As far as I can see you are suggesting that it is better to clain benefits than have a job that you don't like and yet at the same time you are suggesting that being in the dole is worse than having a job.
No, it is better to not have to spend huge amounts of time at a job you hate to prevent the collapse into miserable penury.
The bounty of automation brings the day closer when people aren't forced into poorly renumerated jobs they hate just to avoid starvation/destitution.
Which part of the country are you referring to? Just curious that's all.
Rural East MIdlands where all the jobs are essentially very low paid manufacturing or very low paid agricultural - unless you are lucky enough to get a public sector job in the NHS or council.
Sorry, but I don't agree that increasing the birth rate is a viable or responsible solution. The planet is already at or above its carrying capacity, the problem is unequal population distribution. There are more than enough people, they are just in the wrong places.
A sensible migration policy has the dual effects of helping to tackle our labour shortage and reduction in poverty elsewhere in the world through remissions.
The birthrate in the UK could increase sufficiently to offset the demographic cliff
and it would make absolutely no difference to the fate of the planet.
Huge climate change is going to happen.
All we can do is make sure the UK can weather it the best it can - and it is far too late to be deliberately restricting birth rates in a desperate attempt to avert it.
Remissions that make other parts of the world richer inevitably make Britain poorer.
Doesn't help Britain's housing problem though. "Build more houses" is simply not a solution.
Why not?
If we had more houses then the house prices would tend to fall
A friend has just had a letter from his water company, asking him to use less water, citing that his area is under severe water supply stress. Perhaps the EU should have been paying for the supply network to be strengthened then. Last year I was forced to go on a compulsory water meter supposedly for the same reason. So things have been getting more expensive thanks to rising population, which the EU has heavily contributed to.
The water supply network's capability is almost irrelevant - the price climbs because Ofwat allows the private sector to bleed the public dry for something they cannot do without, making collosal returns on vital infrastructure investment that could be paid for far more cheaply by the state.
We pay more and get less
Considering that water desalination is now practiced in Israel for 55 US cents a cubic metre the idea that there is any potable water shortage at domestic water prices is nonsensical and caused by a lack of good government policy and subserviance to blind ideology.
I don't see the relevance of right to buy. As you say, it may have reduced the supply of social housing (a good thing - ridding
the taxpayer of a liability) but it didn't reduce the overall housing stock. It's also worth adding that it was an extremely popular policy at the time - and I know quite a few nominally working-class people who benefited greatly over time from having a valuable asset to their name which they would otherwise have never had a chance of owning.
Who then became the next generation of slum lords, they were simply lucky enough to be holding onto the ladder when it was hauled up.
This gain can only happen once and can never be repeated because the housing stock is gone.
And it was a terrible deal for the taxpayer because now they have to expend £25 billion pounds a year on housing benefit - simply because the housing stock was sold for a tiny fraction of its value to the lucky few.
As for all these unused plots, I'd like to know where they are. All I read about in my local paper is loads of towns and villages campaigning against large numbers of new houses being built in their location. And looking at how local infrastructure is already at saturation point, it's easy to see why people feel this way. London has already had a wave of overspill last century which the south-east was able to take. This time it can't.
Why can't it take it?
There is still low value agricultural land in the south east - hell there is still low value agricultural land inside the M25.
There are huge numbers of plots available for the taking but there is a vested interest amongst the home owning classes to ensure house prices stay high forever, allowing them to bleed more public money through BTL and Housing Benefit.
Its the rise of a new aristocracy, aided and abetted by NIMBYism and the Town and Country PLanning Act.
And local infrastructure is only at saturation point because most of it was sold to venture capitalists who get the best returns they can when the infrastructure is so overused that it is only a little short of complete collapse.
That is simply how the market works.
