Huguenot

Ah, SteveT, your contribution is to slap the debaters down? There's a constructive response! If you don't want to listen then please, there are plenty of other threads to follow? This is a perfectly reasonable discussion of the allocation of housing resource in ED. It relates to ED prices in that it alters supply and demand variables. It uses macroeconomic debates to populate local economic issues. I'll be perfectly happy in the Lounge of course, it gets more traffic and raises the profile - I just don't understand why you're being so sniffy?

I'm flabbergasted Chav. Are you honestly trying to tell me that a resident in social housing at 400 quid a month (and probably receiving more than that back in other social support) is paying more into the public purse than someone on 30 grand a year paying 1000 pounds tax a month and making no claim on income or residential support? The crying shame is that you probably do believe this. Whilst everybody else is bailing out over 50% of social housing recipients of working age who do no paid work, they're sat there justifying it in this outrageous mockery of logic. We need to get a grip that we cannot blame a 'government' as an oppressive entity for the fact that the public do not feel it's convenient to bail out loafers with their own hard work. The key element in the 'Defence' case is 'need'. I don't accept that a CWALD needs social housing, and I certainly don't accept that your daughter should be demotivated by having it promised on to her next! Talk about incentivising failure.

I've just read that, and it was an unbundled vomit of nonsense and dogma. What are you trying to do, bore us to death? You'll never get elected that way ;-)

"Stole the money"????! You can't steal from yourself. The government are the democratic representatives of the voting public, and the money was recovered from the public purse to be returned to tax payers. I appreciate many people's recall of the 70's will be foggy, but the UK's a damn sight better place now than then. The 70s were a product of indulgent social support from the post war days generating a nation of indolent, ignorant proles who thought the world owed them a living. Thatcher, for all her faults, was voted in by a public despairing of an unrewarding society spiralling down to the lowest common denominator. Better Thatcher than the emerging kakistocracy.

Besides, I think the quotes you've take from the 'Defend' bunch are both disingenuous and unrealistic. The countries where government controlled housing dominated have created squalid communities, curtailment of basic freedoms, and economic & emotional failure. Check out the USSR and China. An essential part of freedom is the opportunity to reap the rewards of your physical and intellectual investment, property rights retain an influential role in this process. Frankly, if all I got was a council house regardless of my efforts, then I'd be part of the crowd of f*ckwits who did nothing with their working lives... then there'd be no government tax revenues/handouts and they'd all be in the sh*t too. Or would you then be suggesting chain gangs and Schutzstaffel to make us work ;-) Arbeit mach frei...

It's not a link Chav, it's a study, and it's attached in all its glory.... ;-)

Agreed, and most times the investment is worthwhile. I just find it a little rude when they metaphorically stick two fingers up afterwards - the kind of "I'm so clever I've got your money and it's given me a bigger house than you" approach.

Macroban and Chav... Annual figures for public support of housing 2004-5 Economic subsidy to social tenants 6.6bn Housing benefit 8.8bn Right to buy discounts 1.8bn Home Improvement grants 0.3bn Tax breaks 15.7 bn Low-cost home ownership 0.3bn Housing benefit 3.2bn Income support for mortgage property 0.3bn (Source London School of Economics) I make that 39.7 billion pounds coming from tax payers (that's where the government gets its cash) that is tied to housing? Of that approximately half goes to people in social housing and half to those in private rentals. Additional payments of around 28bn are also predominantly received by those receiving housing support, these include Income Support, Job Seekers Allowance and Guaranteed Credit Facilities. More than half of the residents of social housing of working age have no paid employment at all. Tell me these people aren't living off the rest of the country whilst cocking a snook? You'd understand why people would advise them not to bite the hand that feeds them?

The point is CWALD that you're subsidised by the tax paying population. The system wouldn't work if everyone demanded your benefits. It's a wee bit rude to take with one hand and then flick the 'V's with the other! ::o

Excellent, will you let us know what they say? ::o

Lol Villager, you're such an impatient chappie! Unfortunately, as important as your observations have been, I'm unable to be permanently at your beck and call. You should however feel free to pursue your own lines of enquiry wherever necessary. Please don't interpret this as cowardice, merely inefficient time management on my part ;-) Both Thames Water and OfWat (and presumably it's predecessors if they kept the paperwork) claim to have no record of complaints of damage caused by London Ring Main development. I received this through an online enquiry that you can repeat, use [email protected] and through OfWat here. If you employ your almost faultless paralegal skills and re-read this thread you'll note that the 80,000 households was my own estimate considering the ring main's length and location. I feel the coincidence with water-butt installations is unlikely to reveal causation, but you never know. Thames Water is also regulated by the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Environment Agency (and hence the Secretary of State), Natural England, the Health Protection Agency, Environmental Health Officers and of course the consumer Council for Water. Enquiries are also made of our numerous MPs. It's plausible that any of these regulators may have had complaints and not passed them on to TW, but probably a little unlikely. Needless to say, I have no monopoly on their time, so please feel free to contact them also? If you find evidence of damage and reparations from the Ring Main, you would of course have my unqualified support in a pre-emptive legal strike.

As I mentioned Villager, I'm not speculating, I'm referring to the fact that the construction of the ring main has been underway for over 30 years and property prices haven't been affected.

I'm not sure Mockers. I think it would be more unfair to claim that we had no responsibility for these situations whilst filling our boots from the trade imbalances that created the crisis in the first place. That being said, as an essentially peaceable chap I don't like to carry the can for people who think the best ways of solving problems involves mass slaughter.

No Tom, it has not, and will not have impact on the value of the house. This is scaremongering. If you spend cash on a costly and possibly malicious piece of litigation the most likely result will be an empty bank account and a frustrated coronary. I'm wondering if this is why you're canvassing support on here - so you don't have to pay for a case you know you're likely to lose?

Good heavens Chav, one moment you're all for bringing down the administration, and the next you're asking them to take control of your home! Council housing is stigmatised precisely because the government is not an efficient landlord. Property rights are a critical part of modern society, allowing individuals to invest amid "the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used". In places like China where that rights is withheld, it's the single largest factor in social discontent.

I wasn't aware that discriminating between their, there and they're was a specific issue for dyslexics? It seems too micro - I was expecting to see broader issues with sequences. I'd probably recommend leaving cognitive challenges to a later stage of the relationship ;-)

We can get just crazy with the amount of fencing, and it should be a lesson to all of us with long thin gardens. The original patio was 6m x 12m - 72sqm and 36m of fencing. Imagine if this was made out of 72 1mx1m tiles, and instead of lying them in a 6m x 12m block, they were laid end to end, resulting in a strip 72m long, 1 m wide, and 146m of fencing!! God forbid they were made out of 10cm tiles. Laid end to end it would 720m long, 10cm wide, and 1.46 km of fencing. Use those 1cm mosaic tiles, and you could achieve a patio 7.2km long, 1 cm wide requiring 14.402 km of fencing. They'd all be the same surface area of course (72sqm) Outrageous. It's a plot by the Victorians you know.

Edited at PR's request Never one to cause unnecessary offence me ;-)

As OfWat pointed out there have been no claims by the 80,000+ households that could have hypothetically been affected by the 30 year construction of the London ring main, of which this work is an extension. There has been no identified depreciation as a consequence of the project. If anything, the increased stability of water supplies has lead to an appreciation of the value of living in London. The 60m depth and infrastructure of this project is not comparable with topsoil projects elsewhere. Whilst I agree that forewarned is forearmed, I can't help but think that throwing cash at legal action now is foolish when evidence suggests there is no significant chance of either damage or litigation success in the future.

And here you go... a secret tear indeed.

Yes, I think so woodie. However, they are a cash crop that need cultivating and transporting, and monoculture itself is regarded as damaging the environment. When the tree is disposed of all the carbon goes back into the environment, so the tree itself is carbon neutral. The consensus is that it becomes quite a close call when an artificial one is only replaced once every 10-15 years, but natural trees need to cultivated and transported every year afresh.

Gosh yes, you can see how an ugly modern block of flats would be really out of place.

What a brilliant post!

Don't worry mate, I wasn't volunteering ;-) I was instead highlighting the challenges with yes/no vs. gradation etc. I mean, is Single Transferable Vote going to be more accurate than simple polling - should 100 2nd places qualify higher than 11 1st places and 89 20th places? It should. First past the post can create terrible injustices you know ;-) I thought the solutions I came up with were unworkable in practice... As Paul and the Clarity team undoubtedly know, the technical execution of online research is child's play - you can either opensource it or reinvent the wheel. The challenge is to elicit valid results. As a fellow industry denizen, I should however recommend him to improve his SEM/SEO strategy ;-)

There's a great word - catharsis. An emotional cleansing, a spriritual renewal, a release from tension, a purge. It's Greek you know. Nothing to do with the Cathars as group, except of course they were 'pure'/purged too. I always wanted to be a Cathar, much cooler than being a Huguenot. More mountains and castles by far. The Pyrenees have always been just way better than the Alps. More imagination and less cuckoo clocks.