Of the three flats on the corridor where I rent my current Edinburgh home, just off the Canongate, two were lived in and one a holiday let. As of this month, only we are resident and there are two holiday lets. Before this I lived in the Holyrood Park apartment block. Of the 14 flats on the stair we lived on, only 3 were inhabited. Eleven were holiday lets and holiday homes. Our rent was raised every six months until eventually we we were forced out by rent reaching over £1500 a month. A taxi driver taking me home once told me he had never taken an actual resident there before, only holidaymakers; he did not know there were residents.
One Edinburgh website alone boasts that over 2,000 Edinburgh apartment owners use its short term letting service – and presumably a significant percentage of those 2,000 own multiple apartments. The authorities simply cannot know how many Edinburgh flats are holiday lets. It is a huge black market, avoiding income tax, fire, safety and other regulations and very often involving illegal sub-letting. Certainly in the apartment block I now inhabit there are flats used for holiday lets which are supposed to be social housing. The extent of it may be gauged by the fact that, with parking in great demand in Central Edinburgh, we have an underground car park with just one narrow space per flat, but that outwith the festival I have never seen the car park more than 20% full.
It is partly, but not just, an airbnb phenomenon. There are many other websites. A search for “apartments only” in Edinburgh from booking.com for 6-8 November shows an astonishing 877 apartments available – in addition to those already let, or available from a plethora of other sites and agents. There must be a minimum of 3,000 housing units not designed as holiday accommodation, taken out of Edinburgh’s housing stock and put to that purpose. Of these, I know from direct observation most are simply empty for the vast majority of the year, but from just Hogmanay and the Festival an owner can make more money than a working family could pay for rent in the year. The result is, of course, to force rents up across the city for ordinary people.
The impact on the city centre community has been devastating, and the process is by no means ended, with estate agents I have spoken with saying that most city centre properties now sold are still going to investors for this purpose.
Cities like Edinburgh and Barcelona, which are quite rightly huge tourist attractions, need to take urgent planning decisions to prevent the organic life of the city becoming extinct, and their being reduced to Disneyland parks. I have sympathy with those who argue that greedy overcharging in the hotel sector is part of the problem. But having lived as a resident in hollowed-out empty buildings, surrounded by homeless people sleeping rough next to empty homes, it is plain something is very wrong. That is without mentioning the unpleasantness of the stag and hen party culture which forms a significant part of the Edinburgh trade, and amongst which even the most liberal person has trouble living with small children in the family.
State regulation is out of fashion, but I would advocate tackling this through planning consent and simply designating which properties are for residential purpose only, and which for holiday accommodation if a permit is obtained. The latter might then be easily taxed as commercial properties, overcrowding and fire regulation addressed, and the income tax more easily pursued. The alternative is for the community of Central Edinburgh to vanish. I live a short walk from my father’s birthplace in a tenement on Johnstone Terrace. It is now a holiday let.
hi Craig, I believe that Andy Wightman (a Green MSP) is active on this front. Might you be in contact with him?
Something must be done.
In Scotland 455,000 council properties have been sold off under the Right-to-Buy legislation and in 2013 there were 400,000 people on the waiting lists for social housing. In 2016 there were 25,000 on the waiting list in Edinburgh, in spite of the Localism Act 2011 which allowed councils to remove people from their waiting lists if they didn’t have a local connection for a specified minimum length of time.
Over 2.5 million council homes have been sold in the UK under Right-to-Buy.
Freedom of Information requests have shown that, rather than creating Thatcher’s “nation of home-owners” Right-to-Buy has led to a decrease in home ownership and an increase in the % of people renting. Many of the council properties sold have ended up in the hands of private landlords who own multiple properties, while a smaller % of people own even one property.
What were once stable communities of social housing tenants with lifetime tenure are now disconnected environments, subject to constant changes of residents on insecure tenancies (ASTs or licences to occupy) or no contracts at all; students, holiday lets, Air BnB, HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation) and tenants constantly on the move as rents increase, evictions take place, Universal Credit takes hold. (Universal Credit pays rent monthly IN ARREARS to tenants, rather than directly to landlords – leading to budgeting and cash-flow problems, followed by rent arrears followed by eviction.)
At the same time as councils were forced to sell their properties they were not allowed to borrow money to build more social housing. There are now over one million people on council waiting lists in England alone. Many councils have transferred their housing stock to housing associations who are now working with the Government to deliver its election commitment to extend the Right to Buy to their tenants.
Figures released last month by the Department for Communities and Local Government showed that council homes are being sold off almost three times faster than local authorities can replace them. Councils are only allowed to spend 30% of the receipts from RTB sales on replacement homes, and have to fund any gaps in meeting construction costs from other sources. A cap on the amount that councils can borrow through housing revenue accounts means that they find it difficult to spend their RTB receipts. Even councils with massively valuable housing stock and large rental income from existing tenants cannot borrow against it in order to build new homes.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed councils in England have been handing over money to private landlords to rent property previously sold under the right to buy scheme.
Melanie Rees, head of policy at the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: “Right to buy has played a significant part in the loss of our most affordable homes at a time we desperately need more, not less, of this crucial housing.”
“The fact that councils are now having to collectively spend many millions to rent those same properties back for homeless households is extremely worrying and, quite frankly, absurd.”
While England tries to extend the Right-to-Buy to Housing Associations, thereby making the lack of affordable housing worse, Scotland has sensibly abandoned the Right-to-Buy.
Ian Gow was Housing Minister at the height of the Right-to-Buy boom in the 1980’s. His son, Charles Gow, owns 35 ex-council flats in one South London block alone. His firm KCG is offering flats in the block for £1,500 a month. Mr Gow, who lives in a £2.5million house in Esher, Surrey, would not say how many ex-council properties he owned but hinted that he owns many more than the total of 40 identified by The Mirror newspaper in its joint investigation with the GMB Union.
Paul Kenny of the GMB said, “The investigation exposes Thatcher’s policy as nothing more than a charter for the exploitation of social housing for private profit.” The GMB found that scores of ex-council properties were owned by wealthy investors via offshore holding firms in tax havens in the Channel Islands.
The Housing Benefit bill was £24 billion in 2014/15, according to the Department for Work and Pensions. Housing Benefit is claimed, not just by the unemployed, but also by pensioners, the disabled and those in work who can’t afford their rent.
This is a link to an old Guardian article on this subject:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jun/28/new-class-landlords-profiting-generation-rent
Right-to-Buy must end, councils must be freed up to finance, build and hold onto new homes, rent caps must be applied, Air BnB and holiday lets must be regulated and possibly limited, IMHO.
great post. adding to the lunacy of the situation is the billions in housing benefit being paid to private landlords…. for properties the government itself owned just yesterday.
40% Tory MPs are BTL landlords
And the other parties?
No doubt and I look forward to your info on that.
A very one-sided post. And actually, as you admit yourself, all these problems are solved if more houses are built.
Those houses which were once owned by councils and ended up in the rental market were obviously sold by the owners at some point and you make no mention of the way they must have benefitted financially from right-to-buy. I’m happy for them.
And why shouldn’t they benefit? Why shouldn’t someone who has lived in a council house say 20 years not have a right to buy?
The problem is down to a lack of new houses being built, in both the private and public sector.
At the same time, people are getting divorced more often today and creating increased demand, and people are traveling more, again putting pressure on demand as houses are dedicated to the holiday accommodation market.
People who are arguing that Airbnb should be banned might as well also argue that divorce should be banned. Both arguments are equally stupid because they approach the problem from the wrong direction.
Housing Benefit should be abolished. It costs £27 billion in a country spending £38 billion on Defence
Don’t be sillly. Abolishing housing benefit would effectively dump millions of people on to the streets.
One extreme to the other.
So we spend £27 billion subsidising wages ? £13 billion of that is paid to 789,000 people in work. Why does the taxpayer have to subsidise low wages in the Socialist Nirvana of Great Britain and much of this is in London !
Who would the landlords rent their properties to then? Where are all these people who can afford to rent without housing benefit but are currently homeless and just waiting to move into the homes newly vacated by the evicted housing benefit ex-claimants?
“Why does the taxpayer have to subsidise low wages”
One example, of many, is because a multi-billion profit company owned by one of the richest men in the world is allowed to operate in this country virtually tax free whilst paying his staff below a living wage, requiring many of them to claim working tax credits. This is an economic model that the government claims is making this country richer.
Good idea ! It is another subsidy for rich property owners, and property developers posing as help for the poor.
House prices would fall putting them back in the price range of ordinary people.
“It costs £27 billion in a country spending £38 billion on Defence”
So, not a great deal in the grand scheme of things. Useless Trident and already obsolete ships with multi-million pound grounded US aircraft or millions of people living with a roof over their head. Seems like an easy choice.
No, the problem is due to uncontrolled immigration, uncontrolled breeding and the uncontrolled greed of buy to let landlords.
Goodwin, I’m so happy not to be on the same side of this debate as you.
Hatuey
You propose a solution which sounds sensible but runs contrary to what has actually happens. The policy of private ownership was not a socialist populist one but a politically motivated cynical one. It was to reduce the council’s stock of social housing and at the same time restrict councils from building more. In any case your creed of individualism versus community seems to ignore the purpose of social housing which is affordable housing for those who cannot afford to buy. And even if your rose tinted vision of letting those who have lived in the property for many years be able to buy them this was done by selling them at below market value in many cases which allowed first generation right to buy owners a bit of a windfall amounting to profits being passed from the tax payer to those individuals. It is not a function of councils to provide affordable housing stock for sale which is what happened but only in a limited time scale.
How many Council Houses did poor Alan Duncan buy in Westminster ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/inside-parliament-house-questions-return-to-haunt-duncan-mp-urged-to-repay-part-of-gain-on-purchase-1429580.html
SA, the importance of the housing market in any economy cannot be exaggerated. It’s massive, so much so that many economists use trends in the housing market to explain and predict the performance of the economy as a whole. This isn’t something that politicians should be allowed to screw around with — get this wrong and the whole economy goes down.
The UK’s housing market is not that bad compared to other countries. The determination of house shortages, regardless of how it is calculated, and there are various ways, suggests we are doing pretty well. London and the south east skews things because it tends to overheat but that’s not really something you can put down to the housing market itself — London is like a black hole that sucks in everything.
A few things could, and I’d say should, be done to improve the situation. If these things were done, I think within 5 years you’d see a marked improvement to the extent that nitpicking over the role of Airbnb etc. would be less of a temptation.
1) we need more houses, private and public.
2) we need to look into ways of making loans and mortgages for the purposes of buying houses more easily obtainable.
3) we need a program that encourages and facilitates converting old office, industrial, and retail buildings into houses.
The annoying thing is that it’s red tape that gets in the way of the above, not finance. Housing is a great investment, finance shouldn’t be an issue.
“SA, the importance of the housing market in any economy cannot be exaggerated”
Why? Housing has become a commodity rather than a need for everybody in modern day capitalism. The quality of someones life should not change whether they own the property or have safeguarded long term tenancy. It is this co-modification of housing that has lead to the distortion whereby housing is not a necessity but a commercial asset to be exploited by the rentier class. To paraphrase what you said:
1) we need more houses, private for those who need to invest in property, and public for social affordable housing
2) we need to look into ways of making loans and other means more easily obtainable for councils to build social housing.
3) we need a program that encourages and facilitates converting old office, industrial, and retail buildings into houses.
SA “Housing has become a commodity rather than a need for everybody in modern day capitalism.”
You could say that about anything, even body-parts. Does that mean having a heart doesn’t matter?
When the housing market slumps, the economy as a whole slumps. The housing market improves and the economy improves. I believe in the UK that correlation is almost 100% although it’s been about 20 years since I researched this.
When people buy houses, they tend to buy carpets, paint, tables, TVs, and so on. They hire tradesmen, estate agents, lawyers, etc. There’s a million spin-off effects.
Outside of a general war, nothing impacts an economy more than housing and house building.
“When the housing market slumps, the economy as a whole slumps. ”
Of course it is self evident that if you commodify something it becomes becomes a marker of growth or slump. The question is should it? The same applies to water and other essentials, should they be a service or a commodity that you can speculate on? These are the sort of basic differences between the greed capitalism and socialism where people come first and not making profits and growth.
Impose CGT on houses. Impose VAT on BTL sales. Remove VAT on house renovation.
“all these problems are solved if more houses are built.”
In what way are they solved? Building more houses simply means you have more houses to for sale or to rent at exactly the same unaffordable prices and rents as we have now. How is that going to solve anything except the problem of how the housebuilders can afford to pay their chief executives ever bigger bonuses?
You don’t think an increase in supply affects price?
Increase in supply can only affect price if the market is near saturation. This is not happening because there are always international and corporate and investment buyers who will buy property and leave them uninhabited as an investment and drive the prices up. Building and selling affordable houses need to be inbuilt into a government policy to work. I can tell you that there is a major boom in house building in the cross rail corridor from London to Reading. But is any of it affordable? You can buy a two bedroom apartments in Maidenhead for between 388-650,000 or in slough two bedroom house or flat for 400-500,000. What do you think?
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E1217&maxBedrooms=2
http://www.shanlyhomes.com/developments/berkshire/towns/maidenhead/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3YCulL-m3gIVr53tCh18Kg6sEAAYAyAAEgIpkvD_BwE
Not with houses. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. You would need to have higher density in the same postcode
“You don’t think an increase in supply affects price?”
No, because the value of a house is mainly the value of the land it stands on and the value of the land it stands on is dictated by its location, in which it has a monopoly. OK, an estate of houses by and large share a location, but even then, the ones on the edge, looking out over green fields will be more valuable than the ones in the middle. Outside this, the supply makes no difference to the price. Building more houses in Bath isn’t going to affect the price of houses in Bristol.
Also the psychology of buying land, as long ago noticed by Ricardo, is different from the psychology of buying anything else. People tend to spend the maximum they can afford, either on rent or on a mortgage, which amounts to the same thing. We tend find the best home they can for the money they have available, not the cheapest price for the home they want. So what drives prices and rents is the money that is available, which depends on two things, how well the economy is doing for rents and what the interest rates are for buying. That’s why houses (land) are so expensive, because interest rates are so low. Building more houses isn’t going to have the slightest effect on the amount of money people can borrow to buy them, so isn’t going to have an effect on price.
Hatuey, i have to agree largely with your sentiment on this.
One of my first jobs was selling people the homes they already lived in!
Besides from the dodgy endowment policies we had to sign them up for, it was a privilege to help complete their RTB forms and lists of home improvements, sort out mortgages, fund further home improvements, etc.
I can’t think of an instant where the purchase was to enable instant mega profits – the resale market on council estates was doa. There was plenty of new build – though much smaller private building.
There was a promise that they, the renters over many decades, would be finally free of otherwise continued rent after 20-25 years, and actually own bricks and mortar for the first time ever – when they and their forebearers were forever doomed to pay for a roof over their heads – paying many multiples of the cost of the property than a better off ‘middle class’ private purchaser.
A chance of equality, fairness, actual asset for their families – there was no downside.
BUT!! – no one said that the coumcils would NOT be allowed to build any more by using the capital receipts or borrowing – that future generations would be cut off from affordable social housing in their communities; that RENTIERISM would become a common affliction instead.
Of course the plan was to wean peoples off the socialist democratic post war ideal – and let the robber barons and aristos regain all their hagemony – with the loadsamoney, sexy, new world order.
Didn’t we just all fall for it!
Now two generations in – life is approaching the pre-war lack of prospects for the youngest, trapped in austerity and debt from the get go.
They are being trained for a return to servitude – the endless cookery and ‘ talent’ shows, whilst being introduced to their ‘betters’ on ‘love the rich’ and their lifestyles TV programs.
The answer are obvious and easy – but the enemies are implacable and ancient and they own all the media.
The answer is a reaffirmation of that post war social democratic ideal. It is actually on offer for the first time in 50 years, if we can grasp that chance rather than being bamboozled about brexit as the hagemons are trying.
What you write is all true – but it is far from the full story.
On the one hand you have all of the problems that you identify – but that is only half of the pincer movement in place to crush the mass of the population.
The offloading of the public housing stock got under way at a large scale as a consequence of the 1980 Housing Act. In 1980 the population of the UK stood at 56.31 million. Today the population of the UK is 66.02 million. In addition to published figures there are estimates that there may be a further 1 million illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are a big problem in that they are effectively hidden from policymakers. Whilst they use services their demand for services are not factored into the planning process.
In addition to the rise in population UK household size has been on a declining trend since at least 1961. In 1961 average household size was 3.1. Today it is less than 2.4.
No-one could make these kind of planning errors over such a long period of time unless they were doing it on purpose. All major political parties are dedicated to the impoverishment of their own electorates. Those on the right by selling off public assets and enriching themselves in the process, and those on the left by stoking demand for housing whilst having zero intention of addressing the supply side.
Why not introduce ‘right to buy’ legislation to also apply to private rented accommodation? With the same discounts that the Tories applied when selling off council properties. And make banks offer sensible mortgages for such purchasers.
I am sick to death of the buy to let parasites that bring nothing to the housing party other than additional costs and rent extraction. Disgusting.
That is called EXPROPRIATION. You cannot sell someone else’s property
– “Why not introduce ‘right to buy’ legislation to also apply to private rented accommodation?”
That wouldn’t work where I live. It’s a house on a farm in the middle of a country estate. If any of these houses were sold the farm track would have to become a public road.
You could argue that the landowner should be forced to break up the estate and sell it off, but this estate has the majority of woodland, and public rights of way, for miles around. Plus the local authority woudn’t be keen on taking on a farm track and raising it to highway standards, and the residents wouldn’t be keen on the track being opened to motor vehicles.
“That is called EXPROPRIATION. You cannot sell someone else’s property”
Unless you are the government, who are proposing to do just that with the housing associations’ property, so why not private landlords? There’s nothing wrong with right to buy, what is wrong is right to buy at undervalue.
That wouldn’t work where I live. It’s a house on a farm in the middle of a country estate. If any of these houses were sold the farm track would have to become a public road.”
There are thousands of houses that are accessed over roads which are not public. The householders are responsible, jointly for their upkeep, they have a right of way over them, but they do not own them, so no, it wouldn’t.
Whoever subscribed to the me-first philosophy of the Thatcher era is responsible for the you-never world we live in in the UK today. If you don’t stand against the greed of the Tories by siding with their opposition, then in effect you are the Tories’ gatekeeper.
I personally would have quit my job if it had involved communicating with Mrs Thatcher, whom I regard as vastly more evil, psychopathic and dangerous for the world than Abdullah bin Salman. Craig held his nose and now he suffers the consequences.
People had Blair-Brown for 13 years after Thatcher had been gone for 7 years………some in the voting booth liked New Labour and its Euro-Communist flirtation with rabid crookery
“Airbnb is a parasitic monster that squats over cities and hoovers up vast sums of money through its slimy proboscis.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/24/airbnb-unregulated-damage-cities-barcelona-law-locals
My thoughts exactly.
This problem may be soluble.
In Monaco, which obviously has a similar problem with outsiders prepared to pay very high rents, there are two laws that limit properties to local tenants.
Perhaps Edinburgh local authority could pass a by-law that allows certain properties to be specified as for locals only.
Unfortunately, knowing the thatcher mob they would probably make it illegal so that their money-grubbing friends can maximise their profits.
Bert.
One way to combat prejudice (e,g, “the thatcher mob…”) is to acquaint yourself with facts.
It is a fact in 2016 there was a referendum in St. Ives in which some 80% of voters voted in favor of all new homes being sold solely to full time residents of St. Ives. Naturally such a policy was not welcomed by those you identify as “money grubbers.” However the courts ruled that the expressed preferences of local voters took precedence the concerns and objections of the “money grubbers”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-37938885
Perhaps anyone in Scotland bemoaning the quality and/or cost of their housing may wish to reflect on the fact that the Scottish government is perfectly capable of addressing the issue. That they do not address the issue tells you all you need to know as to just how much the SNP despises those people that vote for them. After all they have much bigger fish to fry – like people that have a penchant for the lawful shooting of goats.
One of the problems in Edinburgh is the short term let – ie for just a few nights. It’s unlikely that local Edinburgh people would be looking at this kind of rental – however Airbnb and other short term letting platformsa drive up all rentals in the city and property prices in the city, but those are separate issues.
They also destroy the sense of place because they destroy the permanent community.
Time to copy Germany and other EU countries and reduce VAT on hotels and restaurants to 7% with full-rate on alcohol. The fact that Booking.com sucks up 25% room rate as “commission” and VAT takes 20% sets up the traveller for disappointment
How can booking.com charge that much? It doesn’t have a monopoly on online bookings, but other online booking shops have the same prices. I guess booking.com have a clause that the same final rates must be used in all online shops? Something a competitions authority could look into?
Booking.com charges such rates which is why many hotels charge separately for breakfast to get it out of the room rate
On the whole, I’m sure airbnb is a positve thing, Guardian be damned. I’ve never been able to afford hotel prices so why would I object to people using their spare room to make ends meet? That’s been my experience of it so far, and I’ve met quite a few interesting people I never would have otherwiset. The antipathy towards it, particularly in the press, is probably on the whole coming from large hotel chains who can afford to lobby the press. The sanctity of their scarce resource has been challenged. Whatever real problems arise from it, I’ve only observed sneering at airbnb to be prevalent among the middle class.
Cat, meet pigeon.
J, you’re right about a few things here, especially the sneering middle classes.
You’d think those of a socialist persuasion would admire the improve utilisation of capacity that Airbnb brings to the equation too. But no, they’d rather side with big hotel chains who are lobbying like mad against it.
As sharp ears points out below, there are problems, and like so many things, it could be improved immeasurably if the profit motive was blunted, but hey ho.
ah the immeasurable benefits of kicking people out in the street and making money on the usually vacant houses they need.
What you’re describing is quite different from renting out a whole flat and for several “hosts” to own several.
Via airbnb I’ve stayed with a family in Rome in their spare bedroom, in a music academy in Morocco which rents spare rooms to keep teaching traditional Berber music to young Moroccan musicians and in a working convent in a poor suburb of Naples which houses orphans and keeps itself running by renting spare rooms to tourists. Nothing like the accusations levelled by the comments above. I agree, it’s highly likely that arsehole unscrupulous landlords use airbnb to do unethical things. I haven’t experienced that, I’m not defending that and I haven’t taken part in that.
The usual.
‘Airbnb, Inc. is a privately held global company headquartered in San Francisco that operates an online marketplace and hospitality service which is accessible via its websites and mobile apps. Members can use the service to arrange or offer lodging, primarily homestays, or tourism experiences. The company does not own any of the real estate listings, nor does it host events; as a broker, it receives commissions from every booking.’
Revenue $2.6billion
Key people
Brian Chesky
Joe Gebbia
Nathan Blecharczyk
They each have net worth of $3.8billion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbnb
They saw a niche as the saying goes. 😉
Shame on the threesome.
‘Boycott over Israeli settlements
Airbnb is on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions list of companies. The company was added following media reports that lodging listings included settlements in the occupied Palestine that are advertised as being in Israel or in Israeli neighborhoods.
From the ‘Controversies’ list on the Wikipedia entry.
Airbnb do good rates for Hebron, £8 per night. Good luck getting through the Israeli checkpoints.
I tend to think they are share-cropping where Booking.com first ventured to extract its Supernormal Rent from the hotel sector
Avoid Catalania on your travel plans unless you wish to see the Spanish police beating up the people, yet again.
https://twitter.com/CataloniaHelp2/status/1055442132037787648
Catalonia even.
Catalunya even better
So Clara Ponsati has been accused of rebellion and embezzlement, is latest charges to emerge from Madrid.
Madrid has added that it has concluded its investigations into 18 former Catalan leaders, and pro-independence figures, and court proceeding will now begin. The kangaroo, sorry the trials will begin in January 2019.
Spain has held some of the Catalan figures in prison for over a year without trial or charge. Its disgraceful that political prisoners are held untried for that amount of time in western Europe.
Even more disgraceful is the fact that they’re held at all. Their crime holding a democratic election, for which in turn Madrid beat them, shot them, teargassed them and then imprisoned them.
The Guardia Civil received medals for their brutal assaults on the Catalan people. Whilst Spanish loyalists celebrated by singing the Cara Sol.
Better still, Cataluña.
Spanish police are beating up law breakers, communists and anarchists.
If you knew the first thing about Spanish history then you would understand that the Spanish much prefer a few broken bones today than mountains of rotting corpses tomorrow.
Although you seem desperate to reduce Spain to ashes there will be no surrender and the unity of Spain will be maintained under all conditions. Think about what that means – you want to play at this particular table then you need to go all in. All in not only with your own life but the lives of everyone you know. You lack the entrance price so leave people you neither understand, nor wish to understand, alone.
some of the spanish preferred hitler, yes, a lot of others didn’t and franco’s goons broke their bones and provided a mountain of rotting corpses. the franco supporters apparently much preferred that rotting mountain.
Indeed, and it was Franco himself who opined that he was willing to kill half the population in order to gain control of the entire country. Consequently he seemed little concerned with the 500,000 death toll from the war. So unconcerned was he that he was content to effectively expel a minimum of a further 500,000 from Spain.
That still left plenty of people so a further 40,000 men were assembled to form the Division Azul where they were promptly slaughtered by the Russians. Throughout the period of Franco’s rule citizens ran the risk of arbitrary arrest and torture or alternatively imprisonment and forced labor.
El pacto de silencio limits discussion of these matters within Spain – but people know, and they have no intention of voluntarily returning to the blood soaked past or the long period of oppression that followed the blood letting. Today, and to paraphrase Leonard Cohen – they will love you if they can, and they will kill you if they must.
The last thing thing Spain needs is for a load of ignorant anglo agitators reopening the wounds of the past and ringing the bell for another round of bloodletting. People that behave in this manner should be deeply ashamed of themselves – but instead seem to regard their ignorance as a conclusive sign of their virtue.
Anglo society is sick beyond comprehension. On the one hand you have people being arrested for hate speech for simply posting the lyrics to a readily available song on some form of social media. On the other hand you have allegedly educated people being applauded for doing all in their power (short of running any personal risk, or spending any of their own money) for trying to destroy the integrity of Spain and bring the killing fields back to Europe.
What a twisted heart and mind you have, loony. Your grasp of history is also skewed.
The people that should be deeply ashamed of themselves when it comes to Spanish history are those who sit on the sidelines and say nothing, allowing the fascist thugs to attack innocent people with impunity.
That’s the message of the Spanish civil war and it’s the lesson of recent years in Catalonia.
Incidentally, sitting on the sidelines and saying nothing, puts you squarely on the same side as the EU which I believe will regret its handling of recent events Catalonia for 100 years. There are already signs of regret.
Incidentally, when unarmed people are getting shot or beaten with clubs, there’s an argument for saying you have more than an obligation than to simply speak up for them.
I picked up that link to Catalonia from Lifebot News Message Board, successor to Medialens Message Board.
There are some excellent links there today including two which refer to Craig.
http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/msg/1540507493.html (ref the absence of Vanessa Beeley on Twitter)
and
http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/msg/1540535914.html (ref MbS and cocaine)
Private Members’ Bills
The following Bills are scheduled for debate today:
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill
The purpose of the Bill, presented by Karen Buck MP, is to help drive up standards in the private and social rented sectors by putting an obligation on landlords to keep their property in good condition and giving tenants the right to take legal action where their landlord fails to do so.
Find out more about the Home (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill
House of Commons Library briefing paper: Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill
https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2018/october/commons-private-members-bills-26-october-2018/
Sounds toothless.
Sounds like making something ilegal which is already ilegal.
Watch Rosa Koire and agenda 21 Behind the Green Mask. it’s happening across the globe, San Francisco, Sydney, Etc
Happening in Leith as well… once unmentionable country…. now they are building apartment blocks primarily for holiday rental, big blocks of ’em as well.
Really?? Things are bad enough with proposed redevelopment in Leith Walk for student housing. Where are these holiday rental blocks??
One quibble : You say “The authorities simply cannot know how many Edinburgh flats are holiday lets”
Surely it wouldn’t be out of the question for the council to go to the most popular AirBnB-style websites and automatically scrape all the data from them and shove that into a database. Over a period of a year or so you’d have plenty of information as to which flats are being used as holiday lets, and then you just go to the owners, brandish the evidence and hit them with fines or business rates.
These businesses simply must interface easily with random members of the general public – it’s a primary selling point of platforms like AirBnB – making surveillance a simple job.
If Edinburgh Council wanted to crack down on this, they could easily do this by hiring a computer programmer to scrape information and a couple of inspectors to collect physical evidence or communicate with landlords, mystery-shopper style. Some heavy application of business rates and/or fines applied to the first few offenders will both recoup the costs and provide the necessary deterrent effect.
I believe I am right in saying most sites do not give you the precise address with apartment number until after you have booked and paid. But I agree that such research and enforcement would be valuable.
The sites don’t really want you contacting the provider directly. Knowing where the apartment or house is in itself isn’t the issue. The issue is commission. If you contact directly and book directly, over the phone or something, the site isn’t entitled to a commission.
Guess what?? Yep, Russia is being blamed for the ‘pipebomb hoax!!
Hardly surprising – just the sort of thing those pesky Russkis would be after doing….
‘“RUSSIAN OPERATION”: MSM FINDS OUT WHO IS BEHIND PIPE BOMBS SCARE IN U.S.’
https://southfront.org/russian-operation-msm-finds-out-who-is-behind-pipe-bombs-scare-in-u-s/
In hindsight, perhaps they were to blame for the ‘Anthrax Attacks’ after 9/11? Wouldn’t put it past ’em. Dodgy lot, those Russkis. Not like our ‘true-blue’ governments and ‘Security Services’. Ain’t it just great to live in ‘Freedom-Loving ‘Democracies”? Ahem….
’53 Admitted False Flag Attacks – Global ResearchGlobal Research …’
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=53+admitted+false+flag+ops&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBGB789GB789&oq=53+admitted+false+flag+ops&aqs=chrome..69i57.17963j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Paul.
About the current climate of Russia did it.
I wish the EU would stop pandering to the Great Satan’s interests (consecutive US administrations). The latest being the EU awarding its Human Rights prize to Oleg Sentsov, who was sentenced to twenty years in a Russian prison for terrorism charges
Sentsov, has been one of the most vocal opponents of Russia’s annexation of his native Crimea in 2014.
As for the EU, the US has far too much influence, however I’d still like to see a independent Scotland part of the EU, EFTA might be the better fit in my opinion.
Out of interest have you seen the photo of the package allegedly delivered to CNN? The stamps have not been franked. Makes you wonder if it went through the postal service at all.
Lord Sugar, says that the likes of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove should be locked up, over their lies surrounding Brexit.
Sugar added, that he knew that acting in such a manner towards shareholders could see people going to prison.
In my opinion there should be some sort of accountability, enforceable, for when politicians, lie and promise but fail to deliver, removing them at the ballot box isn’t sufficient recompense in my opinion.
Snake oil peddling politicians, need to know that if they fail or can’t be bothered to deliver on their election promises. That they can then be held to account, which could mean disbarment (lawyers can be disbarred). Or in serious cases a custodial sentence applied.
For too long now politicians can say and promise anything and everything to the electorate, and once in office completely ignore, deny, and back track on those promises. They must be held to account.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/lord-sugar-johnson-and-gove-should-be-in-prison-for-brexit-referendum-lies-1-5751886
What does he think about dodgy businessmen who try to take over public companies at a fraction of their fair value ?
Next you’ll be quoting tax fraudsters like Richard Branson !
Take Lord Sugar out of the equation for a moment, do you agree that politicans need to be far more accountable? With regards to false promise etc.
For instance you’d be pretty peeved if you bought goods which didn’t work but the shopkeeper told you they did. Or if your car needed repaired and you paid for it, but the worked was never carried out.
Those people can be held to account and if they continue to lie and make false claims, then they can be imprisoned. I see no real reasons why a politician can’t suffer a similar fate, when they lull you with false promises, so you’ll elect them to what most see as a cushy job.
Is there not a proverbial idiom about pot calling kettle black.
Consider the SNP and their various statements regarding a ban on fracking in Scotland. For example Nicola Sturgeon is on record as stating “fracking is banned in Scotland” This statement seems devoid of ambiguity. But wait…the SNP instructed lawyers to argue that it was a statement full of ambiguity and largely devoid of any meaning.
The courts agreed with the SNP that “fracking is banned in Scotland” was a simple political slogan and could not be sensibly interpreted as meaning that fracking is banned in Scotland.
What chance have you got?
Loony.
Yes I include the SNP MP’s and MSP’s on accountability.
As for fracking in Scotland, I would agree that Sturgeon saying banned, wasn’t quite the right word. However there’s an indefinite moratorium placed on fracking in Scotland.
I believe it might have been used in that manner to prevent a direct legal challenge, which would’ve surely occured right away , if fracking were to be banned outright.
The crux of the matter is that fracking isn’t taking place even though it isn’t banned. The same applies to UCG.
Surely they’ll only be lies if they are not delivered AFTER Brexit?
No, they are liars in the pay of very rich people engaged in a campaign of mass deception.
In the mid eighties I had the great good fortune to have stepped up from a regulated ‘council’ squat in Islington to a block of private flats with an absent tenant. A very kind elderly neighbour who was moving from central London to green pastures gave me the wink and I gratefully took on the ‘legal’ tenancy in the block (a year or so later I discovered that the flat was subject to a ‘fair rent’ registration which meant that most of the significant overpaid rent I had paid was returned to me and a new rent assessment carried out). Naughty landlord quite upset. The two yearly rent review system is still in place for the surviving lucky ones but the fair rent system for new tenants was dropped some years ago. There are just two remaining fair rent tenancies in the block and the rest are all short term occupancy, mainly foreign students or short stayers on their way to somewhere suburban affordable. Most of my time is spent living in Portugal which means my son has somewhere to live while his mum has to run her flat in Islington as an AirBnB to help pay the bills and a mortgage while working. Margaret Thatcher was right on the money politically when she sold off the housing stock – people not only got free money but bought into the tory privatisation principle of property ownership feeding selfishness and the notion of social ascendancy. A gift that kept on giving with almost relentless rises in property values – ‘safe in our hands’ as well as a having a ready source of credit to borrow against when times got hard or if you wanted to start a business. The controlled fair rent system was also effective at stabilising communities. In my borough the council is trying to stop further development of hotels which plague the area and further distorts the social and economic balance. It will require a very brave government to take on the property market now and I can’t imagine the property owning entitlementarians would be willing to take it on. Typical communism taking from the hard working families who have struggled and saved to get a foothold – ‘when we should be making them even richer’!
oops, looks like one can still make new applications for a fair rent if the tenancy started before 15 January 1989, this is likely to be a regulated or secure tenancy.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fair-rents
Meanwhile, the caravan is coming, and Trump’s, trying to look tough for the Mid-Term elections, he said I’m not letting it into America.
The caravan consists of thousands of South and Central American’s who want to enter the US. Trump says he’ll mobilise at least 800 troops to meet the caravan at the border and stop them from entering the US.
Its going to get ugly by the looks of things.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/25/politics/mattis-troops-southern-border/index.html
This week on televised interviews Trump has been suggesting that the caravan contains people from the Middle East. He has also stated as an established fact that ISIS operatives have entered the United States via its southern border. That was a canard that his first National Security Advisor and clinically deluded loon Michael Flynn was peddling in 2016. Flynn claimed that ISIS was erecting directional signage in Arabic so it’s people wouldn’t get lost. Flynn knew this for a fact as he had visited the border and seen the signs with his very own eyes. Unfortunately for history, Flynn neglected to take any form of visual recording device with him on his trip down Ol’ Mexico way.
As for ISIS agents infiltrating American, not so much sleeper agents as comatose agents.
Taking a tough stand against the Caravan, will encourage Trumpeteers to get out and vote. . . . Makes you wonder who organised it!
3m families are worse off under Universal Credit than they were under the old benefits system.
Universal Credit agents encouraged to use ‘deflection script’ to get claimants ‘off phone’
A former DWP employee says agents manning the phones were told to get claimants off the line “as quickly as possible”.
https://news.sky.com/story/universal-credit-agents-encouraged-to-use-deflection-script-to-get-claimants-off-phone-11535654
‘The claims come as the public accounts committee published a damning report which claimed Universal Credit is causing “unacceptable hardship and difficulties” for claimants.
MPs said the DWP was turning a “deaf ear” to concerns – and described the department as “disturbingly adrift from the real-world problems of the people it is there to support”.
[..]
Four million workers are now locked in poverty, according to figures compiled by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and given exclusively to Sky News.
That has risen by half a million in the last five years and represents the highest rate in 20 years.
And while the number of those in work is growing – the number of workers in poverty is growing faster.’
McVey doesn’t want to know as can be seen in the video on the link.
Apologies if this has already been posted, Paul Craig Roberts, has been banned/suspended from Twitter. The suspension came without warning and was noted by journalist Caitlin Johnstone and others Thursday evening.
Here Roberts, tell us of just how deep and tight a grip the US arms manufacturers has on American politics, and how Trump’s looming withdrawal from the (INF) treaty is a handout to the military-security complex.
A link would be nice.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-25/twitter-bans-former-asst-treasury-secretary-paul-craig-roberts-after-sputnik
Not sure whether you spotted this but the latest claim is that it was a fake account — Roberts claims he’s never used twitter himself.
Oh for frack sake stop fracking altogether.
Cuadrilla has suspended fracking at its Lancashire site after a 0.8 magnitude earthquake was recorded this morning.
Courtesy of LBC, one hour ago.
Also I think that brings it up to eleven earthquakes, maybe Mother Earth is trying to tell us something, like stop it.
I once read that Blackpool tower is designed to collapse into the sea. All 2,500 tonnes of steel and 5 million bricks worth.
https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/environment/five-more-earthquakes-recorded-in-blackpool-taking-number-since-fracking-started-to-11-1-9413065
Finally for now.
Colonel Rape Clause Ruth Davidson, and her partner Jen Wilson have given birth to a baby boy, both mother and child appear to be doing well.
However I see a resemblance of someone in the childs face that I can’t quite place…hmmm.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DqcQSQgWsAAzqpc?format=jpg&name=small
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45995711
Is it PC to even refer to the child as a “boy” in this gender-fluid era?
In an event today celebrating 100 years since Stonehenge was ‘gifted’ to the nation, the London Sinfonietta will play a special piece within the circle.
(1) 100 years is a blink to Stonehenge, don’t insult it.
(2) If anyone is playing within the stone circle, it should be Hawkwind.
@Node
That should bring the tourist dollars(if not roubles back to Salisbury ).
O/T, when is Craig going to get serious again?
When is Trump now going to be impeached and removed from office?
That depends. If you believe MSNBC, WaPo, etc, it will happen quickly after the Mueller report. But in the real world, it’s not going to happen at all.
I am not aware that you can impeach a President just because you are bored and looking for something to do.
There is no evidence at all that Trump has committed any crimes that would be impeachable.
Is it not funny how the great and the good are baying for the blood of Trump but are entirely silent on the crimes of the Clinton family and entirely silent on the war crimes of Bush and Blair. With regard to the Clinton family, Bush and Blair there is no shortage of evidence that all have committed the most egregious crimes.
But why stop there? Look at Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Brennan, Clapper et al all of whom have committed treasonous acts against the citizens of the US.
Take a look at the media – if you can stomach it. Only today it is revealed that NBC sat on information that would have discredited an accuser of Kavanaugh. Who is the only person calling out the lying treasonous 4th estate? – Why President Trump.
For his pains Trump will be rewarded by winning big (oh so big) in the Mid Terms. As the man himself said – with me at the helm you are going to win so much you are going get sick of winning.
And his reward for all this could well be an assassins bullet. But even that will not stop Trump – because he is aware of the danger he faces and yet remains unblinking and unwavering. This, more than anything, is what sends the insane even more insane. Here is a society carefully constructed around the adulation of the cult of cowardice and Trump remains unafraid, completely comfortable with his own mortality.
Don;t you see that the window for beating Trump has long since closed. Whatever happens, whatever coup can be engineered, whatever lies can be spun through the CNN “truth machine”, whatever weapon is used. None of it matters, because Trump wins under all scenarios. That means the American people win and you my friend lose.
L: “There is no evidence at all that Trump has committed any crimes that would be impeachable.”
Apart from massive corruption, on a scale the world – or at least America – has never seen the likes, of course. Just for a start.
The thing about the law is that any and all charges need to be supported by evidence. If you have actual evidence of corruption then you have a responsibility to make that evidence available to the relevant authorities.
You do not fulfill your civic duty by appearing on a blog and making teasing comments that you are in possession of relevant evidence that is deleterious to President Trump and then failing to follow through. Indeed your keeping this evidence to yourself may of itself constitute circumstantial evidence that you harbor far right or fascist sympathies.
It would appear that the time has arrived to either put up or shut up. Any attempt on your part to engineer a third way will most likely alert Antifa to the risk that you “are literally Hitler”
As a Trump fanboy you make a poor case for his defence. A serial liar, fantasist and friend of the far right, a danger to world peace, nuclear treaties and ecological disaster – that may not be impeachable, i don’t care, but it makes him an appalling president. However, as most of these qualities are ones you admire, no doubt you think is a fine example of rightwing demagoguery.
I merely pointed out that you cannot impeach a President of the US simply because you are bored and looking for something to do. Rather you need to discover and assemble evidence that the President has committed some form of crime.
You appear to agree with this analysis – so if my case is poor then the question is why do you agree with it?
As is normal when an argument is exposed as wholly bogus the response is to throw as much shit as possible and hope that people either become confused or disinterested.
All politicians are liars – look at the lies that Bush and Blair told to justify the slaughter of an uncounted number of foreign people. Trump’s lies seem far less dangerous and are mostly connected to lies that boost his own ego.
I have no idea what “friend of the far right” means – and neither I suspect have you. Just a handy phrase for muddying the waters. Unless of course you have evidence that Trump is overtly and willing supporting followers of Stepan Bandera. If you have such evidence then you can compare it with the evidence that exists against Cameron, May, Obama, Merkel and Hollande.
Pretty much all nuclear armed countries are a danger to world peace – and the US has a long history of bombing the foreign man on a whim. So far it is a provable fact that Trump has bombed far fewer foreigners than any of his immediate predecessors (Clinton, Bush, Obama). Owing to the fact that Trump is sane he is ignoring all those who urge him prove he is a real man by bombing Russia. Maybe the most obvious threat to world peace are those that urge war with Russia.
What does “ecological disaster ” mean? Take a look at the growth in human population over the last 200 years or so and ask yourself what exactly do you expect to happen to the natural world under such conditions.
You readily are a loony, but that isn/t going to stop me from voting for Martin Looney, the Democratic leader in the Connecticut Senate, in the upcoming midterm elections while signing that Spike Jones refrain about how goof our Nazi land has become.
Sort of the same thing is happening with air bnb
Totally Off-Topic.
Regarding the “MAGA Bomber”, a serial Law offender, apparently, never jailed (How is that? An informant?), sending innocuous failed bombs (the kind that these plants are always given) to the most rabid Trump’s critics, just weeks before mid-terms, prompting these critics to air their “higher moral ground”, non-stop. Sting operation, anyone? The kind of Peter Strzok’s “insurance policy”.
What was innocuous about them? Or are you just prone to believing conspiracy theories without any evidence? the alt-right will believe any rubbish rather than face up to the consequences of their idiocy.
“(T)he alt-right will believe any rubbish“.
That’s exactly it. Especially if it features George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. And look whose names these pipe bomb mailings have put into tens of millions of minds.
@ Ian
I’m glad to know you like facts.
“What was innocuous about them?”
Facts:
– There were 14 pipe bombs and none of them exploded.
– The pipe bombs were poorly manufactured.
– They were filled with fireworks grade gunpowder.
“Or are you just prone to believing conspiracy theories without any evidence?”
Facts:
– We’re two weeks away from a highly contested mid-term elections, existential for both parties.
– The MSM and the mailing bombs’ targets have concluded WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE and, prior to any investigation, that Trump is the only responsible for the virulent political climate.
– In the last two years, some elements in the FBI and the Department of Justice, were willing to do ANYTHING, albeit illegal, to derail Trump’s presidency.
– “Evidence free” has been the trademark of Hillary apologists and never-Trumpers, as in the RussiaGate and the Kavanaugh’s confirmation #MeToo hysteria.
– Stings exist, and suspect is found in record time by…. the F.B.I.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-involved-us-terror-plots-report
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along-by-the-fbi.html
“THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.”
“But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.”
Mr. Sayoc had the perfect profile to be associated to the MAGA movement. He was a long time hater of democrats, very vocal about it and not to brilliant, it seems. A sting operation wouldn’t have found a better candidate.
“the alt-right will believe any rubbish rather than face up to the consequences of their idiocy.”
The fact that you don’t want to exercise your brain doesn’t mean anyone who does it is an alt-right idiot or a conspiracy theorist.
Spot on there ‘Go away… ‘. A diversion. A distraction.
Also a distraction away from the MbS activities.
So as well as not getting an agreement with EU27, the British government looks as though they won’t get an agreement with the World Trade Organisation either. Two comments.
1) This is Britain. The economy here is based on the City of London. The country is Hong Kong surrounded by Portugal. How much of a damn does the part of the ruling elite that’s “based” here in some way or another give for the production and distribution of goods?
2) My goodness, Tories must be getting excited as they look at their pictures of Thomas Malthus.
Nice work Liam. Good to see the twerp screw up. What happens now?
U.K. Suffers Brexit Trade Setback Over Copy-and-Paste WTO Terms – Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-10-25/u-k-suffers-brexit-trade-setback-over-copy-and-paste-wto-terms
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said his plan to quickly normalize the U.K.’s World Trade Organization commitments had failed, forcing the government to enter into what will likely be lengthy negotiations with other members on basic terms of trade after Brexit.
The beauty to this insidious ‘hollowing out’ of ‘everything’ is that, with a gradually disappearing centre, the entire structure becomes increasingly vulnerable to a catastrophic implosion
‘I’m glad to know you like facts’
Rumpole and the case of the soggy Khashoggi
Rumpole twisted his neck taking care not to irreversably dislocate any vertebrae, adjusted his wig and quaffed another decanter of vodka carefully disguised as mineral water.
Qizzically, yet taking care not to risk the wrath of the establishment upon whom he relied, he continued questioning the witness, who surprised the court by reverting to an immediately recognisable East London accent, most unusual for a security guard at a Saudi Consulate. ‘And what exactly did you see?’
‘Well I sees this geezer drop some shrapnel down the well an’ make a wish, then all of a sudden he disappears. So dingdong dell I gets me smartphone out an’ gives me boss a bell and I says ‘Khashoggi’s in the well,’ an’ ‘e says ‘Who put ‘im in?’ an’ I says ‘It wasn’t Muhammad Bin…’
This member of the 1℅ screwed the 99℅ until 2019.
‘George Osborne kept pay cap despite child poverty warning
BBC News
7 hours ago
George Osborne stuck with a public sector pay cap, despite being warned by civil servants it could trap some children in poverty, it has emerged.
The former chancellor limited pay rises to 1% a year until 2019, in his 2015 Budget statement.
Internal documents seen by the BBC reveal he was told the move would hit low income families.’
His own income –
£650k pa for one day’s ‘work’ per week for BlackRock, a US fund manager
a government pension
income from his family business, Osborne & Little
whatever Lebedev pays him for ‘editing’ the Evening Standard rag
etc etc.