Do we expect too much as a right in Great Britain?

In Surrey, all the wonderful old expensive houses are being pulled down and replaced by huge modern piles massively more expensive!!! Awful.
Even worse.

I would hate to see all "expensive" houses replaced by affordable ones. It would change the face of Britain. Sad to see some old architecture go by the board to be replaced by modern cheap housing.

I think planners need to protect the past as well as trying to comply with government demands for more housing any-old-where.

It always has been.

I agree durhamjen. The price for the supposed improvement in the UK's economic situation (though even that is questioned by some) has been paid by those on low and moderate wages.

I have just been looking at the local newspaper website, and noticed a job as a collector of unpaid taxes.
Applicants need 3+ years experience and have a level 3 NVQ in accounts.
They have to be able to understand the technically difficult changes in the new laws and be able to represent the local authority in court.
For doing this they will get pay of between £17-20,000 per year, or between £8 and £10 per hour.
Even in Darlington they will not be able to get much of a mortgage with that pay. If it's someone with a family, they will probably get a tax credit subsidy.
Not right.

My husband was an architect. In the 70s we moved to Peterborough where there was a huge housebuilding programme. Many of the new residents were from London, and rented houses from the development corporation. This could happen again. The reason we moved to Peterborough was because there was a recession in the building industry, so the company he worked for in Norwich was making people redundant.
He moved before it happened to him.
The idea was to get builders back to work, provide housing for those who could not afford them in London and provide work.
In the early 80s the Development Corporation began to wind down, and hand over to the council, so again we had to move on to where the work was.

In the North East there is Nissan building cars and lots of houses going up near Washington.
What happened with housing was that the councils were forced to sell their houses but could not use the money to build new ones. That should change. Housing Associations build now, but not many compared with in the 70s and early 80s.
There are many private builders who have bought land and are hanging onto it in the hope that house prices will go up. Then they will build and get more money. They should have to pay business rates on all land that is banked like that. They should also not be able to hold councils to ransom over affordable houses.
We need affordable houses, so they should have to build those first, before they are allowed to build the expensive ones.
The government should be forced to make up its mind on renewable energy. They were voted in on the promise of being the greenest government ever, and have done u-turn after u-turn on wind power. There were going to be many jobs in renewable energy in the North East, but company after company has pulled out because of the government changing its mind on subsidies.

It seems that most people want to live in or near fashionable London.

Or, of course, it could be the better weather we have in the SE.

The theatre industry could help by opening their big shows in, say, Manchester, or Liverpool., instead of London's West End. But they won't. Shame London is n't more in the centre of the country.

Yet, there are houses sitting abandoned or being sold for £1 in various parts of the country. Against that there is a lack of social or affordable homes and overcrowding in others.

Of course these are areas where there are few jobs to be had. Investing in these run down areas is one answer, but if industry and commerce have already withdrawn from or failed in such places, how can we do this??

Cheap imports from abroad saw off much of the steel-making industry in this country. Other industries, such as car manufacturing, didn't do themselves any favours in the 60s and 70s with their militant trade unions. Thatcher managed to complete what they starteded by closing the pits. And so the rot set in.

The Midlands are seeing investment in transport link via HS2 and industry is certainly picking up here, but how about a concerted effort to regenerate the North, parts of Wales, etc. Scotland will sort herself out after independence I'm sure.

So to return to the OP, yes, we do expect a lot from GB as our right, but perhaps we are expecting the wrong things. Rather than hand outs in whatever form, I'd prefer to see full employment prospects and people who aspire to having a job.

There was an interesting article on the BBC News site a few weeks ago www.bbc.com/news/business-26472423
discussing this and saying that countries that have been successful in geographical economic diversification have second cities that are at least half the size of the main city and this is our problem, we have a first city and several third cities.

Governments since the 1960s have been trying to get industry and offices out of London and the south east, none of the schemes has worked. Labour (Harold Wilson and Tony Benn) subsidised industries like the car industry to build factories in the north west and Scotland, but the moment a recession started, these were the first close, the company owning them had invested so little money in building them that it cost nothing to close them. Civil Service Departments may be moved out, but private industry/commerce do not follow.

In recent years many companies have moved HQs out of London, but not out of the south east, they have moved to Berkshire, Bucks and Oxford.

I think this article is an interesting thought. Perhaps all the houses planned for the South east should be built around Manchester and the government should invest more in transport links (HS2!!) and cross links, not London-Manchester but Liverpool-Hull, for example

Now you're talking, Jings. But not just industry, also financial services, head offices of national and global businesses, government departments, all kinds of employment providers.

Whenever that has been tried, there is a great outcry from those who would have to be transferred away from the capital to "the sticks"!

And where should they build these houses? Does the south-east have to give up more of its countryside so people can live and work near London? A better answer might be to move industry away from the SE.

We need land tax.

Yes, build more social housing so the rents go back into the public purse and not to present-day Rackmans.

People leave to live in London for other reasons than finding work.

People move from their place of origin to other places in search of work. Go round any place of work or housing estate and ask people where they were born and brought up and probably most will not be born locally. Ask them why they moved and they will say it was because they were offered a job locally or came here there searching work because there was more on offer. That is why DS lives in Yorkshire and DD started her working life living in London.

The way to provide roofs over heads is a massive public sector building programme combined with a massive market sector building programme. Why will this not happen? First and foremost because the areas of most housing demand/need are those with the most expensive land and a programme like this would send the price of land soaring even higher. Public funding could not afford the land prices and the prices of new properties would soar even further out of reach of most people.

The answer is control the price of development land. Now there really is a political hot potato.

Where are we to find these roofs to put over heads durham? Let's hear some positive suggestions please.

I think we should expect a roof over our heads and a decent health service. This is an excellent synopsis of the problems with the NHS.
www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/kailash-chand/moment-of-honesty-is-required-new-labour-began-dismantling-of-our-nhs

Just watched the next instalment of the Tower Hamlets How to get a Council House. It seemed to me that there was not much help. Most of the people in the programme were just not believed.
Couldn't believe how many of them were living on the streets. One woman was not believed about having responsibility for her teenage children and had to go back a few times bringing bits of paper. Eventually she brought a letter from her solicitor and the children's birth certificates. They were given two rooms in a bed and breakfast.
Another family there were nine of them living in a 3bedroomed council house in the parents names. They had even turned the living room into a bedroom. The housing officer went to talk to the parents, and asked if they'd thought of a rota in the kitchen and bathroom!
Eventually, the son, his wife and two children were given a room in a bed and breakfast out of the area.
It makes me despair, and I've got a roof over my head. Many of them seemed to lose their tempers in this programme, but I can't say I blame them.

It's not that Dick Whittington felt the need to go to London, Jingle. He was sent there by his father to learn a trade. He became mayor three times, and set up lots of charities. As he was not the eldest son, he would not have inherited from his father, so had to learn to stand on his own feet.
People probably did it before him, but he is the most famous, I think.

Your question answered jingle … Dick Whittington.

It does not say in the article that they do not come from London. However, my nephew was told it was easier to get work there than in Hull. He spent a year living in a squat.
Dick Whittington became Lord Mayor. For every Dick Whittington there must be hundreds living in squats.

I wonder why people feel the need to leave their local home area and go to live in London.

Iam64, an interesting article in the Guardian about London.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/21/london-internal-refugee-camps-homeless
The homeless problem is not just in Australia, unfortunately. The idea of a young woman sleeping out with her baby is quite shameful, or should that be shaming.

In 2005, The King's Fund requested a review be carried out by Sir Derek Wanless to look into this problem and they opted for one of his options, The Partnership Model: 'providing a minimum guaranteed amount of care free at the point of delivery. The review team set this at two-thirds of the total care package, but it could be varied up or down. Individuals can then make contributions matched by the state (up to a limit): in the review's estimates, every £1 contributed by an individual is matched by £1 from the state until the benchmark (for example, economically justified) care package is achieved (thereafter extra private contributions are not matched). People with low incomes would be helped to make their additional contributions through the benefits system (at an annual cost estimated at £0.8 billion).'

'The Limited Liability Model, a hybrid model, effectively a means-tested system for the first three or four years of care and then free personal care thereafter was also considered.

The review concluded that the vast majority of older people would be better off under a partnership model or free personal care. The latter would be most expensive in terms of public funding and also puts the onus on social services in terms of what care is provided.'

For whatever reason, the Government opted for none of those choices (even though Wanless was asked to complete two reviews) at that time. I suppose it remains to be seen what the ultimate goal is of all these changes.

I feel that as I paid into the state pension fund from age 16, my pension shouldn't be means tested. I paid full stamp at a time when many women didn't, on the basis they could rely on their husbands pensions. We all know what happened to so many women, don't we.

I understand the cost of living in Oz is very high, so high incomes are needed but not always achieved. My daughter spent a month in Oz recently, and found it very expensive. She was shocked by the number of beggars, homeless people and drug addiction. This from a young woman whose worked in the very deprived areas of the north west. It raises that issue about the gap between rich and poor. The Scandinavian countries seem to manage this better than many other countries, though of course, they pay high taxes.