There are signs that the Government’s White Paper on Housing will bring in a form of plotland development. Will it deliver affordability and sustainability?
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One of the last plotlands houses to be built
I grew up in Kent in a house built by my father on a plot of land bought as a wedding present. My parents were married just before the World War II so building did not start until 1946.
Under construction in 1946
Its construction was not what you would see today. The “bricks” were very heavy concrete and cinder blocks. They were in a figure of eight. They had two vertical holes. I remember my father showing me the machine that made the blocks. It was rather like the Wizard Block Making Unit described by Preservation in Action. It had other odd features like very hard floors containing sawdust. It was a Magnesium Oxychloride Composition Floor. My father altered the internal walls from time to time. I particularly remember that he mended a bathroom tap through a hole he made in my bedroom wall. He filled the hole in a year later – after moving a wardrobe to hide it – temporally.
Back in the 1950s I watched the series “The Adventures of Robin Hood” on TV written by lefty blacklisted Hollywood writers. I liked the fact that TV Robin took from the rich to give to the poor – without too much real-life brutality.
Trying to throw to the newcomer at the top right
I still have a moral sentiment which could be called Robin Hood redistribution – redistribution from haves to have-nots. It guides me when I am feeding the geese: That goose over there has more than enough food so I try and toss other the scraps to the “poorer” ones.
Perhaps this is related to a moral sentiment that wants all geese to be as satisfied as possible – and I guess the food-rich geese don’t need the crusts of old sandwiches as much as the food-poor geese.
Such moral sentiments come naturally to us and can drive us into action. For example, if one day I pass by with no crusts to give the geese, I might follow my moral sentiment for Robin Hood redistribution and jump into the river to take food from the food-rich geese to give to the food-poor geese. (Note to the family, especially to those of you that have tried something similar: This is only a “thought experiment”.)
The RealClimate website (“Climate science from climate scientists”) has a moderated discussion at the end of each article so that readers can ask questions and make comments. These are sometimes answered by the climate scientists that run the site. In the July Unforced variations, which allows any relevant topic to be broached, I responded to a comment by Bill Henderson, who said
Recent advances in the carbon budget science over the past year have now shrunk this budget to now much less than 1000 Gt, to somewhere closer to 600-800Gt.
The Rogelj et el paper is the main paper quantifying this lower carbon budget but the budget is shrinking because the climate science is also getting much more dire.
It may be even worse
My reply may be of interest, as it contains an interesting quote from a leading climate scientist:
This study shows that, in some cases, we have been overestimating the budget by 50 to more than 200%. At the high end, this is a difference of more than 1,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Including all greenhouse gases and using methods based on scenarios that avoid instead of exceed a given temperature limit results in lower carbon budgets.
Richard Layard and John Philpott repeat the conventional wisdom that “unemployment is the price we pay a for controlling inflation” (“A 12-month turnaround for the unemployed”, September 1.1).
More accurately, it is the price the poor (now renamed the underclasses) pay.
Layard and Philpott’s answer relies heavily on “high-quality training leading to recognised qualifications”.
Before we all jump on the training bandwagon, perhaps we should ask to what extent training independent of the workplace actually increases an individual’s ability to do a job. I remain highly sceptical of the trainers’ claims.
Their suggestion for a subsidy to employers for taking on an unemployed person has some merit: it does oil the friction in the labour market. But some employers are already using similar schemes as long-term labour subsidies by sacking employees after the subsidised period has ceased and taking ‘on new employees and new subsidies,
Why not confront the problem head on? At a given time, there will be people who cannot legally earn enough to have a civilised life. Instead of giving them life skills classes or paying them not to work, subsidise them into a job and, if subsidies need to be long-term, let them be long-term.
Welcome to www.greeningthegreenbelt.org, started 01 February 2003. This is a protest against the unfairness and environmental damage caused by green belt policy.
The problem
Green belts are mechanisms for restricting the supply of planning permission. Green belt policy is usually regarded as the one strong weapon planners have against developers who would destroy our environment; our environment which is free for us all, rich and poor, to enjoy. But, in reality, it
— Increases in the value of land with planning permission
— Gives massive rewards to the affluent (owners of property and land)
— Penalises the poor and the young
— Rewards those that pollute the most – the affluent
— Protects green fields of monoculture with little biodiversity
Our suggestion
Open up the greenbelt to settlements that will
— Have dwellings and shops and public transport
— Use local horticulture – growing more food than conventional agriculture
— Cut food miles to 10% of the National average.
— Create more biodiversity than the farmer
— Have greenfootprints that are a quarter of the National average
I was asked by Professor Lord Megnad Desai to
write a note for the Fabian Society’s newsletter in 1993.
They decided not to publish this note.
Subsequently, Lord Desai referred to me as ‘messianic’.
Headings have been added.
The OECD solution to unemployment
The current economic orthodoxy is ubiquitous. We may be drowning in it. As an example, here is the FT’s precis of the OECD’s latest position:
“The organisation warns that the new and severe deterioration of the employment performance of its 24 member-states since the late 1980s is serious in its own right. It brings individual hardship, economic loss and treat to the social and political fabric …”
So we are screwing up lives, throwing lunches in the bin, creating a criminal society and risking another Hitler(ski?). But what about the OECD’s solutions?
They advocate big reductions in structural budget deficits to allow lower interest rates, which encourage higher consumption and investment. In Europe, the OECD believes, the way forward lies in high productivity jobs filled with workers with high skills and “low productivity jobs warrent the payment of only a low wage”. To achieve high productivity they emphasise two approaches: education and training for the workers and the encouragement of enterprise in high-tech, high-productivity industry at the level of the firm.
The European Commission has asked if this site uses cookies.
My answer: I’ve no idea.
Please advise.
P.S. Since the EU chickened out on banning cookies altogether and really protecting our privacy, we are left with the nonsense of clicking boxes to use essential services.
Professor Richard Layard, London School of Economics, Programme Director – Wellbeing
Percy Bridgman’s operationalism
Operationalism became influential in social science, particularly psychology, through the work of Percy Bridgman. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says
Operationalism is based on the intuition that we do not know the meaning of a concept unless we have a method of measurement for it. …
In 1932, Lionel Robbins applied this to “satisfaction” claiming its use was unscientific because satisfaction could not be directly measured. He gave this example:
If we tested the state of their blood-streams, that would be a test of blood, not satisfaction. Introspection does not enable A to discover what is going on in B’s mind, nor B to discover what is going on in A’s.
Lifestyle research is an essential addition to the factual background in the development of an integrated transport policy. The average behaviour of the whole population is not detailed enough to understand the behaviour of the different lifestyles that comprise to the whole population.
Consider some example households in or near York (these are illustrative pending further research):
A. Flat in central York: Young couple, no children
B. Terraced house in inner suburbs: two parents and two children
C. Semi detached in outer suburbs: two parents and three children
D. Rented house on peripheral council estate: divorced mother of four
E: Cottage in country park: two parents and two children
The transport system affects their lifestyles in different ways…
Below there is a reply about how the IPCC’s “remaining carbon budgets” should be modified: There are climate feedbacks missing from the CMIP5 models used in calculating the original budgets . Parliamentary POSTnote 454, “Risks from Climate Feedbacks” (Jan 2014) also acknowledges this. The reply is remarkably straightforward answer for a government department. Thanks to all concerned.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall
Dear Geoff,
You spoke to Pete Betts at the LSE, and subsequently via email, during which you raised several thoughtful points on the science of feedbacks, and their potential policy implications. With thanks to several of my colleagues, I’ve tried to answer your questions to Pete below.
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