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.
You’ve already got the envelope tax at just over 1%. Not sure how many it captures but as a mechanism that would force people to sell or rent out if you increased it
Dr. Foxy - A year or so ago, a very bright friend and I discussed the possibility of interstellar travel. We agreed that "generation ships" were almost certainly possible -- though so costly, and requiring so much engineering work that it might take a unified world government spending 1% of the world's GDP over 100 years to build a fleet of them.
(You would almost certainly spin them to provide a substitute for gravity,and use nuclear power to run a closed ecology. Such ships could, in principle, travel for hundreds of years. I believe laser-powered solar sails could move such ships at a significant fraction of light speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship )
If you see an obvious error in our thinking, I'd like to know to know what it is.
Would you be will to take Ted Williams's head along for the ride?
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.
The medical difficulties are principally that our bodies don't deal well without gravity.
Ought we to allow non-residents to buy property in the UK? Can we generally buy property as we wish in their countries?
Or is this what funds our current account deficit?
Very few countries bar foreigners from buying property, but many reserve areas for local housing with planning laws, and tax foreign-owned property, especially by non-residents.
Yes, it’s a big source of foreign capital into the UK which helps enormously with the current account deficit.
Despite what most of us on here may think of the UK and its government, to 90% of the rest of the world, it’s considered a safe haven from their own government, and property rights are well respected.
I'm well aware of that. The reality is that we are a densely populated island (south of Leeds) and land is a fixed resource. Neither do we build the number of houses we actually need. Having a hands off approach to foreign property ownership is just asking for trouble.
Building more houses would solve everything.
And devalue those houses people have bought as an investment. Win/win.
I would agree with that. But it needs to be done sensibly. Not just 'bonfire of regulations.'
Yup. The trouble is, it can't be done sensibly or sustainably or any of that crap. It can only be done by abolishing rural England. That is the lesser of two evils vs condemning the poor to homelessness, but it is a crying shame and one which is not resisted purely to prop up house prices. But you can't do it without a bonfire of regulations.
The vast majority of rural England is not built on. Admittedly some land would not be suitable.
What is the footprint for a good size home and garden. Let's say 400 sq metres.
A million homes would be 400 million sq metres or 400 sq km.
England is 130,000 sq km.
So 0.3% of England's land mass. About the size of Rutland.
Have I missed something?
Infrastructure
Roads
Flood plains
Highlands
None of which should be linked to an individual home, except maybe that most people building an individual home for themselves would choose to avoid flood plains because it'll be harder to get insurance on a flood plain.
If they build on a flood plain and an insurer is prepared to insure them, then that's their responsibility.
Ignoring the fact that the act of building on flood plains pushes the floods further downstream and floods other houses which were previously safe. Yet again you display remarkable ignorance for the reason for planning regulations. Something that is increasingly becoming a hallmark of your postings.
Not really, since as I said if a zone needs to be kept free due to environmental risks then with a sensible zoning system you zone that plain as not suitable for development.
I never said build anywhere, I said build on zones where development is acceptable. If development is unacceptable there, it should be zoned that way, then its not a problem that its not developed.
The problem with our system, as we discussed the other day, is that unlike nations like Belgium and Netherlands with zonal development systems whereby its easy to build a new home in approved zones so most people self-build, in this country the planning system is so messed up that only developers navigate it.
Nope. As someone who has been involved in 3 separate self build projects going back over 50 years or more (the first was my dad building his own house in 1970) I can assure you that planning permission is not the issue. The massive issue is building regs which become ever more labyrinthine and unsuited to small scale home building.
As I said the other day, the default position of planning decisions is to permit. Indeed we already zone for development in this country - it is called the local plan. The problem is that as soon as that land is zoned for development the big companies buy it up and sit on it.
One change we could make (and should) is to return to the practice of 30 years ago or more whereby the developer had to pay the specific costs of developing the infrastructure - schools, doctors etc. This no longer happens as the law now allows them to make a smaller up front payment to the local council who then spend that money and don't build the infrastructure.
There are many things wrong with our housebuilding system but planning is not the big one. Stop the developers sitting on vast tracts of land with planning permission for years and that will make a big difference.
It shouldn't be possible for anyone to buy all the land that is zoned for development, since there should always be zones available. If all zones have been bought up, then have new zones available. That will make the developers buying land and sitting on it, utterly worthless.
Find a part of the country that’s economically backward, fairly sparsely populated but geographically accessible. Somewhere in Lincolnshire or Norfolk perhaps. And go full on UAE: build one absolutely massive, brand new city.
- excellent multimodal transport links - Housing capacity for a population of at least 1m people - all buildings passive house levels of energy efficiency - 100% renewables for electricity and heating - Large designated industrial zones with generous tax incentives - Vast new tourist facilities: theme parks, artificial beaches, skiing, casinos - fully services for education, health and social care with the opportunity to innovate - Might as well make it all weather and cover in a huge poly dome
Instead of faffing around with dozens of investment zones and hundreds of NIMBY challenges everywhere, just go big in one place.
Yep that seems sensible to me. Certainly, the plan we have followed for the last century of simply increasing the size of existing towns and villages has been environmentally and socially disastrous. It has destroyed much precious and endangered habitat and has failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the increased numbers. New towns seems a far more sensible idea.
As I mentioned last week they plan on putting new solar farms on 10,000 acres of farmland in North Lincolnshire. At the same time plans were announced earlier this week for a new reservoir in Lincolnshire covering 4,500 acres to provide water to Cambridge. That is 14,500 acres of land. (which for reference is an area larger than Swindon or Ipswich or Peterborough) The main reason being quoted for putting these facilities in Lincolnshire is that the land is cheaper than elsewhere further south.
So I would suggest some of that land towards the Lincolnshire coast would be well suited to a big new development like you describe.
Why can't they put the solar panels on the reservoir on floats? Geese wouldn't like it but evaporation would be lower.
Off topic, but important: Fiona, having damaged Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas, is now attacking eastern Canada: "One of the strongest storms ever to hit Canada slammed into Nova Scotia’s coastline early Saturday, leaving most of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island without power.
Former hurricane Fiona made landfall early Saturday over Guysborough county on the northeast corner of mainland Nova Scotia, Canada’s weather service said. There were maximum sustained winds of almost 81 mph, while peak gusts of over 100 mph were detected, it added." source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/24/hurricane-fiona-nova-scotia-canada/
There are similar problems in Newfoundland.
When I wrote about it here, earlier this week, I mentioned this possibility, but said I expected it to weaken significantly before it hit Canada. That's what usually happens as hurricanes go north, but I was wrong this time.
So far there are no deaths reported, and I hope that continues ot be true, for our good neighbors to the north.
Dr. Foxy - A year or so ago, a very bright friend and I discussed the possibility of interstellar travel. We agreed that "generation ships" were almost certainly possible -- though so costly, and requiring so much engineering work that it might take a unified world government spending 1% of the world's GDP over 100 years to build a fleet of them.
(You would almost certainly spin them to provide a substitute for gravity,and use nuclear power to run a closed ecology. Such ships could, in principle, travel for hundreds of years. I believe laser-powered solar sails could move such ships at a significant fraction of light speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship )
If you see an obvious error in our thinking, I'd like to know to know what it is.
Protection against cosmic radiation may be a problem.
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
Ought we to allow non-residents to buy property in the UK? Can we generally buy property as we wish in their countries?
Or is this what funds our current account deficit?
Very few countries bar foreigners from buying property, but many reserve areas for local housing with planning laws, and tax foreign-owned property, especially by non-residents.
Yes, it’s a big source of foreign capital into the UK which helps enormously with the current account deficit.
Despite what most of us on here may think of the UK and its government, to 90% of the rest of the world, it’s considered a safe haven from their own government, and property rights are well respected.
I'm well aware of that. The reality is that we are a densely populated island (south of Leeds) and land is a fixed resource. Neither do we build the number of houses we actually need. Having a hands off approach to foreign property ownership is just asking for trouble.
Building more houses would solve everything.
And devalue those houses people have bought as an investment. Win/win.
I would agree with that. But it needs to be done sensibly. Not just 'bonfire of regulations.'
Yup. The trouble is, it can't be done sensibly or sustainably or any of that crap. It can only be done by abolishing rural England. That is the lesser of two evils vs condemning the poor to homelessness, but it is a crying shame and one which is not resisted purely to prop up house prices. But you can't do it without a bonfire of regulations.
The vast majority of rural England is not built on. Admittedly some land would not be suitable.
What is the footprint for a good size home and garden. Let's say 400 sq metres.
A million homes would be 400 million sq metres or 400 sq km.
England is 130,000 sq km.
So 0.3% of England's land mass. About the size of Rutland.
Have I missed something?
Infrastructure
Roads
Flood plains
Highlands
None of which should be linked to an individual home, except maybe that most people building an individual home for themselves would choose to avoid flood plains because it'll be harder to get insurance on a flood plain.
If they build on a flood plain and an insurer is prepared to insure them, then that's their responsibility.
Ignoring the fact that the act of building on flood plains pushes the floods further downstream and floods other houses which were previously safe. Yet again you display remarkable ignorance for the reason for planning regulations. Something that is increasingly becoming a hallmark of your postings.
Not really, since as I said if a zone needs to be kept free due to environmental risks then with a sensible zoning system you zone that plain as not suitable for development.
I never said build anywhere, I said build on zones where development is acceptable. If development is unacceptable there, it should be zoned that way, then its not a problem that its not developed.
The problem with our system, as we discussed the other day, is that unlike nations like Belgium and Netherlands with zonal development systems whereby its easy to build a new home in approved zones so most people self-build, in this country the planning system is so messed up that only developers navigate it.
Nope. As someone who has been involved in 3 separate self build projects going back over 50 years or more (the first was my dad building his own house in 1970) I can assure you that planning permission is not the issue. The massive issue is building regs which become ever more labyrinthine and unsuited to small scale home building.
As I said the other day, the default position of planning decisions is to permit. Indeed we already zone for development in this country - it is called the local plan. The problem is that as soon as that land is zoned for development the big companies buy it up and sit on it.
One change we could make (and should) is to return to the practice of 30 years ago or more whereby the developer had to pay the specific costs of developing the infrastructure - schools, doctors etc. This no longer happens as the law now allows them to make a smaller up front payment to the local council who then spend that money and don't build the infrastructure.
There are many things wrong with our housebuilding system but planning is not the big one. Stop the developers sitting on vast tracts of land with planning permission for years and that will make a big difference.
To follow on from this posting on the issue of self build.
The three biggest factors preventing the growth of self build in the UK (apart from the fact there is not much of a tradition of it at the moment)
1. Lack of land being made available exclusively for self building rather than developers. In Holland the local authority pays for all the infrastructure to be put in place (roads, sewerage, etc) prior to selling the plots and the costs are recouped through the cost of buying the plot. These estates are exclusively for the self builder. No developers allowed. 2. Most institutions won't lend to self builders. All three projects I have been involved with needed a complex arrangement of bridging loans and raising private funds or remortgaging an existing property to be able to pay for the self build. 3. Building regs which become more complex by the year. The only way the most recent project I was involved with was able to proceed was because the local building inspector was a decent bloke who put in many extra hours outside of his normal workload helping the owner understand and navigate the regulations.
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.
The medical difficulties are principally that our bodies don't deal well without gravity.
That isn't a (long term) insurmountable problem.
Cosmic rays seem to be much more of an issue. You can sort out gravity with spin, pending inventing AG. No such fix for cosmic rays.
I was in the Sainsbury's garage today waiting to pay, and a bloke ran out with his arms full of stuff he'd swiped off the shelves. This isn't a normal occurence, even in SE14. Society is fraying around the edges. (i didn't chase after him, I am a loyal Sainsbury's shopper but not that loyal).
Seen that a couple of times in ASDA. They've gone from one security guard to three.
Wouldn’t happen at Waitrose. THIS. IS. A. DISGRACE.
No cheese was stolen.
Still, tonnes of crime committed at lesser supermarkets.
Technical term (at least in US) for such loses in market small or super is "shrinkage".
I've got round to this very late but, after reviewing all 600+ of The Queen's charities, I've decided to donate to the following - one's that speak to both me and her, and I am pleased to support:
GOSH hospital
Girl Guides
National Churches Trust
Royal Historical Society
Royal Forestry Society
I may pick a military benevolent fund as well, probably for engineers, but for now these are my civilian choices.
I was in the Sainsbury's garage today waiting to pay, and a bloke ran out with his arms full of stuff he'd swiped off the shelves. This isn't a normal occurence, even in SE14. Society is fraying around the edges. (i didn't chase after him, I am a loyal Sainsbury's shopper but not that loyal).
Seen that a couple of times in ASDA. They've gone from one security guard to three.
Wouldn’t happen at Waitrose. THIS. IS. A. DISGRACE.
No cheese was stolen.
Still, tonnes of crime committed at lesser supermarkets.
Technical term (at least in US) for such loses in market small or super is "shrinkage".
Sorry, wasn’t making a judgement but making a pun with first pair of words.
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
I agree. It is possible. But it is expensive. Actually, in flood areas it is easier to follow the old traditions. Stone flagged floors, no plaster or paper on walls and all furniture removable to upper storeys. You see this in some towns in the lake district. When the floods arrive you open all the doors and let the water flow through. The trouble is that these houses have now been bought by people who want to put carpets and laminate flooring down and have fitted kitchens.
Find a part of the country that’s economically backward, fairly sparsely populated but geographically accessible. Somewhere in Lincolnshire or Norfolk perhaps. And go full on UAE: build one absolutely massive, brand new city.
- excellent multimodal transport links - Housing capacity for a population of at least 1m people - all buildings passive house levels of energy efficiency - 100% renewables for electricity and heating - Large designated industrial zones with generous tax incentives - Vast new tourist facilities: theme parks, artificial beaches, skiing, casinos - fully services for education, health and social care with the opportunity to innovate - Might as well make it all weather and cover in a huge poly dome
Instead of faffing around with dozens of investment zones and hundreds of NIMBY challenges everywhere, just go big in one place.
Yep that seems sensible to me. Certainly, the plan we have followed for the last century of simply increasing the size of existing towns and villages has been environmentally and socially disastrous. It has destroyed much precious and endangered habitat and has failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the increased numbers. New towns seems a far more sensible idea.
As I mentioned last week they plan on putting new solar farms on 10,000 acres of farmland in North Lincolnshire. At the same time plans were announced earlier this week for a new reservoir in Lincolnshire covering 4,500 acres to provide water to Cambridge. That is 14,500 acres of land. (which for reference is an area larger than Swindon or Ipswich or Peterborough) The main reason being quoted for putting these facilities in Lincolnshire is that the land is cheaper than elsewhere further south.
So I would suggest some of that land towards the Lincolnshire coast would be well suited to a big new development like you describe.
Why can't they put the solar panels on the reservoir on floats? Geese wouldn't like it but evaporation would be lower.
This is actually a very popular idea in certain circles, it has already been done near me, Godley reservoir near Hyde, Manchester you can see them on satellite view on Google maps. I know in places like California they use black floating balls to reduce evaporation, so why not make the area extra productive with solar panels.
Find a part of the country that’s economically backward, fairly sparsely populated but geographically accessible. Somewhere in Lincolnshire or Norfolk perhaps. And go full on UAE: build one absolutely massive, brand new city.
- excellent multimodal transport links - Housing capacity for a population of at least 1m people - all buildings passive house levels of energy efficiency - 100% renewables for electricity and heating - Large designated industrial zones with generous tax incentives - Vast new tourist facilities: theme parks, artificial beaches, skiing, casinos - fully services for education, health and social care with the opportunity to innovate - Might as well make it all weather and cover in a huge poly dome
Instead of faffing around with dozens of investment zones and hundreds of NIMBY challenges everywhere, just go big in one place.
Yep that seems sensible to me. Certainly, the plan we have followed for the last century of simply increasing the size of existing towns and villages has been environmentally and socially disastrous. It has destroyed much precious and endangered habitat and has failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the increased numbers. New towns seems a far more sensible idea.
As I mentioned last week they plan on putting new solar farms on 10,000 acres of farmland in North Lincolnshire. At the same time plans were announced earlier this week for a new reservoir in Lincolnshire covering 4,500 acres to provide water to Cambridge. That is 14,500 acres of land. (which for reference is an area larger than Swindon or Ipswich or Peterborough) The main reason being quoted for putting these facilities in Lincolnshire is that the land is cheaper than elsewhere further south.
So I would suggest some of that land towards the Lincolnshire coast would be well suited to a big new development like you describe.
Why can't they put the solar panels on the reservoir on floats? Geese wouldn't like it but evaporation would be lower.
rcs1000 said: "The medical difficulties are principally that our bodies don't deal well without gravity.
That isn't a (long term) insurmountable problem."
Discussions that I have seen assume the generation ships will spin, so that centrifugal force supplies a substitute fo gravity.
(In the "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition", Ed Regis describes (among many other things) an experiment with putting chickens in a centrifuge that gave them 2.5 times their ordinary weight. The chickens came out healthy and very strong. As I recall, they used chickens because they are bipeds with short life spans.)
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
I agree. It is possible. But it is expensive. Actually, in flood areas it is easier to follow the old traditions. Stone flagged floors, no plaster or paper on walls and all furniture removable to upper storeys. You see this in some towns in the lake district. When the floods arrive you open all the doors and let the water flow through. The trouble is that these houses have now been bought by people who want to put carpets and laminate flooring down and have fitted kitchens.
Also nowadays I imagine you have all sorts of toxic crap floating in and on the water which you didn't before - oil and petrol and nasties of all kinds, to add to the good old-fashioned 100% organic dead doggies and pussies and sheep and sewage.
Edit: wondered if you could seal the stonework, but you know what it's like doing that to something that needs to breathe.
I was in the Sainsbury's garage today waiting to pay, and a bloke ran out with his arms full of stuff he'd swiped off the shelves. This isn't a normal occurence, even in SE14. Society is fraying around the edges. (i didn't chase after him, I am a loyal Sainsbury's shopper but not that loyal).
Seen that a couple of times in ASDA. They've gone from one security guard to three.
Wouldn’t happen at Waitrose. THIS. IS. A. DISGRACE.
No cheese was stolen.
Still, tonnes of crime committed at lesser supermarkets.
Technical term (at least in US) for such loses in market small or super is "shrinkage".
Same in the UK. Shrinkage is the difference at the end of the stock take, between what is actually there and what should be there.
Find a part of the country that’s economically backward, fairly sparsely populated but geographically accessible. Somewhere in Lincolnshire or Norfolk perhaps. And go full on UAE: build one absolutely massive, brand new city.
- excellent multimodal transport links - Housing capacity for a population of at least 1m people - all buildings passive house levels of energy efficiency - 100% renewables for electricity and heating - Large designated industrial zones with generous tax incentives - Vast new tourist facilities: theme parks, artificial beaches, skiing, casinos - fully services for education, health and social care with the opportunity to innovate - Might as well make it all weather and cover in a huge poly dome
Instead of faffing around with dozens of investment zones and hundreds of NIMBY challenges everywhere, just go big in one place.
Yep that seems sensible to me. Certainly, the plan we have followed for the last century of simply increasing the size of existing towns and villages has been environmentally and socially disastrous. It has destroyed much precious and endangered habitat and has failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the increased numbers. New towns seems a far more sensible idea.
As I mentioned last week they plan on putting new solar farms on 10,000 acres of farmland in North Lincolnshire. At the same time plans were announced earlier this week for a new reservoir in Lincolnshire covering 4,500 acres to provide water to Cambridge. That is 14,500 acres of land. (which for reference is an area larger than Swindon or Ipswich or Peterborough) The main reason being quoted for putting these facilities in Lincolnshire is that the land is cheaper than elsewhere further south.
So I would suggest some of that land towards the Lincolnshire coast would be well suited to a big new development like you describe.
Why can't they put the solar panels on the reservoir on floats? Geese wouldn't like it but evaporation would be lower.
This is actually a very popular idea in certain circles, it has already been done near me, Godley reservoir near Hyde, Manchester you can see them on satellite view on Google maps. I know in places like California they use black floating balls to reduce evaporation, so why not make the area extra productive with solar panels.
Found them thanks. They look flat rather than angled to South. Is that right?
Find a part of the country that’s economically backward, fairly sparsely populated but geographically accessible. Somewhere in Lincolnshire or Norfolk perhaps. And go full on UAE: build one absolutely massive, brand new city.
- excellent multimodal transport links - Housing capacity for a population of at least 1m people - all buildings passive house levels of energy efficiency - 100% renewables for electricity and heating - Large designated industrial zones with generous tax incentives - Vast new tourist facilities: theme parks, artificial beaches, skiing, casinos - fully services for education, health and social care with the opportunity to innovate - Might as well make it all weather and cover in a huge poly dome
Instead of faffing around with dozens of investment zones and hundreds of NIMBY challenges everywhere, just go big in one place.
Yep that seems sensible to me. Certainly, the plan we have followed for the last century of simply increasing the size of existing towns and villages has been environmentally and socially disastrous. It has destroyed much precious and endangered habitat and has failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the increased numbers. New towns seems a far more sensible idea.
As I mentioned last week they plan on putting new solar farms on 10,000 acres of farmland in North Lincolnshire. At the same time plans were announced earlier this week for a new reservoir in Lincolnshire covering 4,500 acres to provide water to Cambridge. That is 14,500 acres of land. (which for reference is an area larger than Swindon or Ipswich or Peterborough) The main reason being quoted for putting these facilities in Lincolnshire is that the land is cheaper than elsewhere further south.
So I would suggest some of that land towards the Lincolnshire coast would be well suited to a big new development like you describe.
Why can't they put the solar panels on the reservoir on floats? Geese wouldn't like it but evaporation would be lower.
This is actually a very popular idea in certain circles, it has already been done near me, Godley reservoir near Hyde, Manchester you can see them on satellite view on Google maps. I know in places like California they use black floating balls to reduce evaporation, so why not make the area extra productive with solar panels.
Found them thanks. They look flat rather than angled to South. Is that right?
Intderesting, to stop them straining the anchorages and sailing off like a By-the-wind-sailor [kind of small Portuguoese man o'war]?
"The radiation environment of deep space is very different from that on the Earth's surface, or in low earth orbit, due to the much larger influx of high-energy galactic cosmic rays (GCRs). Like other ionizing radiation, high-energy cosmic rays can damage DNA and increase the risk of cancer, cataracts, and neurological disorders.[15] One known practical solution to this problem is surrounding the crewed parts of the ship with a thick enough shielding such as a thick layer of maintained ice as proposed in The Songs of Distant Earth, a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke (note: in this book the ship's mammoth ice shield is only in the forward part of the ship, preventing micrometeors from damaging the ship during its interstellar journey)." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship
It seems likely to me that the "farming" part of such ships would also be used for shielding.
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.
The medical difficulties are principally that our bodies don't deal well without gravity.
That isn't a (long term) insurmountable problem.
Cosmic rays seem to be much more of an issue. You can sort out gravity with spin, pending inventing AG. No such fix for cosmic rays.
You can screen to some extent, but it takes mass or magnetic fields. Which btw plays a role in a SF novel I have just read about visiting the Jupiter planetary complex.
Our 3 litre dehumidifier is from the below company, though looks like they don't make that size anymore. It's big enough to help dry laundry in a small room, so you would need a larger one for a larger room.
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
I agree. It is possible. But it is expensive. Actually, in flood areas it is easier to follow the old traditions. Stone flagged floors, no plaster or paper on walls and all furniture removable to upper storeys. You see this in some towns in the lake district. When the floods arrive you open all the doors and let the water flow through. The trouble is that these houses have now been bought by people who want to put carpets and laminate flooring down and have fitted kitchens.
This sort of goes back to the whole pre-fab situation (the answer IMHO to a lot of probs) that if there was a set of solutions with equipment made for it and houses, sewage pipes, waterproofed utilities, standardised designs etc etc then you could open up huge areas of land for housing.
I imagine the first oil rig in the North Sea effectively cost a fortune but every one afterwards cost less because you standardise the structure and materials and plant them.
A company that, and maybe an offshoot from the oil rig making industry. Could pre-pack the utilities and the structures married with a Huff-house type company would be able to build huge amounts of housing on otherwise tricky land. Also would create, I hope, lots of jobs in the pre-packed housing industry in the UK. Maybe that’s ridiculous…
Ought we to allow non-residents to buy property in the UK? Can we generally buy property as we wish in their countries?
Or is this what funds our current account deficit?
Very few countries bar foreigners from buying property, but many reserve areas for local housing with planning laws, and tax foreign-owned property, especially by non-residents.
Yes, it’s a big source of foreign capital into the UK which helps enormously with the current account deficit.
Despite what most of us on here may think of the UK and its government, to 90% of the rest of the world, it’s considered a safe haven from their own government, and property rights are well respected.
I'm well aware of that. The reality is that we are a densely populated island (south of Leeds) and land is a fixed resource. Neither do we build the number of houses we actually need. Having a hands off approach to foreign property ownership is just asking for trouble.
Building more houses would solve everything.
And devalue those houses people have bought as an investment. Win/win.
I would agree with that. But it needs to be done sensibly. Not just 'bonfire of regulations.'
Yup. The trouble is, it can't be done sensibly or sustainably or any of that crap. It can only be done by abolishing rural England. That is the lesser of two evils vs condemning the poor to homelessness, but it is a crying shame and one which is not resisted purely to prop up house prices. But you can't do it without a bonfire of regulations.
The vast majority of rural England is not built on. Admittedly some land would not be suitable.
What is the footprint for a good size home and garden. Let's say 400 sq metres.
A million homes would be 400 million sq metres or 400 sq km.
England is 130,000 sq km.
So 0.3% of England's land mass. About the size of Rutland.
Have I missed something?
400 sq metre plot (Even including road space) is humungous by Persimmon/Avant/Barratt's standards. So you'd probably need less area.
I've got about 5 new estates within a few miles of my house even though property values are comparitively cheap here. So houses are being built. In Bassetlaw.
I am musing on building a self build for my retirement, but finding plots here is difficult. Easiest is to buy a derelict house or other building and demolish it, I think.
I have a rather idiosyncratic place in mind. Eco design bungalow with African/Australian style large veranda, internal courtyard, outdoor shower, cellar etc
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
I agree. It is possible. But it is expensive. Actually, in flood areas it is easier to follow the old traditions. Stone flagged floors, no plaster or paper on walls and all furniture removable to upper storeys. You see this in some towns in the lake district. When the floods arrive you open all the doors and let the water flow through. The trouble is that these houses have now been bought by people who want to put carpets and laminate flooring down and have fitted kitchens.
This sort of goes back to the whole pre-fab situation (the answer IMHO to a lot of probs) that if there was a set of solutions with equipment made for it and houses, sewage pipes, waterproofed utilities, standardised designs etc etc then you could open up huge areas of land for housing.
I imagine the first oil rig in the North Sea effectively cost a fortune but every one afterwards cost less because you standardise the structure and materials and plant them.
A company that, and maybe an offshoot from the oil rig making industry. Could pre-pack the utilities and the structures married with a Huff-house type company would be able to build huge amounts of housing on otherwise tricky land. Also would create, I hope, lots of jobs in the pre-packed housing industry in the UK. Maybe that’s ridiculous…
I agree this would be a good way to go (although the oil rig example is a bad comparison because each one is built to unique specifications and become more expensive to deal with more and more extreme environments. Also the early ones had a nasty habit of falling over.) But that doesn't detract from your point.
Pre packed wood framed building is massive in Europe. But again it has had little impact in the UK not least because of building regs.
Happened to catch a story on NHK World a few weeks ago about a Japanese experiment in putting solar panels over parking lots. Done right, you could provide protection from the weather for the cars and drivers, and get some power as a bonus.
Find a part of the country that’s economically backward, fairly sparsely populated but geographically accessible. Somewhere in Lincolnshire or Norfolk perhaps. And go full on UAE: build one absolutely massive, brand new city.
- excellent multimodal transport links - Housing capacity for a population of at least 1m people - all buildings passive house levels of energy efficiency - 100% renewables for electricity and heating - Large designated industrial zones with generous tax incentives - Vast new tourist facilities: theme parks, artificial beaches, skiing, casinos - fully services for education, health and social care with the opportunity to innovate - Might as well make it all weather and cover in a huge poly dome
Instead of faffing around with dozens of investment zones and hundreds of NIMBY challenges everywhere, just go big in one place.
Yep that seems sensible to me. Certainly, the plan we have followed for the last century of simply increasing the size of existing towns and villages has been environmentally and socially disastrous. It has destroyed much precious and endangered habitat and has failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the increased numbers. New towns seems a far more sensible idea.
As I mentioned last week they plan on putting new solar farms on 10,000 acres of farmland in North Lincolnshire. At the same time plans were announced earlier this week for a new reservoir in Lincolnshire covering 4,500 acres to provide water to Cambridge. That is 14,500 acres of land. (which for reference is an area larger than Swindon or Ipswich or Peterborough) The main reason being quoted for putting these facilities in Lincolnshire is that the land is cheaper than elsewhere further south.
So I would suggest some of that land towards the Lincolnshire coast would be well suited to a big new development like you describe.
Why can't they put the solar panels on the reservoir on floats? Geese wouldn't like it but evaporation would be lower.
This is actually a very popular idea in certain circles, it has already been done near me, Godley reservoir near Hyde, Manchester you can see them on satellite view on Google maps. I know in places like California they use black floating balls to reduce evaporation, so why not make the area extra productive with solar panels.
Found them thanks. They look flat rather than angled to South. Is that right?
So they are slightly angled not flat, but not as much as ideally you would want to increase efficiency. However this is done for a reason and that's to reduce then acting like sails, is a balancing act. I read somewhere a while ago United utilities have installed another floating array, smaller installation 1MW compared to Godley's 3.5MW, but have the ability to change the angle depending on conditions.
Happened to catch a story on NHK World a few weeks ago about a Japanese experiment in putting solar panels over parking lots. Done right, you could provide protection from the weather for the cars and drivers, and get some power as a bonus.
If there is a flaw in the idea, I don't see it.
That's very popular in Arizona: pretty much all new parking lots have solar shades.
Boris gave away arms stocks but never got round to ordering replacements. Likewise LizT but to be fair, she's not been in the job long.
I did worry this would happen. Wartime production levels need to be much higher than peacetime levels. It needs government commitment to pay for new production lines.
Happened to catch a story on NHK World a few weeks ago about a Japanese experiment in putting solar panels over parking lots. Done right, you could provide protection from the weather for the cars and drivers, and get some power as a bonus.
If there is a flaw in the idea, I don't see it.
Upfront costs is all I can really think of. As EV become more popular I can see supermarkets looking into it for their parking charge points
I am musing on building a self build for my retirement, but finding plots here is difficult. Easiest is to buy a derelict house or other building and demolish it, I think.
I have a rather idiosyncratic place in mind. Eco design bungalow with African/Australian style large veranda, internal courtyard, outdoor shower, cellar etc
It looks amazing, Foxy. I know a few people who've done self-build, and it's pretty crucial to enjoy the process, as the ones who don't get unbearably frustrated, as there's always one more hold-up and the two-year project turns into four. But if you don't mind that and can afford it, it really does give them a sense of belonging and identity that you don't get if you just move to a random bungalow off Rightmove.
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
I agree. It is possible. But it is expensive. Actually, in flood areas it is easier to follow the old traditions. Stone flagged floors, no plaster or paper on walls and all furniture removable to upper storeys. You see this in some towns in the lake district. When the floods arrive you open all the doors and let the water flow through. The trouble is that these houses have now been bought by people who want to put carpets and laminate flooring down and have fitted kitchens.
This sort of goes back to the whole pre-fab situation (the answer IMHO to a lot of probs) that if there was a set of solutions with equipment made for it and houses, sewage pipes, waterproofed utilities, standardised designs etc etc then you could open up huge areas of land for housing.
I imagine the first oil rig in the North Sea effectively cost a fortune but every one afterwards cost less because you standardise the structure and materials and plant them.
A company that, and maybe an offshoot from the oil rig making industry. Could pre-pack the utilities and the structures married with a Huff-house type company would be able to build huge amounts of housing on otherwise tricky land. Also would create, I hope, lots of jobs in the pre-packed housing industry in the UK. Maybe that’s ridiculous…
I agree this would be a good way to go (although the oil rig example is a bad comparison because each one is built to unique specifications and become more expensive to deal with more and more extreme environments. Also the early ones had a nasty habit of falling over.) But that doesn't detract from your point.
Pre packed wood framed building is massive in Europe. But again it has had little impact in the UK not least because of building regs.
Sorry - I know absolutely fuck all about oil rigs or building frankly!
The point is there are so many intelligent people working in the Uk who - if for example - the govt said “create a solution for this” in the way they did for munitions or inventions firming WW2 then I think great things could happen.
If they stopped controlling and basically let crazy chaps like bBarnes Wallis have a bit of space and a relatively small amount of money try and fail and create them for the price they could create some great things.
Instead of sticking with the things that exist they need to try everything - if it’s good enough with taxes to take a “throw shot at the wall and see what works” approach then really open it up to inventors, mavericks, loons.
(The first b in bBarnes Wallis above is a silent “B”; his father dropped it as he felt it was pretentious).
I was in the Sainsbury's garage today waiting to pay, and a bloke ran out with his arms full of stuff he'd swiped off the shelves. This isn't a normal occurence, even in SE14. Society is fraying around the edges. (i didn't chase after him, I am a loyal Sainsbury's shopper but not that loyal).
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Find a part of the country that’s economically backward, fairly sparsely populated but geographically accessible. Somewhere in Lincolnshire or Norfolk perhaps. And go full on UAE: build one absolutely massive, brand new city.
- excellent multimodal transport links - Housing capacity for a population of at least 1m people - all buildings passive house levels of energy efficiency - 100% renewables for electricity and heating - Large designated industrial zones with generous tax incentives - Vast new tourist facilities: theme parks, artificial beaches, skiing, casinos - fully services for education, health and social care with the opportunity to innovate - Might as well make it all weather and cover in a huge poly dome
Instead of faffing around with dozens of investment zones and hundreds of NIMBY challenges everywhere, just go big in one place.
Yep that seems sensible to me. Certainly, the plan we have followed for the last century of simply increasing the size of existing towns and villages has been environmentally and socially disastrous. It has destroyed much precious and endangered habitat and has failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the increased numbers. New towns seems a far more sensible idea.
As I mentioned last week they plan on putting new solar farms on 10,000 acres of farmland in North Lincolnshire. At the same time plans were announced earlier this week for a new reservoir in Lincolnshire covering 4,500 acres to provide water to Cambridge. That is 14,500 acres of land. (which for reference is an area larger than Swindon or Ipswich or Peterborough) The main reason being quoted for putting these facilities in Lincolnshire is that the land is cheaper than elsewhere further south.
So I would suggest some of that land towards the Lincolnshire coast would be well suited to a big new development like you describe.
Why can't they put the solar panels on the reservoir on floats? Geese wouldn't like it but evaporation would be lower.
This is actually a very popular idea in certain circles, it has already been done near me, Godley reservoir near Hyde, Manchester you can see them on satellite view on Google maps. I know in places like California they use black floating balls to reduce evaporation, so why not make the area extra productive with solar panels.
Found them thanks. They look flat rather than angled to South. Is that right?
So they are slightly angled not flat, but not as much as ideally you would want to increase efficiency. However this is done for a reason and that's to reduce then acting like sails, is a balancing act. I read somewhere a while ago United utilities have installed another floating array, smaller installation 1MW compared to Godley's 3.5MW, but have the ability to change the angle depending on conditions.
Floatovoltaic I think it’s called. Would be a no brainer for the highly evaporative lake Nasser.
I am musing on building a self build for my retirement, but finding plots here is difficult. Easiest is to buy a derelict house or other building and demolish it, I think.
I have a rather idiosyncratic place in mind. Eco design bungalow with African/Australian style large veranda, internal courtyard, outdoor shower, cellar etc
It looks amazing, Foxy. I know a few people who've done self-build, and it's pretty crucial to enjoy the process, as the ones who don't get unbearably frustrated, as there's always one more hold-up and the two-year project turns into four. But if you don't mind that and can afford it, it really does give them a sense of belonging and identity that you don't get if you just move to a random bungalow off Rightmove.
I rather took to this style of living when in Africa, and Australia and Mrs Foxy loves the style too.
I would plan some weatherproofing for the verandah. Can't completely rely on global warming!
Happened to catch a story on NHK World a few weeks ago about a Japanese experiment in putting solar panels over parking lots. Done right, you could provide protection from the weather for the cars and drivers, and get some power as a bonus.
If there is a flaw in the idea, I don't see it.
That's very popular in Arizona: pretty much all new parking lots have solar shades.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1573365018808451072 Trump endorsed congressional candidate JR Majewski today says that the reason why there is no record of him serving in combat in Afghanistan in his service record is because it is “classified.”
It was nothing spectacular. But he served. He spent a couple months loading planes in Qatar. They don't make movies about Air Force logistics guys, but he served. That's more than a lot of people did.
Of course, those riding around in Government limos don't have to worry about the cost of filling their tanks up.
The biggest problem is the Fed being too aggressive in raising rates causing the dollar to rise against every other currency.
The US has a considerably bigger deficit than the UK, but the Fed is jacking up rates by 0.75% a go while the BoE aren't.
Indeed. Many people discussing the fall in the pound and of the London stock market, as a stick with which to beat the UK government, are missing the international picture. The issue is the strong dollar, against pretty much every other currency at the moment, caused mostly by the over-eagerness of the Fed to raise rates.
The Americans are pursuing 'beggar thy neighbour' economical policies as they always have. We can't keep following them, so we should stay the course. If a dollar ends up worth 6 pounds, so be it.
How much do the Kremlin pay you?
Nah, not @Luckyguy1983. He may be an idiot but he's not a 'useful idiot' ;-)
Thanks. Strictly useless idiot here.
“Strictly useless idiot” is going to be the next BBC Saturday night extravaganza where they get journalists together, like a cross between the apprentice and mastermind, and ask them to solve basic maths questions and send them outside of London to test their understanding of the general population.
Nobody would bet against Peston winning by a mile.
I am musing on building a self build for my retirement, but finding plots here is difficult. Easiest is to buy a derelict house or other building and demolish it, I think.
I have a rather idiosyncratic place in mind. Eco design bungalow with African/Australian style large veranda, internal courtyard, outdoor shower, cellar etc
That's very elegant, I would be lost there. My house is a workshop---electronic, mechanical and research---with the rigid proviso that no fuel powered engines can cross the threshold. Small wonder that my partner lives elsewhere.
Off topic, but important: Fiona, having damaged Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas, is now attacking eastern Canada: "One of the strongest storms ever to hit Canada slammed into Nova Scotia’s coastline early Saturday, leaving most of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island without power.
Former hurricane Fiona made landfall early Saturday over Guysborough county on the northeast corner of mainland Nova Scotia, Canada’s weather service said. There were maximum sustained winds of almost 81 mph, while peak gusts of over 100 mph were detected, it added." source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/24/hurricane-fiona-nova-scotia-canada/
There are similar problems in Newfoundland.
When I wrote about it here, earlier this week, I mentioned this possibility, but said I expected it to weaken significantly before it hit Canada. That's what usually happens as hurricanes go north, but I was wrong this time.
So far there are no deaths reported, and I hope that continues ot be true, for our good neighbors to the north.
It must have made the Nova Scotians of Scots ancestry feel quite homesick.
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
I agree. It is possible. But it is expensive. Actually, in flood areas it is easier to follow the old traditions. Stone flagged floors, no plaster or paper on walls and all furniture removable to upper storeys. You see this in some towns in the lake district. When the floods arrive you open all the doors and let the water flow through. The trouble is that these houses have now been bought by people who want to put carpets and laminate flooring down and have fitted kitchens.
This sort of goes back to the whole pre-fab situation (the answer IMHO to a lot of probs) that if there was a set of solutions with equipment made for it and houses, sewage pipes, waterproofed utilities, standardised designs etc etc then you could open up huge areas of land for housing.
I imagine the first oil rig in the North Sea effectively cost a fortune but every one afterwards cost less because you standardise the structure and materials and plant them.
A company that, and maybe an offshoot from the oil rig making industry. Could pre-pack the utilities and the structures married with a Huff-house type company would be able to build huge amounts of housing on otherwise tricky land. Also would create, I hope, lots of jobs in the pre-packed housing industry in the UK. Maybe that’s ridiculous…
I agree this would be a good way to go (although the oil rig example is a bad comparison because each one is built to unique specifications and become more expensive to deal with more and more extreme environments. Also the early ones had a nasty habit of falling over.) But that doesn't detract from your point.
Pre packed wood framed building is massive in Europe. But again it has had little impact in the UK not least because of building regs.
Sorry - I know absolutely fuck all about oil rigs or building frankly!
The point is there are so many intelligent people working in the Uk who - if for example - the govt said “create a solution for this” in the way they did for munitions or inventions firming WW2 then I think great things could happen.
If they stopped controlling and basically let crazy chaps like bBarnes Wallis have a bit of space and a relatively small amount of money try and fail and create them for the price they could create some great things.
Instead of sticking with the things that exist they need to try everything - if it’s good enough with taxes to take a “throw shot at the wall and see what works” approach then really open it up to inventors, mavericks, loons.
(The first b in bBarnes Wallis above is a silent “B”; his father dropped it as he felt it was pretentious).
His dad was a very self effacing man. Someone with less bounce, is not something you would eder see.
Ought we to allow non-residents to buy property in the UK? Can we generally buy property as we wish in their countries?
Or is this what funds our current account deficit?
Very few countries bar foreigners from buying property, but many reserve areas for local housing with planning laws, and tax foreign-owned property, especially by non-residents.
Yes, it’s a big source of foreign capital into the UK which helps enormously with the current account deficit.
Despite what most of us on here may think of the UK and its government, to 90% of the rest of the world, it’s considered a safe haven from their own government, and property rights are well respected.
I'm well aware of that. The reality is that we are a densely populated island (south of Leeds) and land is a fixed resource. Neither do we build the number of houses we actually need. Having a hands off approach to foreign property ownership is just asking for trouble.
Building more houses would solve everything.
And devalue those houses people have bought as an investment. Win/win.
I would agree with that. But it needs to be done sensibly. Not just 'bonfire of regulations.'
Yup. The trouble is, it can't be done sensibly or sustainably or any of that crap. It can only be done by abolishing rural England. That is the lesser of two evils vs condemning the poor to homelessness, but it is a crying shame and one which is not resisted purely to prop up house prices. But you can't do it without a bonfire of regulations.
The vast majority of rural England is not built on. Admittedly some land would not be suitable.
What is the footprint for a good size home and garden. Let's say 400 sq metres.
A million homes would be 400 million sq metres or 400 sq km.
England is 130,000 sq km.
So 0.3% of England's land mass. About the size of Rutland.
Have I missed something?
Infrastructure
Roads
Flood plains
Highlands
None of which should be linked to an individual home, except maybe that most people building an individual home for themselves would choose to avoid flood plains because it'll be harder to get insurance on a flood plain.
If they build on a flood plain and an insurer is prepared to insure them, then that's their responsibility.
Ignoring the fact that the act of building on flood plains pushes the floods further downstream and floods other houses which were previously safe. Yet again you display remarkable ignorance for the reason for planning regulations. Something that is increasingly becoming a hallmark of your postings.
Not really, since as I said if a zone needs to be kept free due to environmental risks then with a sensible zoning system you zone that plain as not suitable for development.
I never said build anywhere, I said build on zones where development is acceptable. If development is unacceptable there, it should be zoned that way, then its not a problem that its not developed.
The problem with our system, as we discussed the other day, is that unlike nations like Belgium and Netherlands with zonal development systems whereby its easy to build a new home in approved zones so most people self-build, in this country the planning system is so messed up that only developers navigate it.
Are you simply digging a deeper hole for yourself or are you digging a comprehensive drainage system?
Has Truss actually been very clever in appointing a Chancellor whose name lends itself to puns and witticisms - Kwasinomics, Kamikwasi etc - so that people won't be linking these economic policies to her personally?
Not much help if it's raining outside or you don't want to lose all your expensive heating to the neighborhood.
I think that may be wrong.
One council, may have been Bournemouth, recommended opening windows for a short period to keep your house warm, in addition to the more usual removing condensation.
Idea was that a change of air in winter pretty much always brought in dryer air than indoor air full of all that breathing, showering, gas hob use etc. and the easier job of bringing dry air up to temperature would more than compensate 20 minutes of heat loss.
That would include in a rainstorm - water saturated air at 5 degrees would still carry less water than somewhat humid indoor air at 18 degrees.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
I've got round to this very late but, after reviewing all 600+ of The Queen's charities, I've decided to donate to the following - one's that speak to both me and her, and I am pleased to support:
GOSH hospital
Girl Guides
National Churches Trust
Royal Historical Society
Royal Forestry Society
I may pick a military benevolent fund as well, probably for engineers, but for now these are my civilian choices.
Let's have a shout out for the Sandringham Estate Cottage Horticultural Society, just as worthy of support.
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.
Is "drying rack" what posh people call a clothes horse?
The best place to hang wet clothes if you cannot afford to run radiators is on a clothes horse in front of a coal fire or an open oven door. You will be using the gas oven for heating anyway if you haven't got a coal fire or if you can only afford to heat one room, in which case it should be the kitchen for obvious reasons.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Ought we to allow non-residents to buy property in the UK? Can we generally buy property as we wish in their countries?
Or is this what funds our current account deficit?
Very few countries bar foreigners from buying property, but many reserve areas for local housing with planning laws, and tax foreign-owned property, especially by non-residents.
Yes, it’s a big source of foreign capital into the UK which helps enormously with the current account deficit.
Despite what most of us on here may think of the UK and its government, to 90% of the rest of the world, it’s considered a safe haven from their own government, and property rights are well respected.
I'm well aware of that. The reality is that we are a densely populated island (south of Leeds) and land is a fixed resource. Neither do we build the number of houses we actually need. Having a hands off approach to foreign property ownership is just asking for trouble.
Building more houses would solve everything.
And devalue those houses people have bought as an investment. Win/win.
I would agree with that. But it needs to be done sensibly. Not just 'bonfire of regulations.'
Yup. The trouble is, it can't be done sensibly or sustainably or any of that crap. It can only be done by abolishing rural England. That is the lesser of two evils vs condemning the poor to homelessness, but it is a crying shame and one which is not resisted purely to prop up house prices. But you can't do it without a bonfire of regulations.
The vast majority of rural England is not built on. Admittedly some land would not be suitable.
What is the footprint for a good size home and garden. Let's say 400 sq metres.
A million homes would be 400 million sq metres or 400 sq km.
England is 130,000 sq km.
So 0.3% of England's land mass. About the size of Rutland.
Have I missed something?
Infrastructure
Roads
Flood plains
Highlands
None of which should be linked to an individual home, except maybe that most people building an individual home for themselves would choose to avoid flood plains because it'll be harder to get insurance on a flood plain.
If they build on a flood plain and an insurer is prepared to insure them, then that's their responsibility.
Ignoring the fact that the act of building on flood plains pushes the floods further downstream and floods other houses which were previously safe. Yet again you display remarkable ignorance for the reason for planning regulations. Something that is increasingly becoming a hallmark of your postings.
Not really, since as I said if a zone needs to be kept free due to environmental risks then with a sensible zoning system you zone that plain as not suitable for development.
I never said build anywhere, I said build on zones where development is acceptable. If development is unacceptable there, it should be zoned that way, then its not a problem that its not developed.
The problem with our system, as we discussed the other day, is that unlike nations like Belgium and Netherlands with zonal development systems whereby its easy to build a new home in approved zones so most people self-build, in this country the planning system is so messed up that only developers navigate it.
Nope. As someone who has been involved in 3 separate self build projects going back over 50 years or more (the first was my dad building his own house in 1970) I can assure you that planning permission is not the issue. The massive issue is building regs which become ever more labyrinthine and unsuited to small scale home building.
As I said the other day, the default position of planning decisions is to permit. Indeed we already zone for development in this country - it is called the local plan. The problem is that as soon as that land is zoned for development the big companies buy it up and sit on it.
One change we could make (and should) is to return to the practice of 30 years ago or more whereby the developer had to pay the specific costs of developing the infrastructure - schools, doctors etc. This no longer happens as the law now allows them to make a smaller up front payment to the local council who then spend that money and don't build the infrastructure.
There are many things wrong with our housebuilding system but planning is not the big one. Stop the developers sitting on vast tracts of land with planning permission for years and that will make a big difference.
To follow on from this posting on the issue of self build.
The three biggest factors preventing the growth of self build in the UK (apart from the fact there is not much of a tradition of it at the moment)
1. Lack of land being made available exclusively for self building rather than developers. In Holland the local authority pays for all the infrastructure to be put in place (roads, sewerage, etc) prior to selling the plots and the costs are recouped through the cost of buying the plot. These estates are exclusively for the self builder. No developers allowed. 2. Most institutions won't lend to self builders. All three projects I have been involved with needed a complex arrangement of bridging loans and raising private funds or remortgaging an existing property to be able to pay for the self build. 3. Building regs which become more complex by the year. The only way the most recent project I was involved with was able to proceed was because the local building inspector was a decent bloke who put in many extra hours outside of his normal workload helping the owner understand and navigate the regulations.
Fairliered jnr. is in the early stages of a self build. Planners, contractors, etc. have all been helpful. Lenders, considerably less so. BTW he is in @RochdalePioneers territory.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Dredge the river.
Terrible advice.
Why, out of interest?
Say a flood is 5 x river capacity. you can't really hope to dredge a river to 2 x what it was undredged. therefore you are stressing the river infrastructure (embankments, banks, bridges, everything) by doubling the load on it (probably a square or cube thing actually so x 4 or x 8) and only slightly ameliorating the flood problem.
Back from a lovely long holiday - has anything of note happened in the last few weeks?
Leon went to Portugal and Spain and posted some pictures. He also got banned for posting AI images, but he's back on both counts now, so quite eventful really.
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.
Is "drying rack" what posh people call a clothes horse?
The best place to hang wet clothes if you cannot afford to run radiators is on a clothes horse in front of a coal fire or an open oven door. You will be using the gas oven for heating anyway if you haven't got a coal fire or if you can only afford to heat one room, in which case it should be the kitchen for obvious reasons.
And the gas oven should
a) run off bottled gas, not mains gas, and
b) not require electricity to be lit, with the same applying to the rings and to the grill if it's got one - in other words you should be able to light it with a match.
It's possible to trust that the oligarchs and the Tory government will prioritise keeping the national grid functioning properly and maintaining the supply of mains gas, but only a fool would be so credulous.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Dredge the river.
Don’t be daft! Dead ducks are more important than dead humans.
They've fallen into the cunning trap designed to decimate their support among the ultra-high earners,
Though a few seats with ultra high earners like Cities of London and Westminster and Kensington are Labour target seats at the next general election
I rather suspect a lot of +£150K earners are actually wondering why the hell they have been handed a few grand they don't need at this particualr time.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Dredge the river.
Terrible advice.
Why, out of interest?
Say a flood is 5 x river capacity. you can't really hope to dredge a river to 2 x what it was undredged. therefore you are stressing the river infrastructure (embankments, banks, bridges, everything) by doubling the load on it (probably a square or cube thing actually so x 4 or x 8) and only slightly ameliorating the flood problem.
You can stress the load on infrastructure by having floods where they are, as well. A load of five times capacity in one place is worse than a doubled stress everywhere, if maintenance is done properly (appreciate that's quite an 'if'). It's all about trade offs.
However, from what you're saying it wouldn't help much. Flood plains are part of the infrastructure in itself, designed to swallow excess water, and building on them is an exceptionally stupid idea. Have people forgotten Lynmouth?
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Dredge the river.
Don’t be daft! Dead ducks are more important than dead humans.
Well, I can see why Truss would think that after the last two days...personal interest and all that.
Not much help if it's raining outside or you don't want to lose all your expensive heating to the neighborhood.
I think that may be wrong.
One council, may have been Bournemouth, recommended opening windows for a short period to keep your house warm, in addition to the more usual removing condensation.
Idea was that a change of air in winter pretty much always brought in dryer air than indoor air full of all that breathing, showering, gas hob use etc. and the easier job of bringing dry air up to temperature would more than compensate 20 minutes of heat loss.
That would include in a rainstorm - water saturated air at 5 degrees would still carry less water than somewhat humid indoor air at 18 degrees.
Easy to do in Bournemouth. Most of the residents predate central heating and double glazing.
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.
Is "drying rack" what posh people call a clothes horse?
The best place to hang wet clothes if you cannot afford to run radiators is on a clothes horse in front of a coal fire or an open oven door. You will be using the gas oven for heating anyway if you haven't got a coal fire or if you can only afford to heat one room, in which case it should be the kitchen for obvious reasons.
Ah Dynamo. Good to see you back. I had a revelation today that you were either Seamus Milne or Alan Quartley. - don’t care either way but think I get it now.
They've fallen into the cunning trap designed to decimate their support among the ultra-high earners,
Though a few seats with ultra high earners like Cities of London and Westminster and Kensington are Labour target seats at the next general election
I rather suspect a lot of +£150K earners are actually wondering why the hell they have been handed a few grand they don't need at this particualr time.
Yes, I know a few (one is in fact a very highly-paid banker), and without exception they think it embarrassing and quite ridiculous.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Dredge the river.
Terrible advice.
Why, out of interest?
Say a flood is 5 x river capacity. you can't really hope to dredge a river to 2 x what it was undredged. therefore you are stressing the river infrastructure (embankments, banks, bridges, everything) by doubling the load on it (probably a square or cube thing actually so x 4 or x 8) and only slightly ameliorating the flood problem.
You can stress the load on infrastructure by having floods where they are, as well. A load of five times capacity in one place is worse than a doubled stress everywhere, if maintenance is done properly (appreciate that's quite an 'if'). It's all about trade offs.
However, from what you're saying it wouldn't help much. Flood plains are part of the infrastructure in itself, designed to swallow excess water, and building on them is an exceptionally stupid idea. Have people forgotten Lynmouth?
You have answered your own question. A flood plain just gets wet and then drains, a bridge washes away. Therefore better to stress the flood plain because there's nothing to break there, unless an arse has built a house on it, which is purely his problem.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Dredge the river.
Don’t be daft! Dead ducks are more important than dead humans.
An entirely rubbish point, where do dead ducks come in to it?
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.
#1,005,315?
I must have sold a copy!
Hahaha. Full marks.
Earlier today I mentioned the RSPB having come out against Truss's latest bonfire of regulation, and said there were only two organisations that you'd want to keep more on side for the traditional Tory vote: the National Trust and the RNLI.
Guess what? The National Trust has just endorsed the RSPB's statement. They have a membership of 5.3 million. Most of them, I guess, were Tory voters.
No, now they’re “the woke National Trust” for their exhibits about slavery like “the woke RNLI” who pick up migrants in boats.
RSPB just the latest national treasure to find itself on the opposite side of the Tory culture war, though the woke label is harder to stick on them. NIMBY is more likely (and to be fair birdwatchers have not historically been averse to a bit of nimbyism).
Reading that thread it absolutely sounds like NIMBYism to me.
If Truss tells the NIMBYs to go to hell then she'll be a legend in my eyes. 👍
Lizzie "no sun farms on sheep farms and let's pump house prices by fucking with stamp duty" Truss?
If you looked for two seconds at her utterances and actions your hard on for her would detumesce like a birthday balloon attacked with a chainsaw.
Wasn't she against 'stalinist' housing targets? Doesn't sound like someone trying to make planning in general easier.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Dredge the river.
Terrible advice.
Why, out of interest?
Say a flood is 5 x river capacity. you can't really hope to dredge a river to 2 x what it was undredged. therefore you are stressing the river infrastructure (embankments, banks, bridges, everything) by doubling the load on it (probably a square or cube thing actually so x 4 or x 8) and only slightly ameliorating the flood problem.
You can stress the load on infrastructure by having floods where they are, as well. A load of five times capacity in one place is worse than a doubled stress everywhere, if maintenance is done properly (appreciate that's quite an 'if'). It's all about trade offs.
However, from what you're saying it wouldn't help much. Flood plains are part of the infrastructure in itself, designed to swallow excess water, and building on them is an exceptionally stupid idea. Have people forgotten Lynmouth?
You have answered your own question. A flood plain just gets wet and then drains, a bridge washes away. Therefore better to stress the flood plain because there's nothing to break there, unless an arse has built a house on it, which is purely his problem.
Yes, but you do actually want it to drain, and dredging can help with that. Otherwise you get blockages which can cause worse problems (as indeed happened in Lynmouth).
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.
Is "drying rack" what posh people call a clothes horse?
The best place to hang wet clothes if you cannot afford to run radiators is on a clothes horse in front of a coal fire or an open oven door. You will be using the gas oven for heating anyway if you haven't got a coal fire or if you can only afford to heat one room, in which case it should be the kitchen for obvious reasons.
Other way round, actually. Anything with horse in it is posh.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
A lot of land that does flood semi regularly can actually be very well mitigated such that housing there is not a particular concern.
But developers do still push their luck on that aspect, and some still gets through which shouldn't in that regard.
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.
#1,005,315?
I must have sold a copy!
Hahaha. Full marks.
Earlier today I mentioned the RSPB having come out against Truss's latest bonfire of regulation, and said there were only two organisations that you'd want to keep more on side for the traditional Tory vote: the National Trust and the RNLI.
Guess what? The National Trust has just endorsed the RSPB's statement. They have a membership of 5.3 million. Most of them, I guess, were Tory voters.
No, now they’re “the woke National Trust” for their exhibits about slavery like “the woke RNLI” who pick up migrants in boats.
RSPB just the latest national treasure to find itself on the opposite side of the Tory culture war, though the woke label is harder to stick on them. NIMBY is more likely (and to be fair birdwatchers have not historically been averse to a bit of nimbyism).
Have you seen what hapless birdies do to to support interloper cukoos? Naive libtard suckers, the RSPB must condemn!
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.
Is "drying rack" what posh people call a clothes horse?
The best place to hang wet clothes if you cannot afford to run radiators is on a clothes horse in front of a coal fire or an open oven door. You will be using the gas oven for heating anyway if you haven't got a coal fire or if you can only afford to heat one room, in which case it should be the kitchen for obvious reasons.
Other way round, actually. Anything with horse in it is posh.
They've fallen into the cunning trap designed to decimate their support among the ultra-high earners,
Though a few seats with ultra high earners like Cities of London and Westminster and Kensington are Labour target seats at the next general election
Lose the RedWall regain Mayfair?
Lose the Redwall but regain Mayfair and Chesham and Amersham and hold Surrey seems to be the Truss and Kwarteng strategy
Let’s see their planning ‘reforms’ first. Johnson was forced to withdraw his under the weight of protests from Tory councillors in Surrey and other areas. If Truss and Simon Clarke are seen as the developers’ friends with local democracy by-passed, expect a further wipe out in May’s local elections and beyond.
There's a new development outside Launceston called Kensey Valley Meadow, the Kensey being a river. Floods like fuck, and there is a sewage works in the floodplain.
Dredge the river.
Terrible advice.
Why, out of interest?
Say a flood is 5 x river capacity. you can't really hope to dredge a river to 2 x what it was undredged. therefore you are stressing the river infrastructure (embankments, banks, bridges, everything) by doubling the load on it (probably a square or cube thing actually so x 4 or x 8) and only slightly ameliorating the flood problem.
You can stress the load on infrastructure by having floods where they are, as well. A load of five times capacity in one place is worse than a doubled stress everywhere, if maintenance is done properly (appreciate that's quite an 'if'). It's all about trade offs.
However, from what you're saying it wouldn't help much. Flood plains are part of the infrastructure in itself, designed to swallow excess water, and building on them is an exceptionally stupid idea. Have people forgotten Lynmouth?
You have answered your own question. A flood plain just gets wet and then drains, a bridge washes away. Therefore better to stress the flood plain because there's nothing to break there, unless an arse has built a house on it, which is purely his problem.
Yes, but you do actually want it to drain, and dredging can help with that. Otherwise you get blockages which can cause worse problems (as indeed happened in Lynmouth).
The Lynmouth blockages seem to have been trees and boulders dislodged by the flood itself. Drdging would not have helped with that.
They've fallen into the cunning trap designed to decimate their support among the ultra-high earners,
Though a few seats with ultra high earners like Cities of London and Westminster and Kensington are Labour target seats at the next general election
Lose the RedWall regain Mayfair?
Lose the Redwall but regain Mayfair and Chesham and Amersham and hold Surrey seems to be the Truss and Kwarteng strategy
Let’s see their planning ‘reforms’ first. Johnson was forced to withdraw his under the weight of protests from Tory councillors in Surrey and other areas. If Truss and Simon Clarke are seen as the developers’ friends with local democracy by-passed, expect a further wipe out in May’s local elections and beyond.
Certainly if those development plans encroach too much on the greenbelt yes
Forgive me for being an absolute idiot but in floodplains why don’t they build houses on stilts and give everyone a fan-boat?
Apparently there are parts of the world people live in that are quite waterlogged and they cope.
Most of those places don't worry about things like sewerage systems. Not sure it is a model we should be following.
Ok - but there are enough bright people surely to design housing areas where the sewerage is buried and the houses are raised - if you live in an area that gets massively flooded I’m assuming the worst thing is that all your possessions, the electrics etc get buggered by the flooding.
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
I agree. It is possible. But it is expensive. Actually, in flood areas it is easier to follow the old traditions. Stone flagged floors, no plaster or paper on walls and all furniture removable to upper storeys. You see this in some towns in the lake district. When the floods arrive you open all the doors and let the water flow through. The trouble is that these houses have now been bought by people who want to put carpets and laminate flooring down and have fitted kitchens.
This sort of goes back to the whole pre-fab situation (the answer IMHO to a lot of probs) that if there was a set of solutions with equipment made for it and houses, sewage pipes, waterproofed utilities, standardised designs etc etc then you could open up huge areas of land for housing.
I imagine the first oil rig in the North Sea effectively cost a fortune but every one afterwards cost less because you standardise the structure and materials and plant them.
A company that, and maybe an offshoot from the oil rig making industry. Could pre-pack the utilities and the structures married with a Huff-house type company would be able to build huge amounts of housing on otherwise tricky land. Also would create, I hope, lots of jobs in the pre-packed housing industry in the UK. Maybe that’s ridiculous…
I agree this would be a good way to go (although the oil rig example is a bad comparison because each one is built to unique specifications and become more expensive to deal with more and more extreme environments. Also the early ones had a nasty habit of falling over.) But that doesn't detract from your point.
Pre packed wood framed building is massive in Europe. But again it has had little impact in the UK not least because of building regs.
Sorry - I know absolutely fuck all about oil rigs or building frankly!
The point is there are so many intelligent people working in the Uk who - if for example - the govt said “create a solution for this” in the way they did for munitions or inventions firming WW2 then I think great things could happen.
If they stopped controlling and basically let crazy chaps like bBarnes Wallis have a bit of space and a relatively small amount of money try and fail and create them for the price they could create some great things.
Instead of sticking with the things that exist they need to try everything - if it’s good enough with taxes to take a “throw shot at the wall and see what works” approach then really open it up to inventors, mavericks, loons.
(The first b in bBarnes Wallis above is a silent “B”; his father dropped it as he felt it was pretentious).
This wont happen simple reason being everyone likes to moan and vote down everything.
Like earlier I proposed clawback for pensioners and was castigated because pensioners are poor even though it would only really hit the well off pensioners. Chided by the same sort of people who are here day after day going bloody pensioners hoarding all the money and robbing the young
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.
Is "drying rack" what posh people call a clothes horse?
The best place to hang wet clothes if you cannot afford to run radiators is on a clothes horse in front of a coal fire or an open oven door. You will be using the gas oven for heating anyway if you haven't got a coal fire or if you can only afford to heat one room, in which case it should be the kitchen for obvious reasons.
Other way round, actually. Anything with horse in it is posh.
Best thing is a Dutch dryer. We use it all the time
Comments
Arms industry yet to ramp up production despite Ukraine's need for weapons
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/09/24/britain-runs-low-ammo-ukraine-bombards-kremlin-forces/ (£££)
Boris gave away arms stocks but never got round to ordering replacements. Likewise LizT but to be fair, she's not been in the job long.
That isn't a (long term) insurmountable problem.
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8514795,-3.3902935,3a,27.1y,133.17h,86.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szmuyT0XvA3J54SC9yxMJRA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Former hurricane Fiona made landfall early Saturday over Guysborough county on the northeast corner of mainland Nova Scotia, Canada’s weather service said. There were maximum sustained winds of almost 81 mph, while peak gusts of over 100 mph were detected, it added."
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/24/hurricane-fiona-nova-scotia-canada/
There are similar problems in Newfoundland.
When I wrote about it here, earlier this week, I mentioned this possibility, but said I expected it to weaken significantly before it hit Canada. That's what usually happens as hurricanes go north, but I was wrong this time.
So far there are no deaths reported, and I hope that continues ot be true, for our good neighbors to the north.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/shortcuts/2015/aug/04/new-cold-war-why-women-chilly-at-work-air-conditioning
If you have a house on stilts then the horrors are at least massively reduced to your possessions.
With all the technology and experience in the world surely it’s not above engineers and architects to design buildings and infrastructure that mitigates against the worst of flooding and frees up land rather than just saying “it’s a bit difficult so let’s not bother”?
Just to Edit, Richard I believe you work in the oil industry - people didn’t just say “shot the oil is under the sea bed” they worked out how to make pipes and tubes and drills and platforms to get to it - you of all people could work out how to build such areas?
https://www.thenational.scot/news/14859658.how-floating-dutch-homes-simply-rise-with-the-floodwater/
The three biggest factors preventing the growth of self build in the UK (apart from the fact there is not much of a tradition of it at the moment)
1. Lack of land being made available exclusively for self building rather than developers. In Holland the local authority pays for all the infrastructure to be put in place (roads, sewerage, etc) prior to selling the plots and the costs are recouped through the cost of buying the plot. These estates are exclusively for the self builder. No developers allowed.
2. Most institutions won't lend to self builders. All three projects I have been involved with needed a complex arrangement of bridging loans and raising private funds or remortgaging an existing property to be able to pay for the self build.
3. Building regs which become more complex by the year. The only way the most recent project I was involved with was able to proceed was because the local building inspector was a decent bloke who put in many extra hours outside of his normal workload helping the owner understand and navigate the regulations.
- GOSH hospital
- Girl Guides
- National Churches Trust
- Royal Historical Society
- Royal Forestry Society
I may pick a military benevolent fund as well, probably for engineers, but for now these are my civilian choices.Sorry, wasn’t making a judgement but making a pun with first pair of words.
That isn't a (long term) insurmountable problem."
Discussions that I have seen assume the generation ships will spin, so that centrifugal force supplies a substitute fo gravity.
(In the "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition", Ed Regis describes (among many other things) an experiment with putting chickens in a centrifuge that gave them 2.5 times their ordinary weight. The chickens came out healthy and very strong. As I recall, they used chickens because they are bipeds with short life spans.)
Edit: wondered if you could seal the stonework, but you know what it's like doing that to something that needs to breathe.
https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/comment/225246/kwasinomics-are-easily-explained-hes-bet-the-whole-of-britain-on-red-at-the-roulette-table
(Paywall can be rather trivially sidestepped by loading “reader” mode)
I might just forward to my (tory) MP. He spent 2015-20 furiously retweeting Dan Hodges. Might just have an effect.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship
It seems likely to me that the "farming" part of such ships would also be used for shielding.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-Aphrodite-S-J-Morden/dp/1473228581
https://probreeze.com/product-category/dehumidifiers/
The NYT reviews are normally worth looking at.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-dehumidifier/
As are Which.
https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/dehumidifiers/article/how-to-buy-the-best-dehumidifier-ay5gu4q77WQN
This sort of goes back to the whole pre-fab situation (the answer IMHO to a lot of probs) that if there was a set of solutions with equipment made for it and houses, sewage pipes, waterproofed utilities, standardised designs etc etc then you could open up huge areas of land for housing.
I imagine the first oil rig in the North Sea effectively cost a fortune but every one afterwards cost less because you standardise the structure and materials and plant them.
A company that, and maybe an offshoot from the oil rig making industry. Could pre-pack the utilities and the structures married with a Huff-house type company would be able to build huge amounts of housing on otherwise tricky land. Also would create, I hope, lots of jobs in the pre-packed housing industry in the UK. Maybe that’s ridiculous…
I've got about 5 new estates within a few miles of my house even though property values are comparitively cheap here. So houses are being built. In Bassetlaw.
I have a rather idiosyncratic place in mind. Eco design bungalow with African/Australian style large veranda, internal courtyard, outdoor shower, cellar etc
Like this, but on a smaller scale.
https://www.houzz.com.au/photos/south-african-farmhouse-country-verandah-amsterdam-phvw-vp~1177672
Pre packed wood framed building is massive in Europe. But again it has had little impact in the UK not least because of building regs.
If there is a flaw in the idea, I don't see it.
The point is there are so many intelligent people working in the Uk who - if for example - the govt said “create a solution for this” in the way they did for munitions or inventions firming WW2 then I think great things could happen.
If they stopped controlling and basically let crazy chaps like bBarnes Wallis have a bit of space and a relatively small amount of
money try and fail and create them for the price they could create some great things.
Instead of sticking with the things that exist they need to try everything - if it’s good enough with taxes to take a “throw shot at the wall and see what works” approach then really open it up to inventors, mavericks, loons.
(The first b in bBarnes Wallis above is a silent “B”; his father dropped it as he felt it was pretentious).
I would plan some weatherproofing for the verandah. Can't completely rely on global warming!
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1573365018808451072
Trump endorsed congressional candidate JR Majewski today says that the reason why there is no record of him serving in combat in Afghanistan in his service record is because it is “classified.”
https://twitter.com/Stonekettle/status/1573422579502702607
Thing about this guy: he served.
It was nothing spectacular. But he served. He spent a couple months loading planes in Qatar. They don't make movies about Air Force logistics guys, but he served. That's more than a lot of people did.
He could have ran on that record…
A live look at the economy…
https://twitter.com/caroljsroth/status/1547246036523048962
One council, may have been Bournemouth, recommended opening windows for a short period to keep your house warm, in addition to the more usual removing condensation.
Idea was that a change of air in winter pretty much always brought in dryer air than indoor air full of all that breathing, showering, gas hob use etc. and the easier job of bringing dry air up to temperature would more than compensate 20 minutes of heat loss.
That would include in a rainstorm - water saturated air at 5 degrees would still carry less water than somewhat humid indoor air at 18 degrees.
https://twitter.com/KarlTurnerMP/status/1573593107366559747?s=20&t=0ELUvCsWnnPprW8iqRaavA
The best place to hang wet clothes if you cannot afford to run radiators is on a clothes horse in front of a coal fire or an open oven door. You will be using the gas oven for heating anyway if you haven't got a coal fire or if you can only afford to heat one room, in which case it should be the kitchen for obvious reasons.
a) run off bottled gas, not mains gas, and
b) not require electricity to be lit, with the same applying to the rings and to the grill if it's got one - in other words you should be able to light it with a match.
It's possible to trust that the oligarchs and the Tory government will prioritise keeping the national grid functioning properly and maintaining the supply of mains gas, but only a fool would be so credulous.
However, from what you're saying it wouldn't help much. Flood plains are part of the infrastructure in itself, designed to swallow excess water, and building on them is an exceptionally stupid idea. Have people forgotten Lynmouth?
Took some night shots of Media City on Wednesday. Not sure if this image will come out OK on PB, but FWIW:
But developers do still push their luck on that aspect, and some still gets through which shouldn't in that regard.
Like earlier I proposed clawback for pensioners and was castigated because pensioners are poor even though it would only really hit the well off pensioners. Chided by the same sort of people who are here day after day going bloody pensioners hoarding all the money and robbing the young
https://twitter.com/gabriel_pogrund/status/1573720354555678720?s=46&t=wZTjBKjF_ZcDF3fTIQ7L6A
Opinium very cleverly leaving out 'reduce taxes and retain current levels of public spending'