I thought Bennett was largely a useless so and so but I can get that opinion across without referring to her appearance, quaintly enough.

actually managed to get some decent coherent points across

Me too, and hey, me too! Let's be friends!

If you can remind me of even one that would be good. It's quite easy to get a timely swipe in at two people who are going at each other while ignoring you. You get to pick your route through their conflicting opinions to spout one that makes it look like you've got all the answers. Cleggmania was playing that tune last time, although sadly that didn't work out too well for him.

I felt sorry for the Plaid woman

Can I just say, what a quality exchange guys, the clash of the titans indeed. Love it; for a fleeting instant it felt like the good old days, there

Come on you old dog, let's hear what you thought

Presumably she will be moved south if she's any good, given that being a Tory in Scotland is, thankfully, essentially pointless.

I missed the first Scottish leaders' debate, but apparently the audience booed Sturgeon when she refused to rule out another referendum. Can't decide if I'll catch the second one or not, but the Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, is one of the most interesting and articulate female politicians I've seen in recent years - someone to watch in the future if she has to flee south to enter national politics.

Presumably she will be moved south if she's any good, given that being a Tory in Scotland is, thankfully, essentially pointless.

No, it's gone from about 70 to 400+ becausecthey are so in demand.

Sign broken in Witney.

Witney branches of the Liberal Democrats and Labour said they have not had any problems.

Also, Wessex Regionalist?

The Wessex Regionalist Party - the Party for Wessex - exists to achieve Home Rule for the Wessex region of England. We are a radical decentralist party, matching our constitutional aims with support for a co-operative rather than competitive economy, set within a long-term environmental perspective.

When was Wessex? Wessex is now and is defined by the consensus that exists within a dynamic movement. We started off arguing for a 'maximum Wessex' before refining this to the six-shire Wessex that can be found in Thomas Hardy's novels. We then added Bristol because it sees itself as firmly in the West, not the Midlands. Finally, we added Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, within their traditional boundaries. We did this because of their early Saxon history - it is now thought that Wessex originated in Oxfordshire - and because excluding them would bisect Bristol, Oxford and Reading.
...
Our Wessex is subject to addition or deletion according to popular will, expressed through a referendum of local residents. Meanwhile, arguments over boundaries only detract from the job of putting Wessex on the map and ending London diktat over us.

Seems more reasonable than the bloke the Tories are putting up.

I'd argue that the Conservatives 'Help to Buy ISA' is worse. Save £12,000 and they'll add on £3,000 to allow you to fund a deposit on a house.

But you can only pay in £200 a month.

And the property can't cost more than £450k if its in London or £250k elsewhere. These thresholds being of fairly limited value, given that it is going to take you 5 years to 'save' your £15k deposit. And your £3k bonus is just about wiped out by the stamp duty cost.

If a HA has sold a property then there is nothing that it can do with that money other than to build or buy new property or refurbish property that it already owns as it has no shareholders to pass money to. So in theory a housing association having 20 flats in right to buy should be able to build another 20 (the cost of building a flat, even including the bare land, being about the same as the discounted sale value of the old one). I don't think that there can be a forced repatriation of funds to the council that founded the HA as they should be Arms length now.

We have a housing crisis. It has many different components but at the heart of it is the reality that we have not built nearly enough of the right homes in the right place at the right price for a generation or more. All the efforts of housing associations, local authorities and others are geared towards ending this housing crisis by building new homes and regenerating existing homes where that is the best solution. The Right to Buy makes that more difficult. For those housing associations that already have the preserved RTB, the discounts of up to £102,500 make the government’s commitment to 1-1 replacement a hollow joke. Here’s just one example. Phoenix Community Housing in London recently sold a home worth £210,000 on the open market for just over half of that. From the proceeds, some went back to the Treasury, some to the local authority leaving a receipt of just £27,000. Have you tried building a new home for £27,000?

My second house is paid for by an eastern european immigrant couple.

They're not. They both work full time at the nearby B&M warehouse. Very nice folks too. Lithuanian. Which I suppose is actually Northern Europe.

The Tory dream is to own a house someone else lives in who'll pay the mortgage for you with their benefits, actually.

can someone do the maths for me on this? This is a great idea.

Do what maths? You're just renting your house out but to DSS tenants; it's not like the numbers changes just because there's housing benefit involved.

Do what maths? You're just renting your house out but to DSS tenants; it's not like the numbers changes just because there's housing benefit involved.

Note that housing benefit is available to people on "low incomes", not just the unemployed, and is calculated based on rental prices in your area. That means over a quarter of renters in London receive at least some housing benefit, because it's essentially impossible to rent anything in many parts of London if you don't earn well over minimum wage. That money flows directly to private landlords, of course; the unintended consequence of a benefit intended to help the working poor was that it further inflates a housing bubble that only benefits the rich.

http://www.housing.org.uk/media/blog/ex ... tractions/



This is a cynical and populist policy. It's a shallow attempt to win votes that will only work in the short term. In the long term, much of this housing stock will naturally accumulate in the buy-to-let market, which is ultimately taxpayer funded subsidy (via housing benefit paid to the lower class) of middle-class people's second mortgages. It's a shit idea.

Without the incumbent, what's the actual point?