Independent Ramblings

What the Royal Yacht is Really About

2012-01-24T16:54:00.000Z

From the Independent

"But I would like to be one of the first to offer tangible support to the concept, by offering up to £5m towards the construction costs of building a new, effective and flexible royal yacht."

The proposed vessel – 650ft long and as tall as St Paul's Cathedral – would provide education and vocational training for young people, facilities for scientific research, and a venue for trade missions and commercial exhibitions as well as staterooms for the use of the Royal Family on trips around the United Kingdom and overseas.

There are two things worth pointing out in this:

"£5m towards the construction costs". This yacht might be privately financed, but no-one is saying anything at this point about who's going to pay to run it.
and a venue for trade missions and commercial exhibitions

As a reasonably sane man, who has met sane businessmen, none of them is so soft-hearted as to just throw a large amount of money at something as obviously childish as the monarchy. So the reasons are less obvious - the project is an investment in a facility by these people. Spend a few million up front, then the taxpayer funds Brenda travelling around the world, then you get to use it to entertain your foreign clients when they're in port. Large upfront costs, but will soon pay for itself.

Olympic Travel

2012-01-20T23:34:00.000Z

From MSN (19th January 2012):-

"If everybody seeks to travel the way they always travel every day, the system won't cope. You can't suddenly bring in hundreds of thousands of new people to travel in by train and expect the system to cope so the answer is they have to look at working differently," Norman Baker said.

So, that's how they're going to solve the problems during the Olympics - the people working in London are going to have to travel in less. Like solving the food problem by starving people.

Speaking to MSN, Baker also criticised the demands of the Olympic authorities for dedicated traffic lanes to ensure VIPs don't suffer from the same congestion as ordinary Londoners.
"I think the VIP requirement has been rather overdone - but that's not a government requirement it's a requirement from the IOC," he added.

Which the government could have opposed, or told the IOC that they wouldn't accept that condition and Paris could have the games. And whilst it was Labour that agreed to this, the Lib Dems were right behind the Olympic bid.

To ease the congestion over the three weeks beginning July 27, the government is encouraging commuters to work from home or offices outside London or be flexible about their hours if they do need to travel to the capital.

Yes, I'm sure all those cafe staff, road sweepers and policemen can telecommute. The chorus of Les Mis can just turn up when it suits them.

"The answer is they have to work remotely, they have to work from rural hubs, they have to work from home. They have to come in at different times, they have to use different lines," Mr Baker said. "This is an opportunity to prove to people that working differently can be OK."
However the minister said he was confident that the economy would not suffer as a result.

So, at what point did Norman Baker fully research every business in London to calculate the impact of staff working from home or doing flexitime, or having to travel longer hours?

Conservative Keynsiasm (no, really)

2012-01-08T22:21:00.000Z

From the FT:

The minister responsible for the Olympics rounded on those attacking the government for spending money to promote the UK, saying the event was “a massive Keynesian boost to the economy”.

So, the Conservatives aren't even just a bit soft Conservative, but full on Keynsians now? Of course, it would help if Jeremy Hunt actually understood Kenysian economics, you know, that whole thing about having a surplus to use in the bad times. We don't have a surplus, so Keynsianism doesn't work.

Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, told the Financial Times: “This is the government saying, ‘We are going to ignore the siren voices telling us to back off.’ We are never going to have this again. We want to make sure we do everything we possibly can to help Britain.”

So stop spending money on the Olympics. Probably not worth cancelling now as most of it is paid for, but spend no more. Use it to fund science, research, education.

The opening ceremony was an opportunity to reach a TV audience he claimed could reach 4bn, and he said it was an occasion worth hundreds of millions in publicity.

I have no idea where he gets 4bn from, when the LOCOG site says that the Beijing opening ceremony had a live audience of 1bn people. And I doubt that Jeremy Hunt can back up his "hundreds of millions" in publicity. No-one spends money because of the Olympics, there is simply no data to support that.

The government is facing further questions about Olympics-related spending priorities, with Labour’s Tessa Jowell warning in an Observer interview that the Olympics would go down as “one of the great missed opportunities” to boost sports participation among young people unless funding for school sports was restored.

And Tessa Jowell is lying here, because she put her name to a government report, that the Olympics makes absolutely no difference to sports participation.

I'll reiterate my acid test: any politician that supports the hosting of the Olympics as a good use of public money is not worth your vote. The Olympics are a clear-cut waste of money. If they support them then they're a bloody idiot. That pretty much means that you don't want to trust them with anything. And that's all 3 parties.

Olympic Tourism

2012-01-07T12:07:00.000Z

From Reuters:-

"I personally think that there will be less displacement than many people feel because London is such a huge cultural city, and there are going to be huge numbers of reasons for people to visit," he said citing exhibitions planned for its leading art galleries.

Hunt is lying over this. The evidence is very clear that there is a displacement effect in Olympic years.

Here's what the European Tour Operators Association report says:-

One feature of sports events, of any large event, is that it attracts people who would not
normally come to a city. During the Olympic period, the entire bed-stock of a destination is
devoted to the travelling officials, the press and spectators. These visitors are unlike ‘regular’ tourists, having different spending and behaviour patterns. They are not interested in “tourism” – they are interested in sport. So their behaviour is akin to business visitors attending a convention. They tend not to spend money on leisure and entertainment, and when not in stadia they watch events on TV rather then engaging in other activities. Theme park owners in Los Angeles saw a decline in revenue during 1984. In Barcelona the Costa Brava resorts had a drop in demand and at the Sydney games the normal attractions experienced a downturn in business.

(in fact, the whole report is worth a read as it utterly crushes the myths about long-term tourism, and seems to suggest that spending money on movie makers has a far better return).

On top of that, there's Andrew Lloyd-Webber saying exactly the same thing:-

The composer said that tourist bookings for next July and August were already at just 10 per cent their normal level and predicted that the theatre was in for “a bloodbath of a summer”.
He said he already knew of three major musicals that were not going to play during the Olympics and admitted that he would have to close some of his own shows or theatres too.

Everyone knows it's going to be a security and travel nightmare. Rich Japanese tourists will go to Paris or New York instead. And the effect will be felt further away. People won't come to the UK to see the rest of it, like Stratford-upon-Avon, Windsor and Bath. The prime destination for foreign tourists is London, with those other places gaining from tourists taking excursions. They won't come just to see Bath.

Olympic Tickets - Dodged a Bullet

2012-01-07T11:40:00.001Z

Some time ago, in the first round of Olympics tickets, I bid for them. Now, I have some serious problems with the Olympics, but not with the sport itself.

So, I bid for 3 tickets, for me and the kids to see some qualifying rounds and the decathlon (my views of the decathlon belong in another post). It wasn't too pricey as there were special prices for kids. Unfortunately, I didn't get them.

But as it happens, I recently found out how long it was going to take me to get into the Olympic stadium by checking the Spectator Journey Planner on the 2012 London website. For an arrival at the stadium at say 9:00 for a 10:00 start, we'd have to leave our station in Wiltshire at 04:30, a total journey time of nearly 4 hours, or to be up at about 3 in the morning. Would I have liked to take my 2 kids to do that? Uh... no. Think we'll go and have a day doing something else.

The real problem here is that the time it's going to take to get into the stadium seems to be estimated at about an hour and a half, as it's normally a 40 minute journey from Paddington to Stratford and they're estimating 2 hours for Olympic trips. And if you want to know why, here's the London 2012 guide to travel:-

There will be airport style security at venues so please arrive in good time for your event.

Oh... joy.

Another Olympics Justification Bites The Dust

2012-01-02T20:51:00.000Z

From the Graun,

Hugh Robertson, has admitted that the aim of the London 2012 Games to inspire a million more people to get involved in sport has no chance of being realised.
The target was believed to be the brainchild of the Labour government rather than the Olympic organisers and was widely quoted during London's successful bidding process.
But less than seven months before the London Games are due to begin, only 110,000 extra people have taken up a new sport and Robertson, the minister for sport and the Olympics, said: "It is disappointing – a million sounds like a target that was plucked off the wall and it was."

Well, yes. The civil service even did a report into the Olympics and other mega sporting events back in 2002 (signed off by Blair and Jowell) which said this. It's good of Hugh to point this out, though.

"Do I think it's money well spent? Yes I do," Robertson told the Sunday Times. "The opening is a spectacular. Get it wrong and we will spend three or four days batting back why was the opening ceremony such a failure. It will kick the thing off in the worst possible way.
"Given the importance we are putting as a country and using 2012 to drive economic growth and tourism, it would be foolish not to spend what is necessary to lay on a good opening ceremony. Danny Boyle [artistic director for the opening ceremony] is a top professional and has produced an extraordinarily good ceremony."

Oh dear. The Olympics are not a magnet for tourists. The European Tour Operators Association have looked into the effect of the Olympics on tourism. There's a drop during the games (as non-Olympics people avoid the massive disruption) and no obvious growth was seen. Of course, the government will trot out some "this time it will be different" and in 2 years time I'll be reporting how it wasn't.

Something that does concern me about the Olympics is that there's actually a huge risk of a disaster, but no real gains from it. I have 2 memories of Atlanta: Michael Johnson's magnificent 200m world record and a bomb. And for most people, it's the bomb. Google Munich Olympics, and you won't find much mention of Mark Spitz and Olga Korbut.

No Different? I think not

2011-12-28T14:38:00.000Z

Bill Wasik in Wired on Internet Communications

Acts of communication, by themselves, aren’t especially interesting. We’ve always had protests, riots, and revolutions, and the people who carried them out have always found ways to spread the word. If the medium for those communications shifts from word of mouth, to printed flier, to telephone, then to texts and Twitter, what does it really matter? Technology becomes an important part of the story only if it’s changing the nature of the events — and the nature of the social groups that are carrying them out.

The difference is that someone who owns a printing press can't reach such large numbers, can't so easily have their information redistributed, or redistributed across such a multipurpose transport mechanism.

One problem for the internet for governments is that unlike TV or newspapers, you can't so easily control it as state media. Because the internet isn't just about media, but also commerce and something as trivial as someone sending family photos to a friend, and the huge volume of traffic being sent around from so many different locations, it's almost impossible for the state to police. Someone in company A selling canned fruit in the UK can send someone in company B producing fruit in Egypt a photograph or tweet from an anonymous account, and you'll probably never find it amongst the mass of traffic floating around. You'd never find it amongst the millions of emails floating around.

The only solution of a fascist state is to completely shut down the internet, at which point you start to also damage trade because the rest of the world communicates commerce via the net.

John Redwood Needs to Get His Facts Straight

2011-12-11T15:29:00.001Z

From John Redwood's Diary (10th Dec 2011)

The government can often ignore rebellions as it has a large inbuilt majority. So far it has not mattered if 30,40 or even 81 Conservative MPs defy the whips on the EU, because Labour has always been there to swell the government’s vote, or has abstained, leaving the government with enough votes to do the business.

Back in May 2010, John Redwood wrote the following:-

Could UKIP supporters explain why it helped to prevent Eurosceptic Conservatives winning in 21 seats, so giving us a a more pro EU Parliament?

So, back in 2010 he suggested that these 21 would have been Eurosceptics, but is now saying that had they achieved a majority that Cameron would have had enough people to get this legislation through parliament? Doesn't that mean that those 21 wouldn't have actually been eurosceptics, then?

Redwood has exposed the great lie about the Conservatives which is that they not fundamentally a Eurosceptic party. He is saying that Cameron wanted the treaty and would have got it through parliament, except for a few backbenchers.

So, let us be clear: on Europe there is little difference between Labour and the Conservatives, when it comes to action. If you want a referendum, best to vote UKIP (who it seems you can now thank for serendipitously blocking our entry into this treaty).

Let's Get Something Straight Here...

2011-12-04T22:12:00.000Z

Nick Clegg has committed the government to a crackdown on excessive executive pay, saying that austerity in the public sector had to be balanced by curbs on "irresponsible and unjustifiable" pay rises in the private sector.

Let's get something quite straight here, matey: the word "private" has a pretty clear meaning. It means that it's none of the government's business. If I think an employee is worth £10m/year, then what's it to anyone but me and him?

I think we need to make sure that people in the public sector do not feel that they are doing all the heavy lifting, that people who are in a sense living by completely different rules in the private sector are also held to account

They are held to account. By their employers.

Look, should we legislate against which women that billionaire's shag or marry, which charities they decide to give money to, which football clubs they bankroll? Same thing.

This is nothing but infantile politics of envy by the Lib Dems, that someone out there was in the right place at the right time and played some suckers for more than they were worth. Yeah, they're not suffering like the teachersandnurses, but so what? Some people happen to be born to billionaires. Do we take them into care for that? No.

Go on, quit then...

2011-11-29T19:54:00.000Z

Many years ago, I did some work in a public sector computer department. To describe it as hard work wouldn't exactly be accurate. I had about half a day of work each day.

Now, the thing was about back then that it was hardly something to be resented, because quite honestly, the pay really did suck back then. People got paid pretty badly in that department. The upside was things like a low risk of job losses and yes, a decent pension. It's probably fair to say that Blair, in his early years restored the balance between public and private sector.

But the public sector are living on a different planet now. I watched someone on the news complaining that they had a pay freeze for the past 2 years. I know people in the private sector who haven't had a pay rise in 5 years.

The ultimate measure of your value is whether you can quit and get something better. And I suspect that most of the people striking can't. So you'd better take it. The private sector won't support you and the more you strike, the more likely the public will find a Thatcher type who'll really ruin the party.

Some NHS Analysis (2)

2011-11-19T23:02:00.000Z

Following on from the previous post, here's where we get into a little speculation.

While writing my last post, I had a moment of clarity. As I said, a reminder system for the NHS based on the costs they provide are a no-brainer. Really, you'd be mad not to implement it if such savings were there.

Have you ever worked with a can't-do guy? I have. I had one work for me once, and after a few weeks I wanted to fire him. What such people do is anything to avoid work, and then as much as they can to cover their own arse. They'll look for reasons not to do things, especially if they can create some form of organisational anarchy which makes measuring their delivery hard to prove.

I've realised is why the Doctors spend so much time involved in fakecharity and departmental work about smoking, obesity and alcohol. It's not that they're power mad fascists (although some are). It's about them diverting the blame to you, to try to accept that the ever increasing costs of the NHS aren't down to their inefficiency and lack of improvement, but because the population is doing it.

Missed appointments are part of this. I'm sure that many appointments are missed, but the NHS' figures are obviously bogus. It doesn't cost £650 for an appointment. I've been private and it costs around £150-200. And many missed appointments will simply mean that a day that's running late gets back onto schedule. What that's about is an indirect call for more money, or at least defending the money they already get.

It's designed to divert attention from the systemic problems of the NHS, to get you to think about the problem as simply being about the resources provided to them and the demands on the system, that these are the causes of the problems that we have.

Some NHS Analysis (1)

2011-11-19T22:31:00.000Z

While this post covers a subject in its entirety, I think it's really two separate points, so I'm going to divide it into 2 parts.

The first part concerns a story I spotted on Google News about hospital appointments:-

Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has hailed its new appointment reminder service as a great success, with the proportion of appointments missed in outpatients having dropped by around a third since the initiative was launched.

That's very, very good because we were told a couple of years ago that NHS Missed Appointments were costing £600m every year.

So, if we implemented such a system across the board, the NHS would save £200m/year.

I happen to work in software, and some years ago I worked on a system that had to send SMS messages to customers when their bills were ready to be viewed online. So, I know that setting such things up are quite straightforward and quite cheap (take the customer phone number and message and send it across to a bureau, job done). The bureau would charge us nearly 10p/SMS, although this is now down to nearer 5p/SMS. We then had to build and support the software. And 2 of us basically did this, along with everything else.

The Ashford trust used outbound dialing which has slightly higher costs, including slightly higher support costs. So, for the sake of argument, let's double the price.

Now, the Ashford trust said it had a 7.9% missed rate before, so with 6.5 million missed appointments, we can assume that the NHS makes a total of something around 100 million appointments. So, we'd have to send out 100 million SMS messages. Let's assume a total of £1m to run it and 10p for each call.

So, we'd have to spend £10m/year sending out reminders + £1m to run reminders, and the total saving would be £199m. If I could offer my clients such a high return on such a relatively small investment, they would bite my hand off.

And let me remind you, every figure used here for costs and percentage savings are all from the NHS. They've claimed these losses and also the percentages saved. And my figures are conservative of the sort of costs of implementation.

So why is it the case that this isn't across all hospitals? I know at least 2 trusts that don't do this. I also know that my dentist has had this in place (using SMS messages) for 4 years. The difference is of course that my dentist personally sees the benefit that a bureaucratic NHS manager doesn't see.

One for Mr Wadsworth, I think

2011-11-12T12:56:00.000Z

From CiF

Unlike Tottenham, Brixton's cultural appeal appears to be untouched by the recent disorders. Middle-class families still want to move to Brixton and the area continues to have an appeal beyond its boundaries. Whereas the Tottenham MP, David Lammy, has pleaded with the British public to remember Tottenham, Jowell was able to boast about Brixton's popularity when stating that "people come from all over London to eat in Brixton and enjoy Brixton". This contrast is curious considering the parallels between the two areas: both have had the same turbulent relationship with the police and a similar history of riots and radical activism.

Here's some data from Google Maps: it takes 40-45 minutes by bus from Tottenham to Bank. It takes 23 minutes from Brixton to Bank, and 19 minutes from Notting Hill to Bank.

So, here's my hypothesis: the city boys have already gentrified the East End, Notting Hill and are now doing the same thing to Brixton, because these are reasonably close to the city. Young people, not much money at first, need somewhere to live, prefer it lively, don't mind the risks, but don't want to be too far away. Gradually the coffee shops and organic groceries and galleries move in as these people have money and become nicer areas. But Tottenham is just too far from the city to make it worthwhile, at least right now.

Private Healthcare

2011-11-11T17:31:00.000Z

From the Guardian (in January):-

In Nottingham, Parsa says the company turned around the centre, raising productivity in a single year by 22% and lifting patient satisfaction to 99.6% – one of the highest in the country. Further he says it now has a lower return to theatre rate with 90% of staff rating themselves as happy in the job.

22% in one year? What the hell were all the fucking consultants in the NHS doing for all these years that Circle could raise productivity by so much, so quickly? This doesn't just suggest that they found novel ways to do things, but that there were big and obvious problems with the processes that they took on, because most established businesses can't make those sort of improvements, because they've already refined productivity.

But envy of the world, and all that..

More of Our Money Pissed Away on Sports Days

2011-11-10T14:58:00.000Z

From the Daily Telegraph:-

Mr Cameron said: "I don’t want anyone to be in doubt. We want to bring the World Athletics Championships to London in 2017. The government is behind the bid. Our althletes and sports fans are behind the bid. Our country is behind the bid.

Right, and who's going to pay for it? We are. Yet again, the productive bits of the economy are going to pay for more folly from the supposedly prudent "cutting" party of this country.

"For London and for Great Britain, there is no better way to follow the Olympics, and to build on its legacy, than by welcoming the world's greatest althletes back to London for the 2017 World Championships.

"We have what it takes to host a spectacular Championship…With fantastic facilities, full of passionate fans…In the most exciting, multicultural, sports-mad city in the World.

What "legacy"? Look, just about no-one cares about athletics. When people are sports-mad in this country, it's for cricket, rugby, football, and motor racing. Try and get a ticket for Twickenham. There are events held at 15,000 seat Crystal Palace and the main stand is half empty. This isn't like building up our internet industry, or even the bits of sport that make money. Building up our prowess in a sport that is a subsidy junkie is just nuts. East Germany were fantastic at athletics, and where did it get them?

We want our stadiums to bear witness to World Records….That's why we have invested in state-of-the-art facilities for 2012 and beyond. We want to inspire the next generation of althletes…

What? What the hell is the value of having World Records in our stadia? Honestly, who really cares? Most of the world will watch it on TV. Are we going to get richer because they saw some doped-up Bulgarian she-male throwing a discus 2cm further? No, we're not, are we?

Golden rule: if a politician supports the Olympics or any major athletics event, they're probably not the best people to vote for. I'll give Major a pass because there wasn't enough data on how much wealth the Olympics destroys when he backed the Manchester bid, but there's no excuse now.

I'm Missing a Trick Here

2011-11-10T10:50:00.000Z

I was in Bath recently and saw this "art work".

Basically, it's a print of Frank Sinatra's mugshot, selling for £285. Now, this is public domain. You can find it all over Google Images. So, download it, apply a bit of photoshop, send it of to bonus print and £5 later, you'll have your own bit of art.

Personally, I like the Bill Gates mugshot better (Bill liked driving fast and got nicked a few times for it). It's not just that he became the richest man in the world and then probably the biggest philanthropist, I just really like the "it's a fair cop" grin.

The Smoking Ban In Pubs.. explained to non-smokers

2011-11-05T19:15:00.000Z

Imagine if you get home and there waiting for you in the lounge is Marillon Cotillard*, covered in whipped cream. Would you go down the local brothel and pay £50 to shag Ann Widdecombe?

You see, beer is just beer. Yes, you can find some obscure ale from North Yorkshire, but most people go to the pub for social reasons. And they want to sit and talk to their buddies. If some of that involves talking to their buddies in the pissing rain, or interrupting their conversation to go outside occassionally, then that's a worse experience than just drinking at home. Oh, and drinking at home is also cheaper.

Now, there's certain things that break this rule, such as going out to the pub to meet up as a group. At that point, the pub wins. If you want to pick up some skirt, you won't do it staying at home. So, even if you're a smoker you'll go to the pub just to get some, despite the downsides.

*Marillon Cotillard is this blog's current definition of top totty

This is, of course, Illegal

2011-11-04T15:17:00.001Z

Via the Conservatives...

This morning, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced that the Government will fund 5,000 mentors for new and existing female entrepreneurs who want to start or grow their own business.

Just because it discriminates against men doesn't mean it's OK. Or legal (1975 Sex Discrimination Act, Human Rights Act).

Already contacted the EHRC and my MP about this.

The Higher Education Bubble

2011-11-04T07:43:00.000Z

Sam Bowman points out the serious problems with higher education in the USA over at the ASI. Definitely worth a read.

Et Tu, Salvation Army?

2011-11-03T18:04:00.000Z

The usual suspects of political charity are of course behind the Robin Hood Tax, but I'm sad to see the Salvation Army among their number.

It's like this: if you're a charity and lobby to take my money by force then you get nothing. It's really that simple.

I'll find another home for my donation this Christmas.

E-Petitions: A Summary

2011-11-01T08:03:00.001Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15521020

There won't be enough time to debate them all
A group of ~~snakes~~ politicians will get to decide which of them is the most important

So,it's just a bit of PR.

Wankers... utter wankers

2011-10-27T19:32:00.000+01:00

From the BBC:-

Canon Dr Giles Fraser, who has been sympathetic to the protest camp outside the London landmark, is expected to announce his resignation within days.

Differences over the handling of the protest are thought to have prompted his decision, says the BBC's religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott.

...

Demonstrators, who are protesting against corporate greed and inequality, have vowed to remain at the site for several weeks.

Oh, that's real nice. Here's a guy who's stuck his neck out for you and refused to move you because he thinks that using force to do this is wrong. He could have told the police to come, but he didn't, and as such, put himself in conflict with his employers.

Now, there's times when the weak have to let the strong fight for them, but in the case of a group of spoilt swampies, they really could have done the decent thing, packed up their tents and let a man keep his job. They'd probably have earnt some public respect. Instead, they're prepared to sacrifice someone who was once their saviour.

Wankers... utter wankers

Brownfield Sites

2011-10-18T13:30:00.000+01:00

From the Telegraph:-

He suggested that it was not a coincidence that a requirement forcing councils to allow new homes only to be built on previously developed brownfield sites was dropped from the draft planning documents.

This decision was “incomprehensible” because there was so much brownfield land from England’s industrial past which could be used for building.

Today's homework:-
1) Colour in the parts of England that count as their "industrial past". Yes, I know it's all over the place, but what's the really big places?
2) Colour in the parts of England that people want to live in.

Phillip Hammond... Public Servant

2011-10-16T19:14:00.000+01:00

From The Guardian

The willingness of their elders to put them through it was encapsulated by Philip Hammond with words that ought to be etched on the minds of a generation. The richest man in the cabinet justified taking on interns for the princely wage of £0.00 by saying: "I would regard it as an abuse of taxpayer funding to pay for something that is available for nothing."

Re-inforces my view that he's about the only man in cabinet with any ability.

House Swap

2011-10-16T18:58:00.000+01:00

From The Guardian

The government is to launch a "house swap" programme, reminiscent of Norman Tebbit's call for the jobless to "get on your bike", in an attempt to encourage people to move around the country to find work.

The controversial plan to tackle the unemployment crisis means people living in social housing will be helped to uproot their families in order to chase jobs. Details of the scheme are yet to be finalised, but it is understood the plan would involve a nationwide database of house swaps and the removal of any barriers to people in social housingmoving between regions.

This sounds like a good idea, but there's only one problem: who is going to volunteer to move out of London to say, Manchester? You're an elderly couple, why are you going to do that?

This is one way in which council housing is a mess. With the private sector, people downsize and realise some capital by moving house. They have an incentive to move out of London and go to Somerset when they retire. For someone living in London in a council estate it means moving away from family.