Property: a tale of two countries

If there is any hallmark of the divided nature of our country in the present day, it is in property.

Whilst property owners benefit from rock-bottom interest rates, and a wealthy minority make a small fortune from so-called property investment - which in fact is little more than the accumulation of mulitple houses - a generation of young people are faced with a stark reality: unless you have a very high paid job indeed, you will need to borrow off the bank of mum and dad or face the fact that owning your own home won't happen.

Recent reports of banks requesting deposits of in excess of 30% for first-time buyers, coupled with sky-high prices are contributing to the reversal of years of increases in home ownership.

Today's report that house ownership is slipping back to levels not seen since the 1980's is in this climate unsurprising.

And yet the government does nothing to help, working as it does to defend the interests of the already wealthy. 

The question is this: at what stage will the locked out become a constituency powerful enough to create poltical change in this area?

Until then, it's property investment programmes on Channel 4 and buy-to-let schemes for some, and years of renting at increasingly high prices for others.

More evidence that Tory voters aren't really that...Tory

This blog has posted before on polls that have demonstrated highly significant levels of support amongst self-declared Conservative voters for such (not very Tory) views as increasing the minimum wage, raising taxes on the better off (and on banks), granting better employment rights to temporary workers and for improving rights for interns.

Well, the Telegraph has recently written about the recent YouGov poll that shows that only a minority of Conservative voters support scrapping the 50% top rate of tax, and a majority give their backing for the so-called 'mansion tax'.

This follows on from polling undertaking in 2009 that showed consistently high levels of public support for the renationalisation of the railway system, including a larger proportion of Tory voters favouring this, or the not slightly less radical option of increasing government involvement in the sector.

This is an interesting phenomenon that the right-wing press often choose to ignore. The often cited 'silent majorities' for right-wing proposals are frequently nothing of the kind - more often these are the loud bellows of Tory-leaning press and right-of-centre think thanks.

Admittedly, there is a caveat to to bear in mind: most polling firms add political weightings to their overall 'headline' figures, so analysing polls by sub-groups is therefore open to larger margins of error. Nevertheless, such significant proportions of Conservative voters expressing these views means that these margins of error are unlikely to seriously impact these conclusions.

It just goes to show that that left-of-centre politicians should fret less about public backlashes to progressive policies: they are more popular that people often think.

Holidays

This blog has been quiet of late, but will return in September. In the meantime, EtonMess has a mobile site, courtesy of Blogger.

Jon Stewart and the UK's odd parliamentary 'satire' broadcast rules

US debt talks: The Republican Party are mad

The sheer scale of cuts Obama has offered the Republican Party in the latest round of talks on raising the US debt ceiling has shocked many Democrats. And yet, even this apparent victory for the austerity-fetishists on the political right in America wasn't enough.

The truth is, for a group increasingly dominated by the Tea Party, the Republicans would seem happy only to see the federal government dismantled altogether. They are extremist ideologues, with no grasp - or interest in - reality.

And the strain of dealing with these people is showing on the normally unflappable president, as yesterday's news conference showed:

Cameron's Big Society has nothing to say about corporate excess

The recent scandals that have engulfed News International have - despite the recent efforts of parts of the Tory press to downplay them - shocked many people. The sheer scale of apparent collusion between the legal establishment, the press and the political classes have been surprised even to the most cynical observers.

News International, and its parent company, News Corporation, appear to have wielded such immense power, that they were able to exert influence over the key established power centres of a liberal democracy. That they were able to do this surely leads to one conclusion: that they are too big.

It isn't just political influence that comes with such immense size. As the banks amply demonstrated, large corporations can act in a manner that may be detrimental to the general population. That is because large corporations can become too big to be worried about the concerns of ordinary people. Even individual customers without major wealth ultimately become unimportant.
Strikingly, David Cameron's Big Society agenda - which is relentless in its attacks on the dangers of 'big government' -  has nothing to say about the problems that big business can create. Amazingly, despite the abject failure of a deregulated approach to the banking sector and to the press, Cameron's project remains firmly concerned with dismantling the supposed 'barriers' to business growth.

It is this failure to address these issues that creates cynicism about the Big Society project. If it genuinely is about localism, about returning power to local communities, then surely it would have something to say about how large corporations can - and do - act to disempower ordinary people.

And that is why Ed Miliband's recent comments on corporate irresponsibility are so important. Indeed, in identifying the increasing lack of power held by ordinary middle class people (alongside lower income groups), he may have finally rediscovered the purpose of a social democratic party - to represent the collective will of people whose individual voices are increasingly marginalised. 

And that is a potentially very powerful message.

Will energy price rises invite calls for a new windfall tax?

The news today that British Gas will follow Scottish Power with huge price rises - in the case of the former, price increases of almost 20%, following on from a 7% rise at the end of last year - raises significant problems for a large number of people and a major headache for the government.

These significant rises - set against falling household disposable incomes, a weak economy and inflationary pressures - will hit people even harder than the headline figure suggests.

What can the government do? Well, its already been reported that Chris Huhne has met with smaller energy suppliers to try to increase the diversity of providers in the market. Now, this is a very free-market, neo-liberal approach to tackling this issue. Rather like the Republican Party in the US and their reaction to sky-high medical insurance premiums, the preference of right-leaning parties will always be for trying to increase competition as a method of tackling high prices, rather than using more direct regulation.

But intervention and regulation - proper regulation - can be far more effective than this more hands-off approach. And one piece of intervention that would be both hugely popular and would be a useful source of revenue for the government would be to resurrect one of Tony Blair's earliest policies - a windfall tax on utility companies.

The original tax in 1997 raised an estimated £5billion. The level of income in 2011 would be much higher, and could be used to stimulate the green economy or fund tax relief for households.

How tempting this would be for the Government, despite their ideological hue.