[nothinkjustai]

You’re getting downvoted, but I agree. It’s never the carrot but always the stick with these kind of government initiatives and then people wonder why they’re so hated.

If they were smart they would make it a tax break, and the more you do to welcome animals on your property the bigger it is. Why just one swift brick? What about a bird house? How about a little shelter for cats? Animal lovers get rewarded and those who would rather not don’t get punished.

[GaryBluto]

People won't ever learn. If anything, all this "Swift brick" malarky makes me mentally associate swifts and swift bricks in general, regardless of the situation, with eco-authoritarianism (even though it isn't the swifts' faults that obnoxious upper class luvvies want to force people to attract them), which I imagine is counter to the attitude they want.

[4ndrewl]

You say they're hated, but my echo chamber says they're a great idea.

If you're so opposed though, you could always vote them out in the next Scottish election.

[slopinthebag]

Legislation like this is never really "hated", in fact people will look at you funny if you oppose it (or you get downvoted). But people hate how expensive housing is, they hate when they personally have to deal with the regulatory state, and they hate the outcomes of these types of regulations.

It's kind of like how a developer might be totally fine with an inefficient line of code and accuse you of prematurely optimising. But then the entire program is slow, because this mentality leaks to every line of code in the codebase. So they hate "slow software" but they see no problem with the individual inefficiencies.

[reaperducer]

So instead imposing a tiny cost on the people building the home, your solution is to make everyone in the nation pay for it.

Sounds like HN: Make the public pay, while the private keeps the profit.

[slopinthebag]

That is how taxation works, people pay for services and things that other people receive.

[nothinkjustai]

Yes, just like people receiving healthcare should pay for their procedures, instead of making everyone in the nation pay for it. Abolish the NHS amirite!!!

Hmm, probably not a very good argument for you to make unless you are a libertarian, in which case you wouldn’t be complaining about tax breaks anyhow.

[anigbrowl]

BS, there are endless tax incentives for different things and many of them are abused. Also making it incentive-based is often a way for people to say 'not my problem, someone else will take care of it' and have nothing change.