Should government fund mass house building - city size of London needed

[Mr Prime]

How very arrogant. Pointless people? Is this a new Tory phrase? Doing away with the "pointless people"!

 

It's not political, I've never voted Tory. Given a choice of beautiful land or Jeff and Denise and their 2 brats living in some legoland with the Ford on the drive it's no contest.

[fake]

Exactly. But getting people in social housing to downsize voluntarily isn't easy. The amount of housing benefit paid to a single person on full benefits/pension credit is enough for them to live in a family sized council house. No incentive there to downsize!

 

Family sized social housing properties are in such short supply that some local authorities are offering cash incentives to people to give up a three or four bedroomed houses and move into a one or two bedroomed property. Its only what many owner occupiers or private renters have to do who don't qualify for benefits.

 

I know of no owner occupiers who has or is prepared to down size. I have had this very discussion with family members and there is no way they would sell up and move despite them being retired and living in 3 & 4 bed properties. To them their home will be theirs till they die.

 

With private rented accommodation that may happen as it makes economic sense but not to those that own their property and have spent years looking after and nurturing it.

 

What should be asked is why Sheffield council have not been building any new council properties after demolishing lots and handing some over to housing associations.

 

I agree that some should be asked to downsize and move, but where to?

 

Fake X

[JFKvsNixon]

Population forecasting is a notoriously fickle business, during the 1960's it was estimated that by the year 2000 the UK's population will be around 70 million. Most trends in population growth are temporary, a few years ago it was worried that the UK's population might actually start to fall.

[Rupert_Baehr]

presumably the "city" would just be rows of houses, nobody has mentioned any of the other buildings (or spaces) that a city has, so it wouldn't be as big a London is now.

 

That would be a pretty miserable place in which to live, IMO.

 

We need houses - but we also need civic amenities, shops (well, not me - but many do. - I'll use the interwebby thingy) open spaces (definitely!) places of entertainment and places in which to congregate and talk to people.

 

I once lived in an historic Saxon market town. - A town which was famous for being the place where King John refused to sign the Magna Carta. It was a beautiful place ... but in the late 1980s it was zoned (by the County Council) for 'development'.

 

The developers promised to build communities with community centres, doctors' surgeries, places of entertainment (the whole list.)

 

They built houses. Nothing else. It was a small rural market town in the countryside. A town where there were no parks, no green spaces, no places people could walk and enjoy the countryside, few shops and no additional amenities.

 

Nice people - but I was bloody glad to leave there!

[Rupert_Baehr]

I know of no owner occupiers who has or is prepared to down size. I have had this very discussion with family members and there is no way they would sell up and move despite them being retired and living in 3 & 4 bed properties. To them their home will be theirs till they die.

 

With private rented accommodation that may happen as it makes economic sense but not to those that own their property and have spent years looking after and nurturing it.

 

What should be asked is why Sheffield council have not been building any new council properties after demolishing lots and handing some over to housing associations.

 

I agree that some should be asked to downsize and move, but where to?

 

Fake X

 

You do surprise me. - Each to his own, I suppose. My older brother (now in his 70's) moved from a 4-bedroomed house to a 2-bed. His son had grown up and left home, so he no longer needed a big house.

 

I've moved house more times than enough (the next move - in September - will be my 35th move since I was 18 ) so I'm not 'married' to any house or location. I don't want a house which is any bigger than I need, thanks.

 

I need a 3-bedroomed house (so my son, his partner and the grandchildren can stay with us.) You might argue that I need a 4-bed (one grandchild is a boy, 1 is a girl) but they're young and when they get old enough for that to matter, we'll find a 'work around' - I'm not prepared to pay for a house with an unwanted bedroom which I would use for a couple of weeks a year

 

I suppose that some people do become attached to houses, but when I see single (widows or widowers) living on their own in 4-bedroomed houses I do wonder whether they're doing the right thing. I would hate to live on my own in a big house.

[Rupert_Baehr]

The UK may now import 40% of its food but the reasons are not from lack of agricultural space but purely economic and boils down to it being cheaper to import. Plus, a lot of the food imports are items that have now become part of everyday food that weren't in the past and cant be grown here.

 

You are saying that there is little land left that can be used and yet I read about vast private estates that have fallow land which used to be farmed in the past. There is plenty of land that can still be farmed or built upon but people now consider the country as a place to visit and not to work. If you look at some of the old oil landscape paintings then you would see land being worked on that now is classed as countryside.

 

The land that once was Sheffield Airport has been given away for industrial use and yet if built upon could become a new modern town. Plenty of modern towns were built in the past out of necessity and its time it was done again.

 

I talked about our predilection for (and accustomed availability of) unseasonal foods, so we agree there.

 

As for the economic case for importing foods, I'm torn two ways.

 

Yes, it probably is cheaper to import food from Egypt and from Kenya (to fly green beans in by air!) than to grow them ourselves ...but is it justifiable to do so? Are Kenya and Egypt wealthy countries with vast agricultural surpluses which they can afford to sell off cheaply to lazy Brits, or are we taking food out of the mouths of their children (quite literally)?

 

Did the Egyptians rise up against Mubarraq because they couldn't get Playstations, KFC, Mickey D or the latest Hollywood releases or did they revolt because they couldn't afford to feed their children?

 

We can buy their food for pennies and fly it to the UK. They can't afford to buy it.

 

I'm not posting to be argumentative, or to score points, but I do disagree with much of the rest of your post.

 

I'm not a 'townie'. I suppose that if I add it up, I've spent a total of a year or so living in cities. The other 60-odd years of my life have been spent in small (sometimes extremely small) rural communities. I'm not a farmer, but I do have a number of acquaintances (and a few friends) who are.

 

You said: "... I read about vast private estates that have fallow land which used to be farmed in the past..."

 

That does surprise me! I'm familiar with one 'vast private estate' - that of the Earl of Iveagh.

 

It is big. It has at least one town, two major airfields, a number of villages, some cultivated land and miles of woodland. The land which is usable for agriculture is used for agriculture, but the mere fact that land has trees on it does not mean that it could be ploughed up and used to grow crops. Much of the estate is in the Brecks - land which was listed in the Domesday book as being 'marginal land, unsuitable for agriculture.'

 

My friends and acquaintances who are farmers don't waste their land - they can't afford to. Those who own large amounts of land employ highly-qualified and very competent managers who don't waste land, either.

 

I challenge your assertion that there is a vast acreage of land now laying fallow which was previously cultivated. Indeed, if you were to obtain a map of England from about 1945-1950 (or indeed a pre-1970's map) you would find that much of what used to be cultivated countryside back then is now covered in tarmac and houses. 'Greater London' now covers vast tracts of what used to be fertile and highly-productive farmland when I was a child.

 

You can't simply plough up forests and woodland and make fields.

 

Well you can - but it probably won't work. The countryside is a complex eco-system. Fallow land, forests, woodlands and the other seemingly 'unproductive' lands are a part of that system.

 

In the 1960s, farmers in Lincolnshire grubbed out the field boundaries and destroyed woodlands to make huge easily-managed fields. They created problems for themselves. The copses and woodlands help to create micro-climates. Their destruction increased local aridity and (during the 1970's) areas around Boston were (technically) desert regions. The huge fields might've been more efficient to cultivate [wasted land in 'headlands' was far less and the tractors were more efficient] but the topological desecration caused dramatic changes. When I lived in North Lincolnshire it was estimated that the A15 ridge and the ridge to the East (on the border of the Ancholme valley) were moving eastwards at about 1 cm per annum.

 

Farming isn't about 'getting as much out of the ground this year as you can' - it's about managing the countryside to provide sustainable resources. There may well be vast acreages which are uncultivated, but that's because the people who own them realise that they would do irreparable harm were they to try to cultivate them.

 

The UK was not self-sufficient for food in the 1940's, when the population was less than 45 million. Admittedly, there was no intensive agriculture - no agro-chemicals, little or no agricultural machinery. The country had to import food. That was hardly cheap - it cost money, effort and lives to bring food in.

 

If the politicians (Millipede Major and Broon) were telling the truth at Copenhagen, then in the future we will have the same access to agrochemicals as did the people who lived in the UK during the war, similar amounts of fossil-fuelled agricultural machinery and no 'Land Army'

 

(Unless we can import Eastern Europeans - the Brits are too lazy to work on the land [vide the BBC documentary in which British Workers were asked to do the jobs done by Eastern Europeans and failed - dismally.]

 

DEFRA (the Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Affairs) and the politicians (usually 'Townies') can say what they like. You can only feed so many people on so much land.

 

If the UK was to become an isolated Island (with no trading contact with the outside world) tomorrow, people would starve.

[andikay]

I talked about our predilection for (and accustomed availability of) unseasonal foods, so we agree there.

 

As for the economic case for importing foods, I'm torn two ways.

 

Yes, it probably is cheaper to import food from Egypt and from Kenya (to fly green beans in by air!) than to grow them ourselves ...but is it justifiable to do so? Are Kenya and Egypt wealthy countries with vast agricultural surpluses which they can afford to sell off cheaply to lazy Brits, or are we taking food out of the mouths of their children (quite literally)?

 

Did the Egyptians rise up against Mubarraq because they couldn't get Playstations, KFC, Mickey D or the latest Hollywood releases or did they revolt because they couldn't afford to feed their children?

 

We can buy their food for pennies and fly it to the UK. They can't afford to buy it.

 

I'm not posting to be argumentative, or to score points, but I do disagree with much of the rest of your post.

 

I'm not a 'townie'. I suppose that if I add it up, I've spent a total of a year or so living in cities. The other 60-odd years of my life have been spent in small (sometimes extremely small) rural communities. I'm not a farmer, but I do have a number of acquaintances (and a few friends) who are.

 

You said: "... I read about vast private estates that have fallow land which used to be farmed in the past..."

 

That does surprise me! I'm familiar with one 'vast private estate' - that of the Earl of Iveagh.

 

It is big. It has at least one town, two major airfields, a number of villages, some cultivated land and miles of woodland. The land which is usable for agriculture is used for agriculture, but the mere fact that land has trees on it does not mean that it could be ploughed up and used to grow crops. Much of the estate is in the Brecks - land which was listed in the Domesday book as being 'marginal land, unsuitable for agriculture.'

 

My friends and acquaintances who are farmers don't waste their land - they can't afford to. Those who own large amounts of land employ highly-qualified and very competent managers who don't waste land, either.

 

I challenge your assertion that there is a vast acreage of land now laying fallow which was previously cultivated. Indeed, if you were to obtain a map of England from about 1945-1950 (or indeed a pre-1970's map) you would find that much of what used to be cultivated countryside back then is now covered in tarmac and houses. 'Greater London' now covers vast tracts of what used to be fertile and highly-productive farmland when I was a child.

 

You can't simply plough up forests and woodland and make fields.

 

Well you can - but it probably won't work. The countryside is a complex eco-system. Fallow land, forests, woodlands and the other seemingly 'unproductive' lands are a part of that system.

 

In the 1960s, farmers in Lincolnshire grubbed out the field boundaries and destroyed woodlands to make huge easily-managed fields. They created problems for themselves. The copses and woodlands help to create micro-climates. Their destruction increased local aridity and (during the 1970's) areas around Boston were (technically) desert regions. The huge fields might've been more efficient to cultivate [wasted land in 'headlands' was far less and the tractors were more efficient] but the topological desecration caused dramatic changes. When I lived in North Lincolnshire it was estimated that the A15 ridge and the ridge to the East (on the border of the Ancholme valley) were moving eastwards at about 1 cm per annum.

 

Farming isn't about 'getting as much out of the ground this year as you can' - it's about managing the countryside to provide sustainable resources. There may well be vast acreages which are uncultivated, but that's because the people who own them realise that they would do irreparable harm were they to try to cultivate them.

 

The UK was not self-sufficient for food in the 1940's, when the population was less than 45 million. Admittedly, there was no intensive agriculture - no agro-chemicals, little or no agricultural machinery. The country had to import food. That was hardly cheap - it cost money, effort and lives to bring food in.

 

If the politicians (Millipede Major and Broon) were telling the truth at Copenhagen, then in the future we will have the same access to agrochemicals as did the people who lived in the UK during the war, similar amounts of fossil-fuelled agricultural machinery and no 'Land Army'

 

(Unless we can import Eastern Europeans - the Brits are too lazy to work on the land [vide the BBC documentary in which British Workers were asked to do the jobs done by Eastern Europeans and failed - dismally.]

 

DEFRA (the Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Affairs) and the politicians (usually 'Townies') can say what they like. You can only feed so many people on so much land.

 

If the UK was to become an isolated Island (with no trading contact with the outside world) tomorrow, people would starve.

 

Well said you only have to look at the Amazon to see what happens when you destroy forest to create farm land.

[Ms Macbeth]

I know of no owner occupiers who has or is prepared to down size. I have had this very discussion with family members and there is no way they would sell up and move despite them being retired and living in 3 & 4 bed properties. To them their home will be theirs till they die.

 

With private rented accommodation that may happen as it makes economic sense but not to those that own their property and have spent years looking after and nurturing it.

 

What should be asked is why Sheffield council have not been building any new council properties after demolishing lots and handing some over to housing associations.

 

I agree that some should be asked to downsize and move, but where to?

 

Fake X

 

Downsizing is exactly what we did. We moved from a detached property to a slightly smaller semi (in a cheaper council tax band) to ensure we no longer had a mortgage when we retired. Many pensioners who don't qualify for means tested benefits have to think carefully about choices in retirement.

[mossdog]

How very arrogant. Pointless people? Is this a new Tory phrase? Doing away with the "pointless people"!

But he has a point!............the lower orders breed more vigorously and thus require more housing and benefits.This coupled with unfettered immigration for years,has always been a disaster waiting to happen.

[sues_budgie]

Immigration (net) has increased from 242,000 under New Labour, to 242,000 under the Conservatives.

 

Now our friends from abroad are not too keen on the idea of small familys, and are happy to have 4+ plus kids.

 

NOw 242000 * 20 is 4 million (plus extra), bearing in mind our foregn friends like to have lots of kids, this population could easily double from the 4 million to over 8 million, on the basis that each child born now, has at least another 2 kids.

 

Unless the Conservatives are prepared to cut immigration, then we are facing a housing disaster in 20 years time. I cannot see the conservatives tackling this problem, simply because it would cost millions of votes. All partys are fearful and so will not tackle the problem.

 

The other option is to build enough houses to accomodate another 8 million people, which would get the construction workers back to work for the next 20 years.

 

People say "well where will the money come from?" I say "probably from the same pot of money that we will be using to support the additional 8 million people who will be dependant on our benefits system"