Build more, build better
With all the good will in the world it is hard to discover that 69% of the fund set up by the government in 2017 to encourage house building has not yet been spent, without thinking that the government is run by idiots.
More homes would help bring down house prices, reduce rents, get people on the housing ladder and improve productivity. But the government just sits there and wrings its hands about how to build homes without annoying Nimbys, a circle it can never square.
Still it does mean that an incoming government would have billions to spend on housing because this government has the money, it just hasn’t spent it yet. The trouble, as with infrastructure, is where to build and what to build and increasingly how to build.
Climate change means that the UK’s houses need to be much better insulated and built to survive worse weather while using less energy. Recent storms have also shown that much of our road and rail networks are built to a very low standard and need hardening. A massive undertaking.
But all of this will have to be done and done quickly.
We have done the easy bit of carbon emission reduction by exporting heavy industry to polluting nations and greening energy production. More needs to be done there but the next big step is reducing the energy used by households and cars, while preparing for much worse weather.
Certainly it is not something the current government can do, they can’t even build homes when they have money to give away.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media