Best Of

Evening pb.
Point #1: Due, I can only imagine, to my utter ineptitude, I have managed to post on two successive dead threads: ordinarily I would let this sort of thing slide, but I really enjoyed the photo - so with apologies, I will try again:

Posters may remember I was planning a trip to Glasgow. A full review to follow in due course. But in the meantime, the most Glaswegian image of the day from the adjacent table in the Willow Tea Rooms: Charles Rennie MacKintosh with Irn Bru.

Point #2: For the possible interest of @Theuniondivvie , @malcolmg, @Carnyx , @Fairliered and others who kindly supplied ideas for my trip north, some reflections:
I really, really like Glasgow. My adored Morningside grandmother - for whom Glasgow was number 1 in a long, long list of things of which she disapproved - may turn in her grave at me saying this, but it may be my favourite British city. Edinburgh may be more beautiful, but to this Mancunian, Glasgow feels like a city should feel, only better. I'm struggling to put my finger on exactly why. Glasgow is bloody handsome, or course, but nit as beautiful as Edinburgh. Glasgow's things-to-do quotient is high - its tourist offer, its pubs, its restaurants - but again, surely Edinburgh can easily match it? It does, to this Mancunian, feel like a city should - the right size, the right buzziness, the slight edge - is it just that I am slightly suspicious of things being too nice? I think what it comes down to is the feeling that if you lived here you could have a really nice life. And to be young here must be - if not heaven itself, pretty close.
Of course, you'd have to not mind the weather. I know people who have moved to Manchester because they couldn't cope with the rain in Glasgow any longer.

With thanks for everyone's suggestions, I have managed only a small handful. We stopped on the way to Aberfoyle and had lunch at the Griffin in that dead zone between tge city centre and the West End - the pub looked no better than miderately charming, but the food was amazing - then walked down to the Kelvingrove museum, which was brilliant - exactly what a museum should be and only a minimum of self-flagellation about the empire and climate change (compared to its counterpart in Manchester at least). Then, just as we were leaving, an organ recital! Yer actual toccata and fugue like a horror movie of old. And as we left, the sun came out, and the skyline of the university building: one of my favourite urban views in the country.
[cont in a minute...]

Reeves was aware she needed a licence, but never paid for one

Whatever the estate agent has said, it remains the landlord's responsibility

A diligent person would have double-checked

The Chancellor ought to be the epitome of diligence

I never called for her to lose her job, and never really expected her to

I strongly contested, and continue to contest, the ludicrous notion the she could somehow be unaware of a policy that she had been campaigning in favour of for over eighteen months, before it affected her personally

It is a white wash for sure

Nonsense. I'd have said almost certainly not. Too messy.

But if you think so I'll bet one of my lovely shining English pounds against your equivalent 4.56million Scottish groats that you can't prove your assertion.

I do think the first bit's right though.

You are a naughty boy

And I am the official recipient of the most minor retribution ever conveyed by the poster @malcolmg in the history of PB!

Damn, that's going to take some beating!

Rachel Reeves probably does not spend a lot of time reading the LandlordTODAY website. But if she did, she might have seen this article, written earlier this year, highlighting complaints about licensing schemes like the one that has got the chancellor into difficulties. It says:

Phil Turtle, a compliance consultant at Landlord Licensing & Defence, says it is increasingly the case that a missed renewal notice, a buried letter, or a forgotten deadline can cost landlords their financial stability – and even their properties.

And he believes that selective licensing schemes, enforced with increasing rigour by local councils, are catching landlords off guard with fines that can spiral into the hundreds of thousands.

“I’ve seen landlords lose everything because they didn’t have a system in place to track compliance. One missed deadline can cost you £105,000, and if you’re operating through a limited company, that fine could double to £210,000.”

He points to a recent case in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, where a landlord faced a staggering £66,000 in fines for failing to license a single house converted into two flats. “The council hit the landlord’s limited company with £16,500 per flat and then fined him personally as the sole director another £16,500 per flat. That’s £66,000 for a simple oversight – and now he’s forced to sell the property to cover the cost.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/oct/30/rachel-reeves-labour-keir-starmer-uk-politics-latest-news-updates

"Phil Turtle" sounds like an instruction from some utterly hideous Victorian cookbook...

Don’t mock him, or you’ll be in the soup.

Incredible really

Rachel Reeves was celebrating the renting law being expanded in her constituency, at the same time she was breaking that law with her own house👇

Claiming that she wasn’t aware of these laws is about as credible as her CV.

https://x.com/kemibadenoch/status/1983802829971100152?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

Claiming that she deliberately flouted the law is about as credible as Liz Truss.

Ignorance of the law is not a credible defence. She's an MP and should know better. Why is it that Labour MPs seem to think it's ok for them to be ignorant of the law.

Is that what they are saying ?
Or is it that she inadvertently breached the regulation, is taking steps to correct that, and that should (probably) be the end of the matter ?

As I commented on the last thread, assuming that Reeves is not a rogue landlord (which so far seems to be the case), and has in place gas and electric verification, EPC, etc, then it is ridiculous to be calling for her resignation.

The purpose of regulation is to ensure the safety of the property. It is not an end in itself, and to see an inadvertent breach of the rules, quickly rectified, as a resignation matter is effectively to say that regulation is indeed an end in itself.

Does the Tory party really want to take that stance, that regulation is an end in itself, and any technical breach should result in fines or criminal prosecution ?
If so, then the party is in a worse state than I thought.

I guess we just have to take her word for that her property was compliant given that she refused to get the licence. We have a recent example of a Labour MP being a slumlord so it's not beyond reasonable doubt that her property wasn't fully compliant.

But once again it's the hypocrisy of her campaigning for this type of landlord licencing in her own constituency then failing to get the licence that she campaigned to bring into place.

One rule for them and another for the rest of us. Two tier Keir all over again.