There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Housing: how hard is it to keep people, not profit in mind?
House building must be ‘attractive’ to people who need a house, not to the for-profit private developers, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
LABOUR says if it is elected, their big idea to help the housing crisis is deregulation.
Everybody knows not enough houses are being built and the price of houses is too high, leaving many trapped in poor quality private rented accommodation or struggling with hard-to-afford mortgages. Labour proposes making planning laws more developer-friendly.
They hope that if developers find it easier to build on the green belt, overcome local rejection of proposed estates, or get free development areas in “new towns,” they will build more houses and prices will come down.
But the latest accounts of Bloor Homes, like the accounts of so many housebuilders, suggest this “market” solution to a market failure won’t work.
Bloor Homes are a mid-sized housebuilder, but one with a fair political influence. John Bloor is one of the Tories’ top donors, having given the party around £2.7 million since 2015.
The latest accounts, released this month but covering the year to June 2023, show Bloor Homes is finding the market a bit tighter. The accounts note that “increases in mortgage loan rates” have “made the landscape more challenging” for housebuilders, while they are also being squeezed by “cost inflation in our supply chains.”
More from this author
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
US General Stanley McChrystal has been invited to advise on creating a ‘team of teams’ for healthcare transformation. His credentials? He previously ran interrogation bases where Iraqis were stripped naked and beaten, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
