Mike O'H

Starmer will bring forward legislation in the King’s Speech to align the UK more closely with European market. It’s time to face the fact: Brexit caused damage to both the UK and the EU. Every step to bring us closer again is the right one. For a future together once more 🇪🇺🇬🇧

Having lived in London New builds and now a “character” terrace, here are the realities of London flats: - developers have a statutory duty to build social housing and house people in all developments. Great, but it meant that we were terrorised by those tenants’ children, subject to extreme anti-social behaviour (one guy deliberately made his dog piss in front of our entrance every morning), and had our car broken into by the boyfriend of a tenant (he broke into every car in the car park). - parking is rare. We were lucky enough to rent a space from a neighbour but it’s nice to have your car vaguely near you. Many London boroughs have ridiculous parking restrictions, eg. “Car free” buildings - which doesn’t mean the buildings don’t have car parks, it means you will be denied a permit. Social tenants are prioritised for permits because reasons. - build quality is very poor and stuff starts falling apart after a few years - the housing associations that manage them are universally useless, and require multiple calls to get anything fixed. They tend to have fixed contracts with plumbing firms who are supposed to do maintenance and repairs, but since they don’t respond you end up paying for another one anyway, for something you have already paid for. IMO this makes them a criminal enterprise (fraud - taking money fora contract they have no intention of honouring) - speaking of which, service charge inflation is a joke, with charges often doubling or tripling from year to year. - these flats are mostly leasehold, which is generally a crap system of ownership and should have been phased out with the feudal system. - a lot of these flats have balconies, which is great until you have kids and then that becomes a non-option. - they are ugly. Despite what the performative “ugh I hate neo-Georgian pastiche/I want to live in a vacuum cleaner” pillocks on here claim, the market decides. Character builds retain their value, new builds do not. The price is simply a reflection of what people are willing to pay. Make of that what you will I’m now in a 1920s terrace. It’s small but it’s pretty and it’s ours (or rather, the bank’s until I’m in my sixties). And the free on street parking is life changing.