Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.
If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.
Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.
The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.
The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:
pensions social security NHS debt interest defence education justice/police/prisons local government services.
Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.
In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.
Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?
For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.
Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.
NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.
I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well
There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.
But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.
If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.
Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.
They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.
The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound
The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision? How would drawdown be handled?
Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.
Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns? Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.
Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.
HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.
How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension
Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%. Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance. Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh? If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax. I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.
sighs you misunderstood I think
You get state pension of 9k You get additional income once the additional income is over 5k then for every 5£ you get state pension is reduced by £1
so additional income is 5k you get full state pension at 10K additional you get 1K removed from state pension at 20K additional you get 4k less state pension
so total for the 3 scenarios would be 14K, 18k,and 25K
So on practice not any different to increasing taxation on pensioners, for example by charging all pensioners NI.
In practise yes it would be like a tax.
Sorry but you can't all bang on about pension time bombs, demographic pressure and underfunded services and yet any time someone suggests reducing the things we spend on or trying to save money you are all up in arms.
We either reduce spending or it all collapses. Yes that means some are going to lose out. Doing nothing is no longer an option.
Yes but youre 'taxing' them at 20% on top of income tax on their earnings from ca 14k to ca 59k
Yes and your point is?
We have to reduce spending or increase revenue. That means it has to come from somewhere.The employed are already taxed to the point that many in full employment have to use food banks so increasing basic rates is out. There aren't enough higher earners to make a dent in our spending.
So you tell us where you think the reduction or increased revenue should be found. You are very quick to say "no not there".
If those in employment are using food banks, is that because they are taxed too much or paid too little?
Tax rates in the UK are lower than in most of our European neighbours. We could comfortably be taxed more. Sure, one should target those taxes appropriately. Maybe people who are in no danger of needing a food bank, say those earning over £150,000, could pay a bit more in tax.
It's because housing and other living expenses are too high.
If housing was cheaper in the UK, then everyone would have more disposable income, and people at the lower end of the income scale would be able to afford their own food.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
In my moments of fantasy wondering what I would do if I had Elon Musk type money I’ve always thought of setting up a scheme where I would buy loads of tower blocks in cities and allow school/Uni leavers, who have their potential held back by not having access to money themselves, to live there for say three to five years where they pay their rent but the rent is saved for them and given back for purposes of a deposit when they are ready to get a mortgage.
Would be subject to behaviour clauses and time limited to keep giving others a chance etc but I feel that it would take that sort of massive charitable input to break the crazy situation where people like Z jr cannot potentially fulfil his potential by not being able to live nearest the optimal places for his skills and career.
Now I will go back to inventing some internet thing to make that money even though I can barely use and I-phone!
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
On this Horse we are in complete agreement Dishwashers are equally idiotic
Wrong, dishwashers used right are more efficient than humans, whereas clothes lines cost nuffink.
I live alone, a dishwasher would be a ridiculous extravagence
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
You do end up with a damp problem if you don't vent the moisture or have a condensing tumble dryer instead. Venting means losing all that lovely expensive heat energy to the outside world.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
yep we've been through this many times! we're hoping if she has radiators on to keep the house warm she'll use those for drying clothes, with enough ventilation to stop damp. needs to get kids to stop always putting clothes to wash after each wearing too.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
In my moments of fantasy wondering what I would do if I had Elon Musk type money I’ve always thought of setting up a scheme where I would buy loads of tower blocks in cities and allow school/Uni leavers, who have their potential held back by not having access to money themselves, to live there for say three to five years where they pay their rent but the rent is saved for them and given back for purposes of a deposit when they are ready to get a mortgage.
Would be subject to behaviour clauses and time limited to keep giving others a chance etc but I feel that it would take that sort of massive charitable input to break the crazy situation where people like Z jr cannot potentially fulfil his potential by not being able to live nearest the optimal places for his skills and career.
Now I will go back to inventing some internet thing to make that money even though I can barely use and I-phone!
good plan, but Z jr's parents are - how to put this? - not in the most capital starved decile of the population, and could probably score him an Earlsfield flat in exchange for a token rent. The mentality has pervaded him when it doesn't have to.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
we havent really got room for one so just use an airer, or radiators in winter. dont miss having one at all. towels arent so fluffy maybe but that's not much of a downside when the cost benefits are so obvious.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
And who is qualified to talk about interstallar travel on here? Are people restricted to only comment on topics they are experts in?
That rules out most topics like, to pick a random example, AI.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
TrUst THe ScienZe Leon ffs, he is a bona fide sciencing man with test tubes and petri dishes and EVERYTHING
He has hundreds, if not thousands of papers. Although as they seem to all emanate from CERN, and every paper seems to have hundreds of authors, you might question if he’s even read most of them…
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
And who is qualified to talk about interstallar travel on here? Are people restricted to only comment on topics they are experts in?
That rules out most topics like, to pick a random example, AI.
Yes, but I’m a genius
I was only teasing. PB would be calamitously dull if we all restricted ourselves to our areas of expertise. May @foxy talk about whatever he wants
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
Well of course, but even if we're not literally the only civilized beings in the universe there's an excellent chance that we're fantastically rare. The existence of the eukaryotic cell itself might be regarded as little short of a miracle, let alone the sort of complex multicellular organisms that might ultimately evolve into anything sophisticated enough to achieve space travel. It wouldn't surprise me if there was nobody else out there, although proving the negative in this instance is, of course, impossible.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Leon you make great and interesting posts, but Foxy makes honest and informed posts. You'll forgive me if I suggest that that the likelihood of Interstellar travel will not find a conculsion in discussions here.
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
Southern England looking rather beautiful - and thankfully green - from my train window
The number of vineyards is now quite noticeable
The drought is over? I thought it was still pretty dry there.
The drought lasted longer at my vineyard than in most areas but I’ve now had 59mm this month so the ground is reasonably damp. Still dryish deep down though. I lost quite a few newly planted vines this summer.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Well I do have more knowledge of science than the average flint knapper of sex toys.
This overview covers the health risks of prolonged space travel well:
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Do da maff. Voyager 1 is 21 light hours away after 45 years. At that rate it's about 70,000 years to get to the nearest star, where there is no good reason at all to expect to find life. Manned spacecraft have yet to break the two light second barrier. It really is not easy.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
we havent really got room for one so just use an airer, or radiators in winter. dont miss having one at all. towels arent so fluffy maybe but that's not much of a downside when the cost benefits are so obvious.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
Well of course, but even if we're not literally the only civilized beings in the universe there's an excellent chance that we're fantastically rare. The existence of the eukaryotic cell itself might be regarded as little short of a miracle, let alone the sort of complex multicellular organisms that might ultimately evolve into anything sophisticated enough to achieve space travel. It wouldn't surprise me if there was nobody else out there, although proving the negative in this instance is, of course, impossible.
That reminds me of the old religious theory that God invented humans because He was lonely
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
In my moments of fantasy wondering what I would do if I had Elon Musk type money I’ve always thought of setting up a scheme where I would buy loads of tower blocks in cities and allow school/Uni leavers, who have their potential held back by not having access to money themselves, to live there for say three to five years where they pay their rent but the rent is saved for them and given back for purposes of a deposit when they are ready to get a mortgage.
Would be subject to behaviour clauses and time limited to keep giving others a chance etc but I feel that it would take that sort of massive charitable input to break the crazy situation where people like Z jr cannot potentially fulfil his potential by not being able to live nearest the optimal places for his skills and career.
Now I will go back to inventing some internet thing to make that money even though I can barely use and I-phone!
good plan, but Z jr's parents are - how to put this? - not in the most capital starved decile of the population, and could probably score him an Earlsfield flat in exchange for a token rent. The mentality has pervaded him when it doesn't have to.
Fair enough - we have a huge problem here where so many local kids are leaving because they haven’t a hope of getting on the housing ladder which is sad as they get educated here then off to university and don’t come back (there are of course other reasons for them not coming back) but you are losing all that human capital that the place has invested in but also a place can lose it’s identity when most people are “outsiders” as they have no in built connection with the quirks and what makes a place unique.
The gov screwed things over the last few decades by allowing foreign buyers to buy development properties to rent and added to this by removing the ban on those who moved here on special tax agreements to buy properties other than their main home which has supercharged the property market. I look at younger children/young adults here and feel for them as they are terrified of not getting on the housing ladder so spend 500k plus on crap one bedroom flats etc.
But it would be a great thing to be able to find ways to break that and allow them to save for deposits near where there are jobs when they don’t have the world’s largest horse dealer for a father!
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
On this Horse we are in complete agreement Dishwashers are equally idiotic
Wrong, dishwashers used right are more efficient than humans, whereas clothes lines cost nuffink.
I live alone, a dishwasher would be a ridiculous extravagence
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Leon you make great and interesting posts, but Foxy makes honest and informed posts. You'll forgive me if I suggest that that the likelihood of Interstellar travel will not find a conculsion in discussions here.
I thought my jocular tone made it clear I was having a laugh. Lightening the mood with bantz
@foxy is free to talk about whatever he fancies, and I am free to mock him, and vice versa, and thus the weekend passes in pleasant conversation
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Neil De Twatty Tyson made an absolute arse of himself on this this week suggesting the Navy might be faking artefacts on scanners and video etc (like the gimbal, tic tac etc) to see how their pilots react
That is one of the more insane explanations I’ve heard!
I’ve now read Mick West’s debunking of the Ukraine scientists’ UFO paper. As ever West does a good careful job, and certainly makes them look slapdash and lacking. However, this is just a preprint
To my mind he has not entirely debunked them. And I find it hard to believe three senior astronomers would be fooled by “flies”
Indeed, a money-making hoax by desperate boffins in a war torn country seems more likely
Theres an awful lot of garbage out there from varying motivations
No one has debunked the Calvine photo. Indeed all the various bunkum theories - reflection, mountain top in fog, elaborate hoax, have been successfully ruled out themselves
Which leaves us with the likelihood this shows a real craft in the sky. What it is, who knows
I don’t agree that the possible explanations have been successfully ruled out. Have you ruled out ‘small object tossed into the air and photo taken’? Cos that’s a really common way of faking UFO photos. I’m sceptical until I see the negatives and the other 5 photos. And why has no one found these two chefs? It can’t be that hard to track them down.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Leon you make great and interesting posts, but Foxy makes honest and informed posts. You'll forgive me if I suggest that that the likelihood of Interstellar travel will not find a conculsion in discussions here.
I think that the level of technology required and health hazards involved mean that any society advanced enough to do interstellar travel will almost certainly have the technological expertise to do it more safely and efficiently via robots.
If we have visitors from other systems they are most likely to be manufactured. Indeed their entire societies may be inorganic, having transcended (or exterminated) their mortal origins.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Indeed.
They’re useful if you have a large family and want to do all of the week’s laundry in one day. Many people don’t realise just how much power they use though, it’s the same as having the kettle boil continuously for two hours at a time.
I wouldn't be without my tumble dryer, but then again I'm not watching the pennies so I'm not forced to share my living space with a continuous procession of drying racks full of damp laundry. Ultimately, there's usually a price to be paid for convenience.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Well I do have more knowledge of science than the average flint knapper of sex toys.
This overview covers the health risks of prolonged space travel well:
Actually I tend to agree with you, it is far more likely we will encounter alien probes manned by AI than by organic beings like ourselves
But the probes will be out there. Every civilisation on earth sent them out in the form of early explorers. Noah chucked a dove in the air to go find land. We have sent actual probes into outer space. Ant and bee colonies send scouts
If there are advanced technological civilisations out there, they will surely be sending AI probes to look for other life and report back with sitreps, it seems to be a universal urge
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
I've gone from 4 hours/day on the hot water to 1 hour. Tumble dryer we are trying to totally avoid - maybe the odd 5 minutes for some towels. Going to try and not use the heating at all if possible but we do live in a 4 year old house with plenty of insulation. Under-counter lights in kitchen we used to keep on almost all the time are now going off. I had a small PC I use as a server which was on 24/7 and instead I just turn it on when needed. I think there will be a big drop in energy usage as many make similar decisions to us.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Leon you make great and interesting posts, but Foxy makes honest and informed posts. You'll forgive me if I suggest that that the likelihood of Interstellar travel will not find a conculsion in discussions here.
I think that the level of technology required and health hazards involved mean that any society advanced enough to do interstellar travel will almost certainly have the technological expertise to do it more safely and efficiently via robots.
If we have visitors from other systems they are most likely to be manufactured. Indeed their entire societies may be inorganic, having transcended (or exterminated) their mortal origins.
At what point do they send a couple up to space, with the intention of studying conception, pregnancy and birth in a zero-gravity environment?
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
I remember mum hanging clothes out on the line when we lived in a pre-central heating council house, in the winter we brought them back in like cardboard on frosty nights
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Neil De Twatty Tyson made an absolute arse of himself on this this week suggesting the Navy might be faking artefacts on scanners and video etc (like the gimbal, tic tac etc) to see how their pilots react
That is one of the more insane explanations I’ve heard!
I’ve now read Mick West’s debunking of the Ukraine scientists’ UFO paper. As ever West does a good careful job, and certainly makes them look slapdash and lacking. However, this is just a preprint
To my mind he has not entirely debunked them. And I find it hard to believe three senior astronomers would be fooled by “flies”
Indeed, a money-making hoax by desperate boffins in a war torn country seems more likely
Theres an awful lot of garbage out there from varying motivations
No one has debunked the Calvine photo. Indeed all the various bunkum theories - reflection, mountain top in fog, elaborate hoax, have been successfully ruled out themselves
Which leaves us with the likelihood this shows a real craft in the sky. What it is, who knows
I don’t agree that the possible explanations have been successfully ruled out. Have you ruled out ‘small object tossed into the air and photo taken’? Cos that’s a really common way of faking UFO photos. I’m sceptical until I see the negatives and the other 5 photos. And why has no one found these two chefs? It can’t be that hard to track them down.
The prosaic explanations have not been entirely dismissed, they’ve just got less plausible as people have drilled into the evidence. Which is why I said “likelihood” this is a real craft, not “certainty”
BTW there is said to be progress on identifying the two witnesses. The chefs. Watch this space
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
On this Horse we are in complete agreement Dishwashers are equally idiotic
Wrong, dishwashers used right are more efficient than humans, whereas clothes lines cost nuffink.
I live alone, a dishwasher would be a ridiculous extravagence
So do I, you just put stuff in till it's full.
Seems pointless when i can wash as i go, but each to their own
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
In my moments of fantasy wondering what I would do if I had Elon Musk type money I’ve always thought of setting up a scheme where I would buy loads of tower blocks in cities and allow school/Uni leavers, who have their potential held back by not having access to money themselves, to live there for say three to five years where they pay their rent but the rent is saved for them and given back for purposes of a deposit when they are ready to get a mortgage.
Would be subject to behaviour clauses and time limited to keep giving others a chance etc but I feel that it would take that sort of massive charitable input to break the crazy situation where people like Z jr cannot potentially fulfil his potential by not being able to live nearest the optimal places for his skills and career.
Now I will go back to inventing some internet thing to make that money even though I can barely use and I-phone!
good plan, but Z jr's parents are - how to put this? - not in the most capital starved decile of the population, and could probably score him an Earlsfield flat in exchange for a token rent. The mentality has pervaded him when it doesn't have to.
Fair enough - we have a huge problem here where so many local kids are leaving because they haven’t a hope of getting on the housing ladder which is sad as they get educated here then off to university and don’t come back (there are of course other reasons for them not coming back) but you are losing all that human capital that the place has invested in but also a place can lose it’s identity when most people are “outsiders” as they have no in built connection with the quirks and what makes a place unique.
The gov screwed things over the last few decades by allowing foreign buyers to buy development properties to rent and added to this by removing the ban on those who moved here on special tax agreements to buy properties other than their main home which has supercharged the property market. I look at younger children/young adults here and feel for them as they are terrified of not getting on the housing ladder so spend 500k plus on crap one bedroom flats etc.
But it would be a great thing to be able to find ways to break that and allow them to save for deposits near where there are jobs when they don’t have the world’s largest horse dealer for a father!
All solutions involve building a lot more houses!
Being outside the EU, does now give the opportunity to raise significant taxes on property owned by non-resident foreigners, many of which are unoccupied for most of the year or used as weekly rentals. Even 2-3% per year raises a few billion.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Leon you make great and interesting posts, but Foxy makes honest and informed posts. You'll forgive me if I suggest that that the likelihood of Interstellar travel will not find a conculsion in discussions here.
I think that the level of technology required and health hazards involved mean that any society advanced enough to do interstellar travel will almost certainly have the technological expertise to do it more safely and efficiently via robots.
If we have visitors from other systems they are most likely to be manufactured. Indeed their entire societies may be inorganic, having transcended (or exterminated) their mortal origins.
At what point do they send a couple up to space, with the intention of studying conception, pregnancy and birth in a zero-gravity environment?
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
A tumble dryer is absolutely essential if you have kids. There is so much washing, 24/7
I still have a tumble dryer now tho I live on my own. I don’t mind the expense - my small agreeable flat is otherwise cheap to run - I do resent the space it takes up. This big ugly thing. Washer-dryers don’t work
If I could find a way of drying clothes (I don’t have outside space) without it that would be great, but for half the year my radiators are off and if you just drape clothes on indoor racks they don’t dry properly, and so on and so forth
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
On this Horse we are in complete agreement Dishwashers are equally idiotic
Wrong, dishwashers used right are more efficient than humans, whereas clothes lines cost nuffink.
I live alone, a dishwasher would be a ridiculous extravagence
So do I, you just put stuff in till it's full.
Seems pointless when i can wash as i go, but each to their own
Well, the theory is washing up for 6 costs less in energy by dishwasher (heat plus power) than by hand (heat only) because of economies of hot water usage. Likely to be even more of a saving when it is dishwashing six settings vs handwashing 6 x single sets because of lead in times to get the water hot. but probably years before the dishwasher pays for its acquisiton and installation.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
On this Horse we are in complete agreement Dishwashers are equally idiotic
Wrong, dishwashers used right are more efficient than humans, whereas clothes lines cost nuffink.
I live alone, a dishwasher would be a ridiculous extravagence
So do I, you just put stuff in till it's full.
Seems pointless when i can wash as i go, but each to their own
Well, the theory is washing up for 6 costs less in energy by dishwasher (heat plus power) than by hand (heat only) because of economies of hot water usage. Likely to be even more of a saving when it is dishwashing six settings vs handwashing 6 x single sets because of lead in times to get the water hot. but probably years before the dishwasher pays for its acquisiton and installation.
Perfectly decent point, but it needs to be balanced by the fact that vast quantities of cash are directly redistributed from wealthier to poorer via various state systems both directly in cash and indirectly through other provisions.
Interesting read here on PB this morning as people complain about how the Chancellor's tax cuts disincentivize them to work further because it hits hard when you are on £100K....
I get your attitude to this but it is, unfortunately, a fact of life. And it is not, generally, PB posters saying they are disincentivized, but pointing out that this is having a serious effect on public services, most particularly the NHS.
Combined with the pension tax regime for long servers, the current tax arrangements are a serious drain on expertise and headcount amongst the people we rely most upon to keep the NHS (as an example) running. You may question their public duty if you like but they are making a calculation that most people make at all levels of life, particularly as they approach retirement age. Is it worth me carrying on doing this or, if I can afford it, am I just better off packing it in and doing something else?
All true enough but a bit academic. I keep saying that in politics, perception is more important than reality and the perception around the country will be that the average person has just been stuffed. Anyone complaining about childcare and the difficulty of being on £100K will get zero sympathy.
This is not an election winner of a budget. This is a PR disaster.
It doesn't matter if it is a PR disaster or not. If it is then in this case it is one of those occasions where the public perception is the one at fault. I don't say that because I don't agree with you about either the fact that it probably is a PR disaster or because I necessarily agree with giving tax breaks to people earning £100K a year plus.
But the sad fact is that the situation is exactly as I have described it. GPs and other senior health workers are taking early retirement - or at least leaving the NHS for other jobs - because of the combination of what they perceive as punitive taxes and a broken pension arrangement.
You might say that they should not do this. You might say they are being selfish or betraying their calling or some such other stuff. You may be right and that may be a valid point of view. But unless you are going to explicitly forbid them from retiring or solve the issues they are unhappy with they are going to continue to vote with their feet and leave the NHS. This is a real crisis which can only be solved by Governments changing either the tax regime or the pensions regime. In this case sadly it has to be PR be damned. The choice, in the way you frame it, is between no sympathy or no GPs.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
Leon you make great and interesting posts, but Foxy makes honest and informed posts. You'll forgive me if I suggest that that the likelihood of Interstellar travel will not find a conculsion in discussions here.
I think that the level of technology required and health hazards involved mean that any society advanced enough to do interstellar travel will almost certainly have the technological expertise to do it more safely and efficiently via robots.
If we have visitors from other systems they are most likely to be manufactured. Indeed their entire societies may be inorganic, having transcended (or exterminated) their mortal origins.
At what point do they send a couple up to space, with the intention of studying conception, pregnancy and birth in a zero-gravity environment?
Am I the only one who finds it rather amusing, that NASA spent millions of dollars sending frozen human sperm to space, rather than simply asking the astronauts up there already if they could provide some for analysis?
Obviously, there’s lots of ethical questions in the whole area. Maybe they’ll start by breeding mammals in space, and seeing how they turn out, including if they can reproduce themselves?
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
I'm hoping to get one of these installed - they're quite common around here : https://www.pulleymaid.com/ . Hoist the clothes up into the warmer air and saves some floorspace.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
I'm hoping to get one of these installed - they're quite common around here : https://www.pulleymaid.com/ . Hoist the clothes up into the warmer air and saves some floorspace.
Hmm, that is what my parents used c. 1960 (and probably before but I don't remember ...).
Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.
If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.
Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.
The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.
The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:
pensions social security NHS debt interest defence education justice/police/prisons local government services.
Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.
In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.
Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?
For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.
Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.
NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.
I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well
There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.
But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.
If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.
Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.
They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.
The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound
The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision? How would drawdown be handled?
Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.
Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns? Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.
Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.
HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.
How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension
Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%. Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance. Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh? If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax. I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.
sighs you misunderstood I think
You get state pension of 9k You get additional income once the additional income is over 5k then for every 5£ you get state pension is reduced by £1
so additional income is 5k you get full state pension at 10K additional you get 1K removed from state pension at 20K additional you get 4k less state pension
so total for the 3 scenarios would be 14K, 18k,and 25K
So on practice not any different to increasing taxation on pensioners, for example by charging all pensioners NI.
In practise yes it would be like a tax.
Sorry but you can't all bang on about pension time bombs, demographic pressure and underfunded services and yet any time someone suggests reducing the things we spend on or trying to save money you are all up in arms.
We either reduce spending or it all collapses. Yes that means some are going to lose out. Doing nothing is no longer an option.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
They wouldn't be better off if that £45 went on health insurance or private pension contribution.
I haven't advocated abolishing the state pension just clawing some back from well off pensioners so they would not be paying anything more than now. As to the private health insurance to cover going over the cap....well average lifetime health care costs are something like 150k and so it would only have to pay for figures over that which half those insured would likely never have to claim so it should be relatively cheap cover
Why would it be cheaper than what it costs through tax on the NHS? Indeed, various analyses suggest the more centralised NHS is cheaper than an insurance model (whether insurance payments are paid for by the individual or state or a combination).
Because it is insurance and will only pay out for half the people that use it and even then mostly will be small sums with the occasional hefty bill. Its just in case insurance not covering all your health care just any portion that takes you over the cap. Same reason house insurance is quite cheap the number of homes that need rebuilding from scratch is small compared to the number buying house insurance
You’re delivering the same healthcare. It’s going to cost roughly the same whether it’s via the NHS or insurance. The costs don’t magically disappear.
House insurance is cheap because very few buildings need rebuilding, but you’re talking about half the population needing healthcare from this fund.
Sighs which bit are you failing to get here. Healthcare is funded as now until you reach the spending cap of 150k. Only once you exceed that cap does the insurance pay and at least half wont reach the cap and many that go over wont go over by much. That is why the analogy is house insurance
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Neil De Twatty Tyson made an absolute arse of himself on this this week suggesting the Navy might be faking artefacts on scanners and video etc (like the gimbal, tic tac etc) to see how their pilots react
That is one of the more insane explanations I’ve heard!
I’ve now read Mick West’s debunking of the Ukraine scientists’ UFO paper. As ever West does a good careful job, and certainly makes them look slapdash and lacking. However, this is just a preprint
To my mind he has not entirely debunked them. And I find it hard to believe three senior astronomers would be fooled by “flies”
Indeed, a money-making hoax by desperate boffins in a war torn country seems more likely
Theres an awful lot of garbage out there from varying motivations
No one has debunked the Calvine photo. Indeed all the various bunkum theories - reflection, mountain top in fog, elaborate hoax, have been successfully ruled out themselves
Which leaves us with the likelihood this shows a real craft in the sky. What it is, who knows
I don’t agree that the possible explanations have been successfully ruled out. Have you ruled out ‘small object tossed into the air and photo taken’? Cos that’s a really common way of faking UFO photos. I’m sceptical until I see the negatives and the other 5 photos. And why has no one found these two chefs? It can’t be that hard to track them down.
Agree. Great claims require great evidence. With photographic evidence it is not enough that you can rule out explanation X, Y, Z etc, but you have to unequivocally rule in the UFO explanation as the only one.
This requires clarity, supporting testimony, full disclosure, expert analysis to a criminal level of proof, and it is also good if there are multiple strands of supporting evidence.
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
I'm hoping to get one of these installed - they're quite common around here : https://www.pulleymaid.com/ . Hoist the clothes up into the warmer air and saves some floorspace.
I had one of them. The first few times you use it it’s very exciting and you can pretend you are hoisting the mainsail on HMS victory and then it just becomes doing laundry…. But they are very worthwhile in a utility room.
Christ it’s getting all a bit This Morning with the household tips today!
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
We've found that using a dehumidifier makes a big difference when drying clothes on a rack. Don't know how it's energy use compares to a tumble dryer, but I assume I did check before buying it.
Use of the tumble dryer is mandatory at my in-laws. The west of Ireland is damp enough as it is without trying to dry all your clothes indoors too (though of course no choice with woollens).
There are new heat pump tumble dryers that claim to be a lot more efficient. Technology is, as ever, our ally.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
In my moments of fantasy wondering what I would do if I had Elon Musk type money I’ve always thought of setting up a scheme where I would buy loads of tower blocks in cities and allow school/Uni leavers, who have their potential held back by not having access to money themselves, to live there for say three to five years where they pay their rent but the rent is saved for them and given back for purposes of a deposit when they are ready to get a mortgage.
Would be subject to behaviour clauses and time limited to keep giving others a chance etc but I feel that it would take that sort of massive charitable input to break the crazy situation where people like Z jr cannot potentially fulfil his potential by not being able to live nearest the optimal places for his skills and career.
Now I will go back to inventing some internet thing to make that money even though I can barely use and I-phone!
good plan, but Z jr's parents are - how to put this? - not in the most capital starved decile of the population, and could probably score him an Earlsfield flat in exchange for a token rent. The mentality has pervaded him when it doesn't have to.
Fair enough - we have a huge problem here where so many local kids are leaving because they haven’t a hope of getting on the housing ladder which is sad as they get educated here then off to university and don’t come back (there are of course other reasons for them not coming back) but you are losing all that human capital that the place has invested in but also a place can lose it’s identity when most people are “outsiders” as they have no in built connection with the quirks and what makes a place unique.
The gov screwed things over the last few decades by allowing foreign buyers to buy development properties to rent and added to this by removing the ban on those who moved here on special tax agreements to buy properties other than their main home which has supercharged the property market. I look at younger children/young adults here and feel for them as they are terrified of not getting on the housing ladder so spend 500k plus on crap one bedroom flats etc.
But it would be a great thing to be able to find ways to break that and allow them to save for deposits near where there are jobs when they don’t have the world’s largest horse dealer for a father!
All solutions involve building a lot more houses!
Being outside the EU, does now give the opportunity to raise significant taxes on property owned by non-resident foreigners, many of which are unoccupied for most of the year or used as weekly rentals. Even 2-3% per year raises a few billion.
Punitive increases in taxes on non resident foreign ownership and second homes. Get some of the 700,000 second homes and 250,000 homes owned by non residents back on the market. That is close to 1 million homes.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
It's PB commentary like this - in which a boomer who wrote a sub-Loaded novel about meeting women online (currently at #1,005,315 in the Kindle Store) tries to impress us all by claiming he reads the FT - that makes me glad I don't spend too much time in the more credulous corners of the internet.
On which note, I spent the afternoon at a village beer festival one mile from David Cameron's house. Fair to say that the Tory-curious demographic of 2010 has dissipated. The Blue Wall is the Lib Dems' for the taking, if only they have the dedication to do so. I suspect they don't.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
A decent cellar is what is missing in British homes. Ideal for storage, and utility.
Most American and continental houses seem to have them, not sure why they are so rare here.
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That must be fun on a freezing cold windy day in January.
It was fine last year, just dried things in the kitchen over night with a window open and shut the door. It’s a rental I don’t hugely mind.
how much would a dehumidifier cost to buy and then run to be able to avoid having windows open?
If you’ve got a suggestion let me know! Are the Dysons any good?
*thinks we ought to get one too ... checks*
Which have pages of info (need sub for full access) but it's instantly clear that the decision depends in part on whether you use it in the warm and/or unheated (as egin a shed or yacht). Refrigerants not so good for the cold (seems obvious) but desiccants are more flexible. Meaco DD8L Zambezi is one of their recs - 4 stars for energy efficiency, which is not quite the best. Duux Bora Smart Dehumidifier (DXDH02UK) comes out higher for energy and pretty good but is a refrigerant one.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
On which note, I spent the afternoon at a village beer festival one mile from David Cameron's house. Fair to say that the Tory-curious demographic of 2010 has dissipated. The Blue Wall is the Lib Dems' for the taking, if only they have the dedication to do so. I suspect they don't.
Chesham and Amersham, Shropshire North and Tiverton and Honiton say the dedication’s there. The resources to take the whole wall may be stretched though.
Cancelling this year’s conference has cost the party a fortune.
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
What do you make of this chap then?
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
The same argument applies regardless of the IQ of the individuals affected, I'm afraid. I can't summon up much sympathy for Russia or the Russians TBH. There were 15 Soviet republics, and this is the only one with an unquenchable bloodlust for imperial conquest coupled with a neat sideline in threatening to eradicate the human race in a thermonuclear holocaust if not given its way. Fuck em.
I’ve seen a lot of that sentiment on Twitter, but it’s holding Russians to a standard I’m not sure most of us would meet if we had a government like Putin’s. Besides, draining Russia of brains and manpower is surely a sensible thing to do where possible, even if it indulges a few cowardly hypocrites.
The parable of the prodigal son comes to mind.
The Ukrainians will do a perfectly competent job of draining Russia of brains and manpower utilising a variety of skilfully deployed modern armaments. I'm perfectly content to let them do it until they've either ejected all the Russians from their country by force, or persuaded them to run away.
I suppose I've some sympathy for your arguments regarding what the Russian population is up against with this regime, although even that is blunted to a degree by the willingness of Iranians to stage mass riots over the death of one woman, whereas almost no-one in Russia has hitherto tried to oppose the attempted genocide of an entire nation encompassing 600,000km² and some 45 million people. Basically because most of them either actively approve of the enterprise or don't give a fuck one way or another (or, at least, didn't give a fuck until they started being threatened with call-up papers.)
In the final analysis, the Lithuanian foreign minister has called this one right:
Lithuania will not be granting asylum to those who are simply running from responsibility. Russians should stay and fight. Against Putin.
Is it tough love? Yes. Would you and I be any bloody use at resisting Vladimir Putin? Probably not. But then again, you and I aren't citizens of the Russian Empire which, in its various historical guises, has inflicted a series of dreadful totalitarian strongmen with vast nuclear arsenals upon the rest of the world for most of the last seven decades, and continues to do so. So no, they can either get rid of their dictator, or go to Ukraine and be shot.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
It’s PB commentary like this - in which a semi-retired GP from suburban Leicester rules out the possibility of interstellar travel - which makes me read the FT
It's PB commentary like this - in which a boomer who wrote a sub-Loaded novel about meeting women online (currently at #1,005,315 in the Kindle Store) tries to impress us all by claiming he reads the FT - that makes me glad I don't spend too much time in the more credulous corners of the internet.
On which note, I spent the afternoon at a village beer festival one mile from David Cameron's house. Fair to say that the Tory-curious demographic of 2010 has dissipated. The Blue Wall is the Lib Dems' for the taking, if only they have the dedication to do so. I suspect they don't.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
But if given the choice would you rather an extra bedroom or a nice utility room? Utility for me every time.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
A decent cellar is what is missing in British homes. Ideal for storage, and utility.
Most American and continental houses seem to have them, not sure why they are so rare here.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
I agree. Getting people to downsize to small urban flats would massively help the housing situation. Difficult to do so when any attempt gets labelled as Bedroom tax.
Partly it is people have too much stuff and get used to loads of space, and partly due to the disdain for apartment living.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
I agree. Getting people to downsize to small urban flats would massively help the housing situation. Difficult to do so when any attempt gets labelled as Bedroom tax.
Partly it is people have too much stuff and get used to loads of space, and partly due to the disdain for apartment living.
Not so much disdain up here with 'tenements' eg in Edinburgh and Glasgow, but also elsewhere. But those are of course often C19 and early C20 so to higher standards of space (but not insulation, unless you are piggy in the middle).
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
But if given the choice would you rather an extra bedroom or a nice utility room? Utility for me every time.
For me it would be both in one, I guess
Indeed if my new Turkish venture makes me eleventy bazillion bucks that’s what I will buy: a small TWO bed period flat extremely similar to the one I have. And I’d move actually into Primrose Hill (so about 300 yards from where I am now) or into Marylebone or Fitzrovia - across the park
So I really am not far from my ideal as things stand. Which is pretty good
Lib dems in England telling us yesterday’s mini budget was just a tax cut for the rich and did nothing for the poor. Lib dems in Scotland telling us the rich will now leave Scotland so we should copy Tory policy.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
I agree. Getting people to downsize to small urban flats would massively help the housing situation. Difficult to do so when any attempt gets labelled as Bedroom tax.
Partly it is people have too much stuff and get used to loads of space, and partly due to the disdain for apartment living.
Kwarteng had an opportunity (which of course he didn’t take) to abolish SDLT completely but replace it with a land tax or higher council taxes. Land tax could also replace business rates.
Shifting taxation from income to property ownership and shifting more taxing rights from central to local government makes a lot of economic sense but is of course politically difficult.
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
I'm hoping to get one of these installed - they're quite common around here : https://www.pulleymaid.com/ . Hoist the clothes up into the warmer air and saves some floorspace.
I had one of them. The first few times you use it it’s very exciting and you can pretend you are hoisting the mainsail on HMS victory and then it just becomes doing laundry…. But they are very worthwhile in a utility room.
Christ it’s getting all a bit This Morning with the household tips today!
Part of my attraction to the idea was 100% not standing their wheeching it up and down like the captain of a not-very-good-boat. Absolutely not...
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
I'm hoping to get one of these installed - they're quite common around here : https://www.pulleymaid.com/ . Hoist the clothes up into the warmer air and saves some floorspace.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
I do think that the medical difficulties of life in space are such that travel to other solar systems would be fatal. The same probably is true of aliens.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
In my moments of fantasy wondering what I would do if I had Elon Musk type money I’ve always thought of setting up a scheme where I would buy loads of tower blocks in cities and allow school/Uni leavers, who have their potential held back by not having access to money themselves, to live there for say three to five years where they pay their rent but the rent is saved for them and given back for purposes of a deposit when they are ready to get a mortgage.
Would be subject to behaviour clauses and time limited to keep giving others a chance etc but I feel that it would take that sort of massive charitable input to break the crazy situation where people like Z jr cannot potentially fulfil his potential by not being able to live nearest the optimal places for his skills and career.
Now I will go back to inventing some internet thing to make that money even though I can barely use and I-phone!
good plan, but Z jr's parents are - how to put this? - not in the most capital starved decile of the population, and could probably score him an Earlsfield flat in exchange for a token rent. The mentality has pervaded him when it doesn't have to.
Fair enough - we have a huge problem here where so many local kids are leaving because they haven’t a hope of getting on the housing ladder which is sad as they get educated here then off to university and don’t come back (there are of course other reasons for them not coming back) but you are losing all that human capital that the place has invested in but also a place can lose it’s identity when most people are “outsiders” as they have no in built connection with the quirks and what makes a place unique.
The gov screwed things over the last few decades by allowing foreign buyers to buy development properties to rent and added to this by removing the ban on those who moved here on special tax agreements to buy properties other than their main home which has supercharged the property market. I look at younger children/young adults here and feel for them as they are terrified of not getting on the housing ladder so spend 500k plus on crap one bedroom flats etc.
But it would be a great thing to be able to find ways to break that and allow them to save for deposits near where there are jobs when they don’t have the world’s largest horse dealer for a father!
All solutions involve building a lot more houses!
Being outside the EU, does now give the opportunity to raise significant taxes on property owned by non-resident foreigners, many of which are unoccupied for most of the year or used as weekly rentals. Even 2-3% per year raises a few billion.
Punitive increases in taxes on non resident foreign ownership and second homes. Get some of the 700,000 second homes and 250,000 homes owned by non residents back on the market. That is close to 1 million homes.
Won't happen as the Tories would balk at it and Labour appears to have no intention of diverging from the EU.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
I agree. Getting people to downsize to small urban flats would massively help the housing situation. Difficult to do so when any attempt gets labelled as Bedroom tax.
Partly it is people have too much stuff and get used to loads of space, and partly due to the disdain for apartment living.
The disdain for apartment living is driven by the existence of the feudal leasehold system. With a leasehold flat, you don't own it, you only own the right to lease it long term - you never own a single brick. Yet you are liable for unlimited service charges and maintenence charges, all with very limited recourse to recompense should they decide to be a rip off merchant who artificially inflates charges (no surprises: many of them are).
Flats are toxic in the UK now and will be until leasehold is abolished.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
A decent cellar is what is missing in British homes. Ideal for storage, and utility.
Most American and continental houses seem to have them, not sure why they are so rare here.
US they do dual duty as tornado refuges
And refuge from aliens like in War of the Worlds (2005 version).
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
But if given the choice would you rather an extra bedroom or a nice utility room? Utility for me every time.
For me it would be both in one, I guess
Indeed if my new Turkish venture makes me eleventy bazillion bucks that’s what I will buy: a small TWO bed period flat extremely similar to the one I have. And I’d move actually into Primrose Hill (so about 300 yards from where I am now) or into Marylebone or Fitzrovia - across the park
So I really am not far from my ideal as things stand. Which is pretty good
It IS Gob Tep: Wrath of Khan, isn't it? Only Hollywood promises scribblers Primrose hill size advances.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
I agree. Getting people to downsize to small urban flats would massively help the housing situation. Difficult to do so when any attempt gets labelled as Bedroom tax.
Partly it is people have too much stuff and get used to loads of space, and partly due to the disdain for apartment living.
The disdain for apartment living is driven by the existence of the feudal leasehold system. With a leasehold flat, you don't own it, you only own the right to lease it long term - you never own a single brick. Yet you are liable for unlimited service charges and maintenence charges, all with very limited recourse to recompense should they decide to be a rip off merchant who artificially inflates charges (no surprises: many of them are).
Flats are toxic in the UK now and will be until leasehold is abolished.
I don't think that's the case in Scotland (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong!).
Thanks for your insight, I am shocked to see somebody who's contributions to this site being "Blair was crap" as being misinformed.
Lol, yes - William's transformation from EU zealot to right-wing pundit has been impressive (tbf a bit like me from Blairite to Cortbynite, perhaps ). Hope you're keeping well too!
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
I'm hoping to get one of these installed - they're quite common around here : https://www.pulleymaid.com/ . Hoist the clothes up into the warmer air and saves some floorspace.
I had one of them. The first few times you use it it’s very exciting and you can pretend you are hoisting the mainsail on HMS victory and then it just becomes doing laundry…. But they are very worthwhile in a utility room.
Christ it’s getting all a bit This Morning with the household tips today!
Part of my attraction to the idea was 100% not standing their wheeching it up and down like the captain of a not-very-good-boat. Absolutely not...
Me neither! The only downside is that your duds can take on the odor of last night's din dins. Anything with fish sauce is the worst.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
A decent cellar is what is missing in British homes. Ideal for storage, and utility.
Most American and continental houses seem to have them, not sure why they are so rare here.
US they do dual duty as tornado refuges
And refuge from aliens like in War of the Worlds (2005 version).
And places for the finale of Silence of the Lambs to play out.
But apart from that, what have cellars ever given us?
Ventilation? I just ensure windows are open when drying clothes, not got any damp in our flat that I know of.
That's reassuring, but it is still losing a lot of heat energy doing that. On a diifferent point, is your flat surrounding by many other flats in the block? When we lived in a flat many years ago we didn't need any heating on at all as we leached off the heat given out by pensioner flats all around us!
There’s probably damp in the communal area to be honest, smells a bit musty but it’s not really our responsibility. The flat itself seems to be fine.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
We've found that using a dehumidifier makes a big difference when drying clothes on a rack. Don't know how it's energy use compares to a tumble dryer, but I assume I did check before buying it.
Use of the tumble dryer is mandatory at my in-laws. The west of Ireland is damp enough as it is without trying to dry all your clothes indoors too (though of course no choice with woollens).
There are new heat pump tumble dryers that claim to be a lot more efficient. Technology is, as ever, our ally.
i did wonder if somebody had invented something along those lines.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
Not always true
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
I agree. Getting people to downsize to small urban flats would massively help the housing situation. Difficult to do so when any attempt gets labelled as Bedroom tax.
Partly it is people have too much stuff and get used to loads of space, and partly due to the disdain for apartment living.
There is a joy to downsizing and decluttering, but you have to make the leap
Getting rid of stuff you don’t actually need is a liberation, likewise realising you don’t actually require a big garden, six bedrooms, blah blah
And there is a real sense of nesting with a small flat. A cosiness. Everything you need is near at hand, arranged as you like
I remember a scene in Dexter where the serial killer returns to his bachelor pad and says “ahhh, back to the cool serenity of my apartment, and I can close the door on the world” - totally get that feeling
Of course it depends a lot on your family/relationship circs. And it is fair to say I fucking hated my flat during the lockdowns when I couldn’t travel and all the pubs were shut. My flat is great…. for a man that moves about the world a fair bit
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Kids.
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
We don’t use a tumble dryer - not fit any energy saving reason but because of my wife’s fear of shrunken clothes - and don’t really miss it, but it helps having a warm utility room to dry clothes in.
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
A decent cellar is what is missing in British homes. Ideal for storage, and utility.
Most American and continental houses seem to have them, not sure why they are so rare here.
US they do dual duty as tornado refuges
And refuge from aliens like in War of the Worlds (2005 version).
And places for the finale of Silence of the Lambs to play out.
But apart from that, what have cellars ever given us?
Wine - they needed something to justify building cellars for so started making wine as it was perfect to store in them.
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
What do you make of this chap then?
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
40 years ago, Iranian PhDs were scrabbling around for postdocs to avoid being sent to fight Iraq. One thing Russia's neighbours are said to be worried about is KGB sleepers among the would-be asylum seekers driving across the borders.
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
What do you make of this chap then?
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
40 years ago, Iranian PhDs were scrabbling around for postdocs to avoid being sent to fight Iraq. One thing Russia's neighbours are said to be worried about is KGB sleepers among the would-be asylum seekers driving across the borders.
Anyone who left Russia six months ago or longer, saying "not in my name" I could have had some respect for.
Anyone who did nothing as their nation waged war, then only looked to move once it looked like the war would affect them ... I don't have much sympathy for them I'm afraid.
Incidentally I was listening to D Ream's other famous song yesterday, U R The Best Thing, and realised it's one of the best dance tracks of the 1990s. Never paid it much attention before.
Comments
If housing was cheaper in the UK, then everyone would have more disposable income, and people at the lower end of the income scale would be able to afford their own food.
It must be AI robots interested in probing our bottoms.
Would be subject to behaviour clauses and time limited to keep giving others a chance etc but I feel that it would take that sort of massive charitable input to break the crazy situation where people like Z jr cannot potentially fulfil his potential by not being able to live nearest the optimal places for his skills and career.
Now I will go back to inventing some internet thing to make that money even though I can barely use and I-phone!
That rules out most topics like, to pick a random example, AI.
I’ve been away so much I have forgotten the loveliness of my homeland
I was only teasing. PB would be calamitously dull if we all restricted ourselves to our areas of expertise. May @foxy talk about whatever he wants
THINGS
CAN
ONLY
GET
BETTER
This overview covers the health risks of prolonged space travel well:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-020-00124-6#:~:text=The major health hazards of,long distance from mother Earth.
Yes people below us always seem to have the heat on and there are large families either side so result!
What other ways to dry clothes are there?
The gov screwed things over the last few decades by allowing foreign buyers to buy development properties to rent and added to this by removing the ban on those who moved here on special tax agreements to buy properties other than their main home which has supercharged the property market. I look at younger children/young adults here and feel for them as they are terrified of not getting on the housing ladder so spend 500k plus on crap one bedroom flats etc.
But it would be a great thing to be able to find ways to break that and allow them to save for deposits near where there are jobs when they don’t have the world’s largest horse dealer for a father!
@foxy is free to talk about whatever he fancies, and I am free to mock him, and vice versa, and thus the weekend passes in pleasant conversation
If we have visitors from other systems they are most likely to be manufactured. Indeed their entire societies may be inorganic, having transcended (or exterminated) their mortal origins.
Actually I tend to agree with you, it is far more likely we will encounter alien probes manned by AI than by organic beings like ourselves
But the probes will be out there. Every civilisation on earth sent them out in the form of early explorers. Noah chucked a dove in the air to go find land. We have sent actual probes into outer space. Ant and bee colonies send scouts
If there are advanced technological civilisations out there, they will surely be sending AI probes to look for other life and report back with sitreps, it seems to be a universal urge
https://www.ft.com/content/3883381a-7c79-4ecd-8a26-aae9c15258b2
Unusually satirical for FT
BTW there is said to be progress on identifying the two witnesses. The chefs. Watch this space
It may yet be a hoax as you say
As a young adult I was very happy to use drying racks or radiators etc for mine and then my wife's clothes.
But with a family, doing a family's load of laundry, tumble dryers are a blessing.
Especially since cleaning a house with a couple of young kids is in itself much more of a chore, without even thinking about laundry it's like running on a treadmill just to stand still so anything that helps like dryers are very useful, especially in winter.
Being outside the EU, does now give the opportunity to raise significant taxes on property owned by non-resident foreigners, many of which are unoccupied for most of the year or used as weekly rentals. Even 2-3% per year raises a few billion.
https://futurism.com/sperm-space-nasa
I still have a tumble dryer now tho I live on my own. I don’t mind the expense - my small agreeable flat is otherwise cheap to run - I do resent the space it takes up. This big ugly thing. Washer-dryers don’t work
If I could find a way of drying clothes (I don’t have outside space) without it that would be great, but for half the year my radiators are off and if you just drape clothes on indoor racks they don’t dry properly, and so on and so forth
1. The absolute optimum way of drying clothes in small/crowded dwellings
And
2. The exact possibility of interstellar travel by organic life
This very afternoon.
Come on, PB. We can do it
apologies for the delay in replying but I have been out and about today with no time for PB until now.
It doesn't matter if it is a PR disaster or not. If it is then in this case it is one of those occasions where the public perception is the one at fault. I don't say that because I don't agree with you about either the fact that it probably is a PR disaster or because I necessarily agree with giving tax breaks to people earning £100K a year plus.
But the sad fact is that the situation is exactly as I have described it. GPs and other senior health workers are taking early retirement - or at least leaving the NHS for other jobs - because of the combination of what they perceive as punitive taxes and a broken pension arrangement.
You might say that they should not do this. You might say they are being selfish or betraying their calling or some such other stuff. You may be right and that may be a valid point of view. But unless you are going to explicitly forbid them from retiring or solve the issues they are unhappy with they are going to continue to vote with their feet and leave the NHS. This is a real crisis which can only be solved by Governments changing either the tax regime or the pensions regime. In this case sadly it has to be PR be damned. The choice, in the way you frame it, is between no sympathy or no GPs.
Obviously, there’s lots of ethical questions in the whole area. Maybe they’ll start by breeding mammals in space, and seeing how they turn out, including if they can reproduce themselves?
The secret to happiness in housing is the functional spaces: utility rooms, box rooms, pantries, garages, boot rooms and porches. I have the utility and box rooms but would love the others.
Same with gardens. The shed, cold frames, bike storage etc.
This requires clarity, supporting testimony, full disclosure, expert analysis to a criminal level of proof, and it is also good if there are multiple strands of supporting evidence.
Christ it’s getting all a bit This Morning with the household tips today!
Use of the tumble dryer is mandatory at my in-laws. The west of Ireland is damp enough as it is without trying to dry all your clothes indoors too (though of course no choice with woollens).
There are new heat pump tumble dryers that claim to be a lot more efficient. Technology is, as ever, our ally.
On which note, I spent the afternoon at a village beer festival one mile from David Cameron's house. Fair to say that the Tory-curious demographic of 2010 has dissipated. The Blue Wall is the Lib Dems' for the taking, if only they have the dedication to do so. I suspect they don't.
Eg Me
I am highly content with a really small flat in Camden. It’s perfect for one. It requires minimum maintenance. It has a bedroom, living room, nice modern kitchen, nice modern bathroom. An attic (weirdly, given that there is a flat above) for storage. it is on the first floor of a period conversion so it has nice big sash windows facing south. The location is almost ideal, I can walk to and from the West End through Regent’s Park, which is one of my very favourite places on earth
That’s it, and that’s all I need. I can lock up and leave knowing it’s likely to be fine. Hard to burgle. Easy to clean. Etc. I would like a bit more space (that tumble dryer) but it never really bugs me
For many people it would be impossibly small but I rejoice in its small compact easiness
Also I get to lecture my more annoying Woke Green friends who often live in unjustifiably big houses that they really don’t need
Most American and continental houses seem to have them, not sure why they are so rare here.
Which have pages of info (need sub for full access) but it's instantly clear that the decision depends in part on whether you use it in the warm and/or unheated (as egin a shed or yacht). Refrigerants not so good for the cold (seems obvious) but desiccants are more flexible. Meaco DD8L Zambezi is one of their recs - 4 stars for energy efficiency, which is not quite the best. Duux Bora Smart Dehumidifier (DXDH02UK) comes out higher for energy and pretty good but is a refrigerant one.
Cancelling this year’s conference has cost the party a fortune.
I suppose I've some sympathy for your arguments regarding what the Russian population is up against with this regime, although even that is blunted to a degree by the willingness of Iranians to stage mass riots over the death of one woman, whereas almost no-one in Russia has hitherto tried to oppose the attempted genocide of an entire nation encompassing 600,000km² and some 45 million people. Basically because most of them either actively approve of the enterprise or don't give a fuck one way or another (or, at least, didn't give a fuck until they started being threatened with call-up papers.)
In the final analysis, the Lithuanian foreign minister has called this one right:
Lithuania will not be granting asylum to those who are simply running from responsibility. Russians should stay and fight. Against Putin.
https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1573389737741918209
Things Russian men can do instead of running away to Europe:
✅ protest
✅ disobey
✅ AWOL
✅ POW
✅ mutiny
Asylum for 25 million draft dodgers is not an option.
Russians must liberate Russia.
https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1573631057961918466
Is it tough love? Yes. Would you and I be any bloody use at resisting Vladimir Putin? Probably not. But then again, you and I aren't citizens of the Russian Empire which, in its various historical guises, has inflicted a series of dreadful totalitarian strongmen with vast nuclear arsenals upon the rest of the world for most of the last seven decades, and continues to do so. So no, they can either get rid of their dictator, or go to Ukraine and be shot.
I must have sold a copy!
Partly it is people have too much stuff and get used to loads of space, and partly due to the disdain for apartment living.
Indeed if my new Turkish venture makes me eleventy bazillion bucks that’s what I will buy: a small TWO bed period flat extremely similar to the one I have. And I’d move actually into Primrose Hill (so about 300 yards from where I am now) or into Marylebone or Fitzrovia - across the park
So I really am not far from my ideal as things stand. Which is pretty good
Shifting taxation from income to property ownership and shifting more taxing rights from central to local government makes a lot of economic sense but is of course politically difficult.
Flats are toxic in the UK now and will be until leasehold is abolished.
a bit like me from Blairite to Cortbynite, perhaps
The only downside is that your duds can take on the odor of last night's din dins. Anything with fish sauce is the worst.
But apart from that, what have cellars ever given us?
Getting rid of stuff you don’t actually need is a liberation, likewise realising you don’t actually require a big garden, six bedrooms, blah blah
And there is a real sense of nesting with a small flat. A cosiness. Everything you need is near at hand, arranged as you like
I remember a scene in Dexter where the serial killer returns to his bachelor pad and says “ahhh, back to the cool serenity of my apartment, and I can close the door on the world” - totally get that feeling
Of course it depends a lot on your family/relationship circs. And it is fair to say I fucking hated my flat during the lockdowns when I couldn’t travel and all the pubs were shut. My flat is great…. for a man that moves about the world a fair bit
Or is this what funds our current account deficit?
Anyone who did nothing as their nation waged war, then only looked to move once it looked like the war would affect them ... I don't have much sympathy for them I'm afraid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0MlJveaGEo