As noted at the time the statement from The Stand reversing their decision was hilariously disingenuous. Apparently we're to believe they had zero idea it might amount to unlawful discrimination and of course would not dream of doing such a thing.
Rather than I would suggest a more plausible explanation that they would be very happy to discriminate in order to please their staff, but had no choice but to back down in the face of legal threats. It's pretty clear that legal action is often necessary to see rights enforced - and that should be no surprise, since plenty of people had to fight very hard to get the rights acknowledged in the first place.
I don't think the idea of not bowing to those who are offended has been entirely or even nearly defeated, certainly not with the Rushdie example. People still blame him for the reactions to to his (awful) book. 'Free speech for me but not for thee' as cyclefree puts it is pretty popular I imagine. Heckler's veto is powerful.
We all need to be more robust than to claim to suffer harm from hearing things we don't like. It's childish to do otherwise.
The conclusion is a variant of a famous quote, but I cannot recall where the original is located.
Given ownership of The Stand it is just a pity he crumbled so soon.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
Forced smile as his team is relegated. That's quite the metaphor.
Starmer is an Arsenal fan.
He's getting practice at blowing a big lead and coming second.
Starmer’s certainly taking a right mauling in tomorrows papers with his plan to use EU citizens to rig future UK elections, that perhaps might even be an election to scrap Brexit.
Why is Starmer daft enough to announce a plan like that, he’s not remotely won an election yet. Constitional change is second term stuff if anything, once you’ve earned trust, and every second he is talking about votes for sixteen year old children and EU citizens and not talking about NHS waiting lists, he’s an idiot.
Meanwhile, I think this is a big moment in the race to be Conservative Party leader.
You can try to argue Braverman is not the Conservatives rising star, simply on basis you don’t like her at all, but you will utterly fail in that argument, the reality is: she’s rising if you like it all not, there’s no denying it. Observer had a big splash on her today, risen from family of immigrants to high office etc.
The UK Home Secretary is headline speaker at this Conservative conference, and she is going to say
“…because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations.”
And how many Conservative members and activists are going to disagree with that reasoning to limit immigration? Tory members will say at last, someone who tells it like it is.
You would use words like steadfast, tenacious, and determined to describe Braverman’s style - those are exactly the same words used to list Lady Thatcher’s strengths.
There’s your next leader of the Conservative Party. She’s got it “Suen-up” hasn’t she?
No as only 32 Tory MPs voted for her in the 2022 leadership election, she has no chance of reaching the final 2 to even to the Tory membership therefore if Rishi loses and the race to choose the Tory Leader of the Opposition begins
I knew you were lurking out there with something crazy like this to post 😆
32 was a bloody good start for “what’s she running for” candidate” You saying her fan club hasn’t “sue-welled” since then?
You saying she won’t go into the leadership election with more credibility than Lady Thatcher when she actually won leadership.
You are going to tell us the smug, full of themself woman child Badenoch knocks Braverman out the top two, when it’s so obvious Braverman is the only one of the candidates with determination and tenacity to deliver, focussed and steadfast enough to actually take a fight back to Labour? 😆
Now, most important question of all, when Braverman says we must limit immigration because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations - do you actually disagree with her?
No, the final 3 would be Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt in my view, neither Braverman nor Badenoch make it
Where do we stand when Frosty is parachuted into the HoC like a chisel toned Marine?
From your original list. Mordaunt, too woke, Tugs, too normal, so it has to be Stevie B.
@HYUFD does have his finger on the pulse of the court battles of the Tories, so I have a few quid at good odds on Barclay.
The coming electoral tsunami could take out a lot of potential candidates, or their supporters.
First – and very importantly – it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful and wrong and should not happen. Saying this should not – and does not – depend on agreeing with the views of the person being discriminated against.
Would Cyclefree have written this article if it were a transgender writer being "discriminated against"?
I am not a lawyer. I have no idea whether Cherry's opposition to greater trans recognition is a protected belief. The Stand presumably has lawyers who think it might be.
But moving on from the law as it stands to ethics, I've never been convinced that beliefs should merit the same "protected characteristic" status as race, sex, disability, age and so on. I'm a Christian (of the militant marmalade wing of the CofE). Should that mean I have a legal right to book a room in a mosque to give a lecture on how all non-Christians are going to hell? No, I don't think so. Does my Christianity deserve more protection than others' strongly held, but non-"religious" beliefs, simply because mine involves sky fairies and others' don't? I don't think so either.
Religion and belief should, in my view, be a lesser protected characteristic - protected from discrimination from Government, but not from refusal of service by private entities.
(For what it's worth I think the Stand should probably have refused the talk on the grounds of "we're a comedy club and Joanna Cherry isn't very funny".)
(For what it's worth I think the Stand should probably have refused the talk on the grounds of "we're a comedy club and Joanna Cherry isn't very funny".)
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
There is a row going on at the moment because the Oxford Union has invited Kathleen Stock to speak at the Union. The Student Union, a different body, disapproves of Ms Stock's views on gender and is applying pressure to the Oxford Union to withdraw the invitation. So far the Oxford Union has resisted that pressure on free speech grounds.
As @Cyclefree points out, the enthusiasm of those who wish to deplatform those whose views they do not agree with is strong indeed. The old ideas of I deplore your views but I will fight for your right to say them seems very last century.
First – and very importantly – it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful and wrong and should not happen. Saying this should not – and does not – depend on agreeing with the views of the person being discriminated against.
For what it's worth I think the Stand should probably have refused the talk on the grounds of "we're a comedy club and Joanna Cherry isn't very funny".)
Dangerous precedent though. A lot of comedians aren't very funny...
Forced smile as his team is relegated. That's quite the metaphor.
Starmer is an Arsenal fan.
He's getting practice at blowing a big lead and coming second.
Starmer’s certainly taking a right mauling in tomorrows papers with his plan to use EU citizens to rig future UK elections, that perhaps might even be an election to scrap Brexit.
Why is Starmer daft enough to announce a plan like that, he’s not remotely won an election yet. Constitional change is second term stuff if anything, once you’ve earned trust, and every second he is talking about votes for sixteen year old children and EU citizens and not talking about NHS waiting lists, he’s an idiot.
Meanwhile, I think this is a big moment in the race to be Conservative Party leader.
You can try to argue Braverman is not the Conservatives rising star, simply on basis you don’t like her at all, but you will utterly fail in that argument, the reality is: she’s rising if you like it all not, there’s no denying it. Observer had a big splash on her today, risen from family of immigrants to high office etc.
The UK Home Secretary is headline speaker at this Conservative conference, and she is going to say
“…because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations.”
And how many Conservative members and activists are going to disagree with that reasoning to limit immigration? Tory members will say at last, someone who tells it like it is.
You would use words like steadfast, tenacious, and determined to describe Braverman’s style - those are exactly the same words used to list Lady Thatcher’s strengths.
There’s your next leader of the Conservative Party. She’s got it “Suen-up” hasn’t she?
She didn't used to score well in ConHome's Cabinet League Table series, being below such titans as Therese Coffey, Mel Stride and Victoria Prentis (no, me neither). But now she is near the top.
Rishi had recovered quite a bit by April, but I expect he'll be plummeting back toward the bottom again.
Braverman has the genuine advantage of being underestimated, and not in a Liz Truss way.
Braverman also has a genuine and ruthless killer instinct (like Johnson) which is advantageous in politics.
Truss thought she had one, but hers was a black comedy incompetent suicidal killer instinct and Sunak really doesn't have one at all.
As for Starmer, I suspect he sits somewhere between Suella and Truss.
That well-known pro-European, who welcomed the European legal organs when he was trying to promote the alcohol trade in Scotland. Some useful soundbites there for his opponents.
There is a row going on at the moment because the Oxford Union has invited Kathleen Stock to speak at the Union. The Student Union, a different body, disapproves of Ms Stock's views on gender and is applying pressure to the Oxford Union to withdraw the invitation. So far the Oxford Union has resisted that pressure on free speech grounds.
As @Cyclefree points out, the enthusiasm of those who wish to deplatform those whose views they do not agree with is strong indeed. The old ideas of I deplore your views but I will fight for your right to say them seems very last century.
In my experience, and this goes back 20 years, many of those seeking leadership positions in the Students Union were thinking ahead to a political career, particularly in the Labour Party.
They probably want "I tried to/did stop a TERF" on their CV, as the activist credentials may help them in future.
First – and very importantly – it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful and wrong and should not happen. Saying this should not – and does not – depend on agreeing with the views of the person being discriminated against.
For what it's worth I think the Stand should probably have refused the talk on the grounds of "we're a comedy club and Joanna Cherry isn't very funny".)
Dangerous precedent though. A lot of comedians aren't very funny...
Being a shit comedian as a protected characteristic? You might have something there...
It is pretty much a racing certainty that those applauding The Stand for its initial cancellation and deploring its climb-down would be outraged at the same thing happening to someone whose views they agreed with.
That is very far indeed from certain. What you're doing here is taking a hypothetical hypocrisy, pretending it's nearly universal, and then putting yourself above it. It's the worst kind of straw-man slaying.
I think it is a pretty reasonable assumption to make. It is a bit like football fans complaining about refereeing decisions when they go against their team but welcoming them when they go in their favour.
I don't know who or what The Stand is, or who Cherry is or what her views are. It would at least be helpful to give examples of 'those applauding The Stand for its initial cancellation and deploring its climb-down'.
The Stand is an entertainment venue at Edinburgh festival , owned by SNP MSP and obviously stfeed by the same kind of nutters they have in the SNP mafia. Cherry si an SNP MP who is not liked by the SNP mafi aas she is talented and intelligent. She is a lesbian and is demonised by many as being transphobic and some of these idiots were behind teh plot to have her show cancelled by saying they would not show people to their seats or pull pints in the bar if such an evil person was allowed to have a show there. Ownership obviously thought it was a great wheeze until the dummies were advised that they were heading for court having tried to duff up a KC. Typical of Scotland's current idiots running the country in microcosm.
Although I think the Stand did the right thing, I'm not completely convinced the legal case against the Stand is so clear cut. I realise it's presumptuous of a non lawyer like me to challenge you on this.
I don't think the fact the Stand issued an apology is a statement of the law. It could just be that they don't want to go through with the expense and disruption of one or more court cases. I don't think it's a human rights case as there is AFAIK no state actor involved. It's a dispute between a private club and a private individual. The case you referred to was the police shutting down a publication on an interpretation of the criminal law.
There could be a case of discrimination but I don't think this is absolute. In the hypothetical case where Cherry turned out to be a holocaust denier, the Club would have reasonable grounds to cancel the show.
Cutting to the chase, I think Cherry would have to prove the Stand was arbitrary and unreasonable in shutting down the show and therefore had discriminated against her.
I may be completely wrong of course.
Should add there may have been a breach of contract, but that's a different legal point, I think.
The Stand comedy clubs are part-owned by SNP MP Tommy Sheppard, and they were trying to virtue signal during the somewhat lively Scottish debate about identity.
The problem was they were trying to virtue signal to a KC, and backed off when faced with having to defend their decision in court. Their own counsel advised them to make the case go away, before it got anywhere near a courtroom.
The advisor of the Stand club was the friend of a friend of mine. The Stand has the right to determine who is given the opportunity to perform at their venue but the problem here was that they had made the offer and then withdrawn it for a reason that was potentially discriminatory based on Cherry's beliefs. That was a risk that they did not need to take. I think that they were well advised myself.
Perhaps legal eagles here may find it interesting to debate the legal basis for moderating posts here - for example expressions of belief that are anti-semitic but within the law.
There is no legal obligation in the part of this site to give to anyone at all. We are here on sufferance.
You don't think this site is a "service-provider" within the meaning of the Equality Act?
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
Well, I would say yes and no, on that. It depends whether you mean culturally interesting, or interesting for investors, I would say. Many people in Continental Europe and North America considered London one of the world's most interesting cities in the 1960's and 1970's, along with New York.
Hence people like Ursula Von Der Leyen came to live in Camden in London in the '70s, which was the "thing to do" for many trendy French and Germans. The difference in expense from the late 1980's onwards was more to do the inflow of international money, and various other Thatcher-era policies, some of which have reasonably benefitted London, and some not at all, I would say.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
Forced smile as his team is relegated. That's quite the metaphor.
Starmer is an Arsenal fan.
He's getting practice at blowing a big lead and coming second.
Starmer’s certainly taking a right mauling in tomorrows papers with his plan to use EU citizens to rig future UK elections, that perhaps might even be an election to scrap Brexit.
Why is Starmer daft enough to announce a plan like that, he’s not remotely won an election yet. Constitional change is second term stuff if anything, once you’ve earned trust, and every second he is talking about votes for sixteen year old children and EU citizens and not talking about NHS waiting lists, he’s an idiot.
It’s bizarre to say the least for Labour to go down this road . Votes for 16 and 17 year olds is less controversial, the proposal would be though for all residents to have the vote so basically those from the EU and the rest of the world , commonwealth citizens already have the vote although I doubt many Brits realize this . The right wing papers have gone down the EU nationals route so basically continuing where they left off during the ref campaign , more despicable scapegoating .
I think an issue with this possible proposal is it risks causing a lot of divisiveness and blowback against EU nationals. The right wing will go into overdrive .
I personally have no problem with EU nationals voting in general elections but think this policy proposal if it happens could damage Labours chances in 2024 .
Starmer has a responsibility not to offer up own goals to the Tories and should be avoiding missteps . It would be unforgivable to subject us to 5 more years of this cesspit government !
Giving the vote in national elections to non-citizen residents is fairly unusual. I think New Zealand does this, I guess there must be a few others. The UK is already unusual in giving voting rights at the national level to citizens of quite a few other countries - Ireland and Commonwealth. But Greg Hands is lying when he says 'The right to vote in parliamentary elections and choose the next UK government is rightly restricted to British citizens and those with the closest historical links to our country'. Unless he is enough of a moron to think that Mozambique and Rwanda have closer historical links to the UK than European neighbours or the US.
There was a referendum in Luxemburg in 2015 on giving voting rights in national elections to minimum 10-year resident non-citizens. No won 78% to 22%. Lowering the voting age to 16 lost 80% to 20% in the same referendum.
Not sure if there's been much polling on these, but I would guess both proposals would be vote-losers for Labour, and look suspiciously like fiddling with the voting system for party advantage.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
These types of differences caused me all sorts of bother when trying to get a mortgage here. Banks need Scottish call centres.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
You can also buy houses for less than 250k in Barking and Dagenham.
Personally I would go for the newbuild flat at Barking Riverside though. Next to a new overground station, the boat in to central london, shops, an 'outstanding' school, a decent cafe/work area, a new riverside park, An established developer (Bellway) with a 10 year warranty, flats built to up to date building reg specs including safety rules, etc etc. An altogether better prospect than most flats in London.
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
Forced smile as his team is relegated. That's quite the metaphor.
Starmer is an Arsenal fan.
He's getting practice at blowing a big lead and coming second.
Starmer’s certainly taking a right mauling in tomorrows papers with his plan to use EU citizens to rig future UK elections, that perhaps might even be an election to scrap Brexit.
Why is Starmer daft enough to announce a plan like that, he’s not remotely won an election yet. Constitional change is second term stuff if anything, once you’ve earned trust, and every second he is talking about votes for sixteen year old children and EU citizens and not talking about NHS waiting lists, he’s an idiot.
It’s bizarre to say the least for Labour to go down this road . Votes for 16 and 17 year olds is less controversial, the proposal would be though for all residents to have the vote so basically those from the EU and the rest of the world , commonwealth citizens already have the vote although I doubt many Brits realize this . The right wing papers have gone down the EU nationals route so basically continuing where they left off during the ref campaign , more despicable scapegoating .
I think an issue with this possible proposal is it risks causing a lot of divisiveness and blowback against EU nationals. The right wing will go into overdrive .
I personally have no problem with EU nationals voting in general elections but think this policy proposal if it happens could damage Labours chances in 2024 .
Starmer has a responsibility not to offer up own goals to the Tories and should be avoiding missteps . It would be unforgivable to subject us to 5 more years of this cesspit government !
Giving the vote in national elections to non-citizen residents is fairly unusual. I think New Zealand does this, I guess there must be a few others. The UK is already unusual in giving voting rights at the national level to citizens of quite a few other countries - Ireland and Commonwealth. But Greg Hands is lying when he says 'The right to vote in parliamentary elections and choose the next UK government is rightly restricted to British citizens and those with the closest historical links to our country'. Unless he is enough of a moron to think that Mozambique and Rwanda have closer historical links to the UK than European neighbours or the US.
There was a referendum in Luxemburg in 2015 on giving voting rights in national elections to minimum 10-year resident non-citizens. No won 78% to 22%. Lowering the voting age to 16 lost 80% to 20% in the same referendum.
Not sure if there's been much polling on these, but I would guess both proposals would be vote-losers for Labour, and look suspiciously like fiddling with the voting system for party advantage.
Just seen this graph on Paul Mason's twitter, "proving" how bad Brexit is
Two points..
- Don't trend lines usually have points above and below them? This one has ZERO points above it on the 2009-2015 section that sets the "trend"
- Aren't they usually straight lines? This one is curving upwards
Looks like utter horseshit to me
Looks like a poorly drawn line but the result is still pretty awful. It was generally accepted that business investment would plummet whilst there was uncertainty. Will that now change?
Just seen this graph on Paul Mason's twitter, "proving" how bad Brexit is
Two points..
- Don't trend lines usually have points above and below them? This one has ZERO points above it on the 2009-2015 section that sets the "trend"
- Aren't they usually straight lines? This one is curving upwards
Looks like utter horseshit to me
The curve is probably valid- growth is exponential, after all. Compound interest, wealth begets wealth and all that.
Agree about the exact best fit curve they've used- it should be slightly lower. But not enough to change the conclusion of the graph that something bad happened to investment in 2016, and hasn't stopped happening since.
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
These types of differences caused me all sorts of bother when trying to get a mortgage here. Banks need Scottish call centres.
All our banks are English now which is the issue, though I have to say having dealt with Nationwide I had no issues on my flat, but was via a broker.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
The Japanese system is that when you buy a car, you have to give the police proof that you have somewhere to park it. When our slightly mad neighbours wouldn't pay their service charge for a year, the building association refused to stamp the document showing that they were renting the space, at which point they finally coughed up.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
Four flat tyres would have got the message across for starters.
Ulrich Speck who has been rather sceptical on Germany's foreign policy vis a vis Ukraine/Russia thinks yesterday was pretty significant in positioning Germany away from the latter. Macron accused of living in a parallel universe.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
Four flat tyres would have got the message across for starters.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
The Japanese system is that when you buy a car, you have to give the police proof that you have somewhere to park it. When our slightly mad neighbours wouldn't pay their service charge for a year, the building association refused to stamp the document showing that they were renting the space, at which point they finally coughed up.
So many cities could do with following the Japanese “Kei Car” system. Cars in general have got so much bigger in the past couple of decades.
“Parking Full. If you all drove a Mini there would be loads of space!” - sign outside a high-end restaurant complex here in the sandpit, that usually appears by about 7pm at the weekend.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Gove has always been good at working out problems. He's possibly the only Secretary of State for Education who has ever identified the real issues in England's schools.
The snag is that his solutions not only don't solve the problems but tend to make everything much worse.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Just seen this graph on Paul Mason's twitter, "proving" how bad Brexit is
Two points..
- Don't trend lines usually have points above and below them? This one has ZERO points above it on the 2009-2015 section that sets the "trend"
- Aren't they usually straight lines? This one is curving upwards
Looks like utter horseshit to me
The curve is probably valid- growth is exponential, after all. Compound interest, wealth begets wealth and all that.
Agree about the exact best fit curve they've used- it should be slightly lower. But not enough to change the conclusion of the graph that something bad happened to investment in 2016, and hasn't stopped happening since.
None of it matters anyway. As Turkey showed yesterday, you can have an economy with 80% inflation, industrial collapse and thousands left homeless with no support after a natural disaster and still romp home with nearly 50% of the vote if you deploy the right anti-woke talking points consistently enough.
(And dominate state broadcasting, prosecute opposition journalists and get a Twitter to block their output.)
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
The Japanese system is that when you buy a car, you have to give the police proof that you have somewhere to park it. When our slightly mad neighbours wouldn't pay their service charge for a year, the building association refused to stamp the document showing that they were renting the space, at which point they finally coughed up.
So many cities could do with following the Japanese “Kei Car” system. Cars in general have got so much bigger in the past couple of decades.
“Parking Full. If you all drove a Mini there would be loads of space!” - sign outside a high-end restaurant complex here in the sandpit, that usually appears by about 7pm at the weekend.
As the proud owner of a 1982 Subaru Sambar kei truck (aka "the Porsche of the farm track") I've been reading the American kei truck reddit. This is fun because they're only allowed to drive cars on the road if they're old enough to be classified as classic cars. So they're getting all excited about the new features in each new generation of kei trucks, except with a 25 year time lag.
Forced smile as his team is relegated. That's quite the metaphor.
Starmer is an Arsenal fan.
He's getting practice at blowing a big lead and coming second.
Starmer’s certainly taking a right mauling in tomorrows papers with his plan to use EU citizens to rig future UK elections, that perhaps might even be an election to scrap Brexit.
Why is Starmer daft enough to announce a plan like that, he’s not remotely won an election yet. Constitional change is second term stuff if anything, once you’ve earned trust, and every second he is talking about votes for sixteen year old children and EU citizens and not talking about NHS waiting lists, he’s an idiot.
Meanwhile, I think this is a big moment in the race to be Conservative Party leader.
You can try to argue Braverman is not the Conservatives rising star, simply on basis you don’t like her at all, but you will utterly fail in that argument, the reality is: she’s rising if you like it all not, there’s no denying it. Observer had a big splash on her today, risen from family of immigrants to high office etc.
The UK Home Secretary is headline speaker at this Conservative conference, and she is going to say
“…because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations.”
And how many Conservative members and activists are going to disagree with that reasoning to limit immigration? Tory members will say at last, someone who tells it like it is.
You would use words like steadfast, tenacious, and determined to describe Braverman’s style - those are exactly the same words used to list Lady Thatcher’s strengths.
There’s your next leader of the Conservative Party. She’s got it “Suen-up” hasn’t she?
No as only 32 Tory MPs voted for her in the 2022 leadership election, she has no chance of reaching the final 2 to even to the Tory membership therefore if Rishi loses and the race to choose the Tory Leader of the Opposition begins
I knew you were lurking out there with something crazy like this to post 😆
32 was a bloody good start for “what’s she running for” candidate” You saying her fan club hasn’t “sue-welled” since then?
You saying she won’t go into the leadership election with more credibility than Lady Thatcher when she actually won leadership.
You are going to tell us the smug, full of themself woman child Badenoch knocks Braverman out the top two, when it’s so obvious Braverman is the only one of the candidates with determination and tenacity to deliver, focussed and steadfast enough to actually take a fight back to Labour? 😆
Now, most important question of all, when Braverman says we must limit immigration because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations - do you actually disagree with her?
No, the final 3 would be Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt in my view, neither Braverman nor Badenoch make it
That’s what you most want isn’t it? But not wanting Braverman as leader doesn’t make her disappear. For example, if on the hustings she says, we must limit immigration because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations - will any of the three you mentioned challenge that, instantly flashing up a huge gulf of difference between Braverman and themselves? Braverman and her supporters bring the differentials into the coming leadership election, this is what gets her into the last two, and with these differentials she beats all three of your suggestions easily in Phase 2 doesn’t she?
Are you taking into account how the MP phase can change dramatically from the last one after 100 seat losses?
Most of the Tory seat losses will be redwall MPs on current polls, so the remaining Tory party would be even more southern than it is now with some patches from ex industrial areas of the Midlands.
The next Tory leader will likely be a Leaver but a sane Leaver like Barclay. It would probably take a second heavy general election defeat for the Conservatives to go all out for the pure ideologue as leader and in my view that would be more likely to be Rees Mogg than Braverman or Badenoch. Remember Corbyn and IDS weren't elected when Labour and the Tories first lost power, only after a second defeat. The first Opposition leaders they elected were more from the centre of the party ie Ed Miliband and Hague
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
Who cares whether he gets a knighthood or not, but if true it seems to be another example of a fundamentally disloyal person getting furious at someone 'betraying' them when no loyalty was offered or required.
Just seen this graph on Paul Mason's twitter, "proving" how bad Brexit is
Two points..
- Don't trend lines usually have points above and below them? This one has ZERO points above it on the 2009-2015 section that sets the "trend"
- Aren't they usually straight lines? This one is curving upwards
Looks like utter horseshit to me
If a trend is at a constant rate of increase - such as 1% growth per year - then you will get an upwards curve rather than a straight line.
The trend curve is anchored to be equal to the 2009 figure, which is a little naughty, and creates an offset. It would have been better to set the average of the trend equal to the average of the years 2009-2015 (i.e. the years it has been calculated for), though the offset isn't that large and doesn't really change the point being made.
Forced smile as his team is relegated. That's quite the metaphor.
Starmer is an Arsenal fan.
He's getting practice at blowing a big lead and coming second.
Starmer’s certainly taking a right mauling in tomorrows papers with his plan to use EU citizens to rig future UK elections, that perhaps might even be an election to scrap Brexit.
Why is Starmer daft enough to announce a plan like that, he’s not remotely won an election yet. Constitional change is second term stuff if anything, once you’ve earned trust, and every second he is talking about votes for sixteen year old children and EU citizens and not talking about NHS waiting lists, he’s an idiot.
Meanwhile, I think this is a big moment in the race to be Conservative Party leader.
You can try to argue Braverman is not the Conservatives rising star, simply on basis you don’t like her at all, but you will utterly fail in that argument, the reality is: she’s rising if you like it all not, there’s no denying it. Observer had a big splash on her today, risen from family of immigrants to high office etc.
The UK Home Secretary is headline speaker at this Conservative conference, and she is going to say
“…because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations.”
And how many Conservative members and activists are going to disagree with that reasoning to limit immigration? Tory members will say at last, someone who tells it like it is.
You would use words like steadfast, tenacious, and determined to describe Braverman’s style - those are exactly the same words used to list Lady Thatcher’s strengths.
There’s your next leader of the Conservative Party. She’s got it “Suen-up” hasn’t she?
No as only 32 Tory MPs voted for her in the 2022 leadership election, she has no chance of reaching the final 2 to even to the Tory membership therefore if Rishi loses and the race to choose the Tory Leader of the Opposition begins
I knew you were lurking out there with something crazy like this to post 😆
32 was a bloody good start for “what’s she running for” candidate” You saying her fan club hasn’t “sue-welled” since then?
You saying she won’t go into the leadership election with more credibility than Lady Thatcher when she actually won leadership.
You are going to tell us the smug, full of themself woman child Badenoch knocks Braverman out the top two, when it’s so obvious Braverman is the only one of the candidates with determination and tenacity to deliver, focussed and steadfast enough to actually take a fight back to Labour? 😆
Now, most important question of all, when Braverman says we must limit immigration because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations - do you actually disagree with her?
No, the final 3 would be Barclay, Tugendhat and Mordaunt in my view, neither Braverman nor Badenoch make it
That’s what you most want isn’t it? But not wanting Braverman as leader doesn’t make her disappear. For example, if on the hustings she says, we must limit immigration because of the pressure it puts on housing supply, public services and community relations - will any of the three you mentioned challenge that, instantly flashing up a huge gulf of difference between Braverman and themselves? Braverman and her supporters bring the differentials into the coming leadership election, this is what gets her into the last two, and with these differentials she beats all three of your suggestions easily in Phase 2 doesn’t she?
Are you taking into account how the MP phase can change dramatically from the last one after 100 seat losses?
Most of the Tory seat losses will be redwall MPs on current polls, so the remaining Tory party would be even more southern than it is now with some patches from ex industrial areas of the Midlands
THis is not going to go down well (so to speak) anywhere in Toryland:
"Immigration and food prices must increase to solve the food crisis, ministers are to say at a summit.
Rishi Sunak will be joined by ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as well as farmers and industry leaders at the meeting at No 10 on Tuesday."
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
Basically what you do, but for far less effort ?
Leon spends two hours a morning primping and preening and making up?
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
More than anything else nothing seems to distinguish one from another.
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
First – and very importantly – it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful and wrong and should not happen. Saying this should not – and does not – depend on agreeing with the views of the person being discriminated against.
Would Cyclefree have written this article if it were a transgender writer being "discriminated against"?
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
Basically what you do, but for far less effort ?
The parallel did occur to me!
However I’m not source about the disparity in effort. They actually work quite hard. They have to make sure they constantly look good, they create and edit content in real time and deliver videos and pictures every day or two (all carefully edited and narrated) - I’ve checked out their insta pages
Personally I couldn’t bear it. But the influencers do go to lovely places, and the PR girl told us they are really effective. Her company can see bookings surge upwards - a day or two after the content is put online. Which is why they sent them to the Maldives a month ago and they’re off somewhere else next week
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
Just seen this graph on Paul Mason's twitter, "proving" how bad Brexit is
Two points..
- Don't trend lines usually have points above and below them? This one has ZERO points above it on the 2009-2015 section that sets the "trend"
- Aren't they usually straight lines? This one is curving upwards
Looks like utter horseshit to me
The curve is probably valid- growth is exponential, after all. Compound interest, wealth begets wealth and all that.
Agree about the exact best fit curve they've used- it should be slightly lower. But not enough to change the conclusion of the graph that something bad happened to investment in 2016, and hasn't stopped happening since.
Ah. Possibly the really naughty thing that has been done is starting the series in 2009. We might have seen above trend growth (in business investment) since then due to a rebound from some minor activity in the financial sector that had initially slipped my mind.
There is a row going on at the moment because the Oxford Union has invited Kathleen Stock to speak at the Union. The Student Union, a different body, disapproves of Ms Stock's views on gender and is applying pressure to the Oxford Union to withdraw the invitation. So far the Oxford Union has resisted that pressure on free speech grounds.
As @Cyclefree points out, the enthusiasm of those who wish to deplatform those whose views they do not agree with is strong indeed. The old ideas of I deplore your views but I will fight for your right to say them seems very last century.
*Advocating* free speech is seen by the no-platformers as actively wrong.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
It is sad fcukwits posing for moronic sad fcukwitted halfwits with sad lives, unbelieveable.
There is a row going on at the moment because the Oxford Union has invited Kathleen Stock to speak at the Union. The Student Union, a different body, disapproves of Ms Stock's views on gender and is applying pressure to the Oxford Union to withdraw the invitation. So far the Oxford Union has resisted that pressure on free speech grounds.
As @Cyclefree points out, the enthusiasm of those who wish to deplatform those whose views they do not agree with is strong indeed. The old ideas of I deplore your views but I will fight for your right to say them seems very last century.
There is a very large difference between defending a right to free speech, and offering a platform to those you disagree with, though.
The Union is a private society, and entitled to make its own choices about who speaks there. Equally, the OUSU is equally entitled to lobby them, and the Union to ignore them should it so choose.
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
I believe the whole honours caper to be a nonsense, but this story does amplify the nasty, petty, toxic toad characteristics of Johnson.
Presumably these politicians actually care if they are knighted or not which says even more about them.
I've said it before, but I will repeat: I believe the only honours should be for gallantry and voluntary services. What is more the level of honour should be on what you did not your status in society i.e. Lollipop ladies should not get lower awards than business people. Award on merit not status.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Any Brexiteers onboard ?
Only me, I suspect - tho I wonder about the young English guy from XXXXXXXXX. He’s certainly not on the Left, Got quite vocal in his loathing of Corbyn last night. Then we all drank quite bad Egyptian champagne
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
More than anything else nothing seems to distinguish one from another.
By the time they have photoshopped them to death you have no clue who the plastic muppet in the picture is in any case.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
In the years running up to Indyref Salmond took the idea of independence seriously. He was very focused on Scotland having a viable economy that could deliver for its people after independence. Views will differ as to whether he succeeded or not but he was absolutely clear that this was an essential component of independence.
During the Sturgeon era all sight was lost of the importance of the economy. Her movement to the left, which in fairness was very successful in taking the central belt from Labour, was at the cost of a Statist, high tax, public sector dominated economy with highly critical views of those who had the audacity to make money or build a business.
Forbes offered a return to the Salmond viewpoint but lost out to continuity Yousless. Current policies are simply not designed to build a viable private sector tax base in Scotland, if anything they will continue to make Scotland a less attractive place to invest. So we pay more tax, have more state regulation, have a disproportionately large public sector that scoops up available talent by paying itself rather well, poorly performing schools, restrictions on the number of young Scots who can get a government subsidised university place, a lack of interest in essential infrastructure and policies such as the bottle scheme that are introduced with no thought as to their economic consequences.
Scotland is not fit to be an independent country at present. Its reliance on UK subsidy has increased. Independence now would mean substantial cuts in the public sector and even more tax rises. These problems need to be addressed in the Union or out of it. But they will indeed take decades to address. And the risk is we will continue on a path of blaming others for our failings and go even deeper into this hole before we come out the other side.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
That's a "job" I'd like to see lost to AI
Is it any different to models being worn to promote clothes, and photographed doing so?
There are loads of jobs that I'd like to see destroyed in the fires of a revolution, but I think you are showing an example of being snobby about something that isn't new, but is simply being done in a new way because of technology, which is pretty silly.
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Any Brexiteers onboard ?
Some unionist twat working for a London newspaper who would be a fellow brexiteer no doubt, Leon is easily taken in big time.
This guy has a Glaswegian accent so thick even ChatGPT8 would have trouble faking it
He’s an ex-Sturgeon supporter. He’s somewhat bitter about what has happened, has little to no confidence in Humza (“lightweight”), but sees Alba as pointless and going nowhere
He seems quite relieved to be out of Scotland and in the sun, drinking free mojitos, and fuck Indy and the SNP and all that
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
The job they're doing is freelance advertising. Whatever gets punters' attention sells the space. Easy to get your head around when you call it what it is.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
It is sad fcukwits posing for moronic sad fcukwitted halfwits with sad lives, unbelieveable.
Think of it rather as a modern day version of the holiday brochures we once perused.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
It depends where is meant by London. Central London is now unaffordable for most families, and even the cheaper bits have now been gentrified. However, for the last century it has been the case that, aside from the young and rich, even successful people would commute in to London from large houses in the Home Counties.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
It is sad fcukwits posing for moronic sad fcukwitted halfwits with sad lives, unbelieveable.
That may be true but they are undoubtedly seeing a lot of the world, in some luxury, and for free - and making a proper income from endorsements and links
I find it entirely bizarre, but it is a definite phenomenon
There’s another German influencer couple (man and woman) from TikTok - at this same hotel - who seem to post quasi-porn and make money from THAT. No joke
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
In the years running up to Indyref Salmond took the idea of independence seriously. He was very focused on Scotland having a viable economy that could deliver for its people after independence. Views will differ as to whether he succeeded or not but he was absolutely clear that this was an essential component of independence.
During the Sturgeon era all sight was lost of the importance of the economy. Her movement to the left, which in fairness was very successful in taking the central belt from Labour, was at the cost of a Statist, high tax, public sector dominated economy with highly critical views of those who had the audacity to make money or build a business.
Forbes offered a return to the Salmond viewpoint but lost out to continuity Yousless. Current policies are simply not designed to build a viable private sector tax base in Scotland, if anything they will continue to make Scotland a less attractive place to invest. So we pay more tax, have more state regulation, have a disproportionately large public sector that scoops up available talent by paying itself rather well, poorly performing schools, restrictions on the number of young Scots who can get a government subsidised university place, a lack of interest in essential infrastructure and policies such as the bottle scheme that are introduced with no thought as to their economic consequences.
Scotland is not fit to be an independent country at present. Its reliance on UK subsidy has increased. Independence now would mean substantial cuts in the public sector and even more tax rises. These problems need to be addressed in the Union or out of it. But they will indeed take decades to address. And the risk is we will continue on a path of blaming others for our failings and go even deeper into this hole before we come out the other side.
David, I agree with most of it , the subsidy part is moonshine though. We would not have to pay for England's baubles and foibles so could easily cut out the majority of the supposed borrowing. For sure though if the current bunch of useless grifting crooks are not removed soon we will be a real basket case. However another crooked London party, who care not a jot for Scotland is not the answer. It needs dumping of freeloaders , Independence and some cold porridge.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
The problem is that 'abolishing leasehold' is a massively complex project and the government have already caused chaos with their changes to cladding and building safety rules.
They have also tried once to abolish leasehold, replacing it with 'commonhold' 21 years ago, to get rid of the 'feudal' relationships involved in leasehold. There are about 50 buildings in the UK that took up the opportunity and as far as I know, none of them are mortgageable.
I agree that 'getting rid of freeholders' would not be a silver bullet. I live in a flat where leasehold enfranchisement has taken place and the other owners have very little understanding of the responsibilities and obligations arising from owning a building. There is no management and it is falling in to disrepair. The last major work took place nearly 20 years ago when there was a freeholder but he had to take one of the leaseholders to court to get them to pay their share.
I am familiar with the system of communal block management in Scandinavia where owners are essentially compelled to keep blocks of flats up to date, with the ability to borrow money from a state facility for major works projects. This does mean that work gets done to a good standard but the monthly costs are enormous, 500 euros per month is common. That is why often flats in less popular areas are sold for next to nothing - the monthly service charges are so high.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
That's a "job" I'd like to see lost to AI
Is it any different to models being worn to promote clothes, and photographed doing so?
There are loads of jobs that I'd like to see destroyed in the fires of a revolution, but I think you are showing an example of being snobby about something that isn't new, but is simply being done in a new way because of technology, which is pretty silly.
Does not hide the fact that they are useless parasites leeching off the dumb.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Any Brexiteers onboard ?
Some unionist twat working for a London newspaper who would be a fellow brexiteer no doubt, Leon is easily taken in big time.
This guy has a Glaswegian accent so thick even ChatGPT8 would have trouble faking it
He’s an ex-Sturgeon supporter. He’s somewhat bitter about what has happened, has little to no confidence in Humza (“lightweight”), but sees Alba as pointless and going nowhere
He seems quite relieved to be out of Scotland and in the sun, drinking free mojitos, and fuck Indy and the SNP and all that
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
It is sad fcukwits posing for moronic sad fcukwitted halfwits with sad lives, unbelieveable.
That may be true but they are undoubtedly seeing a lot of the world, in some luxury, and for free - and making a proper income from endorsements and links
I find it entirely bizarre, but it is a definite phenomenon
There’s another German influencer couple (man and woman) from TikTok - at this same hotel - who seem to post quasi-porn and make money from THAT. No joke
The world is turning into a J G Ballard novel
When the world gets fed up with influencers I'm not sure what they're going to do with their lives. And they won't be as young as they used to be.
There is a row going on at the moment because the Oxford Union has invited Kathleen Stock to speak at the Union. The Student Union, a different body, disapproves of Ms Stock's views on gender and is applying pressure to the Oxford Union to withdraw the invitation. So far the Oxford Union has resisted that pressure on free speech grounds.
As @Cyclefree points out, the enthusiasm of those who wish to deplatform those whose views they do not agree with is strong indeed. The old ideas of I deplore your views but I will fight for your right to say them seems very last century.
There is a very large difference between defending a right to free speech, and offering a platform to those you disagree with, though.
The Union is a private society, and entitled to make its own choices about who speaks there. Equally, the OUSU is equally entitled to lobby them, and the Union to ignore them should it so choose.
None of that has really changed over many decades
My son has been dragged into this because he is currently the chair of the Debate Selection Committee. Despite its name it is largely focused on running the competitive debating competitions that he enjoys and takes part in but, at least notionally, the invites to speak go out in their name. He doesn't really play the politics game at Oxford but my word is it vicious.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
That's a "job" I'd like to see lost to AI
Is it any different to models being worn to promote clothes, and photographed doing so?
There are loads of jobs that I'd like to see destroyed in the fires of a revolution, but I think you are showing an example of being snobby about something that isn't new, but is simply being done in a new way because of technology, which is pretty silly.
The models tend to make the clothes being sold look their best
Someone pouting in front of a holiday destination makes it look like a place full of people pouting
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
It is sad fcukwits posing for moronic sad fcukwitted halfwits with sad lives, unbelieveable.
That may be true but they are undoubtedly seeing a lot of the world, in some luxury, and for free - and making a proper income from endorsements and links
I find it entirely bizarre, but it is a definite phenomenon
There’s another German influencer couple (man and woman) from TikTok - at this same hotel - who seem to post quasi-porn and make money from THAT. No joke
The world is turning into a J G Ballard novel
Good luck to them for sure , nice work if you can get it but I just cannot fathom the idiots that fund them
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
In the years running up to Indyref Salmond took the idea of independence seriously. He was very focused on Scotland having a viable economy that could deliver for its people after independence. Views will differ as to whether he succeeded or not but he was absolutely clear that this was an essential component of independence.
During the Sturgeon era all sight was lost of the importance of the economy. Her movement to the left, which in fairness was very successful in taking the central belt from Labour, was at the cost of a Statist, high tax, public sector dominated economy with highly critical views of those who had the audacity to make money or build a business.
Forbes offered a return to the Salmond viewpoint but lost out to continuity Yousless. Current policies are simply not designed to build a viable private sector tax base in Scotland, if anything they will continue to make Scotland a less attractive place to invest. So we pay more tax, have more state regulation, have a disproportionately large public sector that scoops up available talent by paying itself rather well, poorly performing schools, restrictions on the number of young Scots who can get a government subsidised university place, a lack of interest in essential infrastructure and policies such as the bottle scheme that are introduced with no thought as to their economic consequences.
Scotland is not fit to be an independent country at present. Its reliance on UK subsidy has increased. Independence now would mean substantial cuts in the public sector and even more tax rises. These problems need to be addressed in the Union or out of it. But they will indeed take decades to address. And the risk is we will continue on a path of blaming others for our failings and go even deeper into this hole before we come out the other side.
The Scottish guy here is particularly exercised by the incompetence and corruption surrounding the ferries, the terrible drug problem, and the neglect of smaller Scottish towns. All of which is down to the SNP - and he’s a SNP supporter!
(Or was - I get the feeling he is so disenchanted he might abstain next time)
He also loathes English Tories, so conversations have been lively - but friendly
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Have you met any cabbies from Tirana out there?
It’s 90% Germans, so not yet
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
I really can’t get my head around that phenomenon, or the wider popular trend of people striking ridiculous pouty glamour poses everywhere they go then posting on Instagram. It seems so obviously vain and presumptuous. Quite alien.
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
The job they're doing is freelance advertising. Whatever gets punters' attention sells the space. Easy to get your head around when you call it what it is.
I get the economics of it. But perhaps 1% or fewer of the people you see pouting on Instagram are getting any money for it. The rest are doing it purely for personal vanity/neediness it seems. Most have no desire to be influencers. There are members of my extended family who do it too.
You see it with tourists in places like Tower Bridge too. Where once they would ask a passerby to snap them smiling with the towers in the background, now one is puckering up the lips and trying to look smouldering (with the towers in the background), with the other taking the photo.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
Kill all the lawyers. Throw all the large freeholder landlords on the pyre too. No hearts should bleed for them. If they have so many problems running their properties, they can sell them. Nothing worse than hearing a landlord whinge.
Commonhold as envisaged in the Leasehold Reform Act 2002 "wasn't really taken up" because it was wrecked by lawyers and spivs.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
Any Brexiteers onboard ?
Some unionist twat working for a London newspaper who would be a fellow brexiteer no doubt, Leon is easily taken in big time.
This guy has a Glaswegian accent so thick even ChatGPT8 would have trouble faking it
He’s an ex-Sturgeon supporter. He’s somewhat bitter about what has happened, has little to no confidence in Humza (“lightweight”), but sees Alba as pointless and going nowhere
He seems quite relieved to be out of Scotland and in the sun, drinking free mojitos, and fuck Indy and the SNP and all that
He better enjoy it given the state of Scottish newspapers he will be lucky to have a job soon.
Coming to the conclusion that the UK is cooked. I'm fortunate to have done well in my early career, but London rents are getting ridiculous, to the point that I know three people paying £42k/yr for a bang average place in Tooting(!).
We then figured out that one of them was paying a marginal tax rate of 67% on every penny over £50k. (13.8% Employers NI on total - then 40% tax, 2% NI, 9% Undergrad tax, 6% Masters tax, 5% mandatory pension contribution).
Brutally high rents combined with crippling tax rates and public services that effectively just don't exist...
Every party bar Labour have an electoral incentive to not give the Housing theory of everything a look, and Labour are split down the middle in terms of who gets it and who doesn't. Personally I'm going through the steps with work to go fully remote abroad, and Barcelona seems nice, rent half the price, marginal tax rate on the nomad scheme only 1/3rd of what I pay here.
London is a great place to live whilst you are starting out in your career, but difficult to make work over the long term because of the cost of housing.
London is always going to be an expensive place to live because most the world's population would buy a property there if they could afford to. (It was fairly cheap in the 1970s because London wasn't regarded as a particularly attractive place to live at that time).
There is also an element of snobbishness with these complaints though... you can buy a new build flat at Barking Riverside for around £250k.
Buy? You can lease it for 100 years, with all the attendant uncapped service charges, major works bills, and general lack of consumer protection for leaseholders (see: Grenfell).
There's a reason flat prices have flatlined in the last five years while house prices have rocketed.
It may be irrational (in fact, it almost certainly is) but one thing that's always at the back of my mind when looking at leasehold is what happened to Hong Kong over the New Territories.
Buying a lease, even if long-term, is never the same as outright ownership.
Seems to be an England thing , next to none if any leasehold in Scotland. Most if not all of the feudal rights similar were dumped long ago.
One of those subtle but powerful ingredients in making England dysfunctional. Give Gove his due, he worked that out but not that his party would prefer to conserve the current system;
Whilst abolishing leasehold might well help, you're still left with what replaces it. And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had: Lessee who didn't pay their service charge Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting' Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
The Japanese system is that when you buy a car, you have to give the police proof that you have somewhere to park it. When our slightly mad neighbours wouldn't pay their service charge for a year, the building association refused to stamp the document showing that they were renting the space, at which point they finally coughed up.
So many cities could do with following the Japanese “Kei Car” system. Cars in general have got so much bigger in the past couple of decades.
“Parking Full. If you all drove a Mini there would be loads of space!” - sign outside a high-end restaurant complex here in the sandpit, that usually appears by about 7pm at the weekend.
As the proud owner of a 1982 Subaru Sambar kei truck (aka "the Porsche of the farm track") I've been reading the American kei truck reddit. This is fun because they're only allowed to drive cars on the road if they're old enough to be classified as classic cars. So they're getting all excited about the new features in each new generation of kei trucks, except with a 25 year time lag.
Yes, American car forums can be quite funny, with the 25-year rule. Every year, they discover a load of European and Japanese cars that never made it to the States in the ‘90s.
The trick is to buy up collectible 23-year-old cars in Europe and Japan. Many of them double in value overnight, when the Americans come looking for them.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
In the years running up to Indyref Salmond took the idea of independence seriously. He was very focused on Scotland having a viable economy that could deliver for its people after independence. Views will differ as to whether he succeeded or not but he was absolutely clear that this was an essential component of independence.
During the Sturgeon era all sight was lost of the importance of the economy. Her movement to the left, which in fairness was very successful in taking the central belt from Labour, was at the cost of a Statist, high tax, public sector dominated economy with highly critical views of those who had the audacity to make money or build a business.
Forbes offered a return to the Salmond viewpoint but lost out to continuity Yousless. Current policies are simply not designed to build a viable private sector tax base in Scotland, if anything they will continue to make Scotland a less attractive place to invest. So we pay more tax, have more state regulation, have a disproportionately large public sector that scoops up available talent by paying itself rather well, poorly performing schools, restrictions on the number of young Scots who can get a government subsidised university place, a lack of interest in essential infrastructure and policies such as the bottle scheme that are introduced with no thought as to their economic consequences.
Scotland is not fit to be an independent country at present. Its reliance on UK subsidy has increased. Independence now would mean substantial cuts in the public sector and even more tax rises. These problems need to be addressed in the Union or out of it. But they will indeed take decades to address. And the risk is we will continue on a path of blaming others for our failings and go even deeper into this hole before we come out the other side.
The Scottish guy here is particularly exercised by the incompetence and corruption surrounding the ferries, the terrible drug problem, and the neglect of smaller Scottish towns. All of which is down to the SNP - and he’s a SNP supporter!
(Or was - I get the feeling he is so disenchanted he might abstain next time)
He also loathes English Tories, so conversations have been lively - but friendly
Your average Independence supporter then. Only dummies still think current SNP crooks are out for anything but themselves.
There is a row going on at the moment because the Oxford Union has invited Kathleen Stock to speak at the Union. The Student Union, a different body, disapproves of Ms Stock's views on gender and is applying pressure to the Oxford Union to withdraw the invitation. So far the Oxford Union has resisted that pressure on free speech grounds.
As @Cyclefree points out, the enthusiasm of those who wish to deplatform those whose views they do not agree with is strong indeed. The old ideas of I deplore your views but I will fight for your right to say them seems very last century.
There is a very large difference between defending a right to free speech, and offering a platform to those you disagree with, though.
The Union is a private society, and entitled to make its own choices about who speaks there. Equally, the OUSU is equally entitled to lobby them, and the Union to ignore them should it so choose.
None of that has really changed over many decades
The point Cyclefree seems to be arguing is that Joanna Cherry's beliefs about gender are protected against discrimination by the Equality Act 2010. That legislation applies to private societies just as much as it applies to commercial companies and public bodies. The Oxford Union would have to ensure that its choices about who speaks there comply with anti-discrimination law, and if Cyclefree is right its freedom to choose would be severely curtailed.
"... it goes without saying that if a venue discriminates against someone with views wholly opposed to Ms Cherry’s (a transgender writer, say) on the basis that some staff disapproved of their “beliefs” or thought them anti-women or felt “unsafe“, this would also be unlawful ..."
It's not just any old belief, though, is it?
According to the Equality Act, it's a "religious or philosophical belief."
Is there any such thing as a non-philosophical belief?
I believe it’s going to rain today. I believe that Austria was robbed in the Eurovision final. I believe this explanation of what constitutes a non-philosophical belief, while not being completely sound with respect to legal precedents, will get my point across.
Hume and Kuhn and Feyerabend might have things to say about your belief that it's going to rain ...
And they would (arguably) be right, but not with respect to the provisions of the Equality Act.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
It's also worth noting, given the general context of the Edinburgh venue case, [edit] though obviously not an issue in it, that a belief in Scottish independence is also a protected characteristic. That came out when HMG, in the form of MoD, tried to sack a SNP pol cos he might be disloyal or something.
I’m out here in Egypt with a bunch of journos. One of them is a young, quite well known Scottish journalist, and a passionate YES supporter
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
In the years running up to Indyref Salmond took the idea of independence seriously. He was very focused on Scotland having a viable economy that could deliver for its people after independence. Views will differ as to whether he succeeded or not but he was absolutely clear that this was an essential component of independence.
During the Sturgeon era all sight was lost of the importance of the economy. Her movement to the left, which in fairness was very successful in taking the central belt from Labour, was at the cost of a Statist, high tax, public sector dominated economy with highly critical views of those who had the audacity to make money or build a business.
Forbes offered a return to the Salmond viewpoint but lost out to continuity Yousless. Current policies are simply not designed to build a viable private sector tax base in Scotland, if anything they will continue to make Scotland a less attractive place to invest. So we pay more tax, have more state regulation, have a disproportionately large public sector that scoops up available talent by paying itself rather well, poorly performing schools, restrictions on the number of young Scots who can get a government subsidised university place, a lack of interest in essential infrastructure and policies such as the bottle scheme that are introduced with no thought as to their economic consequences.
Scotland is not fit to be an independent country at present. Its reliance on UK subsidy has increased. Independence now would mean substantial cuts in the public sector and even more tax rises. These problems need to be addressed in the Union or out of it. But they will indeed take decades to address. And the risk is we will continue on a path of blaming others for our failings and go even deeper into this hole before we come out the other side.
David, I agree with most of it , the subsidy part is moonshine though. We would not have to pay for England's baubles and foibles so could easily cut out the majority of the supposed borrowing. For sure though if the current bunch of useless grifting crooks are not removed soon we will be a real basket case. However another crooked London party, who care not a jot for Scotland is not the answer. It needs dumping of freeloaders , Independence and some cold porridge.
There is a lot of common ground between Unionists like me and Indy supporters like you who want Scotland to do well and provide opportunities and support for its people. Whether at Holyrood or Westminster, however, the focus remains on constitutional change as it has been for the last couple of decades.
I get that nationalists argue that this is chicken and egg: how do we improve the Scottish economy when some of the more important levers are held south of the border. But there is a hell of a lot that needs doing which is currently in our own control. I am really not confident that a Sarwar led Labour party taking over in Holyrood is going to be an answer to this.
Michael Gove was due to be knighted as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list but the former prime minister removed him after blaming him for blocking his return to No 10 last autumn.
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
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The coming electoral tsunami could take out a lot of potential candidates, or their supporters.
Would Cyclefree have written this article if it were a transgender writer being "discriminated against"?
I am not a lawyer. I have no idea whether Cherry's opposition to greater trans recognition is a protected belief. The Stand presumably has lawyers who think it might be.
But moving on from the law as it stands to ethics, I've never been convinced that beliefs should merit the same "protected characteristic" status as race, sex, disability, age and so on. I'm a Christian (of the militant marmalade wing of the CofE). Should that mean I have a legal right to book a room in a mosque to give a lecture on how all non-Christians are going to hell? No, I don't think so. Does my Christianity deserve more protection than others' strongly held, but non-"religious" beliefs, simply because mine involves sky fairies and others' don't? I don't think so either.
Religion and belief should, in my view, be a lesser protected characteristic - protected from discrimination from Government, but not from refusal of service by private entities.
(For what it's worth I think the Stand should probably have refused the talk on the grounds of "we're a comedy club and Joanna Cherry isn't very funny".)
As @Cyclefree points out, the enthusiasm of those who wish to deplatform those whose views they do not agree with is strong indeed. The old ideas of I deplore your views but I will fight for your right to say them seems very last century.
Two points..
- Don't trend lines usually have points above and below them? This one has ZERO points above it on the 2009-2015 section that sets the "trend"
- Aren't they usually straight lines? This one is curving upwards
Looks like utter horseshit to me
Truss thought she had one, but hers was a black comedy incompetent suicidal killer instinct and Sunak really doesn't have one at all.
As for Starmer, I suspect he sits somewhere between Suella and Truss.
They probably want "I tried to/did stop a TERF" on their CV, as the activist credentials may help them in future.
Feyeraband may also have had things to say about Austria at Eurovision.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65556089
Hence people like Ursula Von Der Leyen came to live in Camden in London in the '70s, which was the "thing to do" for many trendy French and Germans. The difference in expense from the late 1980's onwards was more to do the inflow of international money, and various other Thatcher-era policies, some of which have reasonably benefitted London, and some not at all, I would say.
https://lawandreligionuk.com/2018/08/07/scottish-independence-as-a-protected-philosophical-belief-mceleny/
https://brodies.com/insights/employment-and-immigration/can-a-belief-in-scottish-independence-be-a-protected-philosophical-belief/
There was a referendum in Luxemburg in 2015 on giving voting rights in national elections to minimum 10-year resident non-citizens. No won 78% to 22%. Lowering the voting age to 16 lost 80% to 20% in the same referendum.
Not sure if there's been much polling on these, but I would guess both proposals would be vote-losers for Labour, and look suspiciously like fiddling with the voting system for party advantage.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/125665823#/?channel=RES_BUY
Personally I would go for the newbuild flat at Barking Riverside though. Next to a new overground station, the boat in to central london, shops, an 'outstanding' school, a decent cafe/work area, a new riverside park, An established developer (Bellway) with a 10 year warranty, flats built to up to date building reg specs including safety rules, etc etc. An altogether better prospect than most flats in London.
https://www.bellway.co.uk/new-homes/london-partnerships/fielders-quarter-at-barking-riverside
Johnson had intended to nominate Gove for a knighthood to recognise his longstanding service as a cabinet minister since the Tories entered power in 2010. It was also seen as a way to draw a line under the psychodrama between the pair since Gove stopped him from becoming prime minister following the 2016 Brexit referendum when he decided to stand himself. Sources said a number of other former ministers have been knighted, such as Gavin Williamson, Jake Berry and James Duddridge for serving in significantly fewer roles.
However, a source familiar with his list said Johnson changed his mind after blaming Gove for persuading Kemi Badenoch to endorse Rishi Sunak in the autumn Tory leadership contest.
Badenoch’s backing of Sunak effectively ended Johnson’s chances of returning to No 10 and led to a flurry of other prominent ministers and MPs, including Suella Braverman, formerly a leading supporter of Johnson, to endorse Sunak. Hours later, the former prime minister announced he was withdrawing from the race.
A source said Gove was subsequently taken off the list of people he had nominated for a knighthood. The claim was not denied by Johnson’s spokesman.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/michael-gove-cut-from-honours-list-for-leadership-betrayal-j8jrkrvpk
And at the moment, the only obvious thing is that for a block of flats you have a communal say in how the place is run. It could be Commonhold or whatever was introduced 20 years ago that wasn't really taken up.
But whilst getting rid of leasehold gets rid of third party freeholders, with their ground rent escalators and high service charges, it doesn't solve all problems.
When I had a flat (of seven) I still had:
Lessee who didn't pay their service charge
Lessees who are effectively absent (renting out) and so care little about the building
Sub let tenants who wouldn't care about the place because they were 'just renting'
Allocated parking, but said sub let tenant bought three cars and parked two of them in other peoples bays. When approached, just said, "First come, first served."
None of the above problems will go away by abolishing leasehold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizen_suffrage has a full list.
Agree about the exact best fit curve they've used- it should be slightly lower. But not enough to change the conclusion of the graph that something bad happened to investment in 2016, and hasn't stopped happening since.
He said last night that “indy” is dead in the water. “Decades away”
An interesting perspective from a true believer. He certainly wasn’t deceiving anyone, including himself
“Parking Full. If you all drove a Mini there would be loads of space!” - sign outside a high-end restaurant complex here in the sandpit, that usually appears by about 7pm at the weekend.
The snag is that his solutions not only don't solve the problems but tend to make everything much worse.
There are however two Instagram influencers from the UK here. Women, pretty, etc. One of them has 1m insta followers.
The PR girl who runs the trip says they travel the world taking photos and videos of themselves having a lovely time, and…. That’s it. They are famous if you are into this stuff. They get everything free, and make money from endorsing products
Fascinating
(And dominate state broadcasting, prosecute opposition journalists and get a Twitter to block their output.)
The next Tory leader will likely be a Leaver but a sane Leaver like Barclay. It would probably take a second heavy general election defeat for the Conservatives to go all out for the pure ideologue as leader and in my view that would be more likely to be Rees Mogg than Braverman or Badenoch. Remember Corbyn and IDS weren't elected when Labour and the Tories first lost power, only after a second defeat. The first Opposition leaders they elected were more from the centre of the party ie Ed Miliband and Hague
A MAGA speaker at Trump’s hotel is warning of “highly technologically advanced mermaids and water people” spreading “wickedness.” She calls for “hand-to-hand combat.”
https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1657893368322457610
The trend curve is anchored to be equal to the 2009 figure, which is a little naughty, and creates an offset. It would have been better to set the average of the trend equal to the average of the years 2009-2015 (i.e. the years it has been calculated for), though the offset isn't that large and doesn't really change the point being made.
THis is not going to go down well (so to speak) anywhere in Toryland:
"Immigration and food prices must increase to solve the food crisis, ministers are to say at a summit.
Rishi Sunak will be joined by ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as well as farmers and industry leaders at the meeting at No 10 on Tuesday."
A pose at a landmark, if it must happen, should involve looking somewhat uncomfortable or at most a cheery everyday smile.
I'd settle for a knighthood, GCMG variety only though.
Edit - The title I really want is your excellency.
I might joint the diplomatic corps now.
However I’m not source about the disparity in effort. They actually work quite hard. They have to make sure they constantly look good, they create and edit content in real time and deliver videos and pictures every day or two (all carefully edited and narrated) - I’ve checked out their insta pages
Personally I couldn’t bear it. But the influencers do go to lovely places, and the PR girl told us they are really effective. Her company can see bookings surge upwards - a day or two after the content is put online. Which is why they sent them to the Maldives a month ago and they’re off somewhere else next week
The Union is a private society, and entitled to make its own choices about who speaks there. Equally, the OUSU is equally entitled to lobby them, and the Union to ignore them should it so choose.
None of that has really changed over many decades
During the Sturgeon era all sight was lost of the importance of the economy. Her movement to the left, which in fairness was very successful in taking the central belt from Labour, was at the cost of a Statist, high tax, public sector dominated economy with highly critical views of those who had the audacity to make money or build a business.
Forbes offered a return to the Salmond viewpoint but lost out to continuity Yousless. Current policies are simply not designed to build a viable private sector tax base in Scotland, if anything they will continue to make Scotland a less attractive place to invest. So we pay more tax, have more state regulation, have a disproportionately large public sector that scoops up available talent by paying itself rather well, poorly performing schools, restrictions on the number of young Scots who can get a government subsidised university place, a lack of interest in essential infrastructure and policies such as the bottle scheme that are introduced with no thought as to their economic consequences.
Scotland is not fit to be an independent country at present. Its reliance on UK subsidy has increased. Independence now would mean substantial cuts in the public sector and even more tax rises. These problems need to be addressed in the Union or out of it. But they will indeed take decades to address. And the risk is we will continue on a path of blaming others for our failings and go even deeper into this hole before we come out the other side.
There are loads of jobs that I'd like to see destroyed in the fires of a revolution, but I think you are showing an example of being snobby about something that isn't new, but is simply being done in a new way because of technology, which is pretty silly.
He’s an ex-Sturgeon supporter. He’s somewhat bitter about what has happened, has little to no confidence in Humza (“lightweight”), but sees Alba as pointless and going nowhere
He seems quite relieved to be out of Scotland and in the sun, drinking free mojitos, and fuck Indy and the SNP and all that
I find it entirely bizarre, but it is a definite phenomenon
There’s another German influencer couple (man and woman) from TikTok - at this same hotel - who seem to post quasi-porn and make money from THAT. No joke
The world is turning into a J G Ballard novel
However another crooked London party, who care not a jot for Scotland is not the answer. It needs dumping of freeloaders , Independence and some cold porridge.
They have also tried once to abolish leasehold, replacing it with 'commonhold' 21 years ago, to get rid of the 'feudal' relationships involved in leasehold. There are about 50 buildings in the UK that took up the opportunity and as far as I know, none of them are mortgageable.
I agree that 'getting rid of freeholders' would not be a silver bullet. I live in a flat where leasehold enfranchisement has taken place and the other owners have very little understanding of the responsibilities and obligations arising from owning a building. There is no management and it is falling in to disrepair. The last major work took place nearly 20 years ago when there was a freeholder but he had to take one of the leaseholders to court to get them to pay their share.
I am familiar with the system of communal block management in Scandinavia where owners are essentially compelled to keep blocks of flats up to date, with the ability to borrow money from a state facility for major works projects. This does mean that work gets done to a good standard but the monthly costs are enormous, 500 euros per month is common. That is why often flats in less popular areas are sold for next to nothing - the monthly service charges are so high.
Someone pouting in front of a holiday destination makes it look like a place full of people pouting
I can’t stand the fucking pouting
(Or was - I get the feeling he is so disenchanted he might abstain next time)
He also loathes English Tories, so conversations have been lively - but friendly
of my extended family who do it too.
You see it with tourists in places like Tower Bridge too. Where once they would ask a passerby to snap them smiling with the towers in the background, now one is puckering up the lips and trying to look smouldering (with the towers in the background), with the other taking the photo.
Commonhold as envisaged in the Leasehold Reform Act 2002 "wasn't really taken up" because it was wrecked by lawyers and spivs.
The trick is to buy up collectible 23-year-old cars in Europe and Japan. Many of them double in value overnight, when the Americans come looking for them.
I get that nationalists argue that this is chicken and egg: how do we improve the Scottish economy when some of the more important levers are held south of the border. But there is a hell of a lot that needs doing which is currently in our own control. I am really not confident that a Sarwar led Labour party taking over in Holyrood is going to be an answer to this.