In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
Plenty others see a viable alternative. Scrap it and make sure our
conventional defence forces are up to scratch. Given we don't have
unlimited money.

I don't buy that as an option. Much as I would love a nuke (weapon) free
world, I can see no sense in unilaterally getting rid of ours.

Fairy nuff. But in my opinion the whole idea of a deterrent is flawed.
Deterrents only work with those who reason things out. And as I'm sure you
know, plenty don't.

The railways work perfectly? Etc? Taxation is fair? Plenty of housing
around for the lower paid?

None of those are perfect, never will be. No harm in improving them
where you can.

Government policy had made a bigger pigs ear of not limiting the demand.

Then perhaps we need a radical government who don't make such basic
mistakes.

We are building quite a few houses per year, just not enough. The NIMBY
brigade and restrictive planning laws don't help either.

There is no shortage of housing for those who can afford it. The problem
is for those on lower incomes who can only afford a lowish price or rent.
Which for a very long time was provided by local authority housing.

To solve this you either need to up the pay of the lower paid so they can
buy or rent - or change the way house building is financed. It is not a
problem that a free market can solve.

Needless to say building houses alone is only a partial solution. You
need the infrastructure, schools, GPs etc and all the other stuff as
well.

And those are precisely the things private developers use every trick in
the book to avoid having to pay for. Even when promising to do so as part
of planning permission.

--
*I like cats, too. Let's exchange recipes.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.