Elections have consequences – UK election 4 July 2024 - a conspiracy hypothesis around the incoming Labour governments plans that will further bankrupt the UK economy - housing plans
Back in January 2024, I commented on the incoming UK Labour party’s plans to further bankrupt the UK economy.
I followed it up with another article in April 2024
And another in June 2024 looking more closely at the “manifesto” published by the UK Labour Party.
(100) Labour manifesto: the good, the bad and the vague (substack.com)
The link to the manifesto on that page now carries a “404” message, never mind, here is another to the manifesto:
Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People – The Labour Party
The Marxists in the BBC covered it here:
Labour manifesto 2024: 12 key policies analysed - BBC News
Here is a snippet on taxation:
“There are £8bn of revenue raising measures. These are overwhelmingly changing non-dom tax status for wealthy people, clamping down on tax avoidance, applying VAT to private schools and introducing a windfall tax on big energy.”
8 billion quid of new taxes,
Keep in mind that 1.5 million new homes applied to the UK’s median house price of a little under 400,000 pounds would cost 450 billion pounds!
Keep in mind also that the UK’s national debt is around 3 trillion pounds – costing 120 billion pounds a year in interest alone at 4% – and the UK borrowed 122 billion pounds pounds in the year to 31 March 2024.
Back to the 1.5 million new homes goal.
Right now, the UK has around 25 million homes for 60 million people. An average occupancy of around 2.5 per household. 1.5 million new homes would accommodate around 3.6 million people.
Side note, if there have been 12 million criminal migrants arriving in the US during Biden’s watch, a population equivalent for the UK would be 2.4 million – perhaps not in four years, but easily this many in a few extra years back to say, 2016 – more than double the population of the UK’s second largest city, Birmingham – which is bankrupt and can’t afford to keep its street lights on.
Moving on, from here:
House building in England | Local Government Association
“Most experts believe that we need to build 250,000 new homes per year, whilst over the last decade we have averaged just 130,500 per year.”
It also says this:
A cynic might be wondering at this point what skills in managing the housing crisis lie within the ranks of the Labour party that are not present in the outgoing Conservative party.
Well, of course, it means that Labour will enact dictatorial powers to achieve its goals! Land grabs, planning short cuts, forced evictions in targeted areas and so and so forth.
Check out this report from 2018:
The_Economic_Footprint_of_UK_House_Building_July_2018LR.pdf (hbf.co.uk)
239,000 direct jobs and 698.000 including those indirectly – around a fifth of the entire construction industry. Three jobs for every house built.
Of note, in order to achieve the average annual house build of 130,500 – 12 billion pounds worth of land is required – so for 1.5 million homes a land investment of around 140 billion is needed. The UK des not have a lot of spare land, - so the obvious solution is to build upwards.
The UK is not shy of “think big projects”. Check out Canary Wharf.
“One Canada Square (235 m (771 ft)) and Landmark Pinnacle (233 m (764 ft)) are the third and fourth tallest buildings in the United Kingdom. The seventh to ninth tallest buildings in the United Kingdom are: Newfoundland (220 m (720 ft)), South Quay Plaza (215 m (705 ft)), and One Park Drive (205 m (673 ft)).
Maybe 16 million square feet – 1.5 million square meters – to accommodate 120,000 office workers.
This is the space required for around 120,000 office workers.
An office worker is only given around 133 square feet (including kitchen space, toilets, meeting rooms and stairwells etc). A house for 2.4 people would probably need veer 800 square feet.
1.5 million homes at 800 square foot each = 1.2 billion square feet – 75 Canary Wharfs!!!!
Many older UK readers will recall that Labour has engaged in a plan to secure a lasting majority before – in the 1960’s when it built multiple high-rise blocks in the heartland of Conservative majority electorates.
I suggest this is about to happen again.
All those poor Tory voters complaining about crowded platforms and commuter trains had better work out plans to work from home “pronto” as they are about to witness very large apartment blocks going up in their neighbourhoods – planning restrictions be damned! And what’s more, the people in those new build high rise apartment blocks are likely to be criminal migrants!
The strains on infrastructure – transport, health, education, policing etc = plus crowding or restaurants, bars etc is going to be immense wherever one of those 75 Canary Wharfs are erected.
Whilst all this building of massive apartment block complexes is going on, the UK will have to maybe double the number of workers employed in the construction industry, 700,000 directly and directly employed in the construction industry will have to increase to 1.4 million. There will have to be a reversal of “Auf Wiedersehn, pet” to accomplish this – maybe this is part of a plan to recruit hundreds of thousands of Europeans – Poland supplied many workers in the past, so did Iraq and Iran.
What about the environmental cost? All those deep excavations for foundations, that concrete, wiring, plumbing, plastering – all the appliances, carpets, lighting fixtures etc will have to come from somewhere.
Here’s an idea of just the reinforced concrete used in two buildings on Canary Wharf:
Wood Wharf A2 A3 - Construction, RC Structure, Concrete, Skyscraper, London | Kilnbridge
“Altogether, Buildings A2 and A3 comprise 5,600 tonnes of reinforcement, 31,000m³ of concrete and 65,200m² of soffit formwork.
The scope of works involves the construction of the common basement and medium to high-rise structures at 10 Park Drive, Wood Wharf, including secondary steel work with an overall RC footprint of 65,000m2.”
Recall that Canary Wharf has around 1.5 million square meters of floor space – so these two buildings make up just over 4% of the concrete used in Canary Wharf.
Extrapolating those numbers – all of Canary Wharf = RC footprint = 65,000 times 100%/4% times the 75 Canary Wharfs required = just shy of 122 million tonnes of RC footprint.
RC = reinforced concrete. It has a carbon footprint (if you believe in such things) here:
Carbon Footprint of Reinforced Concrete Structures - Structville
Maybe it’s sustainable reinforced concrete:
What will the CO2 emissions eventually be of all this construction? Maybe the Labour Party planners can refer to this:
Of course, this is not the extent of Labour’s plans.
YJ electricity prices are already 4-5 times higher per KWh as natural gas. Labour has plans to cover a huge number of areas of outstanding natural beauty with forests of wind turbines and plantations of solar panels.
Its energy policy revolves around expensive “renewable energy” and the winding down of cheap hydrocarbons – it has been reticent about nuclear energy.
Th upshot of all of this is even more widespread energy poverty and food price inflation.
But, what else can you expect from incompetent idiots. The UK people will do as they usually do – vote out the current batch of idiots, hoping the new batch of idiots will do better.
There are 4,600 candidates standing for the 750 Parliamentary seats. I would not be surprised if the turnout is low – it will be a vote for who the electorate thinks will cost them the least ad that’s a toss-up for who races to the bottom the fastest.
Onwards!!!
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