boris

As a professional musician - retired - I'd say that there are far too many State subventioned organisations and music halls. Music should be paid for at full wack. There is no free lunch. And the Tax-payer should not be paying for the elite to attend cheap concerts. Almost all Tax-pyers never attend a subsidised concert in their lives ... so why should they help pay for the elite to attend  by paying for it through PAYE?

There should be an absolute ban on state funding for the Arts. I would stop the Arts Council tomorrow if I were Home Secretary. It should worry no person that I am not in Politics.

If they cease then that will be because they have nothing to offer the average Joe.

ATB from George

The 12 bar club of soho is hardly an elite establishment !

And so has no more right to deprive those on ten pro cent over minimum wage of PAYE taxation than anything beyond the NHS and National Security ...

We have a Public Sector borrowing requirement  of 1,6 Trillion £s, so lets stop wasting money on the pleasures of minorities ...

Isn't it what lottery funding was initially intended for? : )

A tax on people who are stupid [people who waste money buying lotto tickets] to raise money from silly gambling to pay for the Arts...

Debs

Like smoking in cars with juveniles present, the Lottery should be banned ...

It is state sponsored theft on behalf of the rich from the poor. ...

A scam and nothing else ...

I'm sure all the Lotto millionaires would disagree. 

Ken

Toby - I presume you are talking about our beloved Mayor of London, and his decision to allow planning permission for the Earls Court scheme?

For those who don't know, this will see the historic venue - scene of classic gigs by the Floyd and Led Zep among others - demolished and replace with a "village" scheme - retail units and around 1,300 homes. Not one of which will be affordable, and which will, in true Boris style, be marketed to rich investors in the Far East before they are even offered to Londoners.

Oh dear Debs. Your snobbery - for this is what your and George's posts are really about - has undone you. Even a cursory Google search (other search engines are available) would revealed that...

National Lottery "good causes" money is allocated as follows:-

• Health, Education, Environment, and charitable causes – 40%
• Sports – 20%
• Arts – 20%
• Heritage – 20%

The National Lottery has, over the past 20 years, raised over £32bn for these projects. Last time I looked, there had been 450,000 grants awarded - 144 for every postcode district in the UK. It's also created, as Ken has alluded, several hundred millionaires, raised billions for the exchequer has has also paid out billions in commission to retailers - many of them small independent businesses (newsagents and the like) for whom said commission has been a lifeline .

On balance, I'd say it has, over the past two decades, been a Pretty Good Thing. It is not compulsory and has provided a bit of fun, pleasure and cash to millions. Snobs have never liked it, but I say, screw 'em.

Kevin

The simple truth is that the Earls Court Exhibition Centre is an outdated dump and is way past its sell by date.

It looks a mess from the outside, is bloody awful on the inside and the toilets and catering facilities border on the useless. The local tube system is inadequate to move everyone around at peak times.

Exhibition centres should be on the outskirts of town not in the middle of a residential area.

Pulling it down and building much needed housing males sense. London needs more houses to drive downward pressure on rents and prices. To refer to it as being of historical interest is a joke, it is an outdated dump pure and simple.

Regards

Mick

So the answer to the high price of housing is to not build any more of it?

George, your habit of hijacking threads and shoehorning in your  views on public funding of the arts, overpopulation, space exploration and the like is making you look a bit daft. You can't even be bothered to do a cursory search to provide any evidence for your rather philistine and self-important pronouncements, can you? If you had bothered, you'd know that Earls Court and the other venues the OP was talking about are not state-owned or subsidised.

State subsidy for the arts has been in decline since the late 1970s, ever since Thatch came to power and this decline has been further accelerated by post-2008 austerity measures. Some of the shortfall has been made up with Lottery money, but a lot of it has been taken up by the private and corporate sector, especially in the visual arts and classical music. Some organisations - such as the various Tates - have also become more like businesses and have managed to better stand on their own feet. Others, such as the Royal Academy of Arts - are, and always have been, entirely privately funded.

If you were Home Sec, there is no way you could abolish Arts Council England (or its Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish equivalents) because it wouldn't be within your remit to do so - ACE is a non-departmental government body that comes under the DCMS umbrella. Even if you were Culture Sec you couldn't abolish it.

Incidentally, the amount of taxpayer money invested by ACE in the three years 2012 to 2015 is just £1.4bn (plus another £1bn of Lotto cash), or £466m a year. Not, in the scheme of things, very much at all, and less than the £2.2bn lost to the taxpayer via the botched Royal Mail sell-off earlier this year. Why aren't you angry at that?

There is certainly a debate to be had about state subsidy of artistic activity, and what level (if any) that should be; but ignorant, dogmatic, overly simplistic and ill-researched posts like yours are not the way to go about it.

For my own part, I would say that government funding of the arts is important because, it’s the creativity fostered among subsidised artists who have no direct interest in the commercial or economic implications of what they do that produces a wider culture of creativity that underpins the so-called creative economy (according to YouGov research published in April this year, this accounts for 2.5 million UK jobs and around 10% of our national income - I've no idea whether this is true incidentally, but I do think that creative and artistic endeavour is important to both the life of the country and its economy).

FWIW my own concern is that there is still a bias of oversubsidy towards opera, often at the expense of small provincial theatres, galleries and museums, many of which do an important job and which struggle to survive.

Finally, there is one part of your post that is pretty offensive, and utterly wrong. You assert: "Tax-payer [sic] should not be paying for the elite to attend cheap concerts" - this implies that art and culture are elitist pursuits, that bus drivers don't go to the opera, or that cleaners can't attend art exhibitions. I can assure you that they most certainly do, but under your regime, with its mix of dogmatism, short-sightedness and philistine snobbery, they couldn't.

As someone from a lower middle-class background, bought up in a single-parent house, I can tell you that my life has been incalculably enriched by free provision of the arts. Having had that privilege myself, there is no way I would wish to deny it to others.

Not what I said, though is it? The answer to the high price of housing certainly isn't to build houses that can only be afforded by cash-rich overseas investors or buy-to-let landlords...

Mick, I agree with you that ECEC is outdated, and with Olympia just round the corner, probably isn't really needed. However, it IS of historical interest, and has played a part in the life of London since 1887, be it shows by Buffalo Bill, the IHE, Motor Show, historic gigs by Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and so on. The Art Deco frontage is also of some architectural merit (although the rest of the structure isn't).

Also, London isn't Swindon or Stoke. Siting an (international) exhibition hall on the "outskirts of town" just isn't practical if you want to attract anyone to it. The "outskirts" of London are now somewhere in Kent, Herts or Middlesex and that's too far out for a major exhibition centre.

But the argument isn't really about whether ECEC should be demolished, it's about what happens next. A vast estate of same old same old retail outlets and pastiche housing developments aimed at investors rather than families isn't the answer. That site could have been used to relieve the capital's housing crisis but will instead be used in the never-ending quest to squeeze more money out of the capital by developers, greedy landlords and foreign speculators. £3m for a four-bedroomed house, anyone?

Boris Johnson, in approving the scheme in its current form, has once again let Londoners down.

Hi Kevin

The fact that the Earls Court centre one hosted a Buffalo Bill show etc is absolutely no reason to keep it. It has served it's purpose but is now ready for replacement.

London needs new houses more than anything else and the more houses you build, the lower prices will become, so it is the obvious way to go.  Earls Court has a unique architecture and yes I would agree that the new properties need to reflect this.

Sellers will always want to exhibit in London because the blunt truth is that salesmen like to go out on the razzle with prospective customers at night and that is why central London sites such as the O2 are popular.

Regards

Mick

Lots of housing developments are being built next to the millennium dome - how long for the new residents to ask closing it as a venue down due to being a bit noisy

Well said Kevin you are on fire to-day. I have to say that the possibilities of our kids getting onto the housing ladder is almost non-existent unless we win the much maligned Lotto.

They are having to spend a huge chunk of their earnings to live in an often ex-council house someone has bought to rent. Even when so called projects are OK'ed with affordable housing they aren't.

If applied to London it's even worse, family friends are paying twice the rent for 1 room appartments that a 3 bed house commands around here.

Oh dear Kevs, just your very hook line and sinker swallowed opinion from the propaganda side of the coin, i hope you realise you'll never become that 2nd rate newspaper hack if you let the facts get in the way of a good story : )

The main gripe i have with Conalot, is primarily that the winning amounts are often far too high.

[If it was up to me i'd impose a cap of £200,000 max top price]

But it's not up to me. The idea for a national lottery was inspired by the super-rich modern banker classes in order to normalise and social accept the concept of get-rich-quickism which was initiated during the hideous reign of Thatcher.

It means that bankers, boardroom members, and the old boys club can obtain frequent bonuses of millions without fear of any more ridicule because the opportunity to make a million is now available to everyone, all you need do is buy a lotto ticket for a quid.

This has also set the president for a generally sub-concuous belief that living is supposed to be all about being unhappy, working long hours for poor pay, poor quality of life, poorer health, pot belly etc, unless you have a million or three so you can afford a life on planet happy world instead : )

99.9% of lotto ticket buyers don't give a toss for what the funding goes on, they only want to win the biggie, but most accept it's only a nice dream and their quid spent is no more than moments of hope - which vaporises every Saturday and Wednesday evening because their chosen numbers don't match the winners... shame but what do you expect with odds of 1 in 14,000,000

The national lottery remains an instrument of capitalist immoral pursuit of exploiting petty gambling to corrupt society into a greed based culture, exploiting people in poverty while glamorising the undeserved event of suddenly becoming far too wealthy.

Debs

And most winners go through their wealth in a matter of years - and are worse off at the end - both financially as well as personally.

A nice quick trickle down boon effect then? Sounds like a win/win situation for the national economy .

Unfortunately not, mostly goes out the country on extended boozing in boring Benidorm until the first stormy night when it goes down with the yacht with all hands because they were too drunk and never did learn to sail the thing properly...

 : (

Only the stupid ones surely. 

Any given development can be built in a number of styles. Fewer, large properties, or more, smaller properties. The large ones would command a higher price than the smaller ones. I'm guessing you'd advocate the smaller property approach. But is a developer not entitled to the strategy that returns them the highest returns. Without intervention they'll pitch the development at the market segment that makes the highest returns. Who would compensate the developer for a law requiring them to build more, smaller houses? The taxpayer? An associated consequence might be that the price of larger properties would increase further, due to restricted supply.

I think what you're really advocating is that overseas buyers and buy-to-let landlords should not be as rich as they are, nor covet London real estate as much as they do. These might well be reasonable wishes, but I can't think of a policy that would achieve that, (other than perhaps building things they want to buy and selling them to the investors as quickly as possible to suppress the capital growth and impoverish them...somewhat) without enormous costs to those that live in London and the rest of the UK.

When you see the gold-plated Bugattis, McLarens and Lamborghinis with Arabic plates outside Harrods, you grind your teeth just a little bit, don't you?

Perhaps a few facts regarding current building policy in London may clarify thing and may even "calm down" Kevin, a little.

By coincidence I happen to have the classifications, floor plans and fit out details of every accommodation in five of the buildings being built as part of the Greenwich Millennium project mentioned by Toby earlier in the thread.

The buildings are a mix of social rented, intermediate and privately owned accommodation.

I've listed the building description and accommodation details of one of the building below.

“A Residential development comprising of 161 units, together with private and communal
amenity space, associated car parking and cycle parking, servicing and access, hard
and soft landscaping and associated works”.

The building’s details can be summarised as follows:
• 161 high quality residential units, of which 76 units would be social rent housing
units, 18 units would be intermediate shared ownership units, and 67 units would
be private open market units.
• Building comprises two main elements rising to 10 storeys above a single-storey
podium car-park set at grade, with low-rise infill elements.
• All units provided will comply with the Lifetime Homes standards and 10% of the
affordable housing provision will be constructed for wheelchair users and 10% of
the private market housing will be adaptable for wheelchair use
• Secure, covered car parking for 40 vehicles. of which 6 spaces will be designed
to meet disabled access requirements in the on-site car park
• Secure, covered storage for 202 bicycles
• Secure, covered parking for 7 motorcycles
• 10% spaces will be fitted out for electric charging vehicles and a further 10% of
the spaces will be adaptable
• High quality communal courtyard featuring hard and soft landscaping.
• Private amenity spaces

The mix of units in building M0117 is set out the table below;

1 bed / 2 person. 16 Social Rented. 7 Intermediate. 23 Private. 46 Total
2 bed / 3 person. 22 Social Rented. 4 Intermediate. 25 Private. 51 Total
2 bed / 4 person. 27 Social Rented 7 Intermediate. 8 Private. 42 Total
3 bed / 5 person. 9 Social Rented. 0 Intermediate. 8 Private. 17 Total
4 bed / 6 person. 2 Social Rented. 0 Intermediate. 0 Private. 2 Total

Total          76 Social Rented 18 Intermediate. 67 Private.

I think I know where you're going with this - the old "politics of envy" trope, yes? I find ostentatious displays of wealth rather vulgar, but, having lived in London most of my life in London, I've become entirely used to them. Most Londoners are similarly sanguine - gold-plated Rollers in Knightsbridge have been a feature of our city life since the 1970s. People can spend their money on whatever they want as far as I'm concerned.

As for your other assertion, my problem with buy-to-let landlords/overseas investors is not that they "are as rich as they are", but that in a city suffering from its worst housing crisis since the War, they can operate in an entirely untrammelled fashion. The housing crisis in the UK and especially in London is partly one of supply (ie, not enough places to live) but also that housing has turned into a speculative pastime - houses as investments, or way of making a buck, rather than as places to live (the old joke in London is that "my house earns more money than I do").

I am not a huge fan of constant government intervention but it is needed in this case. So - buy-to-let mortgages should be abolished; all properties, other than one's primary residence, should be punitively taxed; rental income from large portfolios of rental properties (eg any number larger than two or three) should be taxed at very high rates; tax breaks should be given to developers and builders committed to creating social or affordable housing. That sort of thing.

Kevin,

Your problem is (and it's not unusual), that you are applying your London centric view of the world to the whole of the UK.

So, theoretically, if I owned and let out (say) 10 flats in Aberdeen at an average of £750/month, mostly to young couples or students, then any income on those should be punitively taxed?

Yet developers, who would be given incentives to build in your world, would be given tax breaks?  So, incentives for the big builders (or small builders) but punitive taxation to small landlords.

Not exactly well thought out IMO.

Jim