There is also the element that council housing is often used for the very poorest in society and so when people can afford better housing they move out. The effect is to create ghettos and sink estates.
I was involved in government housing projects in the 1990s and at the time there were some radical proposals knocking around, such as a “void” tax, which was an additional charge on the owner of a vacant property. The idea was to create a fiscal incentive to either sell or rent empty housing. It didn’t get very far, mainly because the ruling Conservative party tend to have a lot of landlords in their ranks.
Back when I was still in the UK councils stopped building new council housing due to it not making any sense because of changes bought about by the Thatcher government.
They were forced to sell for peanuts. There was a lot of other stuff that made it very complicated. Essentially council housing disappeared.
Here in France the system uses private companies to build HLMs. These now tend to get sold off after a while, this could be to the residents or another licensed HLM operator. Changes in norms have made all this very complicated. There was a lot of housing built for civil servants such as Police, prison guards and council workers some of which have been sold of privately others remain depending on whether the establishment that was served is still there or not.
A system used in France is for every 100 HLM built about 8 are allocated to the the department to house people in real need, the private HLM company allocates the rest under certain rules. It’s not bad as long as there’s new HLMs being built.
This article explains in which prison Sarkozy will be held, and under which conditions. It’s instructive.
Much is said about the EU being in crisis blah blah, but I for one applaud the French judiciary system on this occasion. They take to task a potential criminal, and despite of all kinds of political pressure, proceed to his judgement . Once he’s proven guilty beyond any doubt, they punish him accordingly, nevermind his former social and political status (not only Sarkozy, but a whole lot of his accomplices as well).
What many in my country feared, many claimed could not happen due to EFTA rules, has come to pass.
The political climate in Norway right now is very nasty. Either apologia for the EU, using this as an argument for why we need to join, or that the EU has gone to war against us and we must respond by cutting gas off to Europe and making the the EU states suffer and realise their mistakes .
Predicatly, this will cause great hostility and there is a “demand” in the people, that we must retaliate some how. I doubt we will, not under the current government. But this likely feed more the EU skepticism and resentment than those who wants to join. A lot of people, including may politicians, thinks we should respond by making energy cheap for Norwegian industry and refuse to follow market prices etc. Particularly this is true of the parties to the left of Labour as well as the Centre Party.
Right now, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party (as well as the Liberal party) have a problem (they don’t want us to take a Hard Line) have a problem with Public Opinion.
It is now six years and eleven months since the Brexit referendum. Of the 52 per cent who voted to leave, it is clear that some wanted to get out of the EU at any cost, but a much larger number were convinced that departure could and would come at little or no cost.
It’s at the point now where it’s a complete waste of time listening to anything that anyone from that administration has to say ; The only thing they are ‘profoundly concerned’ about are their tech companies having to abide by European law.Their ‘shared values’ of white christian nationalism are not in fact shared by most europeans. And their lectures about ‘civilisational erasure’ and societal cohesion are absurd when their own government is executing US citizens in US cities. No , we don’t have shared values and nor do we any longer have a shared destiny.
TBH, I don’t know what their methodology is, and it is likely to differ by country. There is a difference between active religious participation, nominal religion, irreligious and atheist (anti-religious) which will vary between countries.
I find these sorts of plots a bit misleading. There is a passive adherence to religion (every religion in the West, including non-Christian) that is linked to births, marriages, funerals and of course Coco-Cola day… It sort of always irks me that parents that never go to church and are not involved with its activities still have church weddings, get their children baptized, have burials at a church and of course “celebrate” Christmas.
