Nick Pickles’s blog

go forth and spotify.

Dananananaykroyd - Black Wax

Cold War Kids - Mine is Yours

Foals - Balloons (Kieran Hebden remix)

The Joy Formidable - The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade

Four Tet - Angel Echoes

Kubichek! - Start as we mean to

Radiohead - Palo Alto

The National - Lemonworld

Arctic Monkeys - Crying Lightning

New Order - Age of Consent

There’s been a great deal of noise from those on the left about the Education Maintenance Allowance and how evil scrapping it is. Debate has rarely looked at evidence, simply that apparently lots of students won’t be able to travel to college or buy books.

The right haven’t always quite got it right - some have seemingly implied it’s only being cut because we have to reduce Government spending, rather than questioning the underlying premise. There’s absolutely an informed argument to be made about why the Government shouldn’t be handing out cash to students with absolutely no direct link to their educational attainment.

At present, 650,000 young people are receiving EMA - 45% of 16 to 18-year-olds in full-time education. It costs £560m, which in any context is a huge amount of money.

But data shows 88 per cent of the students receiving EMA would be at college even without the money. And under current plans, the Coalition will put £70m into a discretionary learner fund - enough to fund more than that ten percent.

Throwing cash at a problem is not a way of tackling the underlying causes of it. If there is an issue of students staying on in education, is £30 a week going to solve those problems? In all likelyhood, by the time the student has reached 16 their own determination to pursue further academic study has already been determined. If they do not want to stay on and study, the fact they might do so for a small cash incentive says a great deal about how poorly the opportunities for 16 year olds are structured and communicated.

It’s yet another indication of a misplaced obsession from those on the left who seem intent on pushing as many people as possible through mainstream education, right up to degree level, rather than looking at the needs of the economy and making appropriate choices available to young people. Why not offer employers £30 a week to fund an apprenticeship, or use the money to target tax breaks to companies expanding skilled job opportunities in deprived areas?

In tough times, Government has to invest in what delivers real results in areas that are most in need of action. The EMA is not value for money, and it does not tackle the underlying problem.

This morning, George Monbiot dropped a proverbial policy-bombshell thats annoyed pretty much everyone, myself included. Guido, Mark Wallace and The Telegraph’s Ed West have all gone to town on the article, with the word ‘facist’ being bounded around a little too easily for my liking.

Let’s be clear - I certainly do not support any proposal which would see the Government forcing people to take strangers into their home. I’ve a funny feeling neither does George Monbiot, but that’s beside the point.

But the status quo can’t really be a viable option either? House prices rocketed on a debt bubble inflated by cheap mortgages, but the underlying pressure was the gap between supply and demand growing at an alarming pace. And of course, the soaring Housing Benefit bill is a by-product of this bubble.

We need alternatives, and however much you disagree with George Monbiot at least he’s proposing something. Where are the other solutions? If he’d written an article arguing for people to be moved from under-occupied social housing to smaller properties, I can’t help but feel the reaction would have been very different.

All Governments are caught in a paradox between building houses and the feel-good factor that comes with rising house prices. Monbiot wants less building, and as a result has to come up with more radical alternatives. Those who want more building - myself included - need to come up with ways to actually build more houses.

I think Monbiot’s wrong to argue against more building. According to the DCLG, just 9.9% of Britain is “developed” with only 5.4% of the country’s land mass accounted for by residential homes and gardens. Under the last government house building under Labour fell to its lowest level since 1946, even with centralised targets driving the process.

We need an era of housebuilding, private, social and council, that will make housing affordable again. Housebuilders and land owners cannot be allowed to distort the market by strangling supply, and banks cannot be allowed to distort demand with high-risk mortgages.

In his article, Monbiot proposes four things (alongside new building) to address the problem:

• Introduce a measure of housing occupation (a “footprint”)
• End the single-person 25% council tax discount
• A tax on under-occupation (he say’s “big”)
• Expanding the Homeshare scheme

To me, the first and last are hardly controversial. While there are cost implications for the footprint, expanding an existing charity can be done without any compulsory action and might be very interesting in terms of dealing with social and sheltered housing.

The tax proposals are hardly revolutionary - council tax is a badly out-dated system much in need of reform, and issues like this highlight how unsuitable it is. The single person discount is well meaning but a short-term fix that doesn’t address the underlying issue. In terms of taxing under-occupation, it’s worth remembering that people in such properties already have higher overheads in terms of utilities and the like, so to some extent this is already happening.

It’s absolutely right that much more energy needs to be put into bringing currently derelict homes back onto the market. Cutting VAT on these renovations would help in this regard, but even if we brought all 1 million derelict houses back onto the market, we’re still 4.8m short of what the Government thinks we’ll need over the next 22 years.

Equally, this is connected to the debate about second home ownership and the impact that has on prices. I see no reason why in an age of decentralisation and local decision making local communities should be able to influence the sale of properties which will not be available on the local accommodation market (either rented or owned.)

Part of the problem with this debate is the British (perhaps English) attitude to property, and in particular property ownership. Logically, it seems perfectly sensible to move to a smaller house and reduce your overheads as your accommodation needs fall, or vice-versa as your needs grow. But for some reason, as a nation we are relatively unique in our attitude to bricks and mortar being some kind of spiritual extension of ourselves.

Furthermore, architectural practices focusing on low-rise property have barely changed in a century, save for the boom in city apartments. The suburban trend of two story buildings makes poor use of the development we do have - build higher has been a continental norm for decades.

Of course, perhaps the greatest irony will be the number of people who are up in arms about today’s article who find themselves on the same side of the argument as Monbiot when trying to stop housing development on green belt land near them.