Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

Yeah, flat roofs are horrid. My parent's house is a flat roof and I'd never buy one. Causes so many unnecessary problems.

The bottom one is quite nice albeit on the small side.

you have ANY idea of the crap I am looking at possibly buying and you call THAT small?!!!

[Syt]

The bottom one of the three British houses looks the most like a 50s/60s semi detached houses you might see in my part of Germany.

[Syt]

Yeah, flat roofs are horrid. My parent's house is a flat roof and I'd never buy one. Causes so many unnecessary problems.

The bottom one is quite nice albeit on the small side.

you have ANY idea of the crap I am looking at possibly buying and you call THAT small?!!!

That was my general impression when I traveled to the Maidenhead/Bracknell area - all the houses and buildings looked so small compared to Austria or Germany.

[Grey Fox]

So much brick!

[Tamas]

Yeah, flat roofs are horrid. My parent's house is a flat roof and I'd never buy one. Causes so many unnecessary problems.

The bottom one is quite nice albeit on the small side.

you have ANY idea of the crap I am looking at possibly buying and you call THAT small?!!!

That was my general impression when I traveled to the Maidenhead/Bracknell area - all the houses and buildings looked so small compared to Austria or Germany.

What and when were you doing in my neck of the woods?

[Syt]

Ca. 2010. It was a business trip to our European Bracknell HQ at the old job.

I rank Bracknell as the most depressing town centers I've seen, and some in North Germany are pretty dour.

[Sheilbh]

The bottom one of the three British houses looks the most like a 50s/60s semi detached houses you might see in my part of Germany.

Yeah - that could be plonked anywhere in England and it'd be at home

And yeah our homes - especially new builds are tiny.

So much brick!

That sort of detail will vary in different areas.

But there's New London Vernacular architecture which is popping up all over town - some are properly pseudo-Georgian when infilling a street (a lot around me). But this sort of look is common on every new development in London and it loves bricks (which are a very London material):

[Josquius]

I like that top one. Built on the site of the old city wall I wonder?

[Syt]

Shades of Vienna's most famous public housing project, Karl-Marx-Hof:

[Sheilbh]

I like that top one. Built on the site of the old city wall I wonder?

Yeah some of them have a weirdly Bronze Age fortification look in my opinion - but I do quite like them (but I also don't trust modern developers ):



But as GF says - lots of bricks

[Grey Fox]

No wonder housing costs so much. You're building fortresses in the 21st century.

[Sheilbh]

On the Cameron scandal - a Tory MP (Richard Fuller) has just used parliamentary privilege to ask this question about the Greensill/Liberty Steel businessmodel. Liberty Steel is now teetering after the collapse of Greensill, Cameron's employers:

An acquisition strategy based on supply chain financing arrangements, plus a future receivables derivative scheme, plus an additional month's cash-flow, and a liberal mix of state guarantees has the characteristics of a potential Ponzi scheme. Has my right hon. friend been able to ascertain the facts here, or is this an issue for investigation by the Serious Fraud Office?

The Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng's response is also striking:

My hon. friend raises very serious questions about the business model, which I am not prepared to go into now. What I will say is that, in the first two months of my tenure as Secretary of State, I have pushed forward audit reform as a big issue. A consultation on it is under way. It is issues relating to things such as Greensill capital that show how necessary it is for us to reconsider what we are doing on audit reform and to have the best standards in the world.

In other Greensill news a story's emerged of a camping trip in Saudi with MBS, Cameron and Lex Greensill It's still all a bit inchoate and specialist - but I feel like this story is going to explode at some point.

Edit: Incidentally it's almost tough to think of a government's reputation that's curdled as quickly as the Cameron years. I've always particularly hated Cameron and the rest, but at the time it was seen as a sort of sensible FT/Economist endorsed moderate centre right government. But look at its legacy: austerity, hostile environment, benefits cap, Golden Age with China, migration targets (that could never be met), all the referendums, decimated local government, Osborne, Cameron, Clegg, Johnson as Mayor. Hard to think of any aspect of policy they touched where their reputation is intact - maybe climate?

It all reminds me of that tweet:

Me sowing: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!

Me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

[Tamas]

Ca. 2010. It was a business trip to our European Bracknell HQ at the old job.

I rank Bracknell as the most depressing town centers I've seen, and some in North Germany are pretty dour.

Ah right. That was way before my time here. To be fair I have never been to Bracknell. The property prices do indicate it is the worst-after-Slough town in the area, though.

[Tamas]

As usual, The Guardian, a supposedly leftist paper, writes things like "performs strongly" for property price rises and "lagging behind" for London where they don't.

I find these articles nauseating, especially that they ask for comment people who have vested financial interest to talk things up:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/31/london-worst-performing-region-uk-house-prices-fall

The traditional north-south divide on house prices has been turned on its head, with London the UK's worst-performing region and north-west England topping the table, according to Nationwide.

The data follows numerous surveys reporting a surge in the numbers of people who have moved out of London and other urban areas, or are planning to do so, after concluding they will be able to work from home for at least part of the week in future.

The building society said that for the UK as a whole, prices dipped by 0.2% in March after taking account of seasonal factors, following a 0.7% rise in February.

It said this slowdown probably reflected a softening of demand ahead of the original end of the stamp duty holiday on 31 March before the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced in the budget that it would be extended until 30 June.

Advertisement
As a result, the rate of annual house price growth slowed to 5.7% in March, from 6.9% in February. This puts the average UK house price at £232,134.

Looking at the regions, Nationwide's figures for the first three months of 2021 show London was the UK's weakest performer, with annual price growth falling to 4.8%, down from 6.2% in the final quarter of 2020.

In the surrounding "outer metropolitan" region, which includes places such as Guildford, Crawley and Chelmsford – some of which have been popular with people looking to move out of London – price growth remained stable at 5.6%.

North-west England was the strongest-performing region, with prices up 8.2% year on year. This is the highest rate of price growth in the area since 2005 and average prices there have hit a record high of £181,999, said Nationwide. There was also a pickup in price growth in the neighbouring north region, with a 7.2% annual increase.

Despite the small fall in UK house prices in March, Robert Gardner, Nationwide's chief economist, said recent signs of economic resilience and the stimulus measures announced in the budget, including the extension of the furlough scheme and the stamp duty holiday, as well as the introduction of a mortgage guarantee scheme, suggested market activity "is likely to remain buoyant over the next six months".


Guardian business email sign-up
Jonathan Hopper, the chief executive of the buying agent Garrington Property Finders, said there had been a "pause for breath" in the market after three months of national lockdown.

He added: "New regional hotspots are emerging ... Prices in north-west England are rising nearly twice as fast as those in London, with the capital the worst-performing region."

Nicky Stevenson, the manager director of estate agents Fine & Country, said better weather in the coming weeks was expected to "take activity up another gear", adding it was still the pandemic and the need for more space that were driving the market.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I like that top one. Built on the site of the old city wall I wonder?

Yeah some of them have a weirdly Bronze Age fortification look in my opinion - but I do quite like them (but I also don't trust modern developers ):



But as GF says - lots of bricks

Looks like it might be pretty defensible when the inevitable zombie attack occurs :tinfoil