On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 11:57:24 +0100, "IMM" wrote:


"Andy Hall" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 09:17:23 +0100, "IMM" wrote:

Andy, you have it wrong. The government
should regulate even more.

Nonsense. There is seldom a justification
for increased regulation and legislation

and this is certainly one of them.

Not in my view


The
quality of the crap dished up by construction companies is dire. More
pre-checks, and bigger fines for obvious not nailing down roofs and the
likes, should be done.

The problem is where does one draw the line?

You can adopt the German method, of qualified builders, instead of any Tom ,
Dick or Harry doing it. If you do crap, and proven, then you are suspended
or stuck off and you can't work on building.

That could be a reasonable idea.





No. They just dissolve the company and start under a different name. The
usual palaver. And the cowboys reign supreme.

Small companies may do that, but the large firms certainly don't




It is now, but the cowboyism continues.

It is with every other product that the
consumer buys.

A house is quite different to a toaster.

Yes, but still something that one buys.



Since a lot of problems with a house don't appear for a period of
time, then a proper guarantee covering most aspects of the house
should be required and implemented properly, not the weak NHBC thing
that we have today.

Proper guarantees should be in place, they are not. NHBC is for the
interest of the builders. They formed it.


That was the point that I made.



Perhaps there should be an escrow system for the last X% of the
purchase money of a new property. In other words the purchaser pays
most of the money to the developer in the usual way but X% goes into a
separate account, not under either party's control for a period of say
a year. At the end of the year, the purchaser signs a release for
the money if all is satisfactory and the developer receives this plus
any interest. Having the money outside the direct control of either
party makes sure that it is available as long as the contract
conditions have been met.

A similar thing happens for the roads, etc. Developers pay up front to the
council in some cases, so that they can't dissolve a company and not finish
the roads and pavements stealing a wedge.

Generally methods with financial downside or upside work the most
effectively on businesses.



The

Then still 50% of new homes still have old fashioned tanks in the loft too,
need stupid power shower pumps so they don't have to run around the shower
to get wet.

That is not a measure of the quality of a house, just an indication of
what is used. Both mains pressure and gravity water systems have
their advantages and disadvantages and there are good and bad
implementations of both.



The way you defend cowboyism and the vast profits they make, leads me to
believe you may have a cowboy streak in you too.

I'm not defending cowboyism at all. I simply said that it is
reasonable to make a good profit. If that didn't happen then there
is no incentive for a construction firm to build. They aren't in
business for love.



The real problems are threefold:

- Customers wanting things on the cheap

UK houses are "CHEAP"!!!!!! What world are you in????

I know. The point is that people get what they are willing to pay
for.



- Customers not complaining when things are wrong

Many problems are underlying and are potential time bombs. The after sales
service in most cases, as the consumer TV progs show, is sparse or none
existent.

Which is why I suggested something with financial rather than
legislative teeth.


- Lack of encouragement and incentive
for young people to go into the
construction industry because the
idiot in No. 10 wants them to go to
"universities".

We need people to go to universities, as history will show that a highly
educated population always prospers.

Yes but that notion does not extend to 50% of the population going to
"university" as Mr EU Turn seems to think. There's nothing wrong
with higher education for a broad section of the population as such -
it is question of appropriateness. Not everybody can benefit from an
academic university education, so the idea of dropping the barrier
until they can makes no sense at all.

You are full of petty snobbery as you
don't want your Little Middle Englander kids being in the same uni as your
kids. Pathetic!

That is a completely confused sentence.



There is a long waiting list for plumbing and heating courses which
rubbishes your petty snob views.

This has nothing to do with snobbery at all.

The real question is why is there a proposal to bribe 16 year olds to
stay on in education?

If plumbing and heating have suddenly become so popular, where are all
the people who are passing?



) and his cronies?

Prescott should dish out a few left hooks, that
is clear. The ST Rich list still puts parasite
landowners and large construction company owners as the
richest people in the UK.

Nothing wrong with that.

There is. The land should not be in the hands of few unproductive parasitic
few who make billions by taking rent. The land already belongs to the
people. It is called sovereignty.

I'm not wasting time on that silly nonsense again.


Foreign billionaires using London as a sort of
base, with pet footy teams too, don't count as UK billionaires.

or that.

They can be here, but they are NOT UK billionaires as the ST Rich list say
they are. Strangely, they list the Irish rich, north and south, and do not
list those who made there money outside of Ireland yet list foreign
billionaires as being British: Reusling (sp), Abromovich, The Indian steel
billionaires, etc.

Take these people off the list and the rich list and it is spattered with
unproductive landowning parasites.

So what...

Many of the landowners are worth a hell
of a lot more than what they are, the royal family comes to mind. The
problem is that it is near impossible to assess their wealth, which is not
the case in proper countries.

It's nobody else's business.

Large landowners, and the aristocracy, have
always hid their real wealth, as Kevin Cahill revealed when they suppressed
a land census in the late 1800s, because the census reveal how much land
they actually owned.

So a small number of people have a lot of assets. That always has
been the case and likely always will be.




..andy

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