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Red Ed, What Has Induced This Majot Shift Of Policy?

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ToraToraTora | 00:47 Tue 14th Jan 2014 | News
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/10569973/Ed-Miliband-I-can-save-the-middle-class.html
How is he going to save the middle classes? Are they not the traditional enemy to be taxed till the pips squeak? Are they not the source of the "other peples money" that socialists traditionally run out of?
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No, Tora, "the Rich " were the enemy of old Labour. Ed Milliband is after the young aspirational middle class, which deserted Labour for Mrs Thatcher years ago and which Blair, who learned from that, had some success in getting back, together with the current lower middle class and the middle middle class. These last two groups find that their children can't afford to buy houses, they themselves can't afford what they once regarded as affordable, and, in short, are suffering as the middle always has in recessions. It's the old story; you can always sell Mercedes and you can always sell cheap cars in recessions, because Mercedes buyers don't notice or don't care, and the person who buys the cheap car needs a car as an essential. What you can't sell is mid-range cars, because their market won't or can't spend the money; they are the cars of the squeezed middle
funny coming from a party that has envy writ large across it's forehead.
aspirational people are having it tough, what's new. He should be looking at his party's old constituents, because they have been hit just as hard if not more at Labours policies, large scale immigration, affects housing, jobs, schools, medicine, all those core needs, middle class will try their best to get their children into private schools, and have medical insurance through their workplace, or pay into it, however those lower down the scale can't, those have been classic Labour voters, being rolled on by Ed M's party.
Fred has said everything here...well done Fred !

But houses have been made largely unaffordable for nearly everybody, not just poor people. Greed by housebuilders, bl00dy Estate Agents, and older people, down-sizing is a major cause. The other major cause is we are not building enough houses for rent. Not over-priced housing owned by private landlords, but good, old fashioned council houses.

I know this is like farting in chapel, but if Britain were to start building council houses again, in large numbers, it would go a long way to solve our present housing crisis. It would provide much needed homes for the kind of people that will never earn enough to buy their own home and it would take 10,000's of building workers off the dole and give them work, thus saving huge amounts in welfare handouts. It would rejuvenate local councils housing Depts. and provide apprenticeships for school leavers, just like it did in the 1950's and 1960's. It would give those kids a proper trade in which to start life, not just throw them on the scrapheap.

It would also go a long way to right the wrongs of the daft housing policy of the 80's, where the Government of the time thought it was a terribly good idea to sell off all the council houses but refused to let local councils use the money raised to build their replacements.

Its a very simple solution to the problem but I'm afraid that even Labour is unlikely to take it up.
Thanks emmie for including your usual anti-immigration rant into this discussion !
a rant, hardly, i rarely do rants i leave that to others who are more adept.
as to immigration, that has an impact on the country as a whole, or is that not acceptable to you, as to social housing, why don't both parties look at the big problem of empty properties that could be made good by a little thought and a few quid thrown in, instead of papering over the south east of England, seeing village after village disappearing, like joining up the dots. I have said this before make private landlords
make good these properties, give them 6/12 months to put some of the problems right, then rent them out to needy people, at a fair rent, councils are to blame as well, ours is by continuing to sell off houses they no longer want, stating that the upkeep is too much, preferring to see them fall into ruin and be sold for a song to private developers. Or to let the private developers cover every weeny space with private homes, none remotely affordable, they do so because they get some money off the developers for this nefarious activity. Don't believe me, then attend council meetings and see if i am wrong, you have to ask to visit, sit in on these meetings but it can be done. I have and seen their stupid handiwork for myself. Building million pound homes for who exactly?
causing many ordinary folk to shift outside the capital or so far they are in another land altogether.
and for your info our council is Labour run, so much for foresight and imagination.
and then of course is the bedroom tax, making many downsize, wonder where granny will go if not with you, because you have been asked, made to move or pay a levy on the property you have - is Ed going to change that if he gets into office, cut the bedroom tax levy, i wonder if he will
Mickey, do you really think uncontrolled immigration has not compounded the problem.

Red Ed has done this because he has twigged middle England giveth and middle England taketh. However once in power he will undoubtedly increase taxes for middle England because they are the only ones in sufficient numbers able to pay. There are simply not enough rich, do the Maths.
house buying goes up, according to this, so some can afford it, and some will do so even stretching their finances because they would prefer to own rather than keep on renting, which gives you nothing by way of return. Anyone in social housing will tell you the same, pay rent for 20 years, what apart from a roof over your head do you get, not much. Buy and you can by and large look forward to having a property that you can sell, if you so wish, do up to your standard, not the councils, a better investment than paying money to local authority,


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25710418
some don't know or want to know about immigration, head in sand comes to mind.
If bribing councillors to get more houses built is, in fact, going on, it is failing very badly, emmie !

I can't get even 40 houses built in this village,mostly for downsizing and first timers, but that's the public's loss: the villagers want the houses, whereas I already have one and don't have any family who want to live here, so I'll just go on farming and collecting taxpayers' money, by way of SPS subsidy. I can't even get six built. (Maybe I should offer bribes or use other nefarious activities!)

You speak of £1 million houses; well, £1 million won't get anything special here, but if I wanted to build a £6 million house, I would have no difficulty getting permission for it. That's the insanity of our planning; the £6 million house may well take the space of ten or more ordinary houses but it is only one dwelling, but ten is ten dwellings and not allowed.
its not bribing individual councillors, its a bribe to the council itself and is a big money spinner. In the capital its how some affordable homes get built, the private developer has on offer to build a hundred new homes, in that he will either pay a retainer to the council in order that they get built, or promise to include some affordable homes in that package, have seen this and discussed this with a number of councillors, and people in the know, affordable being the operative word, i am not sure what affordable is any more. Seeing that our borough is pricing many out of it, not just the so called greedy estate agents, who by the way are going with what the market will pay, not setting the levels. If you can charge 500 a week to 4 Chinese students then wouldn't you, but most who work, live in the capital can't remotely afford that, or anywhere near. You can find cheaper accommodation perhaps but it will be so far out, you have to pay a small fortune on train fares to get back in each day.
and 1 million won't get you anything special here, absurd as that sounds.
emmie...not a question of head in sand. Immigration is a factor in housing shortage but not a major one. The biggest factor is what is laid out in my post...the failure of the Right to Buy policy of the 1980's. We just don't have enough affordable homes to rent, especially when you see what the private sector is capable of :::

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/04/buy-to-let-landlord-evicts-housing-benefit-tenants

This wealthy, but odious and self-satisfied couple are evicting working people from their homes, even when they are not defaulting on their rent. People like these landlords are not helping the housing crisis in Britain one little bit. This couple even said that they would prefer to rent to immigrants, something that you and others on AB are presumably against !

So where do people who are may be working but earn little, go to find a home ? The Local Council used to be the source but the Government of the 1980's kicked that into touch. Don't you think it would be a good idea to get back to basics and start building Council Houses again ?

I am getting just a little bit tired of every discussion in News being hijacked by the immigration debate. Immigration doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with the link to Ed's speech above.
Blair won over the middleclasses from the Tories which is how Labour managed to stay in power for 13 years.

The Conservatives haven't done anything for the middle classes these last 3 and a half years, which is why Miliband is making a play to woo them.

Come the election and people ask themselves "am I better off than 5 years ago?" and a latge number of the middleclasses are going to conclude they are not.

Things can change in 18 months, but at the moment, it looks like a landslide for Labour in 2015.

no to building more homes, there are plenty of empty places, they need the councils input to do them up, they don't, just like ours, because they say they don't have the money, they do, they just don't like spending it.
Build more homes where, in the capital, in the south east, whereabouts, and where are the jobs to go along with it. I said this before, friends who live a way off have seen their lovely villages, towns ruined by mass building of housing, the developers got to do it because of the local council, yet there are no new jobs, in fact they struggle already with unemployment, and no new schools, nor plans, money to build any, no jobs, yet thousands of properties for sale, 3, 4, 5 bed houses, why?
Ed Milliband and his party are no lovers of the middle classes, they never have been, their core voters are working class, or has been, i don't know anyone who votes Labour, who i would consider to be middle class.
Then you need to get out more emmie !
i get out and about plenty, and unlike some have my ears and eyes open
I wouldn't give him the opportunity to save me. Tony Blair taught me to vote Conservative - and Gordon Brown confirmed I'd made the right decision. I won't be returning to the fold.

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