Housing conundrum in London

I went to a lecture this week at the University of Greenwich, given by Nick Raynsford MP on the subject of housing.  He has 40 years local and central government experience in this field and an encyclopaedic knowledge.  These are my thoughts that he stimulated.

I never knew that after World War II there was a policy to reduce the size of London, which was part of the rationale for the New Towns outside but near London.  Apparently this policy failed because there was a negative economic effect, and by the 70s the policy was reversed.

The problem in London is the lack of affordable housing.  We all know this.  The conundrum is what to do about it.

Just leaving it to the private sector does not work because they are always looking for maximum profit, and there will always be a large disparity in the incomes of different people, meaning that the low-income people get priced out.  One obvious solution to this is to have more supply than demand, but the private sector are not daft enough to do that.

So what about regulation of the private sector, at least in the rental market – what about going back to rent control?  The danger is that the properties will not be maintained by the landlords, and at some point landlords will step away from the market creating a huge rental shortage.  What could be helpful is regulation to limit rent increases over, say, a 3 year period, allowing for some certainty for the tenant without locking them in.

Do we need public sector controlled housing then, back to council houses?  Was it a huge mistake to allow them to be bought at all, let alone at far below the market price?  It seems there is no appetite in government to go back to this model, although I don’t see anything wrong with it – why not a PFI on a block of flats so that the government is in control, the developer gets paid over time, and the tenants are protected?  The favoured model for this seems to be Housing Associations, and that’s fine – my mother and brother live in such a flat and it works well for them.  Can we get more joint developments between housing associations, government and the developer companies?

I asked the devil’s advocate question “why not seek to make London smaller again, or at least stay the same size, and focus on housing expansion elsewhere in the UK?”.  The answer came that it would, as post-war, be an economic mistake to limit London’s growth … however there’s nothing wrong with initiatives elsewhere in the UK as well.

Mr Raynsford’s summary was that we need sensible, not extreme, action on many fronts.  I agree, because as with all significant challenges where there is no single magic bullet, we need the cumulative effect of many coherent and aligned actions to achieve a sustained response.  I pointed out that the challenge for our society is that housing policy needs to be strategic over a long timescale, and yet politicians who are masters of the policy operate on a comparatively short-term basis.  Mr Raynsford smiled and agreed.

CODA

It occurs to me that everyone still uses the phrase “getting on the property ladder” and I have been saying for a few years now that it’s not a ladder, it’s a roller-coaster, and if property prices are falling (or you need flexibility on your location) then renting is far better.  We still seem to have in our DNA this need to own our property, and it really doesn’t always make sense.  Worse still, the whole expectation that it is a ladder, allowing you to climb up the wealth tree because the next owners will pay far more than an inflationary increase, is surely part of the reason that we now have this problem – young people with normal jobs cannot afford to buy a property.  I benefited from the boom in the 80s, got started with just our own money, got up the ladder to a big house with mortgage paid off – without that I would be poorer now … but I am going to be poorer anyway because I need to fund the deposits for my two daughters so they can buy their first property.  It’s a mad circle.

Recalling UK MPs - blunter or sharper democracy?

38degrees have a campaign to create the ability for the electorate in an MP's constituency to Recall him or her from Parliament and force a by-election.  Whilst clearly there can be debate about the numbers that are required to make this happen, the principle is surely sound that an MP should be answerable to and accountable to all of their constituents - an extension of that notoriously blunt instrument we call democracy?  In my mind, not quite that simple ...

Here is the email exchange with my MP where I push the 38degrees approach, and below it is an email from me to 38degrees where I'm playing devil's advocate in the other direction.

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Dear Rt Hon. Nick Raynsford MP,

The government’s new law to allow voters to sack MPs is simply not strong enough - it is unlikely to ever be usable, and then it is controlled by a panel of MPs.  People’s trust in politics and democracy is at an all time low. Giving normal people the democratic, properly managed power to recall their MP could be the most significant change to the way Britain does politics in decades – and it’s within our grasp.

As my MP, please will you back the only serious alternative by signing up to support the real recall law?

You can read the draft law here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2014-2015/0088/150088.pdf

Thank you for your communication regarding your support for a ‘Recall Bill’. Please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you.

The right to recall MPs was an idea discussed in the run-up to the General Election of 2010. The Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg, who as Deputy Prime Minister has responsibility for constitutional reform, has since argued that the original proposals were only ever intended to apply to MPs who have been found guilty of breaching parliamentary rules. Predictably, Liberal Democrat support has waned significantly since the party reneged on several of its pre-election pledges, such as the promise to scrap tuition fees.

This highlights the difficulties of implementing a recall system. MPs have to vote on a very large number of issues throughout the course of a parliament, and the situation to which a voting issue relates may have changed since before the election. On this basis, an easy recall system, applying in any case where an MP is alleged to have broken an election pledge, would most probably affect every single present-day Member of Parliament.

To avoid this, most people believe that a threshold would need to be set, requiring at least 15 per cent of a constituency electorate to vote for such a recall.

However, this in turn poses awkward questions, such as how does that 15 per cent relate to the percentage of people who voted for the successful candidate? In cases where an individual voted for a candidate from a rival party who was not successful in being elected, would that same voter have the right to vote for the recall of an MP whose policies they did not vote for in the first place?

Whilst I have some sympathy with the idea of recalling who have flagrantly broken election pledges, I do see many problems with implementing it in practice, and it is for these reasons that I believe the current arrangements – where an MP is answerable to an electorate every four to five years, and can be stripped of office if convicted of a criminal offence – is the most appropriate arrangement to have in place. On a separate note, you may already be aware that I myself will not be seeking re-election at the next General Election, and will be standing down.

Thank you again for contacting me about this matter.

Yours sincerely  Nick Raynsford MP

Dear Rt Hon. Nick Raynsford MP

Thank you for your response, and I'm sorry to hear you will be standing down in 2015.

Can I just take issue, for the record, with a couple of points you made below.  You seem to morph from breaking parliamentary rules to breaking election pledges, which is not I think the same thing.  There is no reference to pledges or rules in the proposed Act available through the link in my email.  Nor is there any reference to how people voted at the previous election.  An elected MP represents all the people in his or her constituency, not just those who voted for him or her.  The principle of the Act is quite simple; if a proportion of the electorate believe their MP is performing poorly in representing them, then they can recall that MP.  This is surely democracy in action.  Can you not see that this would incentivise MPs to be far more focused on and accountable to their electorate?  Surely a good thing.

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Nic Vine to 38degrees

I have succeeded in engaging my MP Nick Raynsford in an email debate on this issue, starting with the form email that you provided.

However it occurs to me there is a problem:  what if we have a prime minister who is doing something unpopular in the short-term for the long-term good of the country ... and a powerful lobbying organisation stirs things up sufficiently in his or her constituency that a Recall is enacted.  Is that really what we want?  In other words should the Recall not be constrained to demonstrable under-performance such as breaking rules, not voting, not spending time in the constituency.  I read through the draft Act and perhaps I missed it but i could not see any conditions on the reason for the Recall.  If we can Recall just because we don't like what s/he is doing, isn't that a recipe for chaos rather than improved democracy?

Gagging & Voting - UK

I wrote this email to my MP via 38degrees:

In February I, along with 60,000 others, wrote to Ed Miliband asking him to publicly commit to repealing the gagging law. Last week 38degrees met with Angela Eagle and whilst agreeing it was poor legislation she said that these decisions are made by a wider group of people within the Labour party.

As my local MP, please can you use your influence to pressure your party into scrapping this undemocratic law.  It is crucial that all MPs call for a Labour Party commitment to repeal this law.  It needs to go into your manifesto.

I believe the constraint on charities and organisations that campaign on issues is an outrageous attack on my freedom to spend my money to make my voice heard.  Part of my decision on how to vote will depend on parties' position on this.

Thank you.

In early April Labour, i.e. Ed Miliband, committed to repeal this if they win the election in 2015.  I'm not sure they committed to a timescale, and I'm pretty sure they didn't say what happens if they are in a coalition.  And what if Labour are not in (part) power in June 2015?  

This gagging law still needs to be repealed, or at least changed to exempt charities and other organisations that campaign on issues and are not aligned with any political party or independent candidate.

Christine Lagarde's view of the future ... and mine

Here's an example of me posting something because it gets it into play, and removes a piece of paper from my pending tray, even though I haven't achieved a complete analysis.

I watched Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, give the annual BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture on 4 Feb 14.  Her title was A New Multilateralism for the 21st Century
- the text is on the IMF site.

Here are the notes I made as I watched:

• digital revolution
• hyper-connectivity
• tweet and the Arab Spring
• we can eradicate poverty
• we could have more frequent financial crises
• the UN recognises almost 4,000 non-government organisations
• with more connection we have less consensus
• three big challenge areas:

1. demography & migration
2. environment:  water, food, energy - climate change - pay for the damage caused
3. income inequality - economists see importance now - inclusive growth

• global interest before self-interest
• rekindle the Bretton Woods spirit

Yes, that's it, that's my notes.  The speech reached across the world and way out into the future.  It's worth reading the whole text via the link above.

My difficulty is that even the IMF still seems to see growth, ok, inclusive growth, as the answer to all things with the implication that it is a sustainable model into the medium term (many decades) future.  

I simply don't agree.  It seems to me that the emerging economies are being guided, beguiled, suckered or forced into repeating the same mistakes the developed economies have made in their financial management.  The program on China by Robert Peston this week only reinforces that view.

We need a business model for the world that is 'beyond growth'.  I say 'beyond' because clearly we need some more growth to climb out of the current mess, if that is even possible (and Moneyweek says for the UK it's not - we will apparently collapse like Greece).  However we should be thinking now about the multi-decade strategy that creates stability and prosperity (and equality) without relying solely on continued growth for ever.

Watch this space (blog) for further thinking.

Joined up Journalism

I recently rediscovered Adam Curtis, the investigative journalist and documentary film-maker.  I can't imagine what made me lose him in the first place - he's a man to follow.

I read his blog of Dec 2013 subtitled "The point at which journalism fails and modern power begins", and it gave me considerable pause for thought.

For some time I have been thinking that our global society is so complex that it's impossible to really validate any particular analysis or explanation that is offered by expert observers or the experts themselves.  To be technologically topical, the trouble with Big Data is that you can choose to slice and dice it in a way that proves the point you want to make for your own nefarious purposes.

Going back to the Curtis blog, he talks about McClure's Magazine which at the beginning of the 1900s did the first big exposé of bad practice in big business and politics.  But could the readers validate what McClure was saying?  I bet the targets of his three articles had some strong denials and counter explanations.  Or was the Magazine simply publishing on a wider scale what the readers already knew to be true?  So do we believe McClure?  How do we validate that?  Actually the answer is partly in the work at that time, because they did produce hard evidence, and partly in the lens of historical perspective, which shows the same picture from multiple sources.

Curtis says "The new journalism that McClure began spread like wildfire - and politicians took notice. They were led by the new President, Theodore Roosevelt, who decided to use the law to break the monopolies - or what he called "The Octopus" that was strangling democracy."  But Curtis makes a very simple link there, that Roosevelt took notice of McClure's journalism; that's not proved, although they apparently knew each other - Roosevelt already had a record as Police Commissioner of New York City and then Governor of New York of cleaning up the systems and removing corruption and fraud.  So do we believe Curtis?  How do we validate that? Perhaps I could if I did research beyond a quick google (which proved nothing), but is the public going to do that?  In principle I believe Curtis, or at least I believe his intentions, because of his body of work.  But it was complicated then, in 1906 - how many more times the power of ten is it complicated now?

Curtis ends with "Maybe today we are being farmed by the new system of power. But we can't see quite how it is happening - and we need a new journalism to explain what is really going on."  Yet are we not doing the investigative, exposure journalism all over the place now - wouldn't McClure be proud?  Is the problem simply that it is not joined up? And is that cock-up ... or conspiracy?  

Maybe we can't or won't join up the dots to see the biggest of pictures because the landscape is just too damned big.  And maybe because people, journalists included, have to specialise or focus on specific areas because they can't cover everything, and then they want to keep within that area in order to increase their seniority, to become an expert.

So perhaps we need a new breed of meta-journalists, who will analyse and investigate journalism and work in a very horizontal manner and try to join up the problems we see in banking, in taxation, in corporate structures, in food quality, in political management, in environmental management, in arms sales, and so on and so on.  Quite a challenge.

The Gagging Law - still confused

So 38degrees asked me to fill in a survey, having lost the campaign to stop the component of the Lobbying Bill that will stop organisations like 38degrees campaigning on 'political' issues during the 12 months before an election.  (The vague wording here reflects my uncertainty on the detail, hence the suggestions below.)

Here's some of their questions and my answers:

What other ideas do you have for how we should handle the law?
There are a lot of simple statements, accusations and government-bashing going around.  It would be helpful to have a simple factual summary of precisely how the law restricts the normal 38degrees' activity

How would you describe to another 38 Degrees member why it’s worth carrying on campaigning?
The vote in the Lords was in effect a tie.  Therefore in principle nothing was decided, so nothing should change until it is re-examined.

Any other comments?
Presumably a number of Liberal Democrats voted for this, and yet by all accounts it is neither liberal nor democratic - could we get a LibDem MP and a Lord to explain to us precisely why they voted for it.  If we understand the other view we can spot and exploit weaknesses.

Endorphins for the mature citizen

Good news - I have discovered a couple of 'natural highs' for the older person.

As a younger man, I used to go running irregularly on some slightly spurious grounds of 'keeping fit'.  I was never really fit, and getting fit (for a non-athlete) takes a year of focused effort rather than a few weeks ... but that, as they say, is another blog.

The point is that I used to feel the 'runner's high' generally thought to be caused by endorphins - the natural narcotics in my body, triggered by the physical exercise.

Now that I'm a mature citizen (and no, I don't mean senior!), I have given up the running - I think it's too risky for my knees and ankles which, unlike hips these days, are still nasty, painful and difficult things to repair.

Instead I go walking ... and I don't mean strolling, and not quite speed walking, but certainly fast enough to get my heart-rate up and encourage me to focus on posture.  I do a 2-mile walk around Greenwich Park most mornings, and now I've been doing that for a couple of years I feel that my body (I suppose really my brain) is looking forward to it. When I can't or don't do it, I definitely feel a sense of missing something.  I may not be getting a 'walker's high' in the same way a runner does, yet there's definitely a positive feedback loop going on, and perhaps some modest endorphin production.

There's a another non-physical 'rush' I have recently identified, which is the main trigger for this blog.  When I start reading a book, fiction or non-fiction, that is absorbing, stretching, challenging, and well-written ... I feel a wave of pleasure, excitement and anticipation flow through my head.  After I put it down and continue with (get back to) work or whatever higher priority task is at hand, I can feel the book calling to me ... just as Greenwich Park does on a day when I have not walked.

The particular book that gave rise to the above is God's Debris by Scott Adams (he of Dilbert fame), and the particular rush was enhanced by stumbling across it this morning on my hard drive (it's an ebook) - I apparently downloaded it in 2006 and never got round to 'opening' it - ah those far-off days with no time to read.  It was further enhanced by the ridiculous coincidence that only yesterday I put the latest Scott Adams book onto my Amazon wishlist!  It kind-of feels the same as the 'feel-good' from physical exercise, with the added benefit that I can keep doing it for longer.

Yes, yes - I know this is my reserved time for working on my own book.  In my defence I was looking on my PC for some old notes to incorporate into my seminal work - not that I'm short of content you understand, more to show the consistency and intellectual growth of my thinking (!).  In my further defence, if I didn't take 15 minutes to write this now, it would go onto a list somewhere if it's lucky, only to fall off that list or randomly re-appear in 5 years' time ... and the world would be deprived of this content.