How does the 2014 Autumn Statement affect you?

Politicians can only help create the economic climate in which industry (including house building) can thrive, thus helping to improve employment opportunities. Unfortunately, developers are more interested in big profits than simply building houses, so many of them have been land banking during recessionary times – they will build and sell when the market is right for them, which will not result in cheap housing – that will never happen. The change in the way stamp duty is calculated will make the tax much fairer than it has been in the past, by reducing the hike in tax paid at specific thresholds. It will be more evenly calculated and help a lot of buyers, but at the same time will increase the amount collected at the higher end of the market.

Mr D Cummings – I quite agree – In fact successive governments have failed to build enough homes for many decades – as a consequence, this has caused property prices to rocket and outstrip peoples ability to keep up with the inflated prices. Most Young people today will find it impossible to ever own their own homes unless they are in the position where their parents can provide a substantial deposit.

This is a regional thing. In some parts of the country there are plenty of houses at affordable prices. The problem is the distribution of work. So long as everybody has to pile into London & the South East, where getting less property for more money is reaching ludicrous levels, hardship will persist. I would prefer to see the government taking bigger steps to shift work nearer the population than pressing housebuilders to throw up flats on every square inch of land and landlords to convert every terraced house into apartments. I agree with AQ on the benefits of the new Stamp Duty Land Tax scales, and to the extent that the Chancellor didn’t seek any correction of the distortion in L&SE by introducing differential regional bands then there might be some self-propelled movement of London employers to provincial locations if they cannot attract the workers they need.

The prices reflect what the majority of people can borrow, not what they can afford. The more they are allowed to borrow, the more they bid to compete with each other. Prices rise higher, and people have to stretch themselves further and further. Auctioneers and estate agents exhort people to bid a bit more or regret it forever after. Lenders are forced to offer more and more unreasonable income multiples.

As far as moving (exchanging one residence with another) is concerned, the legal professions (solicitors, accountants, estate agents, independent financial advisors) have failed the public by ratcheting up the uncertainties and stress involved more every year.

The cuts were not targeted on services, but on the numbers of public servants, a huge proportion of which are not employed on front-line delivery. There is massive scope to streamline the provision of public services, both at national and local government level. As an example – take local roads, the responsibility for which falls to the Highways Departments of County Councils. They have armies of people sat in offices all day absorbing huge sums of public funding – from Council Tax and from Central Government Grants, but little of it results in maintaining our local roads to a decent standard. This example can be repeated across a whole raft of services, where so little of the funding we provide actually ends up in what we need.

It is not possible to finance public services from taxes on easily identifiable small groups with few votes but lots of money. A general increase in income or expenditure taxation would result in less economic activity, and so the tax take falls, and with it public services. Income tax was once over 30% and purchase tax the same.

Financial penalties alter people’s behaviour — that is why fines are often an effective punishment and preventative of undesirable behaviour.

The only solution is more efficient public services, and fortunately technology advances can help with this.

For example, genomic medicine can cut the expenditure on prescription medicines by a significant amount, and this will get phased in over the next couple of decades, or even sooner if the political will is there. (Knowing someone’s genome enables doctors to be sure whether a particular medicine will work.) Effective pharmacology will cut back on the need for surgery and hospitals. A health service needs to help as many perfect strangers as possible. Pharmacology enables doctors to help far more people than expensive operations which can only help one at a time.

The application of science rather than crowd gut reaction has the potential to reduce crime. Imprisonment is very expensive and again affects individuals one at a time. Alternative and more effective methods will reduce costs.

The application of ever increasing computing power should replace the enormous waste of resources by legal administration. I don’t know what the gross income of the legal professions (solicitors, accountants, estate agents, IFAs, insurance people etc) as a whole are, but it doesn’t bring the same benefits as housing or infrastructure, and whatever benefits it does bring affects individuals one at a time and are not long lasting. Remove this inefficiency and society as a whole benefits.

I agree with AQ on the need to carry on cutting back the excessive spending of public authorities. So long as our local councils carry on delivering soppy magazines full of self-congratulatory guff about doing what they’re there for I shall not take any notice of their carping and bleating about reduced government funding. They should look at the size and cost of their public relations department before they pare another penny off the social care budget.

And I also agree about the inefficiencies of highways maintenance. When I lived in London I used to wonder why there needed to be thirty-three different organisations responsible for lighting the streets, with 33 different arrangements of lantern, column, spacing, and lux values. At least in shire counties there is a degree of standardisation within each county but I am sure savings could still be made by unifying the management and administrations across whole regions. I suspect that even today, notwithstanding the recent cuts, there are still some untouchable fiefdoms that need to be tackled with a scythe not a grapefruit knife.

As soon as Thatcher sold off our social housing the situation we now see was always going to happen. She also sold our gas,power,water railways,decimated our industrial base,our steel manufacture , mining comunities the list goes on. Cameron is simply carrying this on. The NHS IS BEING PRIVATISED BY STEALTH, yet still they vote for these lunatics.

Those industries once privately owned by the government faired no better then than now they are owned by members of the public who bought shares. At least they can pay dividends according to their performance and not when told to by government (apart from corporation tax), and they can raise further capital by rights issues. In addition, the government gets income from the capital gains penalties levied on those who successfully trade in the shares.

I do think it was a big mistake not to ring fence money raised by the sale of council houses to build more, especially on brown field sites near to places of work.

Fully agree with John. The protection enjoyed by these state owned industries led them to operate inefficiently, knowing that they had a captive audience, making them each a monopoly. In the case of energy companies, I’m not convinced that they have improved much in terms of customer service – especially the big 6 and their common pricing structures. Bob mentions the mining industry, but many of us will remember the stranglehold the NUM had on us all, which nearly crippled the country. Ironically during that time, the power generating sector started importing coal all the way from Australia, because even with the cost of shipping it half way round the planet, it was cheaper than our home produced coal.

The Thatcher government’s policy of selling Council Houses to tenants was a brave attempt at a bit of social engineering. Before the scheme, we were a nation of 50% house ownership and 50% rental. Almost overnight that ratio changed to 70:30 – quite clearly demonstrating the principle of an Englishman’s home is his castle. However, as John says, with no ring fencing of any of the proceeds to fund future social housing, we now have a shortage of such homes for that sector. The problem with nearly all governments is that they never look far enough ahead – they only plan for their term in office, so we end up with quick fix short term policies, instead of policies which should deliver more sustainable long term benefits to us all.

A cap on rents was tried before, and it stops the supply of rented housing, unfortunately. The only real solution is a cap on new people, but this has also been tried before (in China) and has been very difficult and the method there has not really worked.

Humanity cannot grow in numbers forever, particularly if space colonisation remains a pipe dream.

Another problem is that people are not taught as to how to live together, or even encouraged to maintain their marriages. Hence there is a growing demand for low cost single person housing for people impoverished by divorce litigation. “Starter homes” are often “homes for the failed”.

How true – the public is always treated with total disdain. We are the fodder upon which politicians and so many others live the life of Riley. Even when banks and energy companies are “fined” millions for their wrong doings, it does not hit those who are responsible for their actions and decisions. They simply disperse these fines amongst their normal operating costs, which are recovered in the pricing structure for their products, so we, the customers, end up paying again for something we have already been overcharged for. It’s heads they win and tails we lose.

I couldn’t agree more. This extends to all those “serving” across the counter, whether in banks or insurance or estate agents or solicitors at law.

If you go into a shop and hand over money you get something, and you have usually chosen to want that “something”. The shop or manufacturer could have pulled the wool over your eyes a bit as to the value of the something, but at least you get it, and can sell it on (although probably after a depreciation loss).

However for all these people who are administrators, they are just smiling amongst themselves as to how they can get money for mere words in the air or on pieces of paper.

Agree entirely with Jinnii. Unfortunately, stamp duty is simply just another source of tax income – but certainly very unfair to those who are not moving upmarket, but merely having to pay more because of location. There are lots of unfair taxes – the trick is to find alternatives to replace them with something that makes more sense. Or better still, seek ways of reducing government expenditure (and Local authorities’) so that less taxation is needed.