Colin Harvey is Professor of Human Rights Law in the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, a Fellow of the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies. In November, his group, Ireland's Future sent a letter to An Taoiseach calling for a new conversation about the constitutional future of the island of Ireland.

The polls from Michael Ashcroft - conducted by professional polling companies - gave the first indication of a majority in Northern Ireland in favour of reunification with the south, but the demographic breakdown is the real shocker:

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Following on from what I was saying at the top of the last podcast, I got in a couple of Twitter debates, I won’t say Twitter spats, it was all very polite, I’ll link the threads on the website, but I got in a couple of Twitter debates during the week. It was about housing, building and planning policies. People are, rightly, very annoyed when they see homelessness all around them, and derelict buildings, empty houses, and prime sites that lie empty for decades.

The thing is that, as
with almost every problem, there a quick, simple, easy-to-understand solution
that is completely wrong. In this case the two quick, simple, easy and
completely wrong solutions are rent controls and using compulsory purchase
orders – CPOs – to forcibly buy empty properties and house homeless people in
them.

The first thing to say
here is that I don’t doubt for a moment the good faith of the people who I was
disagreeing with, I'm certain that they are motivated by nothing but a desire
to help their fellow citizens.

But let’s take those
ideas in order. The Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, said “Next to bombing, rent controls are
the most efficient known technique for destroying cities.” What he meant is that, like with any
product, if you artificially lower the price, then the producers respond by
just stopping the production of that product. Why should they invest over here