It rings a bell but I would imagine there were problems with it. We have not been building anywhere near enough homes for the last 40 years and still have both a growing population and an ageing one, with a lot of people on waiting lists for somewhere to live so where are all these empty houses the report is talking about - I would imagine a lot of these would probably be in areas with little demand?
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Quite possibly true, but Iām sure in your part of the world there are plenty of ex industrial sites and similar which could easily be built on without destroying any countryside. Iām most familiar with Sheffield, which Iād imagine is fairly typical, and there is plenty of empty space near the centre, near public transport, shops, schools, hospitals etc, which could be used for housing.
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Trueā¦weāve already built housing estates on nearly every colliery site in or near Doncasterā¦
Most of the houses empty around us are ex local authority , so they are already in areas of, local facitlities,shops, doctors, transport etcā¦so updating them would be a financial assetā¦like u point out, mainly for young families and the ageing population.
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Whatās the local Scuttlebutt on why these houses are currently empty and what sort of numbers are we talking about?
Mainly been trashed by previous tenants..no one to do them upā¦streets around meā¦about 10 vacantā¦
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Lets not mention large private entities having and holding onto vast swathes of land either shall we.
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There is a demographic shift as well, in that people are living longer and wanting to stay in family homes for rest of their lives, so there isnāt the throughput of those properties arriving on the market.
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This shows that Labour are truly getting desperate now. Says play the ball not the man and immediately ploughs into the manā¦ Farage is driving the government agenda and they have no idea how to stop it.
Its an interesting (and scary) conundrum on how you deal with people like Farage and Trump. Facts do not matter, expert opinion is also irrelevant. They can and do say things which border on extremism orc even cross the line on many occasion but doing the same thing back is not acceptable.
We are back in the realm of the Brexit debate.
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I donāt quite follow Labourās approach on this. They call out Farage and Reform as the racists they obviously are, yet seek to assuage those potential voters for that party by telking them, āBut we donāt think you are racistā.
Um, hello? People who are likely to vote for a racist party with racist policies are quite likely to be racists themselves, despite this bullshit about it just being a āprotestā against the govt.
Just call them out for what they are, because theyāre probably not going to vote for Labour anyway. These people have been hidden in the background for years, moaning about how they ācanāt say anything these daysā, and now they feel emboldened once more and saying those things out loud.
Itās no good the govt attacking this with a wet sponge. We already have laws in place to counter this rhetoric, such as the Public Order Act (1986) and other legislation designed to stop such behaviours such as hate speech:
āExpressions of hatred toward someone on account of that personās colour, race, sex, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, or sexual orientation is forbidden.ā
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Reform turned over a nearly 15000 Labour majority in Runcorn earlier this year so you shouldnāt dismiss them all as not potential labour voters. The government knows that it is not just Tory voters that are going over to Reform. That in itself would not be a major issue.
It canāt call out the voters as racists as in a place like Runcorn, they were dyed in the wool Labour voters for many years. There were never many Tory voters there.
They canāt afford to alienate swathes of disaffected white working class voters. That would be electoral suicide.
I see what youāre saying, but just because someone has voted Labour in the past doesnāt necessarily mean they arenāt also racists, does it?
If they truly wanted to support Labour then surely they would anyway. I donāt buy it as a protest vote alone.
Whatās the motivation to support a party with racist views, unless you share those views? If you want to protest then why not Greens, Lib Dems, or just donāt vote at all, not add your vote to bloody Reform.
Reform is giving these people a voice that they feel has been ādeniedā them, like itās suddenly okay to express the thoughts and words of previous generations. So, why might they suddenly want to go back to Labour?
First, we had Brexit and now the genie is well and truly out of the bottle.
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I think people have basically swallowed the wrong pill and believe the rhetoric. As I said I dont know how you turn that round without going right the way through the process that occurred up to and through WW2.
We clearly havent learned from history.
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Never have never will.
The masses are too easily led.
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Weird thing is, if you get burned by so.ething hot you sure as hell willbe more careful next time.
However support something that measurably makes you poorer, you double down and blame something else.
And here we are again.
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Itās an old trick. The Haves keep screwing over the Have-Nots, then pointing the finger down instead of up, with a cry, āItās all their fault!ā
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Ha ha letās call everyone a racist because they have different views to me. Just fuck right off.
My point perfectly illustrated.
For the record, i dont think that is the right solution either. It doesnt work.
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Like him or loathe him, this is a great synopsis of the current state of the Labour Party. And it was all totally predictable. Cue incoming comments about how we had to get the Tories out 
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