On housing (with apologies to the person who posted this first)
France - 67.75m population, 38m properties UK - 67.33m population, 25m properties Germany - 83.2m population, 42m properties
0.56 coefficient for France 0.50 for Germany 0.37 for UK
It will be an interesting project to gather such data for other countries.
Switzerland - 8.4m population, 4.7m properties
0.56 for Switzerland
Would not a people per property figure be more meaningful to most people so for the uk it would be 2.69 people per property, france would be 1.78 etc
Possibly, yes.
A challenge - find a country with a worse housing coefficient than the UK...
I was going to say somewhere like Brazil as you need a lot of slums and a desire / need to be near a big population.
but I suspect the real answer is going to be nowhere...
Given the Favelas are house construction constrained only by access to land, not permission from anyone to build.... probably not.
Once you see the size of the gap, it all falls into place.
In rural France, they giggle when the stupid foreigners buy the local big houses. And make a fortune rebuilding them for them. And don't mind that they are empty half the year. Because the actual locals are living in modernised (or modern) houses down the road.
I think I'd be looking for places that are rich and decadent enough that people have the time and clout to prevent new building.
If Sturgeon is going because of the transsexual issue, it's for once going to become as relevant as a party political issue, as it has clearly been a social and moral issue for manym here on PB.
Certainly, it will be more relevant today on PB than Leon, Moonshine and I's interest in party balloons.
The sad truth is that the no-compromise hatethon has come here as well.
The sane policy would go something like this
1) Self id is fine about 99.9% of the time 2) Need to sort out the administrative side of things - when people change names, can break background checks. So need some work in the Home Office to sort that out. Paperwork and process stuff. 3) Self ID breaks down in a small number of cases - prisons, women's refuges. There needs to some protection in law for this. It shouldn't be done by arbitrary actions by the executive - some kind of legal framework, appeals process. Courts, open judgements etc. 4) Medical intervention. A lot of this hasn't been trialled in depth. Answer - the treatment is done under the legal framework for human trials of medical procedures. There is a whole bunch of law and process designed for this. So the treatments continue and (just as importantly) proper medical grade data is gathered on the outcomes.
Inevitable - I heard it being pushed by the Times Radio to a German defence think-tanker the other day, who told them it was baseless.
Oh for a media that attached priority to checking a story before they repeat it.
(TBF around Ukraine I can't say much more for the German media, even the official DW. They have been pushing "NATO ammunition crisis", which is accurate for Germany and maybe parts of Western Europe - not Spain or a couple of Scandis, but was shown to be a political/confidence crisis not an ammunition crisis by Perun back in December.
Germany is suffering from a need for other people to take responsibility for them.
So much for Microsoft adding AI ChatGPT to Bing searches as a Google-killer. Can anyone see what is wrong here?
It lists Margaret Thatcher as “Prime Minister of the U.K.”.
It lists George Washington as "President of the United States", so I would suggest that it's pretty clear what's going on here.
That their facts engine needs a history lesson?
Categorising people by the thing they're best known for, even if they aren't it any longer, is a legitimate choice. Do they need to list all previous presidents as "former President"? If not, what's the dividing line for removing the "former"?
On housing (with apologies to the person who posted this first)
France - 67.75m population, 38m properties UK - 67.33m population, 25m properties Germany - 83.2m population, 42m properties
0.56 coefficient for France 0.50 for Germany 0.37 for UK
It will be an interesting project to gather such data for other countries.
Switzerland - 8.4m population, 4.7m properties
0.56 for Switzerland
Would not a people per property figure be more meaningful to most people so for the uk it would be 2.69 people per property, france would be 1.78 etc
Possibly, yes.
A challenge - find a country with a worse housing coefficient than the UK...
I was going to say somewhere like Brazil as you need a lot of slums and a desire / need to be near a big population.
but I suspect the real answer is going to be nowhere...
Given the Favelas are house construction constrained only by access to land, not permission from anyone to build.... probably not.
Once you see the size of the gap, it all falls into place.
In rural France, they giggle when the stupid foreigners buy the local big houses. And make a fortune rebuilding them for them. And don't mind that they are empty half the year. Because the actual locals are living in modernised (or modern) houses down the road.
I think I'd be looking for places that are rich and decadent enough that people have the time and clout to prevent new building.
Maybe one of the USA states?
Bits of the US - there are a parts of the Hamptons where you'd be sued to death for *thinking* quietly about building/changing a property.
There’s a rumour on the Twitters that Sturgeon plans to stand down next month.
Probably bullshit.
Having spoken to one of her friends in the past week - I'd say it wasn't likely.
Well, that aged well.
When did you say it? If it was during February then you can claim it was 'next month' that 'wasn't likely'
I think it was yesterday. It was, I'm afraid, the first thing which came to mind when I heard the news. Huge credit to ohnotnow who has provided an example to us all of a gracious and witty climbdown.
On housing (with apologies to the person who posted this first)
France - 67.75m population, 38m properties UK - 67.33m population, 25m properties Germany - 83.2m population, 42m properties
0.56 coefficient for France 0.50 for Germany 0.37 for UK
It will be an interesting project to gather such data for other countries.
Switzerland - 8.4m population, 4.7m properties
0.56 for Switzerland
Would not a people per property figure be more meaningful to most people so for the uk it would be 2.69 people per property, france would be 1.78 etc
Possibly, yes.
A challenge - find a country with a worse housing coefficient than the UK...
I was going to say somewhere like Brazil as you need a lot of slums and a desire / need to be near a big population.
but I suspect the real answer is going to be nowhere...
Given the Favelas are house construction constrained only by access to land, not permission from anyone to build.... probably not.
Once you see the size of the gap, it all falls into place.
In rural France, they giggle when the stupid foreigners buy the local big houses. And make a fortune rebuilding them for them. And don't mind that they are empty half the year. Because the actual locals are living in modernised (or modern) houses down the road.
I think I'd be looking for places that are rich and decadent enough that people have the time and clout to prevent new building.
Maybe one of the USA states?
OK, a few years out of date, but I should be doing some work;
Nicola Sturgeon is to resign as Scotland's first minister after more than eight years in the role.
The Scottish National Party leader is expected to make the announcement at a hastily-arranged news conference in Edinburgh. It is not thought that her departure will be immediate, allowing time for a successor to be elected.
A source close to Ms Sturgeon - the longest-serving first minister - told the BBC that she had "had enough".
"I’m becoming less convinced that Sunak will make it to the next election."
Yes - the betting market is getting the next election wrong: both the chance of a Labour majority and the chance of no Tory majority (~ Starmer becoming the next PM). Sunak coming across as an ineffectual damp squib doesn't make it more likely that Labour will win the next election. It makes it more probable that the Tories will unceremonially boot Sunak out (as they removed their previous three leaders) and replace him with somebody under whom they CAN perform well electorally. There's ample time. The method is irrelevant. Could be letters going in, could be resignations, could be something else - who cares?
Contrast can have a powerful effect. The next Tory leader *is* likely to have a honeymoon period. I'm wondering whether it might be Penny Mordaunt. Among other strengths, her armed forces background would reduce any haemorrhaging of Tory support to Reform. She's a cardboard cutout, sure, but she could do the biz in an election.
What argues most in the other direction is that Sunak is filthy rich. He won't see himself as an accidental PM like TMay and Truss and I'm sure a lot of levers were pulled to get him into his current office, over a period of years. There's no way someone as rich as he is will stick around being the leader of the opposition for 4-5 years. Why on earth would he bother? The game plan for him is that he wins the next election. Whether he will actually manage it is another matter - see first paragraph.
So much for Microsoft adding AI ChatGPT to Bing searches as a Google-killer. Can anyone see what is wrong here?
It lists Margaret Thatcher as “Prime Minister of the U.K.”.
It lists George Washington as "President of the United States", so I would suggest that it's pretty clear what's going on here.
Aliens.
...
Text of Sturgeon's speech has been leaked: "Let me say that our mission here, at this time Is about to come to a close in the next few days We came from distant space And even what some might call somewhat of another dimension And we're about to return from whence we came It requires that you, if you move into that evolutionary kingdom That you leave behind everything of human ways, human behaviour Human ignorance, human misinformation If I would title this tape, it would be "Last chance to evacuate planet Earth before it is recycled"
Nicola Sturgeon is to resign as Scotland's first minister after more than eight years in the role.
The Scottish National Party leader is expected to make the announcement at a hastily-arranged news conference in Edinburgh. It is not thought that her departure will be immediate, allowing time for a successor to be elected.
A source close to Ms Sturgeon - the longest-serving first minister - told the BBC that she had "had enough".
On housing (with apologies to the person who posted this first)
France - 67.75m population, 38m properties UK - 67.33m population, 25m properties Germany - 83.2m population, 42m properties
0.56 coefficient for France 0.50 for Germany 0.37 for UK
It will be an interesting project to gather such data for other countries.
Switzerland - 8.4m population, 4.7m properties
0.56 for Switzerland
Would not a people per property figure be more meaningful to most people so for the uk it would be 2.69 people per property, france would be 1.78 etc
Possibly, yes.
A challenge - find a country with a worse housing coefficient than the UK...
I was going to say somewhere like Brazil as you need a lot of slums and a desire / need to be near a big population.
but I suspect the real answer is going to be nowhere...
Given the Favelas are house construction constrained only by access to land, not permission from anyone to build.... probably not.
Once you see the size of the gap, it all falls into place.
In rural France, they giggle when the stupid foreigners buy the local big houses. And make a fortune rebuilding them for them. And don't mind that they are empty half the year. Because the actual locals are living in modernised (or modern) houses down the road.
I think I'd be looking for places that are rich and decadent enough that people have the time and clout to prevent new building.
Maybe one of the USA states?
OK, a few years out of date, but I should be doing some work;
If you have 50 SNP, 20 Northern Ireland, 25 Lib Dems and 5 Greens + Plaid, that's 100 seats not held by the big two.
If Labour get to 330, that leaves the Conservatives on 220, having lost about 150 seats from the new boundary notionals.
Playing with electoral calculus, you get that sort of result from L43 C32 LD15 and no tactical voting.
I wonder who would be happier with that outcome?
Labour would be. No such thing as 'a good loss'. The new regime would have a good five-to-ten years when any criticism could be answered with a picture of Johnson.
On housing (with apologies to the person who posted this first)
France - 67.75m population, 38m properties UK - 67.33m population, 25m properties Germany - 83.2m population, 42m properties
0.56 coefficient for France 0.50 for Germany 0.37 for UK
It will be an interesting project to gather such data for other countries.
Switzerland - 8.4m population, 4.7m properties
0.56 for Switzerland
Would not a people per property figure be more meaningful to most people so for the uk it would be 2.69 people per property, france would be 1.78 etc
Possibly, yes.
A challenge - find a country with a worse housing coefficient than the UK...
I was going to say somewhere like Brazil as you need a lot of slums and a desire / need to be near a big population.
but I suspect the real answer is going to be nowhere...
Given the Favelas are house construction constrained only by access to land, not permission from anyone to build.... probably not.
Once you see the size of the gap, it all falls into place.
In rural France, they giggle when the stupid foreigners buy the local big houses. And make a fortune rebuilding them for them. And don't mind that they are empty half the year. Because the actual locals are living in modernised (or modern) houses down the road.
I think I'd be looking for places that are rich and decadent enough that people have the time and clout to prevent new building.
Maybe one of the USA states?
OK, a few years out of date, but I should be doing some work;
If Sturgeon is going because of the transsexual issue, it's for once going to become as relevant as a party political issue, as it has clearly been a social and moral issue for manym here on PB.
Certainly, it will be more relevant today on PB than Leon, Moonshine and I's interest in party balloons.
The sad truth is that the no-compromise hatethon has come here as well.
The sane policy would go something like this
1) Self id is fine about 99.9% of the time 2) Need to sort out the administrative side of things - when people change names, can break background checks. So need some work in the Home Office to sort that out. Paperwork and process stuff. 3) Self ID breaks down in a small number of cases - prisons, women's refuges. There needs to some protection in law for this. It shouldn't be done by arbitrary actions by the executive - some kind of legal framework, appeals process. Courts, open judgements etc. 4) Medical intervention. A lot of this hasn't been trialled in depth. Answer - the treatment is done under the legal framework for human trials of medical procedures. There is a whole bunch of law and process designed for this. So the treatments continue and (just as importantly) proper medical grade data is gathered on the outcomes.
I disagree!
With your depiction of the discussion here as a no-compromise hateathon that is.
I think all of the above is where we will probably end up here in the UK. There will be some thrashing about thanks to spillover from US culture wars, but liberal principles will win out.
Someone tell me again how trans rights and self-ID are fringe culture war issues that are only important to lunatic right wingers.
If you are linking trans issues to Nicola Sturgeon's resignation, you might be right but more likely is a forthcoming report on financial irregularities. See malcolmg's posts passim.
If she means the trans debate she’s the one that pressed on and on with legislation that angered the general public and alienated her own support
If she means “fighting the indy cause” then what does that say about the indy cause?
I speculated a few weeks ago that she was moving to the end but I claim zero bragging rights for this - as I have predicted her demise at least 19 times. I was bound to get it right in the end
Amazing on the day Starmer exiles Corbyn from the Labour Party, Sturgeon resigns handing him seats in Scotland to ensure he becomes PM in 24
While I have little expectation that Starmer and Labour have the ability to take the hard and unpopular decisions the country needs, as a devoted unionist I am delighted at todays events
I look forward to @StuartDickson response to today's events
If Sturgeon is going because of the transsexual issue, it's for once going to become as relevant as a party political issue, as it has clearly been a social and moral issue for manym here on PB.
Certainly, it will be more relevant today on PB than Leon, Moonshine and I's interest in party balloons.
The sad truth is that the no-compromise hatethon has come here as well.
The sane policy would go something like this
1) Self id is fine about 99.9% of the time 2) Need to sort out the administrative side of things - when people change names, can break background checks. So need some work in the Home Office to sort that out. Paperwork and process stuff. 3) Self ID breaks down in a small number of cases - prisons, women's refuges. There needs to some protection in law for this. It shouldn't be done by arbitrary actions by the executive - some kind of legal framework, appeals process. Courts, open judgements etc. 4) Medical intervention. A lot of this hasn't been trialled in depth. Answer - the treatment is done under the legal framework for human trials of medical procedures. There is a whole bunch of law and process designed for this. So the treatments continue and (just as importantly) proper medical grade data is gathered on the outcomes.
I disagree!
With your depiction of the discussion here as a no-compromise hateathon that is
I think all of the above is where we will probably end up here in the UK. There will be some thrashing about thanks to spillover from US culture wars, but liberal principles will win out.
I didn’t see anyone actually departing from the above (apart from a couple of “There Is No Problem Here” type) - but still had people calling each other evil.
The above is actually pretty much government policy at U.K. national level. After the Tavistock fuck up, a medical trials based approach is the only sane compromise left.
Remember that the Scottish thing was over an amendment to the bill. Not to block or challenge self ID, but to add the capability to block actual sex offenders transferring into women’s prisons.
It will be interesting to hear the reasons she gives. I’m guessing the long litany of duff legislation (Named Persons, Hate Speech which the Polis can’t implement, the Children’s rights, referendum and GRR ultra vires) or failed projects (Ferries, dualing the A9) won’t be among them. I think we can be reasonably confident that it’ll be someone else’s fault.
On a human level you’ve got to feel some sympathy - it’s a gruelling job and when she eschewed point scoring over Westminster during COVID she did well, better than her peers. I suspect like all politicians in power for a long time with no internal opponents worth the name she just stopped listening. Hence the daft (Green inspired) GRR and half baked Deposit scheme.
We must now consider, if Labour will achieve once again, being the largest party in Scotland. They have a window here.
I think it is now not out of the question, that they will recover to their 2010 level.
Events, dear boy... We know that literally everything is possible in politics. So a change in SNP leader does open an opportunity for all of her opponents internal and external.
My niggle is that there isn't any sign that there is a big drop off in drive for independence. Even the latest polls shows a small drop and a big rise in don't know. Which we know will be Yes again if pushed.
So any opposing unionist party needs to find a way though which successfully attacks the way the SNP government is doing policy on things that matter without attacking the voters who remain broadly split on independence.
Inevitable - I heard it being pushed by the Times Radio to a German defence think-tanker the other day, who told them it was baseless.
Oh for a media that attached priority to checking a story before they repeat it.
(TBF around Ukraine I can't say much more for the German media, even the official DW. They have been pushing "NATO ammunition crisis", which is accurate for Germany and maybe parts of Western Europe - not Spain or a couple of Scandis, but was shown to be a political/confidence crisis not an ammunition crisis by Perun back in December.
Germany is suffering from a need for other people to take responsibility for them.
"The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition," Stoltenberg said. "The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current production rates. This puts our defense industries under strain. (...) So we need to ramp up new production and invest in our production capacities."
also widely reported in UK media, I think. I might have missed something else.
btw, why have only Poland, Germany, Norway and Portugal (and Canada?) promised Leopard 2 tanks so far?
It would be wonderful if the SNP were nearly wiped out.
So far we have had a splinter group separate off which is largely a personality vehicle for Alex Salmond. That group has had zero impact on the SNP's prospects.
But, if the coming leadership campaign highlights big differences inside the SNP and the leadership election is messy, there is the potential for it to break apart. So its definitely more likely with her going than it was with her staying.
UK politics will be all the poorer with Sturgeon resigning .
Whatever you think of her she was charismatic and passionate and this is a huge blow to Scottish independence. It’s great news for Labour though whose natural support is more aligned with the SNP and without Sturgeon as leader I expect some of their voters to move back to Labour .
Sturgeon may come up as "competent" in the word cloud, but she has been an absolute sh*tclown since 2014. She is a one-track pony who defecates on the Scottish people, selling them national destiny, mumble mumble, don't trust the Westminsters, they think we all drink Irn Bru, we're entitled to have our cake, eat it, throw it up, eat it, have it on our plate again, and is it because we're Scottish - is it, pal, is it? A f***ing disgrace to Scotland, is what she is.
Her most hilarious moment was when she offered David Cameron advice on how to win a referendum. It's true he didn't do a great job, but at least he did better than she did: 48% is bigger than 45%.
Her most idiotic moment - showing her to be completely out of her depth where anything to with ideas is concerned - was when she reassured intending and possible independence supporters by telling them that hey, sure, of course you'll get "Scotland" written on your passports, my dears - it can be written on them when they're renewed. (Maybe she wanted to save on printing costs, eh, Pagan?)
As for her most ludicrous moment, it's got to be something about letting rapists into women's changing rooms and prisons if they've decided to call themselves women - a policy that absolutely 0% of people in their right minds, whether they're left wing, right wing, or pro or anti independence, has anything but contempt for.
A trial for criminal misconduct in office would bring some vibrant colour, though.
Say what you like about Alec Salmond, but the case against him was a stitch-up and everyone knows Sturgeon was involved.
Inevitable - I heard it being pushed by the Times Radio to a German defence think-tanker the other day, who told them it was baseless.
Oh for a media that attached priority to checking a story before they repeat it.
(TBF around Ukraine I can't say much more for the German media, even the official DW. They have been pushing "NATO ammunition crisis", which is accurate for Germany and maybe parts of Western Europe - not Spain or a couple of Scandis, but was shown to be a political/confidence crisis not an ammunition crisis by Perun back in December.
Germany is suffering from a need for other people to take responsibility for them.
"The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition," Stoltenberg said. "The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current production rates. This puts our defense industries under strain. (...) So we need to ramp up new production and invest in our production capacities."
also widely reported in UK media, I think. I might have missed something else.
btw, why have only Poland, Germany, Norway and Portugal (and Canada?) promised Leopard 2 tanks so far?
Lots of non-runners in the inventories?
It is much cheaper to park tanks in a shed. Unless it is done carefully, with frequent checks, the result is, rapidly, a non-functional system. Mothballing equipment is a bit of an art.
The American government is funding some pretty massive increases in ammunition production. Thales Belfast (where a number of UK weapons are manufactured) is working all the hours - limit there is sub-components, I believe.
That takes the Malmesbury number to 0.43 - almost the same as the Netherlands.
A further big chunk of the difference is second homes. On a quick lookup for example, UK has around 800k - France has around 3 million.
Another factor is empty homes, where the UK is far more efficient keeping them used. This was clearly documented by the Guardian a number of years ago, and is one reason we did not have millions of empties to take in millions of people from Ukraine. (See below)
On dwellings vs population increase. Population increase since 2000 has been approx 8.5 million, whist new dwellings built has been around 3 million, so it has fallen a little behind.
But if you add household size shrinkage to that - divorce, singletons, couples living apart - then you get a lot of net pressure.
In terms of underused dwellings, that is *massively* concentrated in the Owner Occupied sector. The Govt measure used is "2 or more spare bedrooms", which is why the idea of shrinking the PRS is nuts, as that would make the issue far far worse.
That takes the Malmesbury number to 0.43 - almost the same as the Netherlands.
A further big chunk of the difference is second homes. On a quick lookup for example, UK has around 800k - France has around 3 million.
Another factor is empty homes, where the UK is far more efficient keeping them used. This was clearly documented by the Guardian a number of years ago.
On dwellings vs population increase. Population increase since 2000 has been approx 8.5 million, whist new dwellings built has been around 3 million, so it has fallen a little behind.
But if you add household size shrinkage to that - divorce, singletons, couples living apart - then you get a lot of net pressure.
In terms of underused dwellings, that is *massively* concentrated in the Owner Occupied sector. The Govt measure used is "2 or more spare bedrooms", which is why the idea of shrinking the PRS is nuts, as that would make the issue far far worse.
The reason that there are more second homes in France is probably to do with having more housing to go around.
The empty homes number in the UK is a function of the pressure on housing - the number of homes empty is tiny. 99% utilisation of anything suggests a system under stress.
If Sturgeon is going because of the transsexual issue, it's for once going to become as relevant as a party political issue, as it has clearly been a social and moral issue for manym here on PB.
Certainly, it will be more relevant today on PB than Leon, Moonshine and I's interest in party balloons.
The sad truth is that the no-compromise hatethon has come here as well.
The sane policy would go something like this
1) Self id is fine about 99.9% of the time 2) Need to sort out the administrative side of things - when people change names, can break background checks. So need some work in the Home Office to sort that out. Paperwork and process stuff. 3) Self ID breaks down in a small number of cases - prisons, women's refuges. There needs to some protection in law for this. It shouldn't be done by arbitrary actions by the executive - some kind of legal framework, appeals process. Courts, open judgements etc. 4) Medical intervention. A lot of this hasn't been trialled in depth. Answer - the treatment is done under the legal framework for human trials of medical procedures. There is a whole bunch of law and process designed for this. So the treatments continue and (just as importantly) proper medical grade data is gathered on the outcomes.
I disagree!
With your depiction of the discussion here as a no-compromise hateathon that is
I think all of the above is where we will probably end up here in the UK. There will be some thrashing about thanks to spillover from US culture wars, but liberal principles will win out.
I didn’t see anyone actually departing from the above (apart from a couple of “There Is No Problem Here” type) - but still had people calling each other evil.
The above is actually pretty much government policy at U.K. national level. After the Tavistock fuck up, a medical trials based approach is the only sane compromise left.
Remember that the Scottish thing was over an amendment to the bill. Not to block or challenge self ID, but to add the capability to block actual sex offenders transferring into women’s prisons.
I’m aware - & indeed I told Cyclefree in an earlier comment thread that I agreed with her position on the Scottish bill: It left a mile wide loophole for sociopathic abusers to manipulate the system to gain access to vulnerable women.
There are still a number of posters here that insist on using very degrading language when talking about trans people. It’s this kind of thing that sometimes makes it difficuilt to sort geniune criticisms from unadulterated bigotry using scare stories as a front for a wider campaign to push trans people out of public spaces altogether.
If you have 50 SNP, 20 Northern Ireland, 25 Lib Dems and 5 Greens + Plaid, that's 100 seats not held by the big two.
If Labour get to 330, that leaves the Conservatives on 220, having lost about 150 seats from the new boundary notionals.
Playing with electoral calculus, you get that sort of result from L43 C32 LD15 and no tactical voting.
I wonder who would be happier with that outcome?
Labour would be. No such thing as 'a good loss'. The new regime would have a good five-to-ten years when any criticism could be answered with a picture of Johnson.
Rationally, you're right, of course. Politicians who talk about "a good one to lose" don't deserve to be in government. And a government going from 375ish notional to 220 in one go would have had one hell of a beating.
But irrationally? From where we are now, a narrow Labour win could end up feeling like a defeat, and "only" falling to 220 seats doesn't need much copium to look like a sort of success.
I'm struggling to understand why anyone would even consider voting Labour under Starmer. He comes across as horrible, slimy, authoritarian, negative and unappealing. Labour policies are almost all to the detriment of normal British people. The Tories are useless but at least they're not dangerous. No joke, why on earth would anyone in a million years even dream of voting for that bunch of Nazis?! And yes, I'm referring to Starmer's Labour as Nazis, far more scary and totalitarian than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour. Look at how they're non-personing someone they canonised for just a few years ago. Labour are just full of hatred and bile, and this needs calling out.
It would be wonderful if the SNP were nearly wiped out.
So far we have had a splinter group separate off which is largely a personality vehicle for Alex Salmond. That group has had zero impact on the SNP's prospects.
But, if the coming leadership campaign highlights big differences inside the SNP and the leadership election is messy, there is the potential for it to break apart. So its definitely more likely with her going than it was with her staying.
The moment for me that defined Sturgeon was her arrogant response to the Parliamentary enquiry, and therefore to the Scottish Parliament - withhold evidence for months and months, then supply a huge pack of it a couple of hours before the hearing so that proper questioning was rendered impossible.
You can point to things such as the Scottish Nationalist Ferries being built in Poland, and any number of other wheels that have come off, but that I think is peripheral by comparison.
Why now? Does this have something to do with how many members have left the SNP over the current leadership weaponising Gender Rights, plus whatever the latest dithering is on Indyref?
I think two larger issues are whether the Unionist parties can get their shit together enough to deal with a weakened SNP, ditto for Alba, and the Scottish Parliamentary system needing a major service. That last might be one for Starmer, given that he is a bit of a colourless technocrat.
I'm struggling to understand why anyone would even consider voting Labour under Starmer. He comes across as horrible, slimy, authoritarian, negative and unappealing. Labour policies are almost all to the detriment of normal British people. The Tories are useless but at least they're not dangerous. No joke, why on earth would anyone in a million years even dream of voting for that bunch of Nazis?! And yes, I'm referring to Starmer's Labour as Nazis, far more scary and totalitarian than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour. Look at how they're non-personing someone they canonised for just a few years ago. Labour are just full of hatred and bile, and this needs calling out.
It’s that impartiality that undermines you. Get off the fence.
I'm struggling to understand why anyone would even consider voting Labour under Starmer. He comes across as horrible, slimy, authoritarian, negative and unappealing. Labour policies are almost all to the detriment of normal British people. The Tories are useless but at least they're not dangerous. No joke, why on earth would anyone in a million years even dream of voting for that bunch of Nazis?! And yes, I'm referring to Starmer's Labour as Nazis, far more scary and totalitarian than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour. Look at how they're non-personing someone they canonised for just a few years ago. Labour are just full of hatred and bile, and this needs calling out.
Not the most promising start to a pb.com career. Try some transphobic shit. That's been playing well recently.
Comments
Net emigration -> house/people ratio goes up..
A source close to Sturgeon told the BBC that “she’s had enough”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b3c98daa-ad17-11ed-9cb3-80326348937b?shareToken=3755cdc35eda76113e523f6bca4b8399
Maybe one of the USA states?
The sane policy would go something like this
1) Self id is fine about 99.9% of the time
2) Need to sort out the administrative side of things - when people change names, can break background checks. So need some work in the Home Office to sort that out. Paperwork and process stuff.
3) Self ID breaks down in a small number of cases - prisons, women's refuges. There needs to some protection in law for this. It shouldn't be done by arbitrary actions by the executive - some kind of legal framework, appeals process. Courts, open judgements etc.
4) Medical intervention. A lot of this hasn't been trialled in depth. Answer - the treatment is done under the legal framework for human trials of medical procedures. There is a whole bunch of law and process designed for this. So the treatments continue and (just as importantly) proper medical grade data is gathered on the outcomes.
Huge credit to ohnotnow who has provided an example to us all of a gracious and witty climbdown.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/21/gavin-newsom/true-california-ranks-49th-capita-housing-supply/
USA as a whole: 0.42
California: 0.36
Utah:0.35
Nicola Sturgeon is to resign as Scotland's first minister after more than eight years in the role.
The Scottish National Party leader is expected to make the announcement at a hastily-arranged news conference in Edinburgh.
It is not thought that her departure will be immediate, allowing time for a successor to be elected.
A source close to Ms Sturgeon - the longest-serving first minister - told the BBC that she had "had enough".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64647907
Press Conference 11.00
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scotland-64648879
Yes - the betting market is getting the next election wrong: both the chance of a Labour majority and the chance of no Tory majority (~ Starmer becoming the next PM). Sunak coming across as an ineffectual damp squib doesn't make it more likely that Labour will win the next election. It makes it more probable that the Tories will unceremonially boot Sunak out (as they removed their previous three leaders) and replace him with somebody under whom they CAN perform well electorally. There's ample time. The method is irrelevant. Could be letters going in, could be resignations, could be something else - who cares?
Contrast can have a powerful effect. The next Tory leader *is* likely to have a honeymoon period. I'm wondering whether it might be Penny Mordaunt. Among other strengths, her armed forces background would reduce any haemorrhaging of Tory support to Reform. She's a cardboard cutout, sure, but she could do the biz in an election.
What argues most in the other direction is that Sunak is filthy rich. He won't see himself as an accidental PM like TMay and Truss and I'm sure a lot of levers were pulled to get him into his current office, over a period of years. There's no way someone as rich as he is will stick around being the leader of the opposition for 4-5 years. Why on earth would he bother? The game plan for him is that he wins the next election. Whether he will actually manage it is another matter - see first paragraph.
"Let me say that our mission here, at this time
Is about to come to a close in the next few days
We came from distant space
And even what some might call somewhat of another dimension
And we're about to return from whence we came
It requires that you, if you move into that evolutionary kingdom
That you leave behind everything of human ways, human behaviour
Human ignorance, human misinformation
If I would title this tape, it would be
"Last chance to evacuate planet Earth before it is recycled"
Disgraceful.
She’s a quitter not a fighter.
I think it is now not out of the question, that they will recover to their 2010 level.
Billionaire Jahm Najafi set to launch $3.75bn takeover bid for Tottenham Hotspur
https://www.ft.com/content/c3795725-eb77-4681-848d-20c37c990386
I guess she already knew the result
With your depiction of the discussion here as a no-compromise hateathon that is.
I think all of the above is where we will probably end up here in the UK. There will be some thrashing about thanks to spillover from US culture wars, but liberal principles will win out.
If she means the trans debate she’s the one that pressed on and on with legislation that angered the general public and alienated her own support
If she means “fighting the indy cause” then what does that say about the indy cause?
I speculated a few weeks ago that she was moving to the end but I claim zero bragging rights for this - as I have predicted her demise at least 19 times. I was bound to get it right in the end
Big blow to the Nits tho. There will now be blood
Amazing on the day Starmer exiles Corbyn from the Labour Party, Sturgeon resigns handing him seats in Scotland to ensure he becomes PM in 24
While I have little expectation that Starmer and Labour have the ability to take the hard and unpopular decisions the country needs, as a devoted unionist I am delighted at todays events
I look forward to @StuartDickson response to today's events
The above is actually pretty much government policy at U.K. national level. After the Tavistock fuck up, a medical trials based approach is the only sane compromise left.
Remember that the Scottish thing was over an amendment to the bill. Not to block or challenge self ID, but to add the capability to block actual sex offenders transferring into women’s prisons.
On a human level you’ve got to feel some sympathy - it’s a gruelling job and when she eschewed point scoring over Westminster during COVID she did well, better than her peers. I suspect like all politicians in power for a long time with no internal opponents worth the name she just stopped listening. Hence the daft (Green inspired) GRR and half baked Deposit scheme.
Two winners today.
Keir Starmer and the United Kingdom.
My niggle is that there isn't any sign that there is a big drop off in drive for independence. Even the latest polls shows a small drop and a big rise in don't know. Which we know will be Yes again if pushed.
So any opposing unionist party needs to find a way though which successfully attacks the way the SNP government is doing policy on things that matter without attacking the voters who remain broadly split on independence.
https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-nato-warns-of-donor-ammunition-shortages/a-64684823
"The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition," Stoltenberg said. "The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current production rates. This puts our defense industries under strain. (...) So we need to ramp up new production and invest in our production capacities."
also widely reported in UK media, I think. I might have missed something else.
btw, why have only Poland, Germany, Norway and Portugal (and Canada?) promised Leopard 2 tanks so far?
But, if the coming leadership campaign highlights big differences inside the SNP and the leadership election is messy, there is the potential for it to break apart. So its definitely more likely with her going than it was with her staying.
Her most hilarious moment was when she offered David Cameron advice on how to win a referendum. It's true he didn't do a great job, but at least he did better than she did: 48% is bigger than 45%.
Her most idiotic moment - showing her to be completely out of her depth where anything to with ideas is concerned - was when she reassured intending and possible independence supporters by telling them that hey, sure, of course you'll get "Scotland" written on your passports, my dears - it can be written on them when they're renewed. (Maybe she wanted to save on printing costs, eh, Pagan?)
As for her most ludicrous moment, it's got to be something about letting rapists into women's changing rooms and prisons if they've decided to call themselves women - a policy that absolutely 0% of people in their right minds, whether they're left wing, right wing, or pro or anti independence, has anything but contempt for.
A trial for criminal misconduct in office would bring some vibrant colour, though.
Say what you like about Alec Salmond, but the case against him was a stitch-up and everyone knows Sturgeon was involved.
It is much cheaper to park tanks in a shed. Unless it is done carefully, with frequent checks, the result is, rapidly, a non-functional system. Mothballing equipment is a bit of an art.
The American government is funding some pretty massive increases in ammunition production. Thales Belfast (where a number of UK weapons are manufactured) is working all the hours - limit there is sub-components, I believe.
The basic point is good, but the number of dwellings in the UK is more like 28-29m. 25m is the England figure.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/232302/number-of-dwellings-in-england/
That takes the Malmesbury number to 0.43 - almost the same as the Netherlands.
A further big chunk of the difference is second homes. On a quick lookup for example, UK has around 800k - France has around 3 million.
Another factor is empty homes, where the UK is far more efficient keeping them used. This was clearly documented by the Guardian a number of years ago, and is one reason we did not have millions of empties to take in millions of people from Ukraine. (See below)
On dwellings vs population increase. Population increase since 2000 has been
approx 8.5 million, whist new dwellings built has been around 3 million, so it has fallen a little behind.
But if you add household size shrinkage to that - divorce, singletons, couples living apart - then you get a lot of net pressure.
In terms of underused dwellings, that is *massively* concentrated in the Owner Occupied sector. The Govt measure used is "2 or more spare bedrooms", which is why the idea of shrinking the PRS is nuts, as that would make the issue far far worse.
The empty homes number in the UK is a function of the pressure on housing - the number of homes empty is tiny. 99% utilisation of anything suggests a system under stress.
There are still a number of posters here that insist on using very degrading language when talking about trans people. It’s this kind of thing that sometimes makes it difficuilt to sort geniune criticisms from unadulterated bigotry using scare stories as a front for a wider campaign to push trans people out of public spaces altogether.
But irrationally? From where we are now, a narrow Labour win could end up feeling like a defeat, and "only" falling to 220 seats doesn't need much copium to look like a sort of success.
You can point to things such as the Scottish Nationalist Ferries being built in Poland, and any number of other wheels that have come off, but that I think is peripheral by comparison.
Why now? Does this have something to do with how many members have left the SNP over the current leadership weaponising Gender Rights, plus whatever the latest dithering is on Indyref?
I think we are in the political party reporting season, so any fall in membership will come out in public. Daily Record (not SNP supporters) reported last weekend up to 30k lost members, which would put current membership at 35-40% down on 2019.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/snp-crisis-30000-people-cancel-29193882
I think two larger issues are whether the Unionist parties can get their shit together enough to deal with a weakened SNP, ditto for Alba, and the Scottish Parliamentary system needing a major service. That last might be one for Starmer, given that he is a bit of a colourless technocrat.
Kate Forbes ( does she really want it)
Angus Robertson ( a real political heavyweight)
Outsiders
Mhairi Black
Yousef
All that talent, eh Nicola