The only point in Truss Braverman (other than shitting the bed on the economy) is tackling this. Numbers are doubling year on year, soon it will be in the hundreds of thousands at this rate. A proper invasion
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
This will come as a shock to PB-ers, but I have a very bad feeling about the Ukraine War
And I believe we need a negotiated peace, because the risk of nuclear war is too great
But just saying that without suggesting how doesn't get us very far
Maybe something like this
In some highly public place, the G7 leaders get together and offer peace terms to Putin along these lines
1. An immediate ceasefire 2. Both sides withdraw military to pre-Feb 2022 lines 3. Sanctions are progressively dropped over the ensuing two years, pipelines reopened (but EU countries can obviously decide if they still want to rely on Russian energy, I doubt they will) 4. Refugees return to Ukraine 5. UN organised referendums are held in the four provinces on whether they wish to be part of Ukraine or Russia 6. Ukraine will join NATO but will agree not to station nukes on Uke soil 7. The world will recognise Russian possession of Crimea 8. The G20 will create a fund to rebuild Ukraine AND Russian infrastructure damaged in the war (eg Kerch Bridge) 9. Aaaand..... everyone relax
Ukraine refers you to the answer famously given in “Arkell v Pressdram”. by their former ambassador to Germany, to Elon Musk last week.
So the government are prioritizing food security over energy security.
I suppose the point is you can build a nuclear plant or a wind farm and it doesn't take up any agricultural space, but turning our farmland into energy generating land isn't necessarily the best use of it if we believe imported food supplies may be disrupted.
What does it take up then?
I'm not in favour of this ban, but they (Wind, nuclear) do take up less footprint than solar per MW of capability. The main thing with power is that we've got to be careful not to fight the last war. Gas prices through LNG expansion driven by US/Europe/Asia arbitrage should fall in the coming years.
Since these farms are taking up potentially valuable agricultural land I'd propose reduction factors on these installations such that if the grid is saturated with renewable energy then payouts per kwh are reduced. Banning them is not correct.
But it isn't zero sum. You build a nuclear plant, you can't also grow on the land, whereas solar you can still grow some crops within the same space.
Sizewell C is 915 acres for 3.2 GW plated capacity 3.2 GW plated capacity from solar would require 16,000 acres.
UK nuclear capacity factor is around 60%, whereas solar is 10% - so you'd need 96,000 acres to effectively replicate sizewell C. That does make sense since uranium is quite energy err dense and sunlight less so.
Now you might be able to farm on that land but it can't produce as much yield as un-solar farmed land.
It doesn't on it's own kill the argument for solar but it's a simple fact that nuclear power is a far more efficient use of land for power generation than solar.
But the acreage for solar can still be multiuse is a way that nuclear plants can't be. A mixed method of agriculture, energy generation and even some wilderness is the future:
I seem to recall that someone was proposing putting solar on land around a nuclear power station. Typically they sit in a vast prairie of grass - mostly for security. Which doesn’t get much use.
I’m doubtful a final peace deal can be done in Ukraine. The interests of the two parties are too opposed right now.
What is more likely is an uneasy ceasefire leaving the territories in question either side of a line of control with periodic skirmishes and provocations, similar to India/Pakistan.
A stalemate where Russia holds on to Crimea is unstable. Ukraine would hold the water supply to it.
After the invasion of Crimea a second conflict was inevitable because Crimea is an implausible place for the line to be drawn, which is why we have spent years training the Ukrainian army.
Now either we support Ukraine to liberate Crimea and end the war, or we'll be looking at a third conflict after this one because the line will still be toxic and unstable.
With the Russian military weak and defeated, and Ukraine soon to liberate Kherson and control the water supply into Crimea, now is the time to get the Russians out of Crimea and end this war once and for all.
Very plausible arguments, but of course Russia has successfully held onto Crimea for 8 years - whilst this has caused problems and helped lead us down the path to the current situation, if I were to predict any outcome of this conflict (rather than my own preferred outcome) it would be that we will be seeing a ceasefire with Russia either fully or almost-fully withdrawn from its 2022 incursions, but with Crimea still in Russian hands.
I have no doubt the Ukrainians want to force Russia out of Crimea and I believe that Russia should leave Crimea, but I suspect that there will be not be a neat resolution to this conflict.
Well of course Russia has held onto Crimea for eight years because there's been no further fighting in those eight years, and Ukraine wasn't going to start a conflict in that time.
But having had one started on them, and when they're winning it and liberating their lost territory, why would they agree to stop at liberating all but Crimea, leaving an unstable situation that will see them at loggerheads with Russia again in the future? Why not press the advantage to end this war now, while they can?
If Russia withdraws from Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, then Ukraine joins NATO, this is over. We have stable borders returned to their pre-war point, and the conflict can slowly be put behind us. Any stalemate will just drag the war on and be a thorn in the side that keeps an ongoing risk of new fighting and more nuclear threats but with Russia having had time to regroup and retrain and reequip their forces.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
'Libertarian' Liz is a bit of an enigma isn't she? We now have the government micro-managing land use to maximize crop yields. It's positively Stalinesque.
Here's a plausible theory:
Literally and alarmingly, it seems to come down to what's locally contentious in South West Norfolk. Don't have any shale themselves; so elsewhere can be fracked no problem.
Everything makes a lot more sense if she thinks the whole electorate is basically South West Norfolk...
So the government are prioritizing food security over energy security.
I suppose the point is you can build a nuclear plant or a wind farm and it doesn't take up any agricultural space, but turning our farmland into energy generating land isn't necessarily the best use of it if we believe imported food supplies may be disrupted.
What does it take up then?
I'm not in favour of this ban, but they (Wind, nuclear) do take up less footprint than solar per MW of capability. The main thing with power is that we've got to be careful not to fight the last war. Gas prices through LNG expansion driven by US/Europe/Asia arbitrage should fall in the coming years.
Since these farms are taking up potentially valuable agricultural land I'd propose reduction factors on these installations such that if the grid is saturated with renewable energy then payouts per kwh are reduced. Banning them is not correct.
But it isn't zero sum. You build a nuclear plant, you can't also grow on the land, whereas solar you can still grow some crops within the same space.
Sizewell C is 915 acres for 3.2 GW plated capacity 3.2 GW plated capacity from solar would require 16,000 acres.
UK nuclear capacity factor is around 60%, whereas solar is 10% - so you'd need 96,000 acres to effectively replicate sizewell C. That does make sense since uranium is quite energy err dense and sunlight less so.
Now you might be able to farm on that land but it can't produce as much yield as un-solar farmed land.
It doesn't on it's own kill the argument for solar but it's a simple fact that nuclear power is a far more efficient use of land for power generation than solar.
But the acreage for solar can still be multiuse is a way that nuclear plants can't be. A mixed method of agriculture, energy generation and even some wilderness is the future:
I seem to recall that someone was proposing putting solar on land around a nuclear power station. Typically they sit in a vast prairie of grass - mostly for security. Which doesn’t get much use.
I do try to be fair, but very little coming from the government prompts me to reassess my view that Truss is dangerously stupid. Boris was never fit to be PM, but incredibly Truss may well turn out to be even worse, which is not something I would have considered to be remotely likely just a few months ago.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
The only point in Truss Braverman (other than shitting the bed on the economy) is tackling this. Numbers are doubling year on year, soon it will be in the hundreds of thousands at this rate. A proper invasion
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
Scenes
I remember when @rcs1000 told us this was just a function of airport closures during Covid and it would all go away after that as people sought out easier and regular asylum routes.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
This is a distressingly accurate essay on ugly British urbanism
He doesn’t really answer the question posed in the title, though.
Essentially, in the high modern period, planners prioritised cars and cheap utility over people.
That’s changed, but only a bit.
And there’s no concept of beauty whatsoever, indeed the idea is frowned upon as bourgeois decadence.
Years ago, went to planning meeting. A chap wanted to convert a house in an estate outside Abingdon into a corner shop. The son, who was training as an architect had done some nice touches, I thought.
One expert was sulphurous about them not using “proper” roller shutters. To make it less ugly, the son had come up with the idea of using folding window shutters which looked fairly domestic - but executed in painted steel. The expert on planning denounced this in rather weird pseudo-Marxist verbiage. Apparently he believed that shops have to look aggressively modern as a moral issue.
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
On topic, this Government have to be the shitest libertarians ever. Don't want to be looking over people's shoulders to see how many BOGOF ready-meals Chantal's feeding the kids, fair enough, but old Mr MacGregor better not fucking dare think of turning his vegetable patch into a solar farm on his own land.
I suspect the new health minister’s embarrassment at having to front the obesity campaign was the greater consideration, anyway
The only point in Truss Braverman (other than shitting the bed on the economy) is tackling this. Numbers are doubling year on year, soon it will be in the hundreds of thousands at this rate. A proper invasion
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
Scenes
I remember when @rcs1000 told us this was just a function of airport closures during Covid and it would all go away after that as people sought out easier and regular asylum routes.
The mental contortions liberals will undertake, so as to deny what is staring them in the face, if they can remain comfortably virtuous, are extraordinary
Hi, sorry to bother you but this is one of my occasional postings. Some of you may recall the first in my Ukraine War series (see [1]). The sequel - yes, "Ukraine War II" - depicted the Russian invasion as if it was in the UK instead of Ukraine, depicting events in recognisable British locations transposed from their UKR equivalents. I can't speak for the quality of the writing but (except for one flourish referring to an incident in "Red Storm Rising") it was my best efforts at getting the areas and events right
It was written up and sent to OGH and his sons in August and was accepted. Unfortunately the election of Truss and the death of the Monarch put it on the backburner and the recent Ukraine advances make it out of date.
To prevent it being lost, I am making it available to you via this posting. If you want a copy of the Word document, and its accompanying concordance explaining the references, let me know and I'll PM you a copy.
This is the last of these reminders. I will host a Q&A on Tuesday 11th 7-8pm BST to discuss it if anybody wants to.
So many people wanting to flee France to live in the UK.
It is quite clear that France can’t look after refugees properly. All the charities say that it is against the human rights of the refugees to be forced to stay there.
France is therefore a failed state. They even have oil. Do I have to draw a picture, children?
The only point in Truss Braverman (other than shitting the bed on the economy) is tackling this. Numbers are doubling year on year, soon it will be in the hundreds of thousands at this rate. A proper invasion
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
Scenes
I remember when @rcs1000 told us this was just a function of airport closures during Covid and it would all go away after that as people sought out easier and regular asylum routes.
The mental contortions liberals will undertake, so as to deny what is staring them in the face, if they can remain comfortably virtuous, are extraordinary
A bit like you doing contortions to avoid seeing a way for Putin to lose the war.
You have been so driven mad by "woke" that Putin to you is not someone who can possibly be defeated.
I’m doubtful a final peace deal can be done in Ukraine. The interests of the two parties are too opposed right now.
What is more likely is an uneasy ceasefire leaving the territories in question either side of a line of control with periodic skirmishes and provocations, similar to India/Pakistan.
A stalemate where Russia holds on to Crimea is unstable. Ukraine would hold the water supply to it.
After the invasion of Crimea a second conflict was inevitable because Crimea is an implausible place for the line to be drawn, which is why we have spent years training the Ukrainian army.
Now either we support Ukraine to liberate Crimea and end the war, or we'll be looking at a third conflict after this one because the line will still be toxic and unstable.
With the Russian military weak and defeated, and Ukraine soon to liberate Kherson and control the water supply into Crimea, now is the time to get the Russians out of Crimea and end this war once and for all.
Very plausible arguments, but of course Russia has successfully held onto Crimea for 8 years - whilst this has caused problems and helped lead us down the path to the current situation, if I were to predict any outcome of this conflict (rather than my own preferred outcome) it would be that we will be seeing a ceasefire with Russia either fully or almost-fully withdrawn from its 2022 incursions, but with Crimea still in Russian hands.
I have no doubt the Ukrainians want to force Russia out of Crimea and I believe that Russia should leave Crimea, but I suspect that there will be not be a neat resolution to this conflict.
Well of course Russia has held onto Crimea for eight years because there's been no further fighting in those eight years, and Ukraine wasn't going to start a conflict in that time.
But having had one started on them, and when they're winning it and liberating their lost territory, why would they agree to stop at liberating all but Crimea, leaving an unstable situation that will see them at loggerheads with Russia again in the future? Why not press the advantage to end this war now, while they can?
If Russia withdraws from Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, then Ukraine joins NATO, this is over. We have stable borders returned to their pre-war point, and the conflict can slowly be put behind us. Any stalemate will just drag the war on and be a thorn in the side that keeps an ongoing risk of new fighting and more nuclear threats but with Russia having had time to regroup and retrain and reequip their forces.
Interesting that Erdogan has told Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
This will come as a shock to PB-ers, but I have a very bad feeling about the Ukraine War
And I believe we need a negotiated peace, because the risk of nuclear war is too great
But just saying that without suggesting how doesn't get us very far
Maybe something like this
In some highly public place, the G7 leaders get together and offer peace terms to Putin along these lines
1. An immediate ceasefire 2. Both sides withdraw military to pre-Feb 2022 lines 3. Sanctions are progressively dropped over the ensuing two years, pipelines reopened (but EU countries can obviously decide if they still want to rely on Russian energy, I doubt they will) 4. Refugees return to Ukraine 5. UN organised referendums are held in the four provinces on whether they wish to be part of Ukraine or Russia 6. Ukraine will join NATO but will agree not to station nukes on Uke soil 7. The world will recognise Russian possession of Crimea 8. The G20 will create a fund to rebuild Ukraine AND Russian infrastructure damaged in the war (eg Kerch Bridge) 9. Aaaand..... everyone relax
That's essentially what Dynamo proposed, before Elon got wind of it and repeated it.
We can assume the territories vote to stay in Russia. So as for the nuke-free thing we can even achieve some symmetry: no nukes in Ukraine; no nukes in the Russian territories, except Crimea and Sevastopol. Russia is a Black Sea naval power after all. Crimea doesn't even border Ukraine.
Best if Ukraine stays out of NATO. Ditto Sweden and Finland.
The no nukes requirement can be made stronger in both areas: reduce militarisation more than that.
And on 5 and 7, if the UN is organising referendum reruns then the veto powers at least can recognise sovereignty according to the results. Suggest China as the best principal monitoring power. Bear in mind that a majority of the veto powers are in NATO and have been arming Ukraine.
You realise the Azov Regiment won't like this? Something has to be done about the Azov Regiment.
That has got to be the most unconvincing lie since Vladimir Putin said he wasn't a war criminal.
I agree about the Azov Regiment. How about they and their fellow neo-Nazis in the Wagner regiment are trapped on an uninhabited island together? Any survivors after twelve months to be given amnesty and a new life in Kazakhstan.
I meant we can assume it for the sake of this discussion. I am in favour of genuinely fair internationally-monitored referendum reruns, where everyone from the territories can vote however they like, without fear of experiencing any kind of hassle for how they've voted. As I understand it, so are the other supporters of Dynamo's plan such as those whose names are anagrams of ELNO.
Whatever the referendum result in each territory, it may turn out that the borders of the four territories have to be adjusted here and there in order to give residents what they want and to maximise security and minimise the chance of clashes. It will be a fantastic step forward if that is the kind of thing people are arguing about rather than killing each other.
No we can't. Because it would not happen. Let's make assumptions based on realism not on the fantasies of Nazis like Vladimir Putin or everyone's favourite demented anti-Semite Dynamo.
There is at least a reasonable - as in, around one in three - chance that a democratic referendum in the Crimea would vote to join with Russia. It's about the same as the odds of Northern Ireland voting to join Ireland, and for much the same reason.
But any of the others? Forget it. It's about the same chance as Yorkshire voting to join an independent Scotland.
After a period of neural administration and immigration, let the Crimeans decide if they want to to part of the country facing $1trn of international aid, or the country facing $1trn of international sanctions?
The only point in Truss Braverman (other than shitting the bed on the economy) is tackling this. Numbers are doubling year on year, soon it will be in the hundreds of thousands at this rate. A proper invasion
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
Scenes
I remember when @rcs1000 told us this was just a function of airport closures during Covid and it would all go away after that as people sought out easier and regular asylum routes.
The mental contortions liberals will undertake, so as to deny what is staring them in the face, if they can remain comfortably virtuous, are extraordinary
How is this a problem of "liberals"? The reason that there are boats is because our government have essentially refused to allow safe and legal routes into asking for asylum. If they allowed that, instead of one community opposite Calais becoming political football, we could process and house people across the country, distributing the resources needed to support people.
People come here for many reasons - maybe they know how to speak English or were educated in a system similar to ours and so it makes the most sense to come here; maybe they have family or community already here and therefore a support network who would be able to look after them if only they could connect with them; maybe they value things the British state supposedly stands for.
An untruthful line in there, interesting that the BBC have chosen to include it: Many migrants come from some of the poorest and most chaotic parts of the world
In reality, 100% of them come from France. Which you might be able to make a case for being chaotic, but not poorest...
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
I know what you mean. Some parts of it have an uncanny valley feeling, almost
There's a great line in that piece where an architect describes the fire station as "the Parthenon meets Brookside". That's brilliant. But I would bet a million quid that sneering architect is not building new towns as desirable as Poundbury, and that's the issue
It's flawed, but Poundbury works, and our aesthetic quibbles are trivial. Build 1000 Poundburys
So, in the last 24 hours or so we have seen Kwarteng bring forward his budget statement by the best part of a month to reassure the markets and allow the publication of a full OBR report; we have Truss backing off on the question of index linking benefits and we continue tp have positive noises about the NI protocol.
The catastrophically misjudged mini-budget did look terminal but is it just possible that this government might behave a bit more rationally going forward and avoid at least some of the obvious pitfalls?
The big fear is how badly the react to new events.
I suspect the increase mortgage costs is what has doomed this government.
Yup. Sky currently running with the average 2 year fix hitting something like 6%
Nope. I don’t think those under 50s with mortgages voted Tory 2019 to the volume ratio the poorer than them did - if you voted Labour or Lib Dem last time, you are not a switcher from Tories now are you? It’s the Brexit loving, Boris loving poor who have moved these polls, by all means show me the stats to prove I’m wrong.
There aren't nearly enough low income Leavers switching sides to account for the dramatic collapse in the Tories' position. A repeat of the property panic of the early Nineties - mortgage rate spikes, price crashes, repossessions, negative equity - is going to kick aspirational lower middle income homeowners right in the bollocks. Add to that a general sense of complete incompetence that's beginning to erode Tory support across all social groups, even the elderly, and you can understand why they're in such a deep hole. But mortgage cost increases certainly are very important.
You are spinning it a bit, bringing in “General sense of complete incompetence” losing voters right across the social spectrum, which I totally agree with you about - but your central point I do disagree with, if someone with a mortgage feels absolutely shafted and screamingly pissed about it, but didn’t vote Tory last time, there’s no way they can kick the Tories by switching their vote from them.
Since Brexit there’s been a bit of a Hokey Cokey in Tory’s voting Labour in 2017, staying at home 2019, lifelong Labour voters going for Boris in 2019, great swathes of some of the poorest in UK, working poor in two jobs and on UC credit and using foodbanks, voting Tory in 2019, because they love the politics of Brexit, levelling up, trade deals and growth.
But there’s no point arguing over you or I have the larger group Truss has lost, the answer will be there in the polling - I think Mori record this very well, and their monthly is imminent.
"The blast and fire sent part of the 12-mile Kerch Strait Bridge tumbling into the sea and killed at least three people, according to the Russian authorities. A senior Ukrainian official corroborated Russian reports that Ukraine was behind the attack. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, added that Ukraine’s intelligence services had orchestrated the explosion, using a bomb loaded onto a TRUCK being driven across the bridge."
This will come as a shock to PB-ers, but I have a very bad feeling about the Ukraine War
And I believe we need a negotiated peace, because the risk of nuclear war is too great
But just saying that without suggesting how doesn't get us very far
Maybe something like this
In some highly public place, the G7 leaders get together and offer peace terms to Putin along these lines
1. An immediate ceasefire 2. Both sides withdraw military to pre-Feb 2022 lines 3. Sanctions are progressively dropped over the ensuing two years, pipelines reopened (but EU countries can obviously decide if they still want to rely on Russian energy, I doubt they will) 4. Refugees return to Ukraine 5. UN organised referendums are held in the four provinces on whether they wish to be part of Ukraine or Russia 6. Ukraine will join NATO but will agree not to station nukes on Uke soil 7. The world will recognise Russian possession of Crimea 8. The G20 will create a fund to rebuild Ukraine AND Russian infrastructure damaged in the war (eg Kerch Bridge) 9. Aaaand..... everyone relax
That's essentially what Dynamo proposed, before Elon got wind of it and repeated it.
We can assume the territories vote to stay in Russia. So as for the nuke-free thing we can even achieve some symmetry: no nukes in Ukraine; no nukes in the Russian territories, except Crimea and Sevastopol. Russia is a Black Sea naval power after all. Crimea doesn't even border Ukraine.
Best if Ukraine stays out of NATO. Ditto Sweden and Finland.
The no nukes requirement can be made stronger in both areas: reduce militarisation more than that.
And on 5 and 7, if the UN is organising referendum reruns then the veto powers at least can recognise sovereignty according to the results. Suggest China as the best principal monitoring power. Bear in mind that a majority of the veto powers are in NATO and have been arming Ukraine.
You realise the Azov Regiment won't like this? Something has to be done about the Azov Regiment.
That has got to be the most unconvincing lie since Vladimir Putin said he wasn't a war criminal.
I agree about the Azov Regiment. How about they and their fellow neo-Nazis in the Wagner regiment are trapped on an uninhabited island together? Any survivors after twelve months to be given amnesty and a new life in Kazakhstan.
I meant we can assume it for the sake of this discussion. I am in favour of genuinely fair internationally-monitored referendum reruns, where everyone from the territories can vote however they like, without fear of experiencing any kind of hassle for how they've voted. As I understand it, so are the other supporters of Dynamo's plan such as those whose names are anagrams of ELNO.
Whatever the referendum result in each territory, it may turn out that the borders of the four territories have to be adjusted here and there in order to give residents what they want and to maximise security and minimise the chance of clashes. It will be a fantastic step forward if that is the kind of thing people are arguing about rather than killing each other.
No we can't. Because it would not happen. Let's make assumptions based on realism not on the fantasies of Nazis like Vladimir Putin or everyone's favourite demented anti-Semite Dynamo.
There is at least a reasonable - as in, around one in three - chance that a democratic referendum in the Crimea would vote to join with Russia. It's about the same as the odds of Northern Ireland voting to join Ireland, and for much the same reason.
But any of the others? Forget it. It's about the same chance as Yorkshire voting to join an independent Scotland.
After a period of neural administration and immigration, let the Crimeans decide if they want to to part of the country facing $1trn of international aid, or the country facing $1trn of international sanctions?
No credible referendum can be held in a land that is being occupied by a hostile power. Much of the population that is there has moved there due to the invasion, while people who should be there aren't because they've fled even if they still want their homeland back.
Its like a million HYUFDites invading Scotland with their Essicks Massiv threatening to kill anyone who ever voted SNP, then suggesting a referendum is held where HYUFD can vote as a now-resident "Scot" while Malcolm and TUD can't as they're in exile.
The only point in Truss Braverman (other than shitting the bed on the economy) is tackling this. Numbers are doubling year on year, soon it will be in the hundreds of thousands at this rate. A proper invasion
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
Scenes
I remember when @rcs1000 told us this was just a function of airport closures during Covid and it would all go away after that as people sought out easier and regular asylum routes.
The mental contortions liberals will undertake, so as to deny what is staring them in the face, if they can remain comfortably virtuous, are extraordinary
How is this a problem of "liberals"? The reason that there are boats is because our government have essentially refused to allow safe and legal routes into asking for asylum. If they allowed that, instead of one community opposite Calais becoming political football, we could process and house people across the country, distributing the resources needed to support people.
People come here for many reasons - maybe they know how to speak English or were educated in a system similar to ours and so it makes the most sense to come here; maybe they have family or community already here and therefore a support network who would be able to look after them if only they could connect with them; maybe they value things the British state supposedly stands for.
So, Mr Asylum Seeker, what first attracted you to the most-generous-benefits-system-in-the-world United Kingdom?
The pretence that this is an uneven-distribution problem is liberal contortion at its finest. I don't want to "process" these people - a typical leftie concept - I want them to fuck off for good.
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
"The blast and fire sent part of the 12-mile Kerch Strait Bridge tumbling into the sea and killed at least three people, according to the Russian authorities. A senior Ukrainian official corroborated Russian reports that Ukraine was behind the attack. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, added that Ukraine’s intelligence services had orchestrated the explosion, using a bomb loaded onto a TRUCK being driven across the bridge."
Isn't it actually in everyone's interest to say it is a truck bomb? For Russia that is easier to admit than a special forces operation below the bridge. For Ukraine they don't want to give away their secrets and a simple truck bomb is a reasonable explanation to let everyone keep. Who knows if we will ever find out the truth.
I'm sure it has been pointed out already, but it looks like Truss has dumped the 'growth' vision, and is now just doing anything to please the crowd and try and cling to power. Perhaps it is for the best.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
I know what you mean. Some parts of it have an uncanny valley feeling, almost
There's a great line in that piece where an architect describes the fire station as "the Parthenon meets Brookside". That's brilliant. But I would bet a million quid that sneering architect is not building new towns as desirable as Poundbury, and that's the issue
It's flawed, but Poundbury works, and our aesthetic quibbles are trivial. Build 1000 Poundburys
Also, parts of it are genuinely lovely
That's it - the valley feeling. I first saw it one evening when staying in a nearby B&B and being directed to the pub for dinner - in what turned out to be Poundbury. This is the road I took into the centre of the first developed area (I think). Some of the houses just didn't feel right (the Queen Annes with metric windos for instance) though I didn't see the stables for cars in the dark ... (the end of one is just in this view). But once one realises what is going on, though, that's different ... but Mrs C was sorry at the lack of front flower gardens.
I'm sure it has been pointed out already, but it looks like Truss has dumped the 'growth' vision, and is now just doing anything to please the crowd and try and cling to power. Perhaps it is for the best.
If she has, she'll lose the votes of people like me who liked her growth agenda, while probably still not being trusted by those who already opposed her.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
"The blast and fire sent part of the 12-mile Kerch Strait Bridge tumbling into the sea and killed at least three people, according to the Russian authorities. A senior Ukrainian official corroborated Russian reports that Ukraine was behind the attack. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, added that Ukraine’s intelligence services had orchestrated the explosion, using a bomb loaded onto a TRUCK being driven across the bridge."
Isn't it actually in everyone's interest to say it is a truck bomb? For Russia that is easier to admit than a special forces operation below the bridge. For Ukraine they don't want to give away their secrets and a simple truck bomb is a reasonable explanation to let everyone keep. Who knows if we will ever find out the truth.
Except that there’s a video of the explosion, and it definitely isn’t a truck bomb.
I'm sure it has been pointed out already, but it looks like Truss has dumped the 'growth' vision, and is now just doing anything to please the crowd and try and cling to power. Perhaps it is for the best.
Yes, it is very straightforward. No-to-solar-in-fields unpredictably hit the G spot of the party membership (a pass the sickbag concept) and she thinks that the tory party is the country in miniature or at least the tory vote in 2019 in miniature, and the same trick will work twice.
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender. It's like they are unable to separate morality from practicality.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
"The blast and fire sent part of the 12-mile Kerch Strait Bridge tumbling into the sea and killed at least three people, according to the Russian authorities. A senior Ukrainian official corroborated Russian reports that Ukraine was behind the attack. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, added that Ukraine’s intelligence services had orchestrated the explosion, using a bomb loaded onto a TRUCK being driven across the bridge."
Isn't it actually in everyone's interest to say it is a truck bomb? For Russia that is easier to admit than a special forces operation below the bridge. For Ukraine they don't want to give away their secrets and a simple truck bomb is a reasonable explanation to let everyone keep. Who knows if we will ever find out the truth.
Except that there’s a video of the explosion, and it definitely isn’t a truck bomb.
The explosion videos don't have a high enough frame rate to deduce anything to be perfectly honest, the initial flash saturates the frame.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
I know what you mean. Some parts of it have an uncanny valley feeling, almost
There's a great line in that piece where an architect describes the fire station as "the Parthenon meets Brookside". That's brilliant. But I would bet a million quid that sneering architect is not building new towns as desirable as Poundbury, and that's the issue
It's flawed, but Poundbury works, and our aesthetic quibbles are trivial. Build 1000 Poundburys
Also, parts of it are genuinely lovely
None of the real issues* with Poundbry require binning the idea. Build another one. A better one. Then review and improve on that….
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
"The blast and fire sent part of the 12-mile Kerch Strait Bridge tumbling into the sea and killed at least three people, according to the Russian authorities. A senior Ukrainian official corroborated Russian reports that Ukraine was behind the attack. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, added that Ukraine’s intelligence services had orchestrated the explosion, using a bomb loaded onto a TRUCK being driven across the bridge."
Isn't it actually in everyone's interest to say it is a truck bomb? For Russia that is easier to admit than a special forces operation below the bridge. For Ukraine they don't want to give away their secrets and a simple truck bomb is a reasonable explanation to let everyone keep. Who knows if we will ever find out the truth.
Out of interest, when was the last time a developed nation intentionally launched a suicide attack, like this would be if it were a truck bomb?
The only point in Truss Braverman (other than shitting the bed on the economy) is tackling this. Numbers are doubling year on year, soon it will be in the hundreds of thousands at this rate. A proper invasion
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
Scenes
I remember when @rcs1000 told us this was just a function of airport closures during Covid and it would all go away after that as people sought out easier and regular asylum routes.
The mental contortions liberals will undertake, so as to deny what is staring them in the face, if they can remain comfortably virtuous, are extraordinary
How is this a problem of "liberals"? The reason that there are boats is because our government have essentially refused to allow safe and legal routes into asking for asylum. If they allowed that, instead of one community opposite Calais becoming political football, we could process and house people across the country, distributing the resources needed to support people.
People come here for many reasons - maybe they know how to speak English or were educated in a system similar to ours and so it makes the most sense to come here; maybe they have family or community already here and therefore a support network who would be able to look after them if only they could connect with them; maybe they value things the British state supposedly stands for.
So, Mr Asylum Seeker, what first attracted you to the most-generous-benefits-system-in-the-world United Kingdom?
The pretence that this is an uneven-distribution problem is liberal contortion at its finest. I don't want to "process" these people - a typical leftie concept - I want them to fuck off for good.
Do asylum seekers get the full range of benefits? I thought that was a myth propagated by the BNP/ Richard Littlejohn.
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
"The blast and fire sent part of the 12-mile Kerch Strait Bridge tumbling into the sea and killed at least three people, according to the Russian authorities. A senior Ukrainian official corroborated Russian reports that Ukraine was behind the attack. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, added that Ukraine’s intelligence services had orchestrated the explosion, using a bomb loaded onto a TRUCK being driven across the bridge."
Isn't it actually in everyone's interest to say it is a truck bomb? For Russia that is easier to admit than a special forces operation below the bridge. For Ukraine they don't want to give away their secrets and a simple truck bomb is a reasonable explanation to let everyone keep. Who knows if we will ever find out the truth.
My guess is that more books will be written about the Russo-Ukraine War of 2022-? (or 2014-?) then have been written about the Vietnam War. There are going to be loads of books. Everything will be written about.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
The only point in Truss Braverman (other than shitting the bed on the economy) is tackling this. Numbers are doubling year on year, soon it will be in the hundreds of thousands at this rate. A proper invasion
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
Scenes
I remember when @rcs1000 told us this was just a function of airport closures during Covid and it would all go away after that as people sought out easier and regular asylum routes.
The mental contortions liberals will undertake, so as to deny what is staring them in the face, if they can remain comfortably virtuous, are extraordinary
How is this a problem of "liberals"? The reason that there are boats is because our government have essentially refused to allow safe and legal routes into asking for asylum. If they allowed that, instead of one community opposite Calais becoming political football, we could process and house people across the country, distributing the resources needed to support people.
People come here for many reasons - maybe they know how to speak English or were educated in a system similar to ours and so it makes the most sense to come here; maybe they have family or community already here and therefore a support network who would be able to look after them if only they could connect with them; maybe they value things the British state supposedly stands for.
So, Mr Asylum Seeker, what first attracted you to the most-generous-benefits-system-in-the-world United Kingdom?
The pretence that this is an uneven-distribution problem is liberal contortion at its finest. I don't want to "process" these people - a typical leftie concept - I want them to fuck off for good.
We do not have the most generous benefits system in the world - not for citizens nor for asylum seekers:
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender. It's like they are unable to separate morality from practicality.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
Quite. And, yes, Crimea
That will be his pathetic "prize"
I really hope that someone important in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin - Beijing - is thinking all this through and putting it to Putin. If they are not, it is desolately negligent
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender. It's like they are unable to separate morality from practicality.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
Quite. And, yes, Crimea
That will be his pathetic "prize"
I really hope that someone important in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin - Beijing - is thinking all this through and putting it to Putin. If they are not, it is desolately negligent
Except that Crimea is Ukrainian territory, contains the strategic port of Sevastopol, and the rights to substantial O&G and mineral deposits in the Black Sea.
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
Nowadays the bricks are more often beige than red, but I get the general thrust of the gripe. New build homes are always overpriced, the rooms are usually too small and you run a very real risk that they have been shoddily constructed. I wouldn't touch one with the proverbial bargepole.
I'm sure it has been pointed out already, but it looks like Truss has dumped the 'growth' vision, and is now just doing anything to please the crowd and try and cling to power. Perhaps it is for the best.
If she has, she'll lose the votes of people like me who liked her growth agenda, while probably still not being trusted by those who already opposed her.
The opposition to solar panels shows that we are perhaps back to benign incompetence, which for me at least is a bit of a relief. The solar panels are not a bad idea, neither were its predecessor (onshore wind turbines), but you have to be quite careful about where you put them to avoid decimating the landscape, which we have just spent a hundred years preserving.
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender. It's like they are unable to separate morality from practicality.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
Quite. And, yes, Crimea
That will be his pathetic "prize"
I really hope that someone important in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin - Beijing - is thinking all this through and putting it to Putin. If they are not, it is desolately negligent
Except that Crimea is Ukrainian territory, contains the strategic port of Sevastopol, and the rights to substantial O&G and mineral deposits in the Black Sea.
Well, fuck it. That's reality. Sadly. If we all want to live
I know you have a personal vested interest in Ukraine, and obviously I sympathise: so I will leave it there
So the government are prioritizing food security over energy security.
I suppose the point is you can build a nuclear plant or a wind farm and it doesn't take up any agricultural space, but turning our farmland into energy generating land isn't necessarily the best use of it if we believe imported food supplies may be disrupted.
While you clearly can't grow crops under solar panels, there's no reason at all why they can't be used (albeit at a slightly lower density) on grazing land. Indeed, done right, it probably increases the viability of both.
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender. It's like they are unable to separate morality from practicality.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
Nobody forced Russia into Ukraine, and Ukraine does not threaten the existence of Russia.
If Russia fails in Ukraine any internal ramifications for Putin are on him as the architect of the invasion. If he resorts to nuclear war as the equivalent of a child knocking the game board over because they’re losing, then he is truly unhinged and we can’t prevent him from doing so in future - whatever “peace deal” we try to strike with him.
I remain far from convinced that a peace deal is achievable in the current conflict because both parties have wildly contrasting aims. More likely we will see a cessation of hostilities, with a Russian retreat and the establishment of a heavily militarised border and the risk of future disputes. If we are very lucky Putin could be overthrown by a liberal government who reject the SMO and finally bring the dispute to an end - though I fear that is unlikely for some time.
Good on Sturgeon for calling out Bravermans despicable comments .
You can say what you like about Sturgeon but she’s a great speaker and if Scotland does become independent you’d never feel ashamed of her on the world stage .
Every bit as damaging as the run on the pound isn’t it? The Pensions System is not in good place for this, and plans to borrow quarter of a trillion on government credit card become even more pie in the sky as the cost of borrowing goes up?
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
UK housebuilders are lazy and cheapskates. They want to drop the same design of house on different developments across the country, because it is cheaper. At the same time they are also looking for every possible way to pinch pennies.
I live in a 4 year old new build. It wasn't a cheap house. They used the cheapest baths, work surfaces etc. that they could possibly get away with. They even used plastic chrome-effect edging to put around copper pipes so they wouldn't have to use short sections of real chrome pipes for towel radiators.
The houses are all the same as they can then have the same materials list for the same house wherever it is in the country. We agreed to buy our house when it was still early in construction. We asked for some minor changes. The only thing they would agree to was to install network cabling.
There is no incentive to design houses in the UK that are in keeping with the local community and with well thought out connections and infrastructure.
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
Last thing I did before the first lockdown was go to a talk by Charlie Burrell, who is rewilding a growing portion of Sussex.
He explained in detail how the return on his land has been significantly improved through rewilding.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
Those really aren’t the worst.
We are agreed that sheer ugliness is a problem.
Bad architects is probably not the fundamental issue though.
It’s underfunded and underpowered local government, which means it’s nigh impossible to set any sort of vision for a town - certainly not an aesthetic one.
And a dysfunctional planning system which means the building industry tends to monopoly and favours large scale, cheaply made rabbit hutches in car-dependent cul de sacs.
I'm sure it has been pointed out already, but it looks like Truss has dumped the 'growth' vision, and is now just doing anything to please the crowd and try and cling to power. Perhaps it is for the best.
If she has, she'll lose the votes of people like me who liked her growth agenda, while probably still not being trusted by those who already opposed her.
The opposition to solar panels shows that we are perhaps back to benign incompetence, which for me at least is a bit of a relief. The solar panels are not a bad idea, neither were its predecessor (onshore wind turbines), but you have to be quite careful about where you put them to avoid decimating the landscape, which we have just spent a hundred years preserving.
Trouble is the markets are not heaving a sigh of relief, they are pursuing UK debt and turning this into a rout. Which ends where?
With the ERM debacle there was an endpoint. We fell out of the ERM and equilibrium was restored
How do we restore equilibrium here? I am minded that this is more than just a UK issue, this is systemic doubt on a global scale, and the UK is targeted first simply because our stupid government was first out of the trenches into the bullets
I mentioned this in the previous thread - but it isn't necessarily a zero sum when choosing to use agricultural land for food or solar farming - you can do both:
I know a group in Ireland that is working on tuning LEDs so they just emit the light used by photosynthesis for plants. They - of course - are doing it to minimise the cooling and energy requirements of indoor hydroponics, but the longer term opportunity is for a situation where you would actually be able to provide enough light for crops, restrict evaparation, and export elecrticity.
Good on Sturgeon for calling out Bravermans despicable comments .
You can say what you like about Sturgeon but she’s a great speaker and if Scotland does become independent you’d never feel ashamed of her on the world stage .
Might boost the Tories amongst farmers and in rural areas though
I doubt it. Solar is a good way of utilising relatively unproductive land. Farming is becoming progressively more difficult to make a living from. They should be encouraging diversification not restricting it. As for the person that suggested "rewilding" as an alternative please excuse me I just pissed my pants laughing.
You go for a picnic to the solar farm, I'll go to the nature reserve.
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender. It's like they are unable to separate morality from practicality.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
Quite. And, yes, Crimea
That will be his pathetic "prize"
I really hope that someone important in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin - Beijing - is thinking all this through and putting it to Putin. If they are not, it is desolately negligent
Except that Crimea is Ukrainian territory, contains the strategic port of Sevastopol, and the rights to substantial O&G and mineral deposits in the Black Sea.
And a very lucrative holiday destination.
Well, it was. Those 7km queues at the bridge heading back to Russia won't be returning in a hurry.
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender. It's like they are unable to separate morality from practicality.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
Who is calling for Russia's complete surrender? We're only calling for its defeat in Ukraine. That's not a total defeat for Russia, or for Putin, and so I don't see the point at which nukes would be used.
Even when the last Russian soldier has withdrawn from Ukrainian territory Russia will still have lots to lose by launching nuclear war - all of Russia! Where is this point at which they will think they have nothing left to lose and so might as well use nukes as a last-ditch effort?
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
UK housebuilders are lazy and cheapskates. They want to drop the same design of house on different developments across the country, because it is cheaper. At the same time they are also looking for every possible way to pinch pennies.
I live in a 4 year old new build. It wasn't a cheap house. They used the cheapest baths, work surfaces etc. that they could possibly get away with. They even used plastic chrome-effect edging to put around copper pipes so they wouldn't have to use short sections of real chrome pipes for towel radiators.
The houses are all the same as they can then have the same materials list for the same house wherever it is in the country. We agreed to buy our house when it was still early in construction. We asked for some minor changes. The only thing they would agree to was to install network cabling.
There is no incentive to design houses in the UK that are in keeping with the local community and with well thought out connections and infrastructure.
Yes
I'd like to think Starmer's Labour is on to stuff like this, but depressingly I bet they're not, even though these are obvious ways to make the UK better
Incremental improvements to daily life. Clean the streets. Flowers. Do it
So the government are prioritizing food security over energy security.
I suppose the point is you can build a nuclear plant or a wind farm and it doesn't take up any agricultural space, but turning our farmland into energy generating land isn't necessarily the best use of it if we believe imported food supplies may be disrupted.
While you clearly can't grow crops under solar panels, there's no reason at all why they can't be used (albeit at a slightly lower density) on grazing land. Indeed, done right, it probably increases the viability of both.
Hi. Have been sharing a lot of resources discussing how you clearly can grow crops under solar panels:
It doesn’t make sense to cover productive agricultural land with solar panels.
Bad use of land. And the UK’s latitude isn’t particularly friendly to solar.
Better to cover a chunk of the Sahara with solar and import the power via HVDC.
Surely that's for the market to decide?
And don't forget that energy from the Sahara brings with it risks too: suddenly there is a country from which you import a lot of energy, which might have a revolution, or which might invade a neighbour, or where terrorists could knock out the connection.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
UK housebuilders are lazy and cheapskates. They want to drop the same design of house on different developments across the country, because it is cheaper. At the same time they are also looking for every possible way to pinch pennies.
I live in a 4 year old new build. It wasn't a cheap house. They used the cheapest baths, work surfaces etc. that they could possibly get away with. They even used plastic chrome-effect edging to put around copper pipes so they wouldn't have to use short sections of real chrome pipes for towel radiators.
The houses are all the same as they can then have the same materials list for the same house wherever it is in the country. We agreed to buy our house when it was still early in construction. We asked for some minor changes. The only thing they would agree to was to install network cabling.
There is no incentive to design houses in the UK that are in keeping with the local community and with well thought out connections and infrastructure.
Yes
I'd like to think Starmer's Labour is on to stuff like this, but depressingly I bet they're not, even though these are obvious ways to make the UK better
Incremental improvements to daily life. Clean the streets. Flowers. Do it
Gove had the faintest inkling in his Levelling Up Ministry, but was sacked by Truss.
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender.
Does a demand for withdrawal following one country's invasion of another really amount to calling for "complete surrender"? Pretty ominous for any country bordering a nuclear power, if so.
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
UK housebuilders are lazy and cheapskates. They want to drop the same design of house on different developments across the country, because it is cheaper. At the same time they are also looking for every possible way to pinch pennies.
I live in a 4 year old new build. It wasn't a cheap house. They used the cheapest baths, work surfaces etc. that they could possibly get away with. They even used plastic chrome-effect edging to put around copper pipes so they wouldn't have to use short sections of real chrome pipes for towel radiators.
The houses are all the same as they can then have the same materials list for the same house wherever it is in the country. We agreed to buy our house when it was still early in construction. We asked for some minor changes. The only thing they would agree to was to install network cabling.
There is no incentive to design houses in the UK that are in keeping with the local community and with well thought out connections and infrastructure.
It *was* a cheap house and you have set out why - that you paid a lot is because they made a huge profit. Remember that the proposed shake-up of planning laws will enable Barratt et al to keep building unsuitable cheapo ugly shitboxes for large profits, only this time without having to worry about consent or local democracy.
BTW I bought my own Barratt shitbox in 2005 sold it for a loss in 2021, so I do know how bad some of these are - and the other builder putting up other phases of our huge estate was even worse.
Every bit as damaging as the run on the pound isn’t it? The Pensions System is not in good place for this, and plans to borrow quarter of a trillion on government credit card become even more pie in the sky as the cost of borrowing goes up?
To be very honest with you I am not entirely sure how government borrowing actually works.
For example the borrowing needed to pay for freezing the energy bill cap for next 6 months, this money is raised by selling debt on the market in return for money - if they haven’t sold the debt yet, so sure they actually have buyers for it, how do they continue to pay for the frozen energy cap? Are they only issuing an IOU at this time - or handing over real money in anticipation of selling our debt?
I'm sure it has been pointed out already, but it looks like Truss has dumped the 'growth' vision, and is now just doing anything to please the crowd and try and cling to power. Perhaps it is for the best.
If she has, she'll lose the votes of people like me who liked her growth agenda, while probably still not being trusted by those who already opposed her.
She'll be fucked without both of you! (Apologies, but it was too easy!)
There is a point here, though, that Truss seems to be making a particular effort to systematically alienate not only the traditional Tory coalition but also her own. She seems to be crap at politics, which is frankly bizarre when she's been near the top of it for so long and is the actual Prime Minister.
I'm sure it has been pointed out already, but it looks like Truss has dumped the 'growth' vision, and is now just doing anything to please the crowd and try and cling to power. Perhaps it is for the best.
If she has, she'll lose the votes of people like me who liked her growth agenda, while probably still not being trusted by those who already opposed her.
The opposition to solar panels shows that we are perhaps back to benign incompetence, which for me at least is a bit of a relief. The solar panels are not a bad idea, neither were its predecessor (onshore wind turbines), but you have to be quite careful about where you put them to avoid decimating the landscape, which we have just spent a hundred years preserving.
Trouble is the markets are not heaving a sigh of relief, they are pursuing UK debt and turning this into a rout. Which ends where?
With the ERM debacle there was an endpoint. We fell out of the ERM and equilibrium was restored
How do we restore equilibrium here? I am minded that this is more than just a UK issue, this is systemic doubt on a global scale, and the UK is targeted first simply because our stupid government was first out of the trenches into the bullets
How?
Sack Truss. Replace her and Kwarteng and Philip and the rest of the morons. Implement policies costed and sane.
Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817
These are the nutters who will take this to nukes. Putin is relatively level headed compared to them. They WANT all-out war
Which is one reason we need to find a peace that both sides can reluctantly accept
Bleak
While I find a lot of what you say a bit bonkers, I'm with you on this. I really don't understand how so many otherwise rational posters on this board are apparently able to completely disregard the fact that Russia has a very large number of nuclear weapons while calling for its complete surrender. It's like they are unable to separate morality from practicality.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
Nobody forced Russia into Ukraine, and Ukraine does not threaten the existence of Russia.
If Russia fails in Ukraine any internal ramifications for Putin are on him as the architect of the invasion. If he resorts to nuclear war as the equivalent of a child knocking the game board over because they’re losing, then he is truly unhinged and we can’t prevent him from doing so in future - whatever “peace deal” we try to strike with him.
I remain far from convinced that a peace deal is achievable in the current conflict because both parties have wildly contrasting aims. More likely we will see a cessation of hostilities, with a Russian retreat and the establishment of a heavily militarised border and the risk of future disputes. If we are very lucky Putin could be overthrown by a liberal government who reject the SMO and finally bring the dispute to an end - though I fear that is unlikely for some time.
If PB is anything to go by then Ukraine is entering one of the most dangerous moments since the war began - the moment where Western resolve starts to falter and Putin's nuclear blackmail bears fruit.
I can only hope there are cool heads in Western capitals. We don't want our leaders to be gung-ho and drunk on the excitement of giving Russia a good beating, but we have to hope they haven't all been watching Threads and weeing themselves, because that way lies the next big mistake in a long history of giving Putin just enough to keep his revanchist dreams alive.
The media coverage since Kerch and particularly today - an immediate recoil and almost egging Russia on to threaten nuclear attack - is particularly unhelpful. For months the West has been equipping Ukraine to fight the invaders off their land, and that should remain the focus. For sure make preparations or even overtures on negotiations behind the scenes, but ask the press to stop all this high profile worrying in public which only serves Putin's cause.
Nicola Sturgeon describes Truss government as “another spin on the Tory misery-go-round”, adding: “It took the Tories three long years to realise that Boris Johnson was a disaster. With Liz Truss it took them just three weeks.” https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1579481902779486209
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
UK housebuilders are lazy and cheapskates. They want to drop the same design of house on different developments across the country, because it is cheaper. At the same time they are also looking for every possible way to pinch pennies.
I live in a 4 year old new build. It wasn't a cheap house. They used the cheapest baths, work surfaces etc. that they could possibly get away with. They even used plastic chrome-effect edging to put around copper pipes so they wouldn't have to use short sections of real chrome pipes for towel radiators.
The houses are all the same as they can then have the same materials list for the same house wherever it is in the country. We agreed to buy our house when it was still early in construction. We asked for some minor changes. The only thing they would agree to was to install network cabling.
There is no incentive to design houses in the UK that are in keeping with the local community and with well thought out connections and infrastructure.
It *was* a cheap house and you have set out why - that you paid a lot is because they made a huge profit. Remember that the proposed shake-up of planning laws will enable Barratt et al to keep building unsuitable cheapo ugly shitboxes for large profits, only this time without having to worry about consent or local democracy.
BTW I bought my own Barratt shitbox in 2005 sold it for a loss in 2021, so I do know how bad some of these are - and the other builder putting up other phases of our huge estate was even worse.
Serious question, how on earth did the house lose value in that period of massive house price rises?
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
This is the only idea of theirs that I've instantly thought: Yes, good
There is something ugly about farmland being used in this way. Literally and morally
Why is it worse than using it for building houses?
After all, it's less damaging to the land and considerably more easily reversed.
Moreover, they look prettier than most modern housing developments.
The ugliness of modern UK housing developments is one of the most depressing aspects of a depressing time
All that sludgy red brick, the poxy cul de sacs with their pathetic driveways, the total inability to develop proper European urbanism: shops bars places squares. And we used to be great at this!
Let King Charles design everything
Poundbry is not very good. But it is better than many “expert” designs.
Congratulations to British town planners - more shit at their job than a bloke with no training.
I know little about Poundbury (drove past when I think is a new part being built over the summer, but have never visited). From pictures it seems a little whimsical and a mish-mash architecturally (as is my own village), but the important question is:
Does it work as a settlement? Is it a good, livable community?
Yes, it works
"House prices remain buoyant, and Conibear believes it’s not simply the high standard of building but the “favourability of the environment”. Depending on access to garages and private gardens, two-bedroom apartments and semi-detached homes in Poundbury can start anywhere between £190,000 and £275,000. Many of the three-bedroom detached homes go for somewhere between £325,000 and £400,000."
It does depend on having an established county town - Dorchester - with its facilities as an appendix, rather like Cowley has Oxford as an appendix ... it's not built out in the middle of FA, but is within walking distance of the centre/rail stations, 30 mins or so.
Sure, and it's not perfect, and it is quiet (but the residents presumably like it that way)
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
Not in red brick, but (for some) covered in harling, you know, the stuff you don't like when it is in Scotland. Do you call it rendering or what? Or at least the first part of the project was, though the harling was coming off at least one fairly new house [edit] only a few years on.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
The problem is, you kind of do notice. Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
But, it works
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
UK housebuilders are lazy and cheapskates. They want to drop the same design of house on different developments across the country, because it is cheaper. At the same time they are also looking for every possible way to pinch pennies.
I live in a 4 year old new build. It wasn't a cheap house. They used the cheapest baths, work surfaces etc. that they could possibly get away with. They even used plastic chrome-effect edging to put around copper pipes so they wouldn't have to use short sections of real chrome pipes for towel radiators.
The houses are all the same as they can then have the same materials list for the same house wherever it is in the country. We agreed to buy our house when it was still early in construction. We asked for some minor changes. The only thing they would agree to was to install network cabling.
There is no incentive to design houses in the UK that are in keeping with the local community and with well thought out connections and infrastructure.
It *was* a cheap house and you have set out why - that you paid a lot is because they made a huge profit. Remember that the proposed shake-up of planning laws will enable Barratt et al to keep building unsuitable cheapo ugly shitboxes for large profits, only this time without having to worry about consent or local democracy.
BTW I bought my own Barratt shitbox in 2005 sold it for a loss in 2021, so I do know how bad some of these are - and the other builder putting up other phases of our huge estate was even worse.
Yes, you are correct. It was "cheap" but cost a lot to buy. Fortunately I was one of the few on our road who actually bothered to negotiate with the housebuilder so paid substantially less than others. It amazes me how few people bother to negotiate with the housebuilders and think they ought to pay a premium because it is "new".
Comments
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-a-greasy-spoon-in-west-london-tells-us-about-the-threat-of-nuclear-war
Phrase at the end: "get a wriggle on". I always thought it was "get a wiggle on".
They will be another article soon I'm sure on how solar panels on farmland will be the basis of a peace treaty with Russia.
Yet they are spineless on this as on so much else. But really good at cracking down on cannabis use, or not, who the F knows
Scenes
But having had one started on them, and when they're winning it and liberating their lost territory, why would they agree to stop at liberating all but Crimea, leaving an unstable situation that will see them at loggerheads with Russia again in the future? Why not press the advantage to end this war now, while they can?
If Russia withdraws from Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, then Ukraine joins NATO, this is over. We have stable borders returned to their pre-war point, and the conflict can slowly be put behind us. Any stalemate will just drag the war on and be a thorn in the side that keeps an ongoing risk of new fighting and more nuclear threats but with Russia having had time to regroup and retrain and reequip their forces.
The point is it is 3000% better than much of the crap being thrown up around the UK, which has no regard for aesthetics or urbanism at all. And is all in hideous cheap red brick
https://twitter.com/ironeconomist/status/1579082393411256322?s=61&t=MLQdrrUVSK7s5vQ0V5Uaug
One expert was sulphurous about them not using “proper” roller shutters. To make it less ugly, the son had come up with the idea of using folding window shutters which looked fairly domestic - but executed in painted steel. The expert on planning denounced this in rather weird pseudo-Marxist verbiage. Apparently he believed that shops have to look aggressively modern as a moral issue.
So many people wanting to flee France to live in the UK.
@mrsorokaa
Kyiv is bombarded nonstop. All over town. The city is hit in multiple areas.
This is very scary.
https://twitter.com/mrsorokaa/status/1579359557511700480
It was written up and sent to OGH and his sons in August and was accepted. Unfortunately the election of Truss and the death of the Monarch put it on the backburner and the recent Ukraine advances make it out of date.
To prevent it being lost, I am making it available to you via this posting. If you want a copy of the Word document, and its accompanying concordance explaining the references, let me know and I'll PM you a copy.
This is the last of these reminders. I will host a Q&A on Tuesday 11th 7-8pm BST to discuss it if anybody wants to.
Notes
[1] https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2022/05/02/why-ukraine-was-particularly-vulnerable/
France is therefore a failed state. They even have oil. Do I have to draw a picture, children?
You have been so driven mad by "woke" that Putin to you is not someone who can possibly be defeated.
The thing that makes the skin on my back creep, as I have I think mentioned here befo,e is the use of different building stones from different bands of the Jurassic belt - normally not found together. Which, to me, gives it the same sort of feeling of transplantation into alien contiguity that one also gets (for laudable reasons) at St Fagans Folk Museum or the Weald and Downland Museum.
But that is a quibble. Most wouldn't even notice it.
People come here for many reasons - maybe they know how to speak English or were educated in a system similar to ours and so it makes the most sense to come here; maybe they have family or community already here and therefore a support network who would be able to look after them if only they could connect with them; maybe they value things the British state supposedly stands for.
https://www.unhcr.org/uk/asylum-in-the-uk.html
There's a great line in that piece where an architect describes the fire station as "the Parthenon meets Brookside". That's brilliant. But I would bet a million quid that sneering architect is not building new towns as desirable as Poundbury, and that's the issue
It's flawed, but Poundbury works, and our aesthetic quibbles are trivial. Build 1000 Poundburys
Also, parts of it are genuinely lovely
Since Brexit there’s been a bit of a Hokey Cokey in Tory’s voting Labour in 2017, staying at home 2019, lifelong Labour voters going for Boris in 2019, great swathes of some of the poorest in UK, working poor in two jobs and on UC credit and using foodbanks, voting Tory in 2019, because they love the politics of Brexit, levelling up, trade deals and growth.
But there’s no point arguing over you or I have the larger group Truss has lost, the answer will be there in the polling - I think Mori record this very well, and their monthly is imminent.
"The blast and fire sent part of the 12-mile Kerch Strait Bridge tumbling into the sea and killed at least three people, according to the Russian authorities. A senior Ukrainian official corroborated Russian reports that Ukraine was behind the attack. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, added that Ukraine’s intelligence services had orchestrated the explosion, using a bomb loaded onto a TRUCK being driven across the bridge."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/world/europe/ukraine-crimea-bridge-explosion.html
Its like a million HYUFDites invading Scotland with their Essicks Massiv threatening to kill anyone who ever voted SNP, then suggesting a referendum is held where HYUFD can vote as a now-resident "Scot" while Malcolm and TUD can't as they're in exile.
The pretence that this is an uneven-distribution problem is liberal contortion at its finest. I don't want to "process" these people - a typical leftie concept - I want them to fuck off for good.
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.7119683,-2.4577219,3a,75y,172.45h,80.61t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9YUgL-DwEwvgAZ0fkHMXWA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
This is definitely feeding through
A friend texts: "This is hideously worrying. Day by tortuous day"
Because living in England, you subconsciously soak up “what goes with what”.
Poundbury is an interesting experiment, a success on some measures and a failure on others.
But it is a living experiment, so hopefully it’s failures can be addressed over time.
More successful than Skelmersdale or that Scottish one which essentially need to be completely demolished.
Of course we'd like nothing more than to see Russia defeated, Ukrainian lands returned and Putin dead or imprisoned. That's how the story would end if it were a film. But real life isn't a film, and there is a real risk that the above happy ending will not be the one we get. The alternative scenario is that Russia is indeed defeated, but unleashes nuclear devastation on the world as she goes down. I don't know what the probability of the second scenario is, but it is surely not reduced by insistence on the total defeat of Russia.
The most favourable outcome that I can imagine is one in which a severely weakened Russia is gradually forced to withdraw from most of Ukraine but is a allowed some token victory, e.g. international recognition of Crimea as Russian after a referendum, that Putin can sell domestically as a success. This will hopefully be enough to keep his finger off the button but, as the same time, send the message that Russia will pay a huge price for any future aggression.
*aside from the concept upsetting some people.
https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2022-01-10/farmers-to-be-given-cash-to-rewild-land-in-government-plans-to-restore-habitats
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/country-and-farming/meet-the-first-time-farmer-with-a-dream-to-rewild-his-land-and-bring-back-the-species-the-yorkshire-dales-has-lost-3378559
https://youtu.be/WtwYfcw441I?t=350
If I took 20 large, random yet comparable new developments (including Poundbury) and asked you which one would you live in, almost certainly it would be Poundbury
Look at all these. Poundbury is nicer than all of them
https://gleesonhomes.co.uk/developments/
https://www.redrow.co.uk/
https://www.barratthomes.co.uk/
Soulless boring redbrick mediocrity. At best. Actively horrible at worst
https://care4calais.org/news/is-the-uk-asylum-system-more-generous-than-others/#:~:text=In the UK, the weekly,their claims to be decided.
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-javids-misleading-claim-about-uks-refugee-policy
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/blog/social-benefits-europe-isnt-britain/
https://www.cashfloat.co.uk/blog/money-saving/best-welfare-country/
Up 0.25 percentage points just today.
https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/TVC-GB10Y/
What does this mean?
Mortgage rates up, savings rates up. Pressure on the BoE. Pressure on the govt to balance the books.
Grim times ahead, for many.
That will be his pathetic "prize"
I really hope that someone important in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin - Beijing - is thinking all this through and putting it to Putin. If they are not, it is desolately negligent
I know you have a personal vested interest in Ukraine, and obviously I sympathise: so I will leave it there
If Russia fails in Ukraine any internal ramifications for Putin are on him as the architect of the invasion. If he resorts to nuclear war as the equivalent of a child knocking the game board over because they’re losing, then he is truly unhinged and we can’t prevent him from doing so in future - whatever “peace deal” we try to strike with him.
I remain far from convinced that a peace deal is achievable in the current conflict because both parties have wildly contrasting aims. More likely we will see a cessation of hostilities, with a Russian retreat and the establishment of a heavily militarised border and the risk of future disputes. If we are very lucky Putin could be overthrown by a liberal government who reject the SMO and finally bring the dispute to an end - though I fear that is unlikely for some time.
You can say what you like about Sturgeon but she’s a great speaker and if Scotland does become independent you’d never feel ashamed of her on the world stage .
I live in a 4 year old new build. It wasn't a cheap house. They used the cheapest baths, work surfaces etc. that they could possibly get away with. They even used plastic chrome-effect edging to put around copper pipes so they wouldn't have to use short sections of real chrome pipes for towel radiators.
The houses are all the same as they can then have the same materials list for the same house wherever it is in the country. We agreed to buy our house when it was still early in construction. We asked for some minor changes. The only thing they would agree to was to install network cabling.
There is no incentive to design houses in the UK that are in keeping with the local community and with well thought out connections and infrastructure.
He explained in detail how the return on his land has been significantly improved through rewilding.
So piss away.... Or off.
We are agreed that sheer ugliness is a problem.
Bad architects is probably not the fundamental issue though.
It’s underfunded and underpowered local government, which means it’s nigh impossible to set any sort of vision for a town - certainly not an aesthetic one.
And a dysfunctional planning system which means the building industry tends to monopoly and favours large scale, cheaply made rabbit hutches in car-dependent cul de sacs.
With the ERM debacle there was an endpoint. We fell out of the ERM and equilibrium was restored
How do we restore equilibrium here? I am minded that this is more than just a UK issue, this is systemic doubt on a global scale, and the UK is targeted first simply because our stupid government was first out of the trenches into the bullets
Let's see who has a better time of it.
Well, it was. Those 7km queues at the bridge heading back to Russia won't be returning in a hurry.
Even when the last Russian soldier has withdrawn from Ukrainian territory Russia will still have lots to lose by launching nuclear war - all of Russia! Where is this point at which they will think they have nothing left to lose and so might as well use nukes as a last-ditch effort?
I'd like to think Starmer's Labour is on to stuff like this, but depressingly I bet they're not, even though these are obvious ways to make the UK better
Incremental improvements to daily life. Clean the streets. Flowers. Do it
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/agrivoltaic-farming-solar-energy/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-20/how-to-grow-crops-under-solar-panels
https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2022/2/3/largest-farm-to-grow-crops-under-solar-panels-proves-to-be-a-bumper-crop-for-agrivoltaic-land-use
You may have missed them as I posted it quite early on further down the thread.
And don't forget that energy from the Sahara brings with it risks too: suddenly there is a country from which you import a lot of energy, which might have a revolution, or which might invade a neighbour, or where terrorists could knock out the connection.
BTW I bought my own Barratt shitbox in 2005 sold it for a loss in 2021, so I do know how bad some of these are - and the other builder putting up other phases of our huge estate was even worse.
For example the borrowing needed to pay for freezing the energy bill cap for next 6 months, this money is raised by selling debt on the market in return for money - if they haven’t sold the debt yet, so sure they actually have buyers for it, how do they continue to pay for the frozen energy cap? Are they only issuing an IOU at this time - or handing over real money in anticipation of selling our debt?
There is a point here, though, that Truss seems to be making a particular effort to systematically alienate not only the traditional Tory coalition but also her own. She seems to be crap at politics, which is frankly bizarre when she's been near the top of it for so long and is the actual Prime Minister.
Nothing will top that doozy.
Sack Truss. Replace her and Kwarteng and Philip and the rest of the morons. Implement policies costed and sane.
I can only hope there are cool heads in Western capitals. We don't want our leaders to be gung-ho and drunk on the excitement of giving Russia a good beating, but we have to hope they haven't all been watching Threads and weeing themselves, because that way lies the next big mistake in a long history of giving Putin just enough to keep his revanchist dreams alive.
The media coverage since Kerch and particularly today - an immediate recoil and almost egging Russia on to threaten nuclear attack - is particularly unhelpful. For months the West has been equipping Ukraine to fight the invaders off their land, and that should remain the focus. For sure make preparations or even overtures on negotiations behind the scenes, but ask the press to stop all this high profile worrying in public which only serves Putin's cause.
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1579481902779486209
https://twitter.com/rbrharrison/status/1579479280459091974?s=20&t=uaBWCq9NP8Td9Uz9Hv2o_w