they gain some enjoyment from costing every single little thing.

EDIT: I've got an exam tomorrow, **** this ****.

[toronto353]

(Original post by paperclip)
Who the **** gives a ****? I really couldn't care if you want to argue "the left aren't fiscally responsible". This is a model house of commons for ****s sake, can we not just debate a bill based on its merits and flaws, rather than costing every single bill. That would just become incredibly boring and tedious. We've had the debate about a budget before, and we have decided that it is just too much to ask. Quite frankly, i couldn't give a rats arse if the sum of your criticism is to do with balancing a budget, if it were something insanely ridiculous, like giving free cars to everyone, then i'd understand. But this is quite clearly a principled bill and the debate to it really can be approached in a more meaningful way. Moreover, the bill doesn't say that every house will be appropriated, it devolves such power to local authorities and mentions no increase to budgets for LAs, therefore, they can make that decision - why do you want central government to impose all these measures on LAs, they can make the decision whether they want to make use of it. I've got a ****ing brilliant idea of where the money can come from, we can stop MPs expenses scandals, we can stop writing of the tax bills of massive multi nationals over dinner, or we can stop paying the CEOs of state owned banks so ****ing much.

Every ****ing bill for gods sake. If you've got nothing better to do with your time than estimate where every penny comes from for every single legislation then i really couldn't care less. I'm trying to have some fun and debate what i would do with a country, yes it may be slightly unrealistic but you don't see Halo fans complaining. Get a life.

****ing tories.

Do you even bother reading what I have put? I said that I had numerous other criticisms, but you seem unable or unwilling to actually address those criticisms at all and resort to some expletive filled, pointless rant. Unless you actually bother to address those criticisms in your reply, then don't bother replying at all because I'm not dealing with some idiot who can't read and whose vocabulary is that limited that most of his posts are filled with expletive after expletive.

(Original post by Abiraleft)
What questions from the first reading remain unanswered? I did my best to cover all of them in the thread for the second reading. I specifically remember apologizing, digging up stuff from the first thread and asking you if that was all.

That is, but it's a fun little thing to bring up. In all seriousness, I have new concerns besides the costs issues which I have mentioned, but I've had no answer to yet. They're in this thread.

[stanlas]

(Original post by toronto353)
Yes, but £70 billion isn't exactly room for manoeuvre. Your use of that phrase is rather hilarious for this kind of money.

UK government debt is going to be somewhere around £1.2 trillion by 2027, so its roughly 5% of total debt; in other words, large, but not impossible to raise. This year alone we will raise over a hundred billion pounds in government bond sales.

(Original post by toronto353)
Well you haven't answered my question (again). Where do we build 1 million homes? Give me some locations that you feel won't upset residents and will be easy to access. Because if you build these houses in some of this 200,000 square kilometres that is currently quite inaccessible, you need to build roads and local amenities. You know as well as I do that a lot of that land is probably too far away from major roads which are needed for the companies to bring building equipment to the sites. It probably isn't 200,000 square kilometres. For example, the Highlands. Are you including that in your total? If so, that's a bit misleading to say the least isn't it?

I'm afraid I can't give you a list of places to build new homes, as that information is not available to me. However, I could found a government plan from the BBC for “about 450,000 mainly affordable homes will be built by 2015.” The scheme doesn’t seem to be going anywhere (surprise, surprise), but if the government thinks there is enough space to build 450,000 houses by 2015, there should easily be enough space to build a million by 2027 (as we have a longer timeframe to find space). That's enough evidence for me at any rate the there is spare land available.

[Stiff Little Fingers]

(Original post by toronto353)

That is, but it's a fun little thing to bring up. In all seriousness, I have new concerns besides the costs issues which I have mentioned, but I've had no answer to yet. They're in this thread.

Which concerns are these?

I've had a skim through and from what I can see the mains ones are the repeal of the right to buy scheme and (without wanting to start people off flogging a seemingly dead horse again) the costings?
Adorno's mentioned that since the Right to Buy scheme was introduced, the backlog of people waiting for social housing has increased quite substantially (whether the two are connected in the way I'm assuming (housing being sold = fewer houses = greater waiting time) is another discussion) and the costing has been, I would suggest, fairly comprehensively covered?

[obi_adorno_kenobi]

(Original post by tehFrance)
****ing Socialists

You and your banana. Is this all just because yours is unpeeled?

Btw: No one has answered my observation on p. 1 of this thread. Can I throw a hissy fit now too?

[jesusandtequila]

With regards costing - the figures for building an extra 1.03m houses and bringing others into public ownership represents a largish reduction in the land value tax base, no? Bringing it into public ownership means the owner is government, and so it's government paying government for owning this, which is a net zero.

Furthermore, considering the incentive effects the LVT has, and has been evidenced where it's been implemented, the housing shortage will be nowhere near as large (especially in the longer term) given that people have to pay to hold land. As such, land is put to it's most efficient use - since there's no incentive just to hold and speculate, since any increases in land value aren't realised in an increase in the capital price (since rental value increases are captured by the future tax), and likewise no increase in rental values. This stops people making a living off land speculation.

In addition, any land which isn't being used by the owner, they have an incentive to sell it, since it's costing them money to hold the deed, and speculation (which is only originally a problem because of planning permission regulations) doesn't pay off.

We've seen huge drops in housing shortages where it's been implemented in RL, and I don't see why that wouldn't be the case in TSR-land. I don't see the fairness argument for being able to compulsory purchase something at below market value (however you may be determining that without putting it on the market) and without the consent of the owner, who is paying the cost to the community they impose by excluding others from that land.

Oh, and to argue that something is abandoned if it's been on the market for over 6 months is odd. What if the housing market (as is in RL) is just really, really slow. Things can take longer than 6 months to sell under normal circumstances. Doesn't this give anyone wishing to sell a house an incentive to mark it up by 50-60% more, leave it to have no buyers and have the council buy it at 80% of the listed price? Thus costing the council huge amounts and making houses even more unaffordable. Furthermore, since you repeal the right to buy - and are appropriating private homes, you're going to drive up the cost of them even more (through reducing the stock of private housing) and thus driving a wedge between council houses and private accommodation, leaving more people trapped in social housing for their lives. No chance of moving up the ladder.

Oh, and the right to buy has a 0 effect on the housing shortage problem. Someone in a council house, then exercising their right to buy reduces the stock of council housing by 1, and the number of houses needed for social housing by 1. Net effect? 0. The problem has been a long-term lack of provision (which is an issue with, or without the right to buy) if you're on the Left, and a lack of tackling of the root causes of homelessness if you're me, not the right to buy.

This is a big No No No from me.

[tehFrance]

(Original post by obi_adorno_kenobi)
You and your banana. Is this all just because yours is unpeeled?

Yes me and my banana

Are you saying I have a foreskin my banana is peeled

[obi_adorno_kenobi]

(Original post by tehFrance)
Yes me and my banana

Are you saying I have a foreskin my banana is peeled

Argh, I can't speak English today. I've spent the whole day operating in French for no reason other than I dreamt in French last night and haven't got out of it yet. Yes, I meant peeled rather than unpeeeled in the previous reply. Rather spoiled the joke.

[obi_adorno_kenobi]

(Original post by jesusandtequila)
This is a big No No No from me.

You're missing a No. There's four clauses.