Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

@Sheilbh - that's a good point too. Russia knows that if they go all in fighting the US, they'll be completely fucked. The UK is a safer arch-enemy, given Russian capabilities.

A clash of mostly faded empires...

Exactly. I even think it's maybe linked to the mirroring point.

You look at the depiction of British power in the post-war and it's espionage - I think that's also broadly true of Russia. The reality of British power is being forced out of Iraq and Afghanistan (plus cuts to defence) and the reality of Russia's power is in a meatgrinder. It's a little bit grander to imagine two powers grappling in a shadowy hall of mirrors - everything else may be gone but, at least in branding, it's one espionage superpower against another.

The reality is that it is just two faded metropoles - and I don't personally have any reason to think that British or Russian espionage/secret state power has somehow been more robust than the military, whether in Basra or Bakhmut.

[Josquius]

Russia as arch enemy for Britain does have a certain appeal to it.
They are everything we are not (honest) and all that.

[Sheilbh]

I thought it worked because of the similarities

[Josquius]

I thought it worked because of the similarities

Its a bit of both.
I was channelling something I half remember reading... a quote from some 19th century guy about how Russia is Britain's natural enemy, being a sort of dark mirror and our polar opposite in all things, a land based empire of conquest and feudalism vs. an ocean going trading empire of democracy and freedom.
It said more about the self-view of the upper class elite of Britain of the time than the actual reality of course. But self image does matter.
 And I do wonder how Russia reflected it back- I doubt they'd see themselves as honest bash you on the head klingons vs. our effette sneaky Romulans.

[Sheilbh]

With all the stuff around the Post Office and the Fujitsu Horizon system - which I've posted about before - there's a bit in the FT that's gone viral as it does feel like pretty indicative:

Earlier this week Lord Francis Maude, who was minister for the Cabinet Office and a Tory MP during the coalition government, said the government had tried to block Fuitsu from public contracts.

"In 2010, we found that it was deeply entrenched across the whole of central government," Maude told the House of Lords. "Its performance in many of these contracts was woeful, and the procurement system regulations then in place made it impossible - although we tried - to prevent it getting further contracts."

There was apparently another attempt later to try and block Fujitsu from getting new government contracts, "the push was ultimately unsuccessful after government lawyers advised that it would not be legally possible to discriminate against companies based on their past performance, the officials said."

Which, of course, sounds mad. So I looked it up to see if it's true and it sounds like it basically is (from a summary) - these tests are so narrow it's mad:

The Regulations (PCR 2015) allow Contracting Authorities to reject economic operators that have shown poor performance or significant shortcomings in a previous public contract. However, this cannot solely be a matter of judgement for the Contracting Authority. They must be able to meet some very specific tests:

First, Regulation 57(8)(g) PCR 2015 states that the performance must have been significantly or persistently deficient.

Secondly, the Regulation states that poor performance must have led to early termination, damages or comparable sanctions.

Finally, Regulation 57(12) PCR 2015 states that you must consider how long ago the past performance occurred. Economic operators can only be excluded within three years of the relevant event.

As Sam Freedman pointed out in 2013 Serco and G4S were operating the government's electronic tag system often for people on bail or probation. They were banned from government contracts after it emerged they'd been chargning for tagging people who were: in prison, out of the country, or dead. For the duration of that 3 year ban (as set out above), they still won 14 contracts.

Labour made a big to do of dropping G4S as the company providing security for the Labour Party conference. They then had to go back and hire G4S because it was basically them or Serco who could provide security for an event of that size (particularly with senior political leaders etc).

Apparently the basic principle in Whitehall is that every single service bid or procurement is treated as an absolute blank slate that ignores, say, a bidder's track record of failure sadly makes sense. Especially when you then add in that the main criteria is price - and vendors often deliberately under-bid knowing they will basically negotiate the price up with change control (and it's not like the government can remember if they keep doing this). Feel like this explains a lot Especially as if the government is strict on costs/pricing - you can end up with, say, a Carillion situation where the company collapses and ultimately the government carries the can because it still needs to provide the service.

I did some work on public procurement as a very junior lawyer and remember how mad and incredibly strict all the rules are - in particular because the value of a government contract is massive (at the time the Post Office system was being tendered, it was the biggest non-defence procurement in Europe) so the decision is always litigated. So every single thing has to be intensely lawyered and even then you can fuck it up. This is also why I find theories of minister level corruption broadly unlikely is that I've seen (as a junior note taker admittedly) the public procurement process

Again I feel like they're things that are deeply unsexy and not exciting for the public but I feel like things like civil service reform, public procurement reform and planning reform could really help things along here....

[Josquius]

The whole Fujitsu thing blowing up and the government promising to forgive everyone really gets me.
Obviously, its the right thing to do...
But why did it take a TV show to get here? Its been an issue for ages. Really is the government just hopping on whats popular.
Is this a path campaigners for issues should be taking now- pursuing funding for a dramatisation?

And civil service procurement sucks yes. I very briefly had view of it in a past job and even on a small level of getting pens and such....ugh.


Read this article the other day on planning again which was interesting.

https://www.ft.com/content/07abecc4-f49c-4ed8-b6ca-28e46d9a9bf2

Land banking is something that doesn't get much reporting these days. Seems to have fallen off the radar.

[Sheilbh]

The whole Fujitsu thing blowing up and the government promising to forgive everyone really gets me.
Obviously, its the right thing to do...
But why did it take a TV show to get here? Its been an issue for ages. Really is the government just hopping on whats popular.
Is this a path campaigners for issues should be taking now- pursuing funding for a dramatisation?

Yeah - I think it's always been a little bit like that though. It's the power of dramatisation. But you think of the impact of Cathy Come Home, or Jimmy McGovern's entire career and drama makes people get the emotional core of an issue (when it's done well).

I have seen some stuff from people moaning about why the media hadn't covered this and it took an ITV drama. There's been two Panorama specials, the Guardian and Times have been covering it since at least 2015 and Private Eye and (especially) Computer Weekly largely broke and drove the story forward. It's not for want of trying from the mainstream media.

I think it gets to the challenge to an extent of this type of story. The core moral and emotional point is really clear: individuals who'd done nothing wrong were being pursued and punished very harshly by a state owned company because of a computer bug. People went to prison, went bankrupt, committed suicide over this. But the details of what happened are quite complicated and technical - and perhaps too often the reporting was the next incremental fact that's been uncovered (which is the news) rather than the big picture? I've posted a couple of times here about it because it's horrendous but it is really difficult to find a piece that has the right balance of the big picture as a background to the story and the current details.

In terms of why now it is because it's popular but it's also because any compensation scheme is really expensive so every government wants to "do justice" but ideally put off the inevitable compensation scheme. See infected blood, Hillsborough - I suspect the same will happen with Grenfell and care homes in covid.

Edit: On the other hand I find it slightly reassuring that even in a fragmented streaming age a linear TV drama on a national scandal can still have this impact.

[Gups]

Can't read that FT article (behind a paywall) but my view is that land banking is pretty much a myth.

https://lichfields.uk/blog/2023/july/4/losing-the-plots-the-misdirected-exhumation-of-housebuilder-land-hoarding/

[Josquius]

Weird, works on my phone but not computer.
Cached works
The images are worth viewing so won't copy it in here.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:udFGEvwUawkJ:https://www.ft.com/content/07abecc4-f49c-4ed8-b6ca-28e46d9a9bf2&hl=en&gl=uk


I'm not sure on land banking being a myth.
There seems quite a blame game going on with those opposed to planning reform pointing at land banking but I've certainly seen locally numerous examples that would qualify as it. Tackling it is not the solution to fixing everything but it is something worth looking at. Just this morning signed a petition to protect a medieval building a developer is sitting on and doing nothing with (is it still land banking when its building banking?)

[Sheilbh]

Can't read that FT article (behind a paywall) but my view is that land banking is pretty much a myth.

https://lichfields.uk/blog/2023/july/4/losing-the-plots-the-misdirected-exhumation-of-housebuilder-land-hoarding/

Yeah my view on land banking is that whenever I see it being raised it's normally as a reason not to do any planning reform - which makes me suspicious that it's just one of the bank of reasons not to change things. Maybe it's slightly more left NIMBY.

[Tamas]

Can't read that FT article (behind a paywall) but my view is that land banking is pretty much a myth.

https://lichfields.uk/blog/2023/july/4/losing-the-plots-the-misdirected-exhumation-of-housebuilder-land-hoarding/

Yeah my view on land banking is that whenever I see it being raised it's normally as a reason not to do any planning reform - which makes me suspicious that it's just one of the bank of reasons not to change things. Maybe it's slightly more left NIMBY.

Can't be as big a myth as property prices being high because of all them overseas investors buying up everything everywhere to leave them empty (likely twisting their mustache while doing so).

[Sheilbh]

I think it depends where you are. I certainly hear land banking a lot more and I suspect in both cases there are specific areas of the market where it has some truth.

The overseas buyer thing I imagine is true in the luxury developments market - which very often have marketing suites in Singapore and Dubai etc. Similarly I'm sure there's areas where land banking is an issue.

But in both cases it strikes me that they're broadly symptoms of the fundamental issue which is about pricing and predictable steady development (plus, with overseas buyers, the other classic stuff which makes property in the UK an attractive asset).

[Josquius]

Not so much overseas buyers but general second home buyers are a big problem in areas like Cornwall, the lakes, west Wales, etc...

Again though saying this is the entire reason for the housing crisis is dumb, I definitely have no problem recognising its a problem which does cause local pain and needs addressing.

[Tamas]

Not so much overseas buyers but general second home buyers are a big problem in areas like Cornwall, the lakes, west Wales, etc...

Again though saying this is the entire reason for the housing crisis is dumb, I definitely have no problem recognising its a problem which does cause local pain and needs addressing.

Yes but second home buyers are very different from the overseas buyer boogeyman.

Average Gary will not be competing for the same homes with Dubai people investing in London. But he WILL compete with Average Susan buying her third property with a buy-to-let mortgage.

[Sheilbh]

Although that varies depending on where Average Gary is. For example, in my old borough there was a big redevelopment of a former council estate with new towers and flats going in. The flats started at £300k which is average for that sort of area of London. One of the towers was entirely bought by overseas buyers before it was even put on the market in the UK.

I don't think it has a major impact on housing (and is, in part, downstream of the actual planning issues), but Transparency International looked at 14 new housing developments in London and found that 40% were sold either to investors from countries with a high risk of corruption, or to anonymous shell companies. The next 35-40% by investors from countries with a lower risk of corruption and less than 1/4 by buyers based in the UK.

So I think within London and maybe other city centres (and I imagine the same goes for, say, cities in Canada, the US, Australia) off plan flats in a development are an asset class within global capital. As I say I think that's more of a symptom than a cause and I don't think it's nationwide so I don't think it is the issue, but I think at a local level (basically inner city developments in London, Manchester etc) it is a thing.

I think politically it is also problematic because in the example I started with, that was a former council estate and the council made a lot of money through that deal which was really necessary - but it's a shift from 3,000+ council tenants to generally private rental (with some social rent).

Been really interesting pieces in the Economist and FT I'll ty to find.

Edit: But all of that goes to I think the overseas ownership thing is more of an issue around transparency and anti-corruption policy than housing.