Immigration.

 We now have close to 120,000 illegal immigrants in the UK just from the channel dinghy crossings alone. These people are being housed in 4-star hotels across the country at huge cost.

Over the past week have now added to that figure by "repatriating" over 10,000 "refugees" from Afghanistan. We've also opened the doors to hundreds of thousands of people from Hong Kong.

Apart from the illegal channel crossers, in general I have no qualms about the people coming in from Afghanistan and Hong Kong. We have some moral obligation towards them. In Afghanistan we went in with size 10 hobnails and failed to sort out their country. In Hong Kong we gave them away to the authoritarian Chinese government lock, stock and barrel. 

But, and the is a big but.... where are all these people going to go? We are already in the midst of a housing crisis. We have hundreds of thousands of people homeless on the streets, we have people unable to afford rent on a single wage, let alone buy a property and pay a mortgage.

So where exactly do we put these new immigrants these new citizens of the UK? Where do we house them? How do we house them?

We don't have the housing to place them, we don't have the infrastructure to support the new houses that need to be built, we just don't have the facilities to keep the door open for ever, accepting everyone into the country.

Yet we spend billions on HS2. 

I firmly believe that the country's priorities are fucked up. First an foremost should be providing basic facilities to people at a cost they can afford. We need more houses and if necessary, legislation should be put forward to ease the planning burden and sad to say, encroach on the green belt. 

It's without a hint of self-awareness that the people that shout loudest about accepting immigrants into the country are usually the ones that shout loudest against new housing developments and roads. Well, you can't have it both ways. You want to allow all and sundry to come in, then your precious green belt is going to have to go. Your fault, no on else's. 

Think that virtue-signalling and being virtuous won't have an effect on your middle-class life? Think again. 

Want to keep your precious greenery? Want to preserve your idyllic towns an villages? Don't want them to be swallowed up by massive conurbations? 

Don't want your house price to fall as more and more houses are being built? Enjoying the increased value of your house? Don't want to experience negative equity?

Then start to reject the open-door immigration policies. Because at some point, you will have to pay the piper for your virtue.

I blogged a few years ago that the housing crisis can only be solved by classing it as a national emergency and giving national government special powers in order to solve it. Planning objections need to be swept away and the houses need to be built now.

Being a national project, we need to identify decent sized accommodation, not the poxy shoeboxes that developers cram into the smallest plots in order to maximise profit. The houses need to be built and sold with a small profit. The difference between material costs and the actual value of a house is huge. 

By contracting the building of houses and selling them at a small margin over the material cost brings in revenue for the government and provides affordable housing.

At some point one of the major parties need to run with this policy. Because if one of the minor parties like UKIP (Change that bloody name!) or Nigel Farage's ex-party Reform run with this, they could well collect a huge number of votes from the low-paid working class. 

Add a dab of virtue by housing the homeless and immigrants then it might also bring the middle-classes on board too. After all if they are so virtuous they want to save everyone, then surely a drop in house values is a small price to pay eh? 

Or is all that virtue available just so long as it doesn't affect them?

I'd also add in a dash of Tax reclamation from the Mega-corporations like Google, PayPal and the like to pay for it. Change the rules so they can't pay tax offshore. If they resist then they're denying homes for the homeless and immigrants, the selfish bastards.

Tories "Building the Future" but with not Enough Actual Building.....

The Tories have launched a new slogan, "Building a Britain Fit for the Future", except my understanding is there isn't going to be any actual building.

Yet another wishy-washy mish-mash of rehashed, already launched policies, packaged up into something to talk about during next week's budget. Financial incentives, planning changes, but nothing concrete (if you'll excuse the pun). You can have that one for free, shadow Chancellor.

Labour need to be prepared to counter-strike and knock down each of the Tory's proposal. That means credible and detailed homework from the left to be able to deflate every one of the pumped up policies from the Conservatives.

It would also be nice if Labour put a few shots across the bows of the Tories beforehand, signalling intent to really sink their teeth into the Tories unless there are radical, substantial, new proposals to sort out the housing crisis. Tinkering at the edges or rehashing old news will. not. do.

Hopefully with a few well-placed broadsides from Labour, the Tories can be persuaded against presenting a PR campaign as a budget and get them to produce an actual policy with real targets, a real budget and demonstrable progress against those targets.

What Labour cannot do is just trot out the same old anti-Tory plattitudes, the ones that turn voters off and do nothing to change Tory policy. They have to give detailed and credible opposition and strip the veneer from the Tory plans so the voters can see the lack of detail underneath.

But given the superficiality of politics at the moment, I doubt I'll see any of the above actually happen.

One of those times you really wish you were an MP and able to give such superficial people a slap. (before it gets banned) ;-)

Back here I outlined my thoughts on housing and how the crisis should be managed. Government managed housing stock, outside the remit of local authorities needs to be started. Local authorities we all know are corrupt, with contracts going to friends that had surprisingly well-informed tenders. keeping it central (for once) seems to be the preferred option. From the planning perspective national government involvement means it's easier to quote national interest and make the planning stage eaisier. There are plenty of laws the government can invoke to build new housing, or they can quite quickly release old MOD land for building if necessary.