Small landlords are toast – sacrificed to big business interests

Small landlords have been quitting the market in their droves thanks to punitive taxes, soaring mortgage rates and nightmare bureaucratic interference. Rents have soared, but not enough to make it worthwhile for a landlord to keep a property in the current circumstances.

Michael Gove, the Levelling Up and Housing Secretary, has called for a slowdown or even relaxation in the rate of implementation of some of the more infexible regulations following a concerning result for the Tories in the recent bye elections that has indicated dissatisfaction with Green policies among the voting public.

Mr. Gove has also let the cat out of the bag as to why policies have been implemented that could only result in driving small landlords out of the business of letting property.

The government will creat new, government-sponsored development corporations with the power to buy up land using compulsory purchase orders and sell it on to developers to build new homes.

In addition the Action Taskforce for Land Assembly Sites will make it easier for shops and agricultural buildings to be turned into homes.

No mention or place for small landlords. They are being replaced by big business and investors.

It would have been very easy to open up the housing market. Remove the expensive regulations that hinder investment and allow people with spare rooms to let all of them, not just one, tax free and with no bureaucratic inerference. Instead step by stealthy step the market has been squeezed until renters are desperate and supply is dwindling.

All the government has to do now is stand back and allow big business to ride to the rescue. Pity for the small ex-landlords and for the tenants who will find they have very little choice in a market provided by a very few large organisations.

We need a blueprint for the future not a net zero disaster zone

As campaigners and protesters point to hot weather and demand yet more pain for the people on the grounds that we have a “climate crisis” isn’t it time to look at what is really happening now that we are seeing the implementation of policies that not only remove choice but endanger the necessities of life.?

There are several components that make up a safe, secure and most importantly, happy state.

Food security. Energy security. A home from which one can repel all invaders and live as one wishes. Unfortunately the campaigns and actions of animal rights (AR) and environmental rights (ER) groups have weakened and in some cases damaged each of these.

Instead of financially crippling people and driving them to the verge of panic, how about accepting that the climate on the planet has always changed and has been far hotter and far colder than it is now at various times in the past?

Instead of pretending that anything we can do will alter the natural sequence of events and squandering all of our resources on highly expensive actions destined to fail, why are we not putting those resources to work in order to mitigate the problems that might arise if the climate gets warmer (or colder) in future? If we don’t do that now there won’t be any resources left to do so when needed.

Land is being taken out of agricultural production in order to house solar panels and grow biofuel at a time when the war in Ukraine has reduced their ability to grow crops for export and when extreme drought conditions in the American breadbasket has led to wheat crops being abandoned. People are dying of starvation in North Korea and drought and other extreme weather crises have left people dying of hunger in Somalia and facing high acute food insecurity across the Horn of Africa. A situation now being exacerbated by the decision of Russia to pull out of the deal allowing millions of tons of grain to be exported from Ukrainian ports.

Much of Europe and the US are suffering from extremely high and dangerous temperatures and fires have broken out across large parts of the continent. 44% of the EU and UK are now critically exposed to drought conditions leaving our food production system at risk. 

At a time when food and fuel imports are both high cost and scarce, government is pushing forwards with rewilding initiatives that will take yet more land out of food production and cut the carbon footprint. Alan Titchmarsh has told a House of Lords horticultural sector committee that rewilded gardens are catastrophic for wildlife. They limit the number of plant and animal species that can survive by becoming scrub or monocultures of weeds. In the same way farmland is likely to become impenetrable thickets of bracken and brambles where no tree could ever germinate.

Despite the fact that much meat production takes place on land that is unsuitable for crop growing there are calls to end meat eating on the grounds that eating less meat would be like taking 8 million cars off the road. 

There are concerns in Wales that the Welsh Government’s mandatory requirement of 10% tree planting for the Sustainable Farming Scheme will lead to farmland being taken out of food production. Meanwhile the SNP have admitted to felling 16 million trees to develop wind farms.

The devastation of the natural environment in the name of all that is Green is not limited to land. Minerals needed if the world is to meet the demand for Green Technologies can be found on the sea bed. Areas deemed to have a rich potential harvest have unique environments and species adapted to them. One area is estimated to have over 5000 species present. 

Mining for the nickel desperately needed for electric car batteries is destroying the way of life of the indigenous Bajaj people of Indonesia as the waste enters the waters in which they dive turning the water a reddish brown colour that is impossible to see through. Sodium cyanide and diesel, if not stored and disposed of properly can leach into the water. Coral reefs suffocate under the sediment along with giant clams that are buried alive.

As we destroy the world around us while chasing the Green Dream, governments continue to pander to campaigners and move to destroy farming and end the keeping of animals. 

The Irish government has suggested culling 65,000 dairy cows annually in order to reduce methane emissions. The UK government is busy planning to register every animal in the country so that they know where to find them in the event of a disease outbreak. Even pet birds are not exempt. Nor are dogs and cats, whose owners will now be subject to a £500 fine for failing to microchip and enter their details on a register so that the authorities can find them.

Consider the fact that the UK government discussed whether they might have to institute a cat cull if it turned out that cats could transmit coronavirus to humans. Since then it has been confirmed that cats and other animals can be infected by covid 19, bird flu, H5N1 and the European Safety Authority has advised that cats are kept indoors and dogs on a lead where the virus is known to be circulating.

The UK has a record of culling pet animals. During the Great Plague of 1665 the Common Council of the City of London decreed that all dogs and cats were to be killed to stop the spread of the plague. In 1760 they responded to reports of mad dogs attacking people on the streets with an order that any dog found not he streets would be killed and buried in a mass grave. Similar orders were made in surrounding areas. The resulting mob violence and slaughter of even owned petA s left the bodies of the poor animals rotting in the streets. Similar cull of street dogs took place in Edinburgh in 1738.

Few will forget the mass culls of foot and mouth and BSE, but there is a great difference between the culling of food animals that might pass on a deadly disease and the culling of pet animals.

One of the protections against times of food shortage was the keeping of small livestock. Pigeons, chickens, ducks and geese along with rabbits.  It is increasingly unlikely that people will have that option available in future.

What should be happening is preparation for potential problems to ensure that people survive and don’t suffer. Michael Gove has seen the writing on the wall and called for a rowing back on Net Zero targets following devastating by election results.

More is needed and not just policies aimed at convincing Conservative voters to return to the fold.

If we are to see dryer and hotter conditions along with sudden very heavy rainfall, or new disease outbreaks that could turn into pandemics, then emergency services should to have plans and resources in place.

Planners need to assess the potential dangers of new builds, something they were supposed to be doing anyway, and either refuse those in areas vulnerable to problems or ensure that designers have taken account of them.

We also have to face up to the fact that we are going to need fossil fuels for the foreseeable future if we are to keep people warm over winter and cool during hotter summers and leaving our own resources in the ground while leaving ourselves dependent on other, sometimes hostile, countries leaves us vulnerable to devastating price hikes and shortages.

Government needs to balance the needs of the country against the unreasonable demands of campaigners and protesters and produce a blueprint that provides us with a future not a disaster zone.

The Sun, the unnamed, hypocrisy and chutzpah

The case of the BBC presenter who has been accused in The Sun of sharing “sexual” photos with a (then) 17 year old looks set to run and run with the “unnamed young person” now stating that nothing illegal took place via a letter from a solicitor.

Strange that The Sun is so incensed at this case when back in the seventies they published photos of 16 year old Sam Fox on Page 3, a major selling point for the paper.

The fact that the UK signed up to the crazy UN claim that everyone under 18 is a child and so while the age of consent is 16 it is now illegal to post or publish photos of anyone under 18 is irrelevant. Yes, the Sam Fox photos would be illegal to publish now, but had they been illegal back then they would have prevented Ms. Fox from making her fortune.

The claims by the unnamed “young person’s” mother that money paid was used to fund a cocaine habit do not mean that paying that “young person”, if that is what happened, was inherently evil, although technically illegal, it means that this perticular “young person” was not guided and prepared for the world of adulthood by their parents in the same way that Sam Fox was. Is that the fault of the “unnamed presenter”?

Now we are told that another “unnamed young person” has decided to pop up and add their claim to the furore. Why? Because it is in the public domain which encourages people into the “me too” mentality when they wouldn’t have bothered otherwise? The claim is that they felt scared of the “unnamed presenter’s” power, although that didn’t stop them from hinting online about naming the “unnamed presenter”. Well guess what. There are lots of powerful people out there, but they are less likely to harm you than the knife wielding kids running amok in our city streets.

Still, the hypocrisy of The Sun in its outrage over someone who did privately what made The Sun’s name when paraded in public is the very definition of chutzpah.