First Berlin comprehensively proved that rent controls are disastrous for the housing market; then Ireland followed suit destroying their housing supply with their “rent pressure zones”, resulting in one case of a 150-person queue for a three-bedroom home in Dublin. Despite these real-world cases of rent controls doing exactly what free market theorists warned they’d do, last Thursday the Scottish Government ignored all the warnings and pushed through legislation freezing public and private rental prices until the end of March 2023. What was it Einstein said about insanity?
It appears the chickens have come home to roost in less than a week. Today The Times reports that as a direct result of the rent freeze, Lord Haughey has halted a £1 billion plan to address the housing crisis by building 11,000 affordable homes.
Can the SNP-Green coalition able to dodge blame in any way? Is Lord Haughey being vague in his blame? Not quite…
“Patrick Harvie’s rent freeze is a big part of my decision [to halt the project]. The housing market is in absolute crisis and without any plans on how to address it that crisis can only get worse.
“I planned over the next ten years to build 11,000 houses – houses that people can be proud of. I was trying to build communities and I wanted to build 1,200 sq ft homes that people would rent for about £695 per month with maintenance bills included to help people keep their energy costs down. But two things happened,” he said, alluding to a notification from his bricks supplier that costs had increased by 28 per cent.
“Add to that Patrick Harvie’s rent freeze bill and I am going to put things on hold. There is no incentive whatsoever to try to make a difference.”
“Patrick Harvie will go down in history as the man who stopped investment and added to the calamitous lack of housing we have in Scotland, 100 per cent. Don’t take my word for it — the house associations are calling for [the Bill] to be scrapped.”
Guido can guarantee you this third example of market failure following rent caps will do nothing to stop Sadiq pursuing the calamitous policy in London…
Sturgeon welcomed Scottish Green Party co-Leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater to Bute House this afternoon to announce the full details of their new power-sharing agreement. A copy of the agreement is also now available on the Scottish Government’s website. Two Green MSPs will become ministers, whilst the Greens have committed to supporting the SNP on confidence votes and annual budgets provided there is “appropriate funding for the shared policy programme“.
Sturgeon said:
“The Agreement also sets out the processes of co-operation and consultation that will enable a stable parliamentary majority for the delivery of the Scottish Government’s legislative and policy programme…It recognises that business as usual is not good enough in the times we are living through. It grasps that – out of great challenge – a better world and a better Scotland is capable of being born…it understands that achieving it will take boldness, courage and a will to do things differently. That is what we offer.”
Two minority parties propping each other up…
The SNP has come to a new “power-sharing partnership” with the loony-left Scottish Green party to give them a majority in Holyrood. The new deal – which stops short of a full-on coalition – will be agreed virtually this morning at Sturgeon’s 9.30 cabinet meeting. The Scottish Tories have dusted off the classic “coalition of chaos” slogan. It was so effective in 2017…
The deal, which gives the Greens opt-outs over certain policy areas, will see the party rewarded with a couple of ministerial posts and marks the first period of Green governance anywhere in the UK. A hard-left party responsible for an economy already in the pits, and which relies heavily on oil and gas? What could possibly go wrong…
The Scottish Greens manage to make their English counterparts look positively centrist, with the Scottish Mail describing them as “Marxist eco-zealots”. In 2015, co-leader Patrick Harvie said capitalism was not “sustainable” and “must end” and this year used Holyrood’s Prince Philip memorial session to throw insults at the recently-deceased; prominent Green MSP Ross Greer describes Winston Churchill as a “white supremacist mass murder” and has been condemned for voicing public support of Hamas. Still, anything to cling on…
No messing about from the leader of the Scottish Green Party, Patrick Harvie, in this thundering op-ed warning: “we need an alternative to aviation“.
Harvie says long haul flights mean “hundreds of millions of tonnes of additional greenhouse gas emissions” are being pumped into the atmosphere.
Apparently putting strict restrictions on flying wouldn’t affect normal people because “70 per cent of flights are taken by the wealthiest 15 per cent”.
Harvie might soon be experiencing some turbulence from his colleagues when they find out he recently crossed the Atlantic on a climate change “leadership program” junket:
“The costs of meals, travel and accommodation within the US, and occasional expenses, were met by the US Department of State Cultural Affairs Division to a total of $8,100”
Gaia asked Harvie if he made the trip by plane or boat, but alas a reply was not forthcoming. Plane stupid.
