Comments for Thoughts on the London Mayoralty at http://www.adamsmith.org , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://www.adamsmith.org Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:59:09 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/politics/thoughts-on-the-london-mayoralty-200805091348/#comment-194 "More housing so that London life becomes a little more affordable" While at the same time promising to clamp down on 'garden grabbing', i.e. efficient use of available land, in order not to alienate his core vote, the Tories and NIMBYs? Why not liberalise planning laws and just let the markets provide the extra housing and office space? Or does he plan loads of social housing for key workers and tied workers, with all the unintended consequences that entails? Does he not realise that it is a moving target - every year hundreds of thousands of people move to London and hundreds of thousands move away again? One thing that makes them move away is the high house prices. If you managed to build more and get prices down (unlikely - they are crashing anyway) so what? More people would move here and fewer would move away so we reach a new equilibrium where prices are just as expensive and London is even more crowded. After the ban on booze on the Tube I am distinctly underwhelmed and altho' he might be less cronyist than Red Ken, he doesn't seem to understand Logic or Economics. Fair do's, Ken is a leftie and the whole left philosophy assumes that the State knows better than the Markets, but if you judge Boris by his own standards he is a miserable failure already. - Mark Wadsworth Fri, 09 May 2008 14:51:57 +0100