Jim Gleeson

Am I reading that right - 30 minutes free parking (on Upper Street??) from 7am to 4pm?

I'm always open to a local government finance explanation, but is that a common pattern across all the anglosphere countries?

I don't have systematic numbers, but anecdotally the pattern seems similar in Croydon's suburban intensification experiment. For example, 76 Reddown Road was sold for £1m in 2019 and replaced with 9 flats ranging from £370k to £525k maps.app.goo.gl/NezsVbtVqDxb...

Obviously this is driven by size. When an existing home is replaced by one new home, the latter is likely to be much larger. But if you're squeezing 9+ homes onto a plot that used to contain just 1 they are likely to be smaller. But the effect is still to lower the price of entry to that location.

Very useful analysis from Seattle of the prices charged when one home is replaced with one or more new homes. A 1-for-1 replacement results in a home nearly three times as expensive, but replacing one home with 9+ new ones involves average prices that are around half the original.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/0c628bdb-a3f6-47c1-9684-a47410bd4adf While the housing situation in continental western Europe is hardly a panacea, the shocks there have been much more modest, and housing security remains far more common. Young adult home ownership rates are higher, as is the prevalence of secure long-term rents and tenant protections What makes the Anglosphere affordability crunch all the more damaging is that it has happened in societies that have placed especially high value on home ownership, both culturally as the go-to marker of having made it in life, and financially as a means to accumulate wealth in less generous welfare systems than those of continental Europe. English-speaking governments, policymakers and societies more broadly have raised a generation to play the home ownership game. They have then not so much ripped up the rule book as confiscated the board and all the pieces without explanation.

Re this piece by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com, perhaps the Anglosphere affordability crunch happened *because* those societies put such a high priority on the interests of homeowners, with policies like tax breaks and restricted supply. Homeownerism may be self-defeating. on.ft.com/4kTUHyA

It was only an “e-bike crash” in the sense that the driver of a Landrover Discovery got upset by the e-bike lights (because he was dealing drugs in his car), chased them ONE MILE and then hit them, killing the woman who was on the back and seriously injuring the cyclist.

Come on, BBC.

Leasehold housing in England: Statistics This briefing explores statistics on leasehold housing stock and transactions, in the context of ongoing reforms to the leasehold system.

I've published a new briefing bringing together the stats on leasehold housing in England (and a bit in Wales). Featuring:
- MHCLG data on leasehold stock
- Trends in transactions over time and for constituencies
- Experiences of leaseholders

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

An AI slop factory apparently tried to rewrite our article about AI not replacing workers en masse, but hit the paywall... so just summarised the paywall. If this is the robot that takes my job I'll be v embarrassed

Vietnam setting bans on gasoline motorcycles next year, followed by cars Vietnam is taking bold steps to clean up its streets – and quiet them down. Starting next summer, the major...

Big things happening in Vietnam.

"Starting next summer, the major downtown areas of Hanoi will ban all gasoline-powered motorcycles as part of a program to cut down on emissions."

"City officials have confirmed that it will extend to gasoline-powered cars in later phases."

Fewer cars --> Safer streets

In London, Low Traffic Neighborhoods saw a 35% drop in all traffic injuries and a 37% drop in deaths/serious injuries.

injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/earl...

New data for 2024 are in.
A long-term view on the meteoric rise and unabated dramatic fall of China's wine consumption and production. China's wine consumption peaked in 2017 and fell by 71%. China's wine production peaked in 2012 (!) and fell by 84%

A screenshot of an interactive map of London, show cool areas and locations of various cool spaces and drinking fountains.

🥵 Hot in #London? Find cool spaces 🥶 and water fountains 💧near you, with our interactive map: apps.london.gov.uk/cool-spaces/ 👍

If it had been created by AI, then when called on it the AI would at least have apologised and promised to do better in future. Before making something else up, admittedly.

Does this rely on adequately accommodating credit conditions, though? If those conditions are quite tight and HTB significantly loosens them, then maybe it could be seen as allowing prices to rise towards a level consistent with rental yields.

YouTube video by Key & Peele It’s Actually Really Hard to Storm Out of an Interview - Key & Peele

Immediately reminded of this youtu.be/vIfGgDnmBXg?...

The higher the bonnet, the bigger the blind spot. Diagram showing how drivers can't see children in high fronted cars.

NEW RESEARCH: new car bonnets are trending higher every year and drivers of high fronted cars unable to see children as old as nine 😱🚙🚸❗

#Carspreading is out of control. What’s the latest? 🧵1/8

@transenv.bsky.social @cleancitiescampaign.org

Yes, it's any expenditure (revenue or capital) by a public body.

Migrants cross English Channel ahead of spending review announcement New arrivals wearing life jackets were brought to shore in a Border Force boat in Dover, Kent, on Wednesday.

I 100% guarantee you that absolutely no-one crossing one of the world's busiest shipping routes in order to seek asylum was doing it based on the timing of the spending review.

Well remembered - in 2015-18 there were 'capped' and 'discounted' varieties of Affordable Rent in London which averaged out at around 65% of market rents.

If I remember right the previous VOA data on private rents also gave lower figures than the new ONS index does, so I imagine the % was higher when that was the comparison being made.

Hi Anna, LAR is more like 45% of market rents. When the benchmarks were last published (for 2022/23), the maximum rent for a 2-bed was £178.23 a week, which is 45% of what ONS said the average private rent was in Sept 2022 www.london.gov.uk/programmes-s...

Grant funding for councils, housing associations and a small number of for-profit affordable housing providers to build a mix of social housing and 'intermediate' tenures like shared ownership. Not sure if they will announce the tenure mix today, but likely to be more social rent.

It's striking how few people actually think this, despite the indefatigable efforts of so many in the media and various campaigns to convince them over the years.

Seems to also include fire safety remediation costs, which may be driving quite a lot of the difference.

Aw, thanks Tom!

Combining capital and revenue for these figures would be bad at any time. Including the pandemic years when the government banned travel yet demanded a full tube service be run (the biggest peak) just leads to unusable data.

Is that figure just "investment" in new transport infrastructure, or does it cover all public expenditure, including both revenue and capital? Looks like the latter to me, which puts a somewhat different complexion on things.

A lot of London's existing public transport infrastructure was originally built with private money, even if it's now publicly operated (and therefore included in this chart). By contrast, most motorways and roads were built with public money but the expenditure used to drive on them is private.

For example, if TfL operate a train service that Londoners pay for with fares, does that count as "public transport expenditure"? While if someone drives their car down a road that was built years ago with public funding, that does not count as public transport expenditure this year.