And I've been saying for a very long time that we need to rebuild manufacturing. But it doesn't happen overnight – and the reasons it fell away were because of decisions taken by politicians on the basis of a particular ideology, which even ignoring that basically the same ideology had failed in the past (and was massively instrumental in leading to WWII), it has proved to be disastrous for large geographic swathes of the country, and also for pretty much anyone who isn't in the narrow band of top earners, and that in a number of ways.

I think we are arguing over Semantics TBH, The point is that this country is become more and more 'London or bust' therefore it is hardly surprising that the area that gets the highest 'spend' gets the highest output.
The problem is that this has been going on for decades as you say and I'm not certain that the balance can ever be returned.

I personally think that when news items like the one linked at the start of this thread are created the writer needs to be sat down and slapped about a bit and reminded that it isn't a level playing field and hasn't been for YEARS.

I don't think it is. There is a certain level of employment you get by default in a capital but that is mostly government related. Look at Australia and Canberra as an example. It is not Australia's financial capital despite being the nations.

In fact as I am sure you know one of the reasons Canberra was made the nations capital was to avoid what we see in London to prevent any one of its other major cities becaming dominant by dint of being the nations capital as well as a major metropolis.

Wigan for the national capital !!!

There isn't any logic to it, apart from the belief that property values increase at a greater rate in London & teh South East than anywhere else in the country. But that's the crazy situation we get into where a house is seen as something other than somewhere to live

Your house is the beignets financial investment 99.9% of the population will ever make. It has to be seen as more than just a place of habitation. I appreciate your think we should all rent and ownership is anti-social but society has moved on since the 60s and people do want to own their own castle. If we take your logic we will all be returning our cars because 50 years ago they were considered a luxury. Things move on you need to accept yours isn't the only view out there.

On balance, I'm with Sal on this one.

Rent is dead money on which you get no return.
If you buy, even if prices remain static, at least you get most of your money back when you sell.
Thinking of your home as an investment is caused by seeing prices go up.
If supply met demand, prices would not rise so much ... except that they aren't making any more land in the UK, so prices will rise over time.
So, a house becomes an investment.

It's obvious we won't be pulling up any trees economically, the Tories smashed all our industry into rubble.

Though Leeds is apparantly the 2nd largest financial sector in the UK, I'm told.

Ahead of Edimbugh?

Perhaps I could have phrased it better: "where a house is seen primarily as an investment rather than somewhere to live"

But there you go throwing around unsubstantiated sytatistics again. Where do you get a figure of 99.9% of home ownership from? The reality of home ownership is now only a distant dream to an ever increasing percentage of the population, a percentage far higher than your 0.1%.

Given that, as the bearded one stated, they ain't making land anymore and your tory mates are more than happy to keep the poor in penury, how do you suggest those in the rented sector get the opportunity to enter the home-ownership market?

The latest figures show:

home ownership (including mortgaged) of 14.5m

Rented households of 7m

So approximately 1/3rd of households are renting, a figure that has continued to rise against ownership over the last few years.

[url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdE5WdFpNSmMydl9QTDhTdFRtTXQ0WUE&hl=en_US#gid=0SOURCE[/url

You are struggling with reading again - I said a house is the biggest investment that 99.9% of the population that do invest in house purchase, will ever make. My house is worth 10 times more than my next biggest investment a car. That is why people see house purchase as an investment.

According to your grand plan there is heaps of land ripe for development - you think it should be developed for rental properties but it could easily be developed for ownership - shortage of land is not an issue in this country - but you need to get the banks etc on side or give suitable people access to the necessary funds to get on the ladder.

This is not rocket science - you have to accept the majority of people given a choice - for the reason El B stated - want to own their own house. With a bit of help from us both my son and my daughter - both in their early 20s - have bought their own house/flat. It is possible - renting is dead money.

The biggest problem at the moment is that the financial outlets, particularly the banks, have little desire to lend on mortgages and never had a social reason for lending on property, lending money from a banks point of view is about making a profit on the deal whilst at the same time protecting your loan by taking security.

In good times its not a problem, housing is seen as safe and we saw that the banks were prepared to fight each other for any scrap of business - for several years now they have pulled down the blinds and for some inexplicable reason no longer see house loans as "safe" particulalry high loan-to-value loans (ie first time buyers), and in doing so demonstrate absolutely that they have no interest in the long term social impact and absolutely every interest in making a profit with sufficient security - the rubbish that they state in their loan terms about long term investments is simply going through the routine, they have no interest at all in long term loans.

The government backed HomeBuyer style guarantees are the way forward as new housing is the riskiest sector of the business but also the most necessary to the economy - there just isn't enough emphasis on HomeBuyer and not enough money in the pot for it at the moment.

An easy way round this would be to scrap CGT on property sales (alot of long-standing landlords just hold until they die to avoid having to pay huge amounts in CGT) and replace it with a 5% annual value tax on 2nd properties, 7.5% on thirds, etc. That would free up loads of property and cause prices to fall.