There's a long standing tradition in Britain that just before a lengthy rainy spell, the authorities announce that we are in the middle of a terrible drought and there will need to be a hose ban pipe in the summer.
This, of course, is excessively optimistic, because we don't always get summers in Britain. But what is even more extraordinary is that the powers that be have an uncanny knack for announcing droughts shortly before the heavens open and we are all drenched in a downpour.
No Native American witch doctor ever performed a more effective rain dance than do the weather experts when shuffling uneasily (even on radio you can tell they are shuffling) as they threaten us with the dreaded hose pipe ban.
I don't own a hose pipe and if I did I wouldn't know what to do with it since I live in a flat and have no garden. Hose pipes are effectively banned from the Brind household, come rain or shine.
We had the drought warnings about a week ago, since when it has rained more or less continually. It's amazing! How do they know it's about to rain? If they do have a sixth sense for these matters, why when they see the signs of coming rain, does it suddenly make them fixate on the poor hose pipe?
After the drought warnings, after the flood, the next step is usually the imposition of a hose pipe ban anyway. A lot of rain doesn't mean we don't have a drought. Oh no, we just have a very wet drought.
The usual excuse is that the rain happened at the wrong time, or it was the wrong kind of rain. Despite the whole country being a sodden mess, it's still officially a drought.
We haven't reached that stage yet but watch out for it. I'm confident it will happen. I can't predict the weather, but I can predict the weathermen!
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Ken Dodd
Years ago I was the editor of a coal industry magazine called Solid Fuel. Late one night I was sitting in the office when I received a call from a very angry Ken Dodd. My assistant at the time, David Cusworth (who subsequently went to Perth in Australia and long monopolised the state press awards for his headline writing), had been causing Ken grief.
David had been pursuing Ken's brother Arthur, a coal merchant who (from memory and as unlikely as it may seem this is how I remember it), was based in Knotty Ash, Merseyside. For those who don't know Ken Dodd's act, Knotty Ash is an almost mythical place he refers to, the home of the Diddymen. The Diddymen, who definitely are mythical, are Pinky and Perky type characters.
Anyway, David had been ringing Arthur Dodd's business phone line, asking him to get in touch with the magazine. We thought a bit of publicity might do him some good and it would certainly make interesting reading for our coal merchant audience.
So back to the call. There I was working on something (in those pre-email days the phones seemed to ring all day so sometimes the evening was the only time you could actually get anything done) when the phone rang.
I could tell immediately Ken Dodd was angry. This was not the loveable character he mostly portrays in his stage act. The conversation went something like.
"I'm Ken Dodd,"KD
"Oh, hello Ken," me.
"Why are you ringing my brother?"KD
"Oh that's not me, that's my assistant David," me.
"Why is he ringing my brother?" KD
"We wanted to do a feature about him," me. "We thought it would be interesting."
"Well don't." KD.
"He's a coal merchant and we write about coal merchants in Solid Fuel,"me
"He doesn't want to talk to you,"KD.
"But why, Ken?" me. "It would be good for his business and a positive, interesting story."
"If you have to do something write about me," KD.
"But I can't Ken you're not a coal merchant," me. "We write about coal merchants."
"Well leave my brother alone!," KD.
"Ok Ken, I'll tell David to drop the story," me.
The next morning I told David that Arthur wasn't going to talk to him so he should drop the story.
A shame really. The story I'd heard was that the Dodd coal business used to be owned by Ken and Arthur's father. When one of the sons had to take over it turned out that Arthur was a first rate comedian but also a great coal merchant. Ken was not a bad comedian but he was certainly a worse coal merchant. So Arthur got the business and Ken took to the stage.
Rubbish, of course, you don't get to be as good a comedian as Ken Dodd through natural talent. It's practice, practice, practice, practice. It takes years of heart break and failure to make a great comedian.
But all the same it's a good story and it would have been great to have some photographs of the Knotty Ash coal business.
David had been pursuing Ken's brother Arthur, a coal merchant who (from memory and as unlikely as it may seem this is how I remember it), was based in Knotty Ash, Merseyside. For those who don't know Ken Dodd's act, Knotty Ash is an almost mythical place he refers to, the home of the Diddymen. The Diddymen, who definitely are mythical, are Pinky and Perky type characters.
Anyway, David had been ringing Arthur Dodd's business phone line, asking him to get in touch with the magazine. We thought a bit of publicity might do him some good and it would certainly make interesting reading for our coal merchant audience.
So back to the call. There I was working on something (in those pre-email days the phones seemed to ring all day so sometimes the evening was the only time you could actually get anything done) when the phone rang.
I could tell immediately Ken Dodd was angry. This was not the loveable character he mostly portrays in his stage act. The conversation went something like.
"I'm Ken Dodd,"KD
"Oh, hello Ken," me.
"Why are you ringing my brother?"KD
"Oh that's not me, that's my assistant David," me.
"Why is he ringing my brother?" KD
"We wanted to do a feature about him," me. "We thought it would be interesting."
"Well don't." KD.
"He's a coal merchant and we write about coal merchants in Solid Fuel,"me
"He doesn't want to talk to you,"KD.
"But why, Ken?" me. "It would be good for his business and a positive, interesting story."
"If you have to do something write about me," KD.
"But I can't Ken you're not a coal merchant," me. "We write about coal merchants."
"Well leave my brother alone!," KD.
"Ok Ken, I'll tell David to drop the story," me.
The next morning I told David that Arthur wasn't going to talk to him so he should drop the story.
A shame really. The story I'd heard was that the Dodd coal business used to be owned by Ken and Arthur's father. When one of the sons had to take over it turned out that Arthur was a first rate comedian but also a great coal merchant. Ken was not a bad comedian but he was certainly a worse coal merchant. So Arthur got the business and Ken took to the stage.
Rubbish, of course, you don't get to be as good a comedian as Ken Dodd through natural talent. It's practice, practice, practice, practice. It takes years of heart break and failure to make a great comedian.
But all the same it's a good story and it would have been great to have some photographs of the Knotty Ash coal business.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Sarkie
Nicolas Sarkozy's last ditch attempt to win re-election to the French presidency by promising a 0.1% share transaction tax could be a sign that the tide is turning. Those who like me believe in kondratiev waves and have long been waiting for the economic nadir to be reached, may find this encouraging. This may be the sign.
After the Second World War people in Europe and across the world rejected the rapacious capitalism of the 1930s that had caused so much human misery and destruction to the fabric of society. In Britain a Labour Government introduced the modern welfare state, nationalised the basic industries that were seen as the backbone of society at the time and Conservative and Labour governments competed with each other to see how many council houses they could build!
This social confidence petered out in the 1960s with the so called individualism of flower power and drug culture. We had rooms full of students, each expressing their individuality but from a distance looking exactly the same as each other.
In the 1970s and 1980s with Thatcherism and Reganism there was the emergence of the lunatic assertion that there is no such thing as society and the creation of a world fit for small shopkeepers and B movie leading men. Labour and Conservative parties competed with each other to see how many industries could be de-nationalised.
The nineties and the noughties were decades of excess and unprecedented collapse: boom and bust on a previously unimaginable scale.
Inequalities multiplied with the richest taking an ever greater share of the pie, while the majority in America and Europe, got poorer. This was very much the story of the 1920s and 1930s.
A financial transaction tax will not damage investment, since long term investors like Warren Buffet will scarcely be affected. If you don't make transactions you don't have to pay the tax!
What it will do is tax churn, by that I mean the relentless speculation and financial manipulation carried out by banks and other cowboy outfits. Banking should be boring.
Tax the transactions enough and all the credit default swaps and financial derivatives become transparently a mugs game. Even the people who believed they could make a killing out of trillion dollar zero sum games, come to realise the process is fundamentally flawed.
And when you think about it every other transaction is taxed. When you buy a packet of baby food, or a house or pretty much anything else there is a sales tax. The only major exemptions are some forms of gambling and the stock market.
Tax all the transactions and you strike at the heart of the giant machine that has been grinding wealth and prosperity away from the mass of the people to an unelected elite. A tax on share transactions is a first step.
Britain, of course, has much to fear from a financial transaction tax. Much of the British economy is devoted to the City and finance. A British transaction tax could cost the economy dear if the city upped stumps and moved elsewhere. But the City is hardly going to move to Paris and if Sarkozy starts a trend it may be that there are fewer and fewer bolt holes for speculators who don't want to live in the Cayman Isles or Lichenstein.
And Britain also has much to gain. While a 0.1% transaction tax won't raise much in France (a billion euros perhaps), it would raise quite a lot in Britain and might make the current Government's doomed attempt to balance the financial books, a little more plausible.
After the Second World War people in Europe and across the world rejected the rapacious capitalism of the 1930s that had caused so much human misery and destruction to the fabric of society. In Britain a Labour Government introduced the modern welfare state, nationalised the basic industries that were seen as the backbone of society at the time and Conservative and Labour governments competed with each other to see how many council houses they could build!
This social confidence petered out in the 1960s with the so called individualism of flower power and drug culture. We had rooms full of students, each expressing their individuality but from a distance looking exactly the same as each other.
In the 1970s and 1980s with Thatcherism and Reganism there was the emergence of the lunatic assertion that there is no such thing as society and the creation of a world fit for small shopkeepers and B movie leading men. Labour and Conservative parties competed with each other to see how many industries could be de-nationalised.
The nineties and the noughties were decades of excess and unprecedented collapse: boom and bust on a previously unimaginable scale.
Inequalities multiplied with the richest taking an ever greater share of the pie, while the majority in America and Europe, got poorer. This was very much the story of the 1920s and 1930s.
A financial transaction tax will not damage investment, since long term investors like Warren Buffet will scarcely be affected. If you don't make transactions you don't have to pay the tax!
What it will do is tax churn, by that I mean the relentless speculation and financial manipulation carried out by banks and other cowboy outfits. Banking should be boring.
Tax the transactions enough and all the credit default swaps and financial derivatives become transparently a mugs game. Even the people who believed they could make a killing out of trillion dollar zero sum games, come to realise the process is fundamentally flawed.
And when you think about it every other transaction is taxed. When you buy a packet of baby food, or a house or pretty much anything else there is a sales tax. The only major exemptions are some forms of gambling and the stock market.
Tax all the transactions and you strike at the heart of the giant machine that has been grinding wealth and prosperity away from the mass of the people to an unelected elite. A tax on share transactions is a first step.
Britain, of course, has much to fear from a financial transaction tax. Much of the British economy is devoted to the City and finance. A British transaction tax could cost the economy dear if the city upped stumps and moved elsewhere. But the City is hardly going to move to Paris and if Sarkozy starts a trend it may be that there are fewer and fewer bolt holes for speculators who don't want to live in the Cayman Isles or Lichenstein.
And Britain also has much to gain. While a 0.1% transaction tax won't raise much in France (a billion euros perhaps), it would raise quite a lot in Britain and might make the current Government's doomed attempt to balance the financial books, a little more plausible.
Thursday, 29 December 2011
a new type of search engine
Imagine everything you have ever been told about the internet in general and search engines in particular. Then reverse it.
This is a counter intuitive idea, yet when I explain it, people always say it must exist already. Perhaps it does, but I haven't come across it.
Information they say wants to be free and perhaps it does but advertisers want different values placed on different types of information: so free means different things at different places.
Let's put it this way, but it is only one of millions of potential examples, suppose you are looking for orange Egyptian cotton sheets in Ebay, you can find them but it is a very tedious process. These are standard high street products but you will have to wade through enormous quantities of stuff you are not interested in at all (pillow cases, polycotton sheets, which is probably not cotton at all and a lot of other stuff as well, almost none of it coming from Egypt).
Ebay probably tries its best to serve people who want to buy the goods offered via its service, but I believe internet traders attempt as hard as they can to compete on anything but price. In other words they hope that you may forget what you are looking for and instead click to buy their offerings on impulse. There seems to be no other conceivable reason for the fact that many of the entries are virtually identical, as if the search engine had been stuffed in order to crowd out low priced competition.
It's the same story with Google and other search engines. Googlewhacking is the name given to the process of entering search terms into google - often two words - with the aim of finding a search with just one result on Google. There is a word for this phenomenon because it is so rare. Many searches will give you millions of results. It is said that you can even get billions of results if you enter a term like if!
So far as most of these searches are concerned the results are of little value to anyone except the advertisers, reminding one of the old adage, he who pays the piper calls the tune!
So is the internet doomed to sink into a commercially driven miasma? Unfortunately, it probably is and, of course, this has driven the creation of selective search engines and web sites that catalogue related information. It's also possible to refine the way you search but fundamentally so long as the advertisers are paying it's never going to be a level playing field. If it was they wouldn't pay!
From a consumer's point of view this is all pretty depressing. Just as the internet really takes off as a commercial forum and high street stores start to feel the competition, consumers begin to find it almost impossible to discover what they really want.
So there is a huge unmet demand for an intelligent search engine and at the same time there is a vast amount of extremely cheap untapped intelligence: About three billion people (half the world's population), live on less than $2.5 a day. Source: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
It's hard to avoid watching techy or third world development tv programmes without seeing stories of African towns, or sometimes whole African countries, aiming to be internet hot spots. But what exactly are they supposed to do with the internet (apart from attempting to obtain the bank account details of people who believe they are about to get $100million from some phoney source)?
Obviously, there are legitimate things people can do, like compete for jobs on services like peopleperhour, but they don't seem to do it a great deal. Perhaps it is too complex to get access to an internet enabled computer and perform quite sophisticated duties (like designing a Powerpoint presentation)?
But doing a search is quite a simple operation, if tedious. Pay internet enabled people living in these desperately poor areas $5 a day and I imagine it would seem like wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
Even if they had to spend 20 minutes wading through an Ebay search sometimes, they'd probably be able to do a dozen searches a day. Charge the consumers $2 a search word ($8 for Orange Egyptian Cotton Sheets) and it could be quite profitable.
Save the core information obtained on an intranet and it might be possible for second line searchers to do a hundred searches a day, so you could make a good profit even if you were charging 25c a word.
Of course, there would be considerable consumer resistance to a search engine like this. People expect to get information for free and even premium services usually offer limited use for free.
Then there's the problem of micro transactions. It might be difficult to charge 25c via Paypal (or similar) so there would be a need to register and pay a subscription. Many consumers might give up at this point and say they can't be arsed to pay for something they know little about, particularly if they have to go through the process of registration.
On the other hand, I don't think it would be worth doing unless some (preferably a handful) of charities like Computer Aid and Oxfam, bought into the process. These charities have enormous databases and a vast ability to publicise a scheme like this. Their involvement would also make consumers feel better about parting with their cash.
Then there's the problem that search results would be delayed. They would not be instant. Could this be presented as an advantage?
For one thing this search engine is really intelligent and does not simply appear to be intelligent. It passes the Turing test so you can engage in a genuine conversation with it. If you don't like the response you can ask for the engine to take another look (possibly for a small additional fee).
Then there's the cooling off period angle. I can imagine the advert: ever bought a blow up purple rhino on the internet and wondered why when it was delivered a few days later? Using this search engine if you want to buy something you get to look at what you want to see yet the transaction takes a while. It isn't instant.
This idea would change the world. It could make internet shopping work better. It could improve the lives of the poverty stricken. It could force companies to be more transparent when they list their wares on the internet.
Lots of people have talked about providing internet enabled $100 computers in some of the poorest parts of the world. This search engine could afford to pay for and distribute such machines in meaningful numbers and at the same time create a lot of value for the people who construct it.
This is a counter intuitive idea, yet when I explain it, people always say it must exist already. Perhaps it does, but I haven't come across it.
Information they say wants to be free and perhaps it does but advertisers want different values placed on different types of information: so free means different things at different places.
Let's put it this way, but it is only one of millions of potential examples, suppose you are looking for orange Egyptian cotton sheets in Ebay, you can find them but it is a very tedious process. These are standard high street products but you will have to wade through enormous quantities of stuff you are not interested in at all (pillow cases, polycotton sheets, which is probably not cotton at all and a lot of other stuff as well, almost none of it coming from Egypt).
Ebay probably tries its best to serve people who want to buy the goods offered via its service, but I believe internet traders attempt as hard as they can to compete on anything but price. In other words they hope that you may forget what you are looking for and instead click to buy their offerings on impulse. There seems to be no other conceivable reason for the fact that many of the entries are virtually identical, as if the search engine had been stuffed in order to crowd out low priced competition.
It's the same story with Google and other search engines. Googlewhacking is the name given to the process of entering search terms into google - often two words - with the aim of finding a search with just one result on Google. There is a word for this phenomenon because it is so rare. Many searches will give you millions of results. It is said that you can even get billions of results if you enter a term like if!
So far as most of these searches are concerned the results are of little value to anyone except the advertisers, reminding one of the old adage, he who pays the piper calls the tune!
So is the internet doomed to sink into a commercially driven miasma? Unfortunately, it probably is and, of course, this has driven the creation of selective search engines and web sites that catalogue related information. It's also possible to refine the way you search but fundamentally so long as the advertisers are paying it's never going to be a level playing field. If it was they wouldn't pay!
From a consumer's point of view this is all pretty depressing. Just as the internet really takes off as a commercial forum and high street stores start to feel the competition, consumers begin to find it almost impossible to discover what they really want.
So there is a huge unmet demand for an intelligent search engine and at the same time there is a vast amount of extremely cheap untapped intelligence: About three billion people (half the world's population), live on less than $2.5 a day. Source: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
It's hard to avoid watching techy or third world development tv programmes without seeing stories of African towns, or sometimes whole African countries, aiming to be internet hot spots. But what exactly are they supposed to do with the internet (apart from attempting to obtain the bank account details of people who believe they are about to get $100million from some phoney source)?
Obviously, there are legitimate things people can do, like compete for jobs on services like peopleperhour, but they don't seem to do it a great deal. Perhaps it is too complex to get access to an internet enabled computer and perform quite sophisticated duties (like designing a Powerpoint presentation)?
But doing a search is quite a simple operation, if tedious. Pay internet enabled people living in these desperately poor areas $5 a day and I imagine it would seem like wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
Even if they had to spend 20 minutes wading through an Ebay search sometimes, they'd probably be able to do a dozen searches a day. Charge the consumers $2 a search word ($8 for Orange Egyptian Cotton Sheets) and it could be quite profitable.
Save the core information obtained on an intranet and it might be possible for second line searchers to do a hundred searches a day, so you could make a good profit even if you were charging 25c a word.
Of course, there would be considerable consumer resistance to a search engine like this. People expect to get information for free and even premium services usually offer limited use for free.
Then there's the problem of micro transactions. It might be difficult to charge 25c via Paypal (or similar) so there would be a need to register and pay a subscription. Many consumers might give up at this point and say they can't be arsed to pay for something they know little about, particularly if they have to go through the process of registration.
On the other hand, I don't think it would be worth doing unless some (preferably a handful) of charities like Computer Aid and Oxfam, bought into the process. These charities have enormous databases and a vast ability to publicise a scheme like this. Their involvement would also make consumers feel better about parting with their cash.
Then there's the problem that search results would be delayed. They would not be instant. Could this be presented as an advantage?
For one thing this search engine is really intelligent and does not simply appear to be intelligent. It passes the Turing test so you can engage in a genuine conversation with it. If you don't like the response you can ask for the engine to take another look (possibly for a small additional fee).
Then there's the cooling off period angle. I can imagine the advert: ever bought a blow up purple rhino on the internet and wondered why when it was delivered a few days later? Using this search engine if you want to buy something you get to look at what you want to see yet the transaction takes a while. It isn't instant.
This idea would change the world. It could make internet shopping work better. It could improve the lives of the poverty stricken. It could force companies to be more transparent when they list their wares on the internet.
Lots of people have talked about providing internet enabled $100 computers in some of the poorest parts of the world. This search engine could afford to pay for and distribute such machines in meaningful numbers and at the same time create a lot of value for the people who construct it.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Biutiful (2010)
Biutiful written and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu is probably the most depressing film I've ever seen. I would cheerfully break off watching it to see Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Ingmar Bergman is a comic film maker (and I'm not talking about Now About These Women) in comparison to Iñárritu.
Yet Biutiful is gorgeously made and has some of the best performances ever recorded on celluloid, particularly Hanaa Bouchaib, a teenager, though it was actually Javier Bardem who got nominated for the Oscar. In truth his performance is phenomenal but in this Spaniish film that is not unusual.
It is set in a Catlonian badland, so bleakly depressing that it seems as if it would be impossible for things to be worse: and yet almost immediately they get much worse and continue to spiral downwards at an ever increasing rate.
If you imagine something ghastly might happen, it almost immediately will. Yet this is not done for comic effect and it is hard to believe that Iñárritu thinks it will actually change anything. It probably won't.
The only redeeming factor is that you may emerge a better person having gone through an emotional wringer (a roller coaster with only downs and no ups). I sincerely hope so.
If you have to see the very best film making (which this is) go see it. But if you value your happiness, stay well away.
Yet Biutiful is gorgeously made and has some of the best performances ever recorded on celluloid, particularly Hanaa Bouchaib, a teenager, though it was actually Javier Bardem who got nominated for the Oscar. In truth his performance is phenomenal but in this Spaniish film that is not unusual.
It is set in a Catlonian badland, so bleakly depressing that it seems as if it would be impossible for things to be worse: and yet almost immediately they get much worse and continue to spiral downwards at an ever increasing rate.
If you imagine something ghastly might happen, it almost immediately will. Yet this is not done for comic effect and it is hard to believe that Iñárritu thinks it will actually change anything. It probably won't.
The only redeeming factor is that you may emerge a better person having gone through an emotional wringer (a roller coaster with only downs and no ups). I sincerely hope so.
If you have to see the very best film making (which this is) go see it. But if you value your happiness, stay well away.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Brief Encounter of The Third Kind
This is a treatment for a film script I could write (or produce in collaboration with other writers).
The background is very steam train heavy. Lots of steam trains since there are many steam railways run by enthusiasts and it might be possible to get access to their system at a reasonable cost. The project would also need a disused railway station, a sand pit in a park (with a nearby path big enough for an ice cream van) and a hill with a railway line running up it (Snowdonia would be nice but might be expensive).
The kernel is boy meets alien (or dreams alien). Falls in love. Lips quiver. He obsessively starts to build train shaped sculptures (for example a train shaped sandcastle in a sandpit). Meanwhile everywhere he goes he hears a set of five to eight notes and sees people with bent arms moving them backwards and forwards in a co-ordinated way like children playing trains. The ice cream van, for example plays the five to eight note refrain while he is creating the train sandcastle.
The film starts with images of pipes being oiled, clearly overheating. The pipes thrash about in a frenetic way as old fashioned steam piping does but the camera is so close it is impossible to see any context. Eventually as the tension builds the viewpoint shifts to a billowing white cloud, through which a steam engine appears.
It concludes with a meeting as a railway station on top of a hill at which the two star crossed lovers decide that cultural differences are just too great and their love can never be consummated (apart from anything their plumbing works in such radically different ways making such an event quite impossible). It ends with the alien departing on the train.
Along the way there is a psychiatrist who says the leading character (let us call him Trevor Howard) is mad, police officers who chase him to a field where wide eyed locals have gathered to watch the ghost train pass by and a station tea room where Trevor imagines he entertains the alien (let us call it Celia Johnson) and she seems to take embodiment.
The background is very steam train heavy. Lots of steam trains since there are many steam railways run by enthusiasts and it might be possible to get access to their system at a reasonable cost. The project would also need a disused railway station, a sand pit in a park (with a nearby path big enough for an ice cream van) and a hill with a railway line running up it (Snowdonia would be nice but might be expensive).
The kernel is boy meets alien (or dreams alien). Falls in love. Lips quiver. He obsessively starts to build train shaped sculptures (for example a train shaped sandcastle in a sandpit). Meanwhile everywhere he goes he hears a set of five to eight notes and sees people with bent arms moving them backwards and forwards in a co-ordinated way like children playing trains. The ice cream van, for example plays the five to eight note refrain while he is creating the train sandcastle.
The film starts with images of pipes being oiled, clearly overheating. The pipes thrash about in a frenetic way as old fashioned steam piping does but the camera is so close it is impossible to see any context. Eventually as the tension builds the viewpoint shifts to a billowing white cloud, through which a steam engine appears.
It concludes with a meeting as a railway station on top of a hill at which the two star crossed lovers decide that cultural differences are just too great and their love can never be consummated (apart from anything their plumbing works in such radically different ways making such an event quite impossible). It ends with the alien departing on the train.
Along the way there is a psychiatrist who says the leading character (let us call him Trevor Howard) is mad, police officers who chase him to a field where wide eyed locals have gathered to watch the ghost train pass by and a station tea room where Trevor imagines he entertains the alien (let us call it Celia Johnson) and she seems to take embodiment.
Monday, 21 November 2011
House building
In 1980 when Maggie Thatcher was rolling back the public sector and was about to begin selling off council housing at bargain basement prices, the private sector embarked on building 131,990 while the public sector notched up 110,010 housing starts. The balance was roughly 55% to 45%.
The UK housing stock is about 25 million so total starts of 242,000 meant the average new property had to last a shade more than 103 years. Build 242,000 houses every year for 103 years and you get 25 million.
But the design life of much new housing is only 30 years. This is not just a theoretical constraint. Much 1960s housing has already been demolished.
One of the motivations for cutting back public sector housing was to liberate the private sector: to let the free market provide the needs of the country.
In reality house building has been declining.
In 2008 there were only 182,820 housing starts. This is a quite remarkable reduction. A third more housing was built in 1980 than in 2008.
In general the private sector has built more houses than it did in 1980 (in 2008 private starts stood at 150,720) but the additional units were nothing like enough to make up for the decline in public sector building brought about by Thatcherism.
At the same time the population has been climbing quite rapidly, it hit 62,262,000 in mid 2010, compared to 56,330,000 in 1980, an increase of more than ten per cent.
In 2003 the Barker Review of Housing Supply calculated that 39,000 extra houses needed to be built each year just to accommodate population growth and changing patterns of household formation. (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_barker_03.htm).
A paper published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (UK Household Formation: Nuclear Fission?) pointed out: "There have been dramatic changes in patterns of marriage and childbearing behaviour in the United Kingdom in the past 15 years. Divorce rates have risen, the propensity of unmarried couples to 'cohabit' has increased, and the proportion of babies born outside marriage has risen, from 8% to 19%."
If the nuclear family really is melting down then there will be a need for extra housing units even if the population stays the same.
The press often talks about a population time bomb caused by baby boomers reaching pensionable age and putting unacceptable pressure on the social fabric of our society. In reality this does not seem to be happening (for various reasons). If the proportion of pensioners was too high you'd expect births to decline. The opposite is happening. In 2010 live births reached 797,000, the highest since 1991.
More births, of course, means more demand for housing both now and in future years.
Government statistics reveal that things are much worse in 2010/11 (April 2010-March 2011) with total housing starts running at 131,040 of which 99,050 are private sector. At a rate of 131,000 houses built each year, the average new property will have to last 190 years.
Well some may, but to return to that Barker report house prices have risen much faster in Britain than elsewhere in Europe, suggesting there is already considerable over demand (or to put it another way, scarcity).
source:e Office for National Statistics (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13975481)
source: http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/media/pdfs/research/2010/50_Years_of_Housing_UK.pdf (Communities and Local Government *Based on Experian forecast for Great Britain)
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop-people-population&date=1980
The UK housing stock is about 25 million so total starts of 242,000 meant the average new property had to last a shade more than 103 years. Build 242,000 houses every year for 103 years and you get 25 million.
But the design life of much new housing is only 30 years. This is not just a theoretical constraint. Much 1960s housing has already been demolished.
One of the motivations for cutting back public sector housing was to liberate the private sector: to let the free market provide the needs of the country.
In reality house building has been declining.
In 2008 there were only 182,820 housing starts. This is a quite remarkable reduction. A third more housing was built in 1980 than in 2008.
In general the private sector has built more houses than it did in 1980 (in 2008 private starts stood at 150,720) but the additional units were nothing like enough to make up for the decline in public sector building brought about by Thatcherism.
At the same time the population has been climbing quite rapidly, it hit 62,262,000 in mid 2010, compared to 56,330,000 in 1980, an increase of more than ten per cent.
In 2003 the Barker Review of Housing Supply calculated that 39,000 extra houses needed to be built each year just to accommodate population growth and changing patterns of household formation. (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_barker_03.htm).
A paper published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (UK Household Formation: Nuclear Fission?) pointed out: "There have been dramatic changes in patterns of marriage and childbearing behaviour in the United Kingdom in the past 15 years. Divorce rates have risen, the propensity of unmarried couples to 'cohabit' has increased, and the proportion of babies born outside marriage has risen, from 8% to 19%."
If the nuclear family really is melting down then there will be a need for extra housing units even if the population stays the same.
The press often talks about a population time bomb caused by baby boomers reaching pensionable age and putting unacceptable pressure on the social fabric of our society. In reality this does not seem to be happening (for various reasons). If the proportion of pensioners was too high you'd expect births to decline. The opposite is happening. In 2010 live births reached 797,000, the highest since 1991.
More births, of course, means more demand for housing both now and in future years.
Government statistics reveal that things are much worse in 2010/11 (April 2010-March 2011) with total housing starts running at 131,040 of which 99,050 are private sector. At a rate of 131,000 houses built each year, the average new property will have to last 190 years.
Well some may, but to return to that Barker report house prices have risen much faster in Britain than elsewhere in Europe, suggesting there is already considerable over demand (or to put it another way, scarcity).
source:e Office for National Statistics (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13975481)
source: http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/media/pdfs/research/2010/50_Years_of_Housing_UK.pdf (Communities and Local Government *Based on Experian forecast for Great Britain)
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop-people-population&date=1980
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