"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
We are superbly equipped to fight a small war for about 2-4 weeks. Then we be [rudeword]ed.
This reflects NATO policy in the 1970s and 80s. Basically, our army and those of our allies were supposed to be capable of holding up the mighty Red Army for 2-4 weeks. If the war was still going on at that point it was thought it was inevitable that it would go nuclear. It made a certain sense then. You wanted the maximum front line force for your money and really didn't want to use your spend creating long, sustainable supply lines.
The problem is that wars are just not like that but if we wanted the capacity we have on the front line at the moment on a sustainable basis you are talking serious cash. Maybe even double what we are spending right now. And that's before you start to think about how drones are making a lot of kit redundant and they themselves are developing on an almost weekly basis.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
Spoiler alert. I am currently watching the sci-fi series (excellent, by the way) "3 Body Problem". In one scene the commander of a "state-of-the-art" Navy warship, after describing its many shortcomings, is asked "How would you better spend £1bn to defend the country? "Thousands and thousands of drones".
Millions, actually. That's what Ukraine and Russia will use in the next year.
The drone thing is an interesting case of low tech warfare that will become high tech when it hits the high end arena.
Point defence systems can take out all the commercial drone systems, easily. In fact the issue is dumbing the point defence systems down so the cost per shot is low enough. There’s already YouTube’s of guys in the US who’ve built a shotgun based turret systems for LOLs.
Laser systems are well on the way, as well.
So, fairly soon, a hobby drone won’t get near a modern army in the field.
In some ways this is a repeat of the Arsenal ship debates, years back. Lots of low capability stuff sounds good - until the countermeasures are deployed.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
Spoiler alert. I am currently watching the sci-fi series (excellent, by the way) "3 Body Problem". In one scene the commander of a "state-of-the-art" Navy warship, after describing its many shortcomings, is asked "How would you better spend £1bn to defend the country? "Thousands and thousands of drones".
Millions, actually. That's what Ukraine and Russia will use in the next year.
The drone thing is an interesting case of low tech warfare that will become high tech when it hits the high end arena.
Point defence systems can take out all the commercial drone systems, easily. In fact the issue is dumbing the point defence systems down so the cost per shot is low enough. There’s already YouTube’s of guys in the US who’ve built a shotgun based turret systems for LOLs.
Laser systems are well on the way, as well.
So, fairly soon, a hobby drone won’t get near a modern army in the field.
In some ways this is a repeat of the Arsenal ship debates, years back. Lots of low capability stuff sounds good - until the countermeasures are deployed.
Right. So whoever is able to deploy a cheap anti-drone system that can be scaled to thousands of units is going to gain quite an advantage. For a while at least.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
If we'd spent £5bn on them, rather than Ajax, we'd still like now have had no Ajax, but we'd have had 10k Storm Shadows.
Imagine what you could do with that.
Defence procurement should think about such comparisons from time to time.
Yeah, but how many Dutch league titles have Storm Shadow won?
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
I saw some interesting stuff about how, not constrained by “must have a big expensive project” culture, the Ukrainians were upgrading the problem bits on the various vehicles they’ve been sent.
The most interesting thing is the evolution of the drones. What started as basically regular quadcopters or FPV racing drones carrying an anti-take grenade to be dropped or rammed into a target has evoled into ever more capable weapons. Some now have infrared cameras. There a relay drones to boost signals. There are upgraded antennas to make jamming much harder. Drones with anti-personnel munitions. Some drones even have limited autonomy to fly to a target when jammed or signal is lost. Ukraine is doing in 2 years what the MOD would take 10-20 to do, and they are doing it with truly COTS hardware at very low cost and high volume.
We are very probably at the point that we should be learning and getting training from them rather than the other way around. Our forces, thankfully, have never had to fight a war quite like this and they have a hell of a lot to learn.
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Putin lied about the 1999 apartment building bombings, 2000 Kursk submarine disaster, 2004 Beslan school siege, murders of Politkovskaya in 2006, Magnitsky in 2009, Nemtsov in 2015, and many other critics, Russian soldiers occupying Crimea, the downing of MH17, and plans to invade Ukraine, to name a few lies on a very, very long list.
Putin is a pathological liar. Including now that he is desperately attempting to link Ukraine or other Western nations to the mass shooting near Moscow, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support such claims.
Do not let Putin and his henchmen dupe you. Their only goal is to motivate more Russians to die in their senseless and criminal war against Ukraine, as well as to instill even more hatred for other nations, not just Ukrainians, but the entire West. https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1771863927300792579
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
It's the drain from the AC condenser. Imagine driving a Suzuki Swift without a working knowledge of Henry's Law. What a fucking joker.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
The "decades of leftism" you refer to have certainly passed me by.
Perhaps we are immune here in the UK because, in my adult lifetime, and I am in my mid-50s, there hasn't been a government that was to the left of me, and I am a centrist liberal and certainly not a socialist.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
It's the drain from the AC condenser. Imagine driving a Suzuki Swift without a working knowledge of Henry's Law. What a fucking joker.
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
Spoiler alert. I am currently watching the sci-fi series (excellent, by the way) "3 Body Problem". In one scene the commander of a "state-of-the-art" Navy warship, after describing its many shortcomings, is asked "How would you better spend £1bn to defend the country? "Thousands and thousands of drones".
Millions, actually. That's what Ukraine and Russia will use in the next year.
The drone thing is an interesting case of low tech warfare that will become high tech when it hits the high end arena.
Point defence systems can take out all the commercial drone systems, easily. In fact the issue is dumbing the point defence systems down so the cost per shot is low enough. There’s already YouTube’s of guys in the US who’ve built a shotgun based turret systems for LOLs.
Laser systems are well on the way, as well.
So, fairly soon, a hobby drone won’t get near a modern army in the field.
In some ways this is a repeat of the Arsenal ship debates, years back. Lots of low capability stuff sounds good - until the countermeasures are deployed.
Sounds good in theory, but yet to be demonstrated. And when most drones are used against personnel, not vehicles, ‘turret based systems’ aren’t an answer anyway.
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Air conditioners do drip water from their condenser, which is the most likely cause of fluid leaking from a car. The ‘water’ in the radiator is usually not water but a green or blue coloured coolant with a distinctive smell. Any other liquid is going to be oil or hydraulic fluid, which you’d definitely notice.
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Serendipity, huh
If it's not running hot then don't fucking worry about it. It's not your car.
Car coolant systems run at about 1 bar of pressure so if it were a coolant leak, it will piss it all out and seize the engine quite quickly.
Checking coolant levels in other people's cars is woke.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
As has already been pointed out the amounts claimed by the Treasury as the hit on pension funds are tiny. In 2021 the total value of UK pension funds was just under £3 Trillion. Even taking the upper treasury figure of £40 billion cost that is only equivalent to 0.01% of the pension fund values.
Is it not 0.75%? Maybe I am getting my decimal point in the wrong place. But, as we discussed recently, the consequences of Brown's raid has been utterly disastrous with the proportion of UK FTSE 100 shares owned by our pension funds has fallen from more than half to 4%.
This transfer has been a major headwind for UK registered plcs making them vulnerable to international takeovers and making it more difficult to acquire additional capital for investment. We need that £3trn to be driving growth and investment in the UK and it just isn't right now.
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
I would say it is a likely response to the cultural dominance of the left. Young people will look for ways to react against it, ie by rejecting some of the concepts they are forced to adhere to: ie about gender, refugees, race etc. It is mistaken to assume they will always respond by demanding even more progressivism, this is just the 'history will always repeat itself' fallacy.
I think however that in Britain we have gone past peak 'woke', the situation is not even vaguely like Canada which seems to have gone further than anywhere else in the world and is long due a correction.
I saw some interesting stuff about how, not constrained by “must have a big expensive project” culture, the Ukrainians were upgrading the problem bits on the various vehicles they’ve been sent.
The most interesting thing is the evolution of the drones. What started as basically regular quadcopters or FPV racing drones carrying an anti-take grenade to be dropped or rammed into a target has evoled into ever more capable weapons. Some now have infrared cameras. There a relay drones to boost signals. There are upgraded antennas to make jamming much harder. Drones with anti-personnel munitions. Some drones even have limited autonomy to fly to a target when jammed or signal is lost. Ukraine is doing in 2 years what the MOD would take 10-20 to do, and they are doing it with truly COTS hardware at very low cost and high volume.
We are very probably at the point that we should be learning and getting training from them rather than the other way around. Our forces, thankfully, have never had to fight a war quite like this and they have a hell of a lot to learn.
It’s of huge value to the US, as well as us.
The lessons they can learn in Ukraine could likely save them far more than $60bn in potentially wasted defence procurement and obsoleted military training.
A thread on the topic by someone with a bit more knowledge than me would be interesting. The next government is going to be severely cash constrained, while at the same time can’t neglect defence.
We can’t afford to waste billions more on useless projects like Ajax. And we need to build manufacturing capacity that’s actually useful.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
I would say it is a likely response to the cultural dominance of the left. Young people will look for ways to react against it, ie by rejecting some of the concepts they are forced to adhere to: ie about gender, refugees, race etc. It is mistaken to assume they will always respond by demanding even more progressivism, this is just the 'history will always repeat itself' fallacy.
I think however that in Britain we have gone past peak 'woke', the situation is not even vaguely like Canada which seems to have gone further than anywhere else in the world and is long due a correction.
Canada has insane levels of immigration. It is national policy
It’s probably the only large country in the world with higher net migration than the UK right now
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Serendipity, huh
You're in the wrong continent. Serendip is Ceylon, as was
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Serendipity, huh
Who knows what you would have discovered though?
Ah, yes, sigh
The road less travelled. But which is it
One never knows
Might it simply be condensation from the AirCon? Hot humid air ia cooled and dried by the aircon. The water vapour condensed in the process has to go somewhere and is I presume just dripped onto the road. If it's really hot and humid that could be a lot of water but is nothing to worry about.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
That's mental.
You want to keep an entire class of ownership structure for the sole purpose of creating an investment return for pensions. Thereby taxing leaseholders to pay out pensions. Why?
You could create all sorts of weird ownership structures to tax all sorts of different people to pay for pensions if you wanted. But seems a bit odd.
Ground rent isn’t the same as head leaseholders where the issues arise.
It’s much closer to a mortgage.
Effectively it’s:
I will give you X up front
In return you give me £100 + inflation for the next 125 years
At the end of 125 years you have the right to buy the freehold for £100
And I will provide zero services for the ground rent - it’s a fully maintaining / fully repairing lease. But if you don’t pay then either (a) you pay the default [haven’t done the math but that would be pre-specified - probably close to the sum of all future payments] or (b) you terminate the lease
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Serendipity, huh
Who knows what you would have discovered though?
Ah, yes, sigh
The road less travelled. But which is it
One never knows
Might it simply be condensation from the AirCon? Hot humid air ia cooled and dried by the aircon. The water vapour condensed in the process has to go somewhere and is I presume just dripped onto the road. If it's really hot and humid that could be a lot of water but is nothing to worry about.
The consensus is aircon
If I seem unusually anxious this is why: I rented the car for two days. But this part of Colombia turned out so compelling I extended my stay by a week
But the car company told me - over the phone - that I had to go back to the office to extend. You can’t do it by phone or Net in Colombia
So I thought Fuck that and I’ve just kept the car. They can bill me when I return it
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
As has already been pointed out the amounts claimed by the Treasury as the hit on pension funds are tiny. In 2021 the total value of UK pension funds was just under £3 Trillion. Even taking the upper treasury figure of £40 billion cost that is only equivalent to 0.01% of the pension fund values.
It’s not about value, it’s about cash flow.
A pension always needs to be able to guarantee they have the cash to pay pensions
At the moment their options are UK government debt or ground rents
Eliminating ground rents increases demand for UK government debt and thereby reduces the cost to the government at the cost of pension fund beneficiaries…
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
I saw some interesting stuff about how, not constrained by “must have a big expensive project” culture, the Ukrainians were upgrading the problem bits on the various vehicles they’ve been sent.
The most interesting thing is the evolution of the drones. What started as basically regular quadcopters or FPV racing drones carrying an anti-take grenade to be dropped or rammed into a target has evoled into ever more capable weapons. Some now have infrared cameras. There a relay drones to boost signals. There are upgraded antennas to make jamming much harder. Drones with anti-personnel munitions. Some drones even have limited autonomy to fly to a target when jammed or signal is lost. Ukraine is doing in 2 years what the MOD would take 10-20 to do, and they are doing it with truly COTS hardware at very low cost and high volume.
We are very probably at the point that we should be learning and getting training from them rather than the other way around. Our forces, thankfully, have never had to fight a war quite like this and they have a hell of a lot to learn.
It’s of huge value to the US, as well as us.
The lessons they can learn in Ukraine could likely save them far more than $60bn in potentially wasted defence procurement and obsoleted military training.
A thread on the topic by someone with a bit more knowledge than me would be interesting. The next government is going to be severely cash constrained, while at the same time can’t neglect defence.
We can’t afford to waste billions more on useless projects like Ajax. And we need to build manufacturing capacity that’s actually useful.
The US Army just cancelled the FARA helicopter project partially as a result of "learnings" from the SMO.
I predict the UK will adopt those lessons which allow them to cancel very expensive projects or embark on new and exciting ones (drones, etc.) but will not do anything worthwhile but boring like having 12km long ammo dumps like the Russians.
The Starmer government won't be the slightest bit interested in defence. A bit of benign neglect is probably what the MoD need right now anyway.
In other defence news, I see Shappsie and his tiny, furry co-pilot got a ride in an RAAF Super Hornet. Ticking it off the bucket list before he gets chucked on the dole.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
I think it has, in a way. Back then, you had a minority (say, 5%) who were SeanT-like shitposters in 'normal' groups. But they were laughed with, and at.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
The other thing that’s changed is the law. People are far more likely to have their collars felt for a tweet that hurts someone’s feelings than back then for a usenet post that upset someone.
I was a little alarmed that Hester (? - the racist Tory donor) was being investigated by the police to see if he’d committed a crime
He made some deeply unpleasant racist remarks and has rightly been condemned.
But criminalising speech is a dangerous road to go down.
I agree and initially 'liked' your comment. But thinking about it, I think it could very reasonably be claimed that saying someone should be shot might be considered incitement to violence. I would at least expect the police to take a look at it even if they then dismiss it as a stupid comment rather than a real threat or incitement.
Of course.
But a complaint 5 years later to the Met for an event that occurred in Leeds? That’s entirely political!
Arguably bringing the comments to public attention is creating the “risk” of violence - no one since that evening had probably given a moment’s thought to the remarks…
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
Indeed
I’ve gone for a mixed bag
Investing in the tech giants Investing in global tech Investing in US shares with a tech bias (hmmm) Investing in the Indian stock market (this is my “fun” bet - it’s a total punt, I just feel India has a lot of potential - the next China - and it has a LOT of coders and engineers)
If anyone has a better investment strategy right now please tell. I did notice the other day that you can buy quite nice houses in rural Japan for $30k
Westerners are doing it. Apparently it’s pretty easy
There’s a massive oversupply because of depopulation. I confess I am tempted - rural Japan may be quite a good place to sit out the coming apocalypse. Also I like the climate in the south
The houses are built for a limited time period not like western houses
China will hit Okinawa because of the US base. Japan will have to respond.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
Indeed
I’ve gone for a mixed bag
Investing in the tech giants Investing in global tech Investing in US shares with a tech bias (hmmm) Investing in the Indian stock market (this is my “fun” bet - it’s a total punt, I just feel India has a lot of potential - the next China - and it has a LOT of coders and engineers)
If anyone has a better investment strategy right now please tell. I did notice the other day that you can buy quite nice houses in rural Japan for $30k
Westerners are doing it. Apparently it’s pretty easy
There’s a massive oversupply because of depopulation. I confess I am tempted - rural Japan may be quite a good place to sit out the coming apocalypse. Also I like the climate in the south
The houses are built for a limited time period not like western houses
China will hit Okinawa because of the US base. Japan will have to respond.
My thoughts are more towards the AI apocalypse, these days
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
Spoiler alert. I am currently watching the sci-fi series (excellent, by the way) "3 Body Problem". In one scene the commander of a "state-of-the-art" Navy warship, after describing its many shortcomings, is asked "How would you better spend £1bn to defend the country? "Thousands and thousands of drones".
Millions, actually. That's what Ukraine and Russia will use in the next year.
The drone thing is an interesting case of low tech warfare that will become high tech when it hits the high end arena.
Point defence systems can take out all the commercial drone systems, easily. In fact the issue is dumbing the point defence systems down so the cost per shot is low enough. There’s already YouTube’s of guys in the US who’ve built a shotgun based turret systems for LOLs.
Laser systems are well on the way, as well.
So, fairly soon, a hobby drone won’t get near a modern army in the field.
In some ways this is a repeat of the Arsenal ship debates, years back. Lots of low capability stuff sounds good - until the countermeasures are deployed.
Right. So whoever is able to deploy a cheap anti-drone system that can be scaled to thousands of units is going to gain quite an advantage. For a while at least.
Sort of. Such systems are already in existence and deployed in limited numbers. Probably the next arms race in this war.
Before you know it, you’ll looking at high speed, terrain following, long range, stealthy…. Drones or missiles? And round it goes again….
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Brilliant news for detached sprawl developers too. Their model of land banking and profit maximisation would've been undercut by this reform.
I have not understood the ramifications of this reform as I've not paid much attention. However, I will say that the Treasury is an absolute blight on good governance and economic success for the country. They need to be broken, their department chopped up and merged with others. The PM should be responsible for the economic strategy for the country.
Time and again the Treasury has undermined the authority of the PM, almost always with disastrous consequences. As an example, they tracked the DM, leading to the economic downturn of the late-80s, against Thatcher's express instructions. That was with a PM of the character of Thatcher. What chance have Sunak or Starmer got to bring meaningful positive change, even if they wanted to?
I think the Conservative Government haven't thought it through, as per everything.
(And I suggest that leasehold in England is perhaps more complex than leasehold in Scotland, down to the sheer quantity and variety.)
I'd say that:
1 - The core of the scandalous abuse is escalating leaseholds on newbuild, or recent, single-family properties.
These can be addressed by preventing use of leasehold in for these properties.
2 - It is more complex for blocks of flats etc.
These need to be managed and maintained jointly, and I'm not convinced that there management by flat-dwellers / owners committee is always effective or efficient.
This one needs more thought.
3 - Significant areas of housing in leasehold ownership need care.
For example Grosvenor Estate areas in London are kept in common appearance by the Estate.
How will this be managed / maintained - or will Mayfair become like Balamory, or a collection of Liquorice Allsorts.
The Park Estate in Nottingham may be a good precedent here, which has transitioned from Oxford University Chest to the Park Residents' Association.
4 - I'd suggest that the increase rates and charges for leasehold could be capped at say CPI and perhaps 1% of property value, with an exception for large expenses (eg new windows in a block of flats) by application to the First Tier or Second Tier Tribunal.
Of these, point 1 can be done quickly, and I'd suggest applied retrospectively to properties built since date X, which could be 2000, 1990 or 1980.
The Royal Crescent in Bath all has different owners and afaik different coloured doors, and it looks fine.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
Indeed
I’ve gone for a mixed bag
Investing in the tech giants Investing in global tech Investing in US shares with a tech bias (hmmm) Investing in the Indian stock market (this is my “fun” bet - it’s a total punt, I just feel India has a lot of potential - the next China - and it has a LOT of coders and engineers)
If anyone has a better investment strategy right now please tell. I did notice the other day that you can buy quite nice houses in rural Japan for $30k
Westerners are doing it. Apparently it’s pretty easy
There’s a massive oversupply because of depopulation. I confess I am tempted - rural Japan may be quite a good place to sit out the coming apocalypse. Also I like the climate in the south
The houses are built for a limited time period not like western houses
China will hit Okinawa because of the US base. Japan will have to respond.
My thoughts are more towards the AI apocalypse, these days
My best advice for facing a zombie/AI apocalype is .. learn to fish.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Farage certainly isn't the discredited establishment, and says the jungle has changed the response to him from young people.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Yes, fair points. Britain is an outlier for the reasons you state
However I predict we will probably catch up in time; it’s basically inevitable. The left has been in power “culturally” for decades, Wokeness has been advancing since the 60s - the fact it only now has a pejorative label - Woke - shows that only now are people waking up to Woke: realising it’s evil consequences (especially for young white men)
The trans debate is the cutting edge here
Once the left is in power politically as well as all other ways then, belatedly, young Brits will kick against it
It’s about bloody time. How can they not realise that one significant reason they can’t buy housing is because we have ridiculously high levels of immigration? Duhhh
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Serendipity, huh
Who knows what you would have discovered though?
Ah, yes, sigh
The road less travelled. But which is it
One never knows
Might it simply be condensation from the AirCon? Hot humid air ia cooled and dried by the aircon. The water vapour condensed in the process has to go somewhere and is I presume just dripped onto the road. If it's really hot and humid that could be a lot of water but is nothing to worry about.
The consensus is aircon
If I seem unusually anxious this is why: I rented the car for two days. But this part of Colombia turned out so compelling I extended my stay by a week
But the car company told me - over the phone - that I had to go back to the office to extend. You can’t do it by phone or Net in Colombia
So I thought Fuck that and I’ve just kept the car. They can bill me when I return it
So I’m kinda driving a stolen car
And you've broken it. Its just as well that Columbia is famous for its due process and bureaucratic justice system rather than, say, being dominated by criminal gangs that will happily take the law into their own hands and execute summary justice for a modest fee, isn't it?
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Yes, fair points. Britain is an outlier for the reasons you state
However I predict we will probably catch up in time; it’s basically inevitable. The left has been in power “culturally” for decades, Wokeness has been advancing since the 60s - the fact it only now has a pejorative label - Woke - shows that only now are people waking up to Woke: realising it’s evil consequences (especially for young white men)
The trans debate is the cutting edge here
Once the left is in power politically as well as all other ways then, belatedly, young Brits will kick against it
It’s about bloody time. How can they not realise that one significant reason they can’t buy housing is because we have ridiculously high levels of immigration? Duhhh
The main reason that they can't buy a house is that comfortable, middle aged people with capital like us are more concerned about the value of our assets and the quality of our views than whether young people have somewhere to live.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Farage certainly isn't the discredited establishment, and says the jungle has changed the response to him from young people.
I am not sure how much credence I give to the latter half of that statement given I'm A Celebrity's viewing figures were down by millions (don't know if down to Farage - likely more it is past its sell by date) and linear TV audiences skew fairly elderly. It's not shown up in any kind of polling or phenomena other than "taking Nige's word for it".
And he kind of is? Love him or loathe him Farage has been a major political figure for roughly two decades. He's a part of the firmament and was a key mover behind the defining British political moment of those two decades. In many ways a product of his success is that the Tory Party now pretty much sound like him. Plus his entire political persona is based around being the outspoken chap in the golf club bar. He's establishment coded even when railing against his perception of it.
If you're after something new and exciting you maybe haven't heard before, he is not it.
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Serendipity, huh
Who knows what you would have discovered though?
Ah, yes, sigh
The road less travelled. But which is it
One never knows
One of the great poems with real insight into the human existence. My wife is a great fan of a novel called The Midnight Library by Matt Haig which explores similar ideas.
Oh I can't resist
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Yes, fair points. Britain is an outlier for the reasons you state
However I predict we will probably catch up in time; it’s basically inevitable. The left has been in power “culturally” for decades, Wokeness has been advancing since the 60s - the fact it only now has a pejorative label - Woke - shows that only now are people waking up to Woke: realising it’s evil consequences (especially for young white men)
The trans debate is the cutting edge here
Once the left is in power politically as well as all other ways then, belatedly, young Brits will kick against it
It’s about bloody time. How can they not realise that one significant reason they can’t buy housing is because we have ridiculously high levels of immigration? Duhhh
The main reason that they can't buy a house is that comfortable, middle aged people with capital like us are more concerned about the value of our assets and the quality of our views than whether young people have somewhere to live.
It’s counterintuitive, but mass immigration benefits people with assets, particularly the retired, at the expense of younger workers without. Young people get a double whammy of depressed wages and inflated housing costs.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Farage certainly isn't the discredited establishment, and says the jungle has changed the response to him from young people.
Son of a stockbroker, public school educated, ex-commodity trader Farage is not part of the establishment?
Definitely an ordinary bloke, man of the people. Definitely.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
That's mental.
You want to keep an entire class of ownership structure for the sole purpose of creating an investment return for pensions. Thereby taxing leaseholders to pay out pensions. Why?
You could create all sorts of weird ownership structures to tax all sorts of different people to pay for pensions if you wanted. But seems a bit odd.
Ground rent isn’t the same as head leaseholders where the issues arise.
It’s much closer to a mortgage.
Effectively it’s:
I will give you X up front
In return you give me £100 + inflation for the next 125 years
At the end of 125 years you have the right to buy the freehold for £100
And I will provide zero services for the ground rent - it’s a fully maintaining / fully repairing lease. But if you don’t pay then either (a) you pay the default [haven’t done the math but that would be pre-specified - probably close to the sum of all future payments] or (b) you terminate the lease
How is it like a mortgage? What does the leaseholder get except for being ripped off?
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
Indeed
I’ve gone for a mixed bag
Investing in the tech giants Investing in global tech Investing in US shares with a tech bias (hmmm) Investing in the Indian stock market (this is my “fun” bet - it’s a total punt, I just feel India has a lot of potential - the next China - and it has a LOT of coders and engineers)
If anyone has a better investment strategy right now please tell. I did notice the other day that you can buy quite nice houses in rural Japan for $30k
Westerners are doing it. Apparently it’s pretty easy
There’s a massive oversupply because of depopulation. I confess I am tempted - rural Japan may be quite a good place to sit out the coming apocalypse. Also I like the climate in the south
The houses are built for a limited time period not like western houses
China will hit Okinawa because of the US base. Japan will have to respond.
My thoughts are more towards the AI apocalypse, these days
And how do you think AI will get rid of all those pesky humans?
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Yes, fair points. Britain is an outlier for the reasons you state
However I predict we will probably catch up in time; it’s basically inevitable. The left has been in power “culturally” for decades, Wokeness has been advancing since the 60s - the fact it only now has a pejorative label - Woke - shows that only now are people waking up to Woke: realising it’s evil consequences (especially for young white men)
The trans debate is the cutting edge here
Once the left is in power politically as well as all other ways then, belatedly, young Brits will kick against it
It’s about bloody time. How can they not realise that one significant reason they can’t buy housing is because we have ridiculously high levels of immigration? Duhhh
The main reason that they can't buy a house is that comfortable, middle aged people with capital like us are more concerned about the value of our assets and the quality of our views than whether young people have somewhere to live.
It’s counterintuitive, but mass immigration benefits people with assets, particularly the retired, at the expense of younger workers without. Young people get a double whammy of depressed wages and inflated housing costs.
Sure, I don't dispute that at all. But if we were building enough houses where the work is both adverse effects would be ameliorated.
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
Happens with Mrs J's car after a long journey on a hot day, and my dad's Jeep. I don't know about the bang, but air cons do produce liquid that dribbles out - condensation, essentially. It's nothing to worry about.
Cool, Thankyou
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
Perhaps. But if a mechanic tells you its okay, then it'll probably be okay. We always keep a little windscreen wash in our windscreen washers (since I've been told it prevents algae build up in very hot weather), so it'd be easy to tell eh difference between that and condensate.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
The Internet is quite insistent that it is water from the AC - the position of the leak is indicative
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Serendipity, huh
Who knows what you would have discovered though?
Ah, yes, sigh
The road less travelled. But which is it
One never knows
Might it simply be condensation from the AirCon? Hot humid air ia cooled and dried by the aircon. The water vapour condensed in the process has to go somewhere and is I presume just dripped onto the road. If it's really hot and humid that could be a lot of water but is nothing to worry about.
The consensus is aircon
If I seem unusually anxious this is why: I rented the car for two days. But this part of Colombia turned out so compelling I extended my stay by a week
But the car company told me - over the phone - that I had to go back to the office to extend. You can’t do it by phone or Net in Colombia
So I thought Fuck that and I’ve just kept the car. They can bill me when I return it
So I’m kinda driving a stolen car
And you've broken it. Its just as well that Columbia is famous for its due process and bureaucratic justice system rather than, say, being dominated by criminal gangs that will happily take the law into their own hands and execute summary justice for a modest fee, isn't it?
No it’s fine because this part of Colombia - the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta - is run by the associates of this guy, notorious rapist and mass murderer Hernan Giraldo alias El Taraldo - “the drill” - so-called because of his penchant for forcibly taking the virginity of girls aged 12-15 given to him by their terrified mothers. Ie “drilling” them. So it’s all good
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
Indeed
I’ve gone for a mixed bag
Investing in the tech giants Investing in global tech Investing in US shares with a tech bias (hmmm) Investing in the Indian stock market (this is my “fun” bet - it’s a total punt, I just feel India has a lot of potential - the next China - and it has a LOT of coders and engineers)
If anyone has a better investment strategy right now please tell. I did notice the other day that you can buy quite nice houses in rural Japan for $30k
Westerners are doing it. Apparently it’s pretty easy
There’s a massive oversupply because of depopulation. I confess I am tempted - rural Japan may be quite a good place to sit out the coming apocalypse. Also I like the climate in the south
The houses are built for a limited time period not like western houses
China will hit Okinawa because of the US base. Japan will have to respond.
My thoughts are more towards the AI apocalypse, these days
And how do you think AI will get rid of all those pesky humans?
Probably the simplest way will be to create a virus that makes us sterile.
Here are three things I've tried to use Google to find in the past week and could not
* A physical shop that sells self-adhesive credit-card sleeves for a mobile phone case * A physical shop that sells and displays sliding wardrobe doors * The title sequence to the 2009 Prisoner remake with Jesus and Gandalf.
The combination of Google deterioration and increased online shopping means that after tens of minutes searching I had to give up in frustration. I'm beginning to think "dead internet theory" is a real thing...
What is dead internet theory? I've struggled to find *the actual link for* document x many times recently, and had a lot more success asking Bing's copilot 'can you give me the link for'...
much of the content online is generated by bots/algorithms and
human interactions with the internet are guided/directed by other algorithms, and
these characteristics are increasing
The world-wide-web originally consisted with people creating content, other people and then algorithms collating those sites by their content, then people searching those collations via search engines that maximised utility and contacting each other via email.
None of those things are still wholly true
It now consists of computer-generated content and search engines that maximise engagement or advertising profit. All contact is done via contact forms not email. So machines producing contact that is relayed by machines to people whose sole function is to buy things, not to be informed, where human contact is minimised.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Yes, fair points. Britain is an outlier for the reasons you state
However I predict we will probably catch up in time; it’s basically inevitable. The left has been in power “culturally” for decades, Wokeness has been advancing since the 60s - the fact it only now has a pejorative label - Woke - shows that only now are people waking up to Woke: realising it’s evil consequences (especially for young white men)
The trans debate is the cutting edge here
Once the left is in power politically as well as all other ways then, belatedly, young Brits will kick against it
It’s about bloody time. How can they not realise that one significant reason they can’t buy housing is because we have ridiculously high levels of immigration? Duhhh
The main reason that they can't buy a house is that comfortable, middle aged people with capital like us are more concerned about the value of our assets and the quality of our views than whether young people have somewhere to live.
Nimbyism, the political imperative to inflate asset prices and preserve inherited wealth, builders' desire to maximise profit by ensuring a strangulated supply of nasty little rabbit hutches AND runaway population growth are all relevant factors. The latter, of course, caused by the same short-termism that I referenced earlier this afternoon.
The population is ageing, the increasingly huge pensioner population all need looking after somehow, and investing in upskilling the remaining pool of workers is difficult and expensive. The easiest thing to do is to import a load of new workers to get around these problems. The fact that this is all one immense Ponzi scheme - the new workers eventually age, and will require replacement by even large quantities of immigrants to pay for the vast hordes of decrepit elderly and stave off economic collapse - is never acknowledged. Because dealing with that is a problem for future pols and not the current lot, who therefore don't give a fuck.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Farage certainly isn't the discredited establishment, and says the jungle has changed the response to him from young people.
I am not sure how much credence I give to the latter half of that statement given I'm A Celebrity's viewing figures were down by millions (don't know if down to Farage - likely more it is past its sell by date) and linear TV audiences skew fairly elderly. It's not shown up in any kind of polling or phenomena other than "taking Nige's word for it".
And he kind of is? Love him or loathe him Farage has been a major political figure for roughly two decades. He's a part of the firmament and was a key mover behind the defining British political moment of those two decades. In many ways a product of his success is that the Tory Party now pretty much sound like him. Plus his entire political persona is based around being the outspoken chap in the golf club bar. He's establishment coded even when railing against his perception of it.
If you're after something new and exciting you maybe haven't heard before, he is not it.
That smacks to me of a very establishment perspective. You think that the great unrepresented young are pining for the next Rory Stewart or Emmanuel Macron or Nick Clegg or Chuka Ummuna. They're not. Nobody is going to be interested in a fresh coat of lipstick on the net-zero woke pig, they'll be looking for people to overturn the established system in their favour. These are bread and butter issues, not image issues.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
That's mental.
You want to keep an entire class of ownership structure for the sole purpose of creating an investment return for pensions. Thereby taxing leaseholders to pay out pensions. Why?
You could create all sorts of weird ownership structures to tax all sorts of different people to pay for pensions if you wanted. But seems a bit odd.
Ground rent isn’t the same as head leaseholders where the issues arise.
It’s much closer to a mortgage.
Effectively it’s:
I will give you X up front
In return you give me £100 + inflation for the next 125 years
At the end of 125 years you have the right to buy the freehold for £100
And I will provide zero services for the ground rent - it’s a fully maintaining / fully repairing lease. But if you don’t pay then either (a) you pay the default [haven’t done the math but that would be pre-specified - probably close to the sum of all future payments] or (b) you terminate the lease
I struggle to see how owning the freehold of a block of flats is a low risk, hands off investment. The cost of administering the rent collection and the maintenance of a multi occupancy building, all of which is typically outsourced to a managing agent, is enormous. Things like major works need to be done through a legally defined process. Some leaseholders won't pay. There is recourse to a legal tribunal where things go wrong. Clearly and obviously the business opportunity here is in maximising the revenue from administrative processes associated with the above and associated commissions, rather than the nominal amount of ground rent that is actually collected.
Without wishing to get into a debate on transgender issues, it's going a bit far to suggest it's more of a scandal than the Holocaust.
You think the holocaust is a scandal of medical history?
At one point my work took me to a hospital where the Nazis had “experimented” on Jews and other prisoners.
It’s the only place I have ever been to that I will never return to. There was a heaviness in the air, a palpable sense of evil that had sunk into the very walls
(The only other place I have had a similar sense was in Nissim de Camondo - there it was an intense sadness and grief.)
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Yes, fair points. Britain is an outlier for the reasons you state
However I predict we will probably catch up in time; it’s basically inevitable. The left has been in power “culturally” for decades, Wokeness has been advancing since the 60s - the fact it only now has a pejorative label - Woke - shows that only now are people waking up to Woke: realising it’s evil consequences (especially for young white men)
The trans debate is the cutting edge here
Once the left is in power politically as well as all other ways then, belatedly, young Brits will kick against it
It’s about bloody time. How can they not realise that one significant reason they can’t buy housing is because we have ridiculously high levels of immigration? Duhhh
Interesting the culture thing as I think the backlash is already occurring. But maybe contained within it. The left has dominated that sector for a long while but that's partly I think a product of a lack of power elsewhere. For all the issues around 'wokeness' we aren't anywhere near America - which sometimes pollutes the discourse around it. There isn't the power to enforce as heavily, with the possible exception of academia, that there is in the states. A British Robin DiAngelo would be, and are, laughed out of town.
Hence why culture wars have less purchase here. Yes it's annoying, but a second order rather than a first order problem.
On housing, it's build more of them. Build more infrastructure. We'd still have a housing crisis if immigration levels were down to the fabled 'tens of thousands'.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever
Putting my head in the lion's mouth but no.
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
It is in general a kick against the establishment from the dissatisfied, isn't it? Which is why Britain trends against other countries. Much as right-wingers try and convince themselves otherwise, we have been governed by the right for 32 out of the past 45 years and so those that have grown up with it see its failings more sharply than the left's. Especially as arguably the two big upheavals (Thatcherism, Brexit) have been at the behest of the right and in contrast to Europe - whose default is social democrat - the Conservatives have been 'the natural party of government' we take as our baseline.
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
No, absolutely wrong. Its an actual shift to quite radical right positions by young white men who see governments endlessly favouring minorities/women even as they can’t buy a house or get laid
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
I don't dispute that's a thing - and one that will perhaps become more significant as today's teenagers get older having grown up in a culture that is more right on in their direct dealings with it. But it's much less of one for a reason here than in other countries and you can look at voting intention by age. There's evidence of the likes of Tate having a constituency but it's not showing up as a more widespread phenomenon (yet) beyond what has always existed in terms of adolescent male anger and liking stuff you're not supposed to.
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
Farage certainly isn't the discredited establishment, and says the jungle has changed the response to him from young people.
Son of a stockbroker, public school educated, ex-commodity trader Farage is not part of the establishment?
Definitely an ordinary bloke, man of the people. Definitely.
Yet again, like virtually all the lefties I come across, you speak entirely in terms of identity and 'optics'. These are bread and butter issues - it is a fact that our power bills are driven through the roof because we subsidise non-competitive renewables, mostly held by the sovereign wealth funds of Gulf and other states. That is a simple transfer of wealth from the struggling to the rich, under the guise of 'saving the planet'. It is the person who points this out, and has a plan to reverse us out of it that matters, not whether or not they have a posh accent.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
That's mental.
You want to keep an entire class of ownership structure for the sole purpose of creating an investment return for pensions. Thereby taxing leaseholders to pay out pensions. Why?
You could create all sorts of weird ownership structures to tax all sorts of different people to pay for pensions if you wanted. But seems a bit odd.
Ground rent isn’t the same as head leaseholders where the issues arise.
It’s much closer to a mortgage.
Effectively it’s:
I will give you X up front
In return you give me £100 + inflation for the next 125 years
At the end of 125 years you have the right to buy the freehold for £100
And I will provide zero services for the ground rent - it’s a fully maintaining / fully repairing lease. But if you don’t pay then either (a) you pay the default [haven’t done the math but that would be pre-specified - probably close to the sum of all future payments] or (b) you terminate the lease
How is it like a mortgage? What does the leaseholder get except for being ripped off?
The person who grants the lease gets money (about £4,000) up front which does not have to be repaid. Instead there is an annual obligation to pay £100+inflation each year.
Any buyer of the property takes on the liability which will be reflected in the purchase price.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
Do we have any car experts here? I know absolutely zip about cars and car maintenance, I just like driving them
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Comments
The problem is that wars are just not like that but if we wanted the capacity we have on the front line at the moment on a sustainable basis you are talking serious cash. Maybe even double what we are spending right now. And that's before you start to think about how drones are making a lot of kit redundant and they themselves are developing on an almost weekly basis.
Point defence systems can take out all the commercial drone systems, easily. In fact the issue is dumbing the point defence systems down so the cost per shot is low enough. There’s already YouTube’s of guys in the US who’ve built a shotgun based turret systems for LOLs.
Laser systems are well on the way, as well.
So, fairly soon, a hobby drone won’t get near a modern army in the field.
In some ways this is a repeat of the Arsenal ship debates, years back. Lots of low capability stuff sounds good - until the countermeasures are deployed.
Yesterday I tried to take my Suzuki Swift across the Andes, unsurprisingly I failed and also hit a few hard rocks with a nasty smashing noise
After I pulled over I noticed liquid leaking from under the car. At the front, under the passenger seat
I smelt the liquid - odourless. Water? However it kept leaking - albeit slowly - and I thought Fuck I’ve broken the car
So I drove it slowly to a mechanic and he managed to tell me in a mix of Kogi and Spanish that it was no problem. Normal
I wanted to believe him but it still felt wrong. A loud bang and then a leak? Surely I broke something. At the same time there is no water to wash the windows AFAICS - so I must have ruptured some water reservoir?
However the internet is also telling me this is normal. It’s a byproduct of running the air con hard - which I definitely was. Its HOT
Thoughts?
20 years and 12 months.
So the lack of window washer fluid might just be unlucky coincidence?
When a party is in power for a long period whether it be the Canadian Liberals or the British Conservatives, the opposition which emerges gravitates to the main opposition party. The same happened with Blair and Labour in the 90s when in 1997 a whole generation of younger (and female) Labour MPs were elected, many in their 30s and 40s, whose formative years had been spent under Thatcher's "hard leftism and wokery" (your words, not mind).
Move on 13 years and the cohort of Conservative MPs elected in 2010 were mainly in their 30s and 40s and they had also spent their formative political years in opposition to the Government.
Oddly enough, it's older voters who are more conservative and tend to continue to support the Government because they remember what went before while younger voters dodn't have that memory and see the opposition party as the vehicle for change.
Note I say 30s and 40s not teens and 20s - for example, in the latest London Mayoral polling, Khan has a 53 point ad among younger voters but among 55+ Londoners Hall leads Khan 43-36. Hall's problem is London is a young city.
To caveat that slightly, it also depends if there is a viable alternative on the other side of the spectrum - in some countries there is (VOX, AfD, Chega) but in Britain we have Reform.
But re-reading your post: it depends on the amount of liquid, the temperature, how hard you'd had the air conditioning going, etc, etc.
And when most drones are used against personnel, not vehicles, ‘turret based systems’ aren’t an answer anyway.
I’m gonna go check the water (how does one do that?) then, hopefully, chill
Weird thing is: if I hadn’t crocked the car I wouldn’t have turned back to Palomino and I wouldn’t have then pulled over at some random spot in the forest, noticed a lot of people in all white walking into the woods, then I wouldn’t have followed them and discovered the “Arhuaco Reunion”
Serendipity, huh
Car coolant systems run at about 1 bar of pressure so if it were a coolant leak, it will piss it all out and seize the engine quite quickly.
Checking coolant levels in other people's cars is woke.
This transfer has been a major headwind for UK registered plcs making them vulnerable to international takeovers and making it more difficult to acquire additional capital for investment. We need that £3trn to be driving growth and investment in the UK and it just isn't right now.
The road less travelled. But which is it
One never knows
I think however that in Britain we have gone past peak 'woke', the situation is not even vaguely like Canada which seems to have gone further than anywhere else in the world and is long due a correction.
The lessons they can learn in Ukraine could likely save them far more than $60bn in potentially wasted defence procurement and obsoleted military training.
A thread on the topic by someone with a bit more knowledge than me would be interesting. The next government is going to be severely cash constrained, while at the same time can’t neglect defence.
We can’t afford to waste billions more on useless projects like Ajax.
And we need to build manufacturing capacity that’s actually useful.
It’s probably the only large country in the world with higher net migration than the UK right now
It’s much closer to a mortgage.
Effectively it’s:
I will give you X up front
In return you give me £100 + inflation for the next 125 years
At the end of 125 years you have the right to buy the freehold for £100
And I will provide zero services for the ground rent - it’s a fully maintaining / fully repairing lease. But if you don’t pay then either (a) you pay the default [haven’t done the math but that would be pre-specified - probably close to the sum of all future payments] or (b) you terminate the lease
If I seem unusually anxious this is why: I rented the car for two days. But this part of Colombia turned out so compelling I extended my stay by a week
But the car company told me - over the phone - that I had to go back to the office to extend. You can’t do it by phone or Net in Colombia
So I thought Fuck that and I’ve just kept the car. They can bill me when I return it
So I’m kinda driving a stolen car
A pension always needs to be able to guarantee they have the cash to pay pensions
At the moment their options are UK government debt or ground rents
Eliminating ground rents increases demand for UK government debt and thereby reduces the cost to the government at the cost of pension fund beneficiaries…
And one reason pensioners are the most reliable Tory cohort - yes there are financial reasons for it - but also are the only group who remember the difficulties a Labour government and the more left-wing post-war settlement had in the 70s as a defining political moment that shaped their views. Canada has been extremely liberal for a good while so we are seeing a backlash from those who see policies as having failed them.
As an example, I talk to a guy in the pub who will always vote Tory because he still fumes about the unions' behaviour in the 70s. Your average person who is 35 or under in contrast has spent their working life being poorer relative to what they may have expected and had to deal with endless Tory psychodrama. They don't give a monkeys about the traditional fears levelled at the left, but do have an acute appreciation of those aimed at the right.
I can't see it changing unless you get a super strident Labour government that is very left-wing and screws up badly, in which case it'll be the teenagers now who shift right - whereas those in their 20s or 30s now (so 40s and 50s in 10-20 years) will always be thinking "Well they may be rubbish, but it could be worse, remember the right in the 2010s and 2020s".
I predict the UK will adopt those lessons which allow them to cancel very expensive projects or embark on new and exciting ones (drones, etc.) but will not do anything worthwhile but boring like having 12km long ammo dumps like the Russians.
The Starmer government won't be the slightest bit interested in defence. A bit of benign neglect is probably what the MoD need right now anyway.
In other defence news, I see Shappsie and his tiny, furry co-pilot got a ride in an RAAF Super Hornet. Ticking it off the bucket list before he gets chucked on the dole.
But a complaint 5 years later to the Met for an event that occurred in Leeds? That’s entirely political!
Arguably bringing the comments to public attention is creating the “risk” of violence - no one since that evening had probably given a moment’s thought to the remarks…
China will hit Okinawa because of the US base. Japan will have to respond.
My thoughts are more towards the AI apocalypse, these days
Before you know it, you’ll looking at high speed, terrain following, long range, stealthy…. Drones or missiles? And round it goes again….
Cf the rise of Andrew Tate. Britain is merely late to the game
“Sex reassignment in minors may be medical history’s ‘greatest ethical scandal’, French report says”
https://x.com/telegraph/status/1771647167544828131?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele
If it were we'd be seeing some odd things like a Reform (or an equivalent) would surge among 18-24 year olds. But the radical right are still deeply unpopular here because are still the discredited establishment. It's Jacob Rees-Mogg. Farage et al. A 'Brexit' tackle is a comedically bad one. Stuffy old bigots and thieving Tories who insult you rather than younger iconoclasts.
As I said, that might change - there are indicators the young have a much more entrepreneurial outlook for one thing. Oddly the more successful in implementing its outlook Labour is in government the more likely it is. But it isn't happening yet, whereas it is in other countries where the left is seen as more a permanent part of government, and that is the most reasonable explanation.
However I predict we will probably catch up in time; it’s basically inevitable. The left has been in power “culturally” for decades, Wokeness has been advancing since the 60s - the fact it only now has a pejorative label - Woke - shows that only now are people waking up to Woke: realising it’s evil consequences (especially for young white men)
The trans debate is the cutting edge here
Once the left is in power politically as well as all other ways then, belatedly, young Brits will kick against it
It’s about bloody time. How can they not realise that one significant reason they can’t buy housing is because we have ridiculously high levels of immigration? Duhhh
And he kind of is? Love him or loathe him Farage has been a major political figure for roughly two decades. He's a part of the firmament and was a key mover behind the defining British political moment of those two decades. In many ways a product of his success is that the Tory Party now pretty much sound like him. Plus his entire political persona is based around being the outspoken chap in the golf club bar. He's establishment coded even when railing against his perception of it.
If you're after something new and exciting you maybe haven't heard before, he is not it.
Oh I can't resist
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Definitely an ordinary bloke, man of the people. Definitely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernán_Giraldo
- much of the content online is generated by bots/algorithms and
- human interactions with the internet are guided/directed by other algorithms, and
- these characteristics are increasing
The world-wide-web originally consisted with people creating content, other people and then algorithms collating those sites by their content, then people searching those collations via search engines that maximised utility and contacting each other via email.None of those things are still wholly true
It now consists of computer-generated content and search engines that maximise engagement or advertising profit. All contact is done via contact forms not email. So machines producing contact that is relayed by machines to people whose sole function is to buy things, not to be informed, where human contact is minimised.
The population is ageing, the increasingly huge pensioner population all need looking after somehow, and investing in upskilling the remaining pool of workers is difficult and expensive. The easiest thing to do is to import a load of new workers to get around these problems. The fact that this is all one immense Ponzi scheme - the new workers eventually age, and will require replacement by even large quantities of immigrants to pay for the vast hordes of decrepit elderly and stave off economic collapse - is never acknowledged. Because dealing with that is a problem for future pols and not the current lot, who therefore don't give a fuck.
NEW THREAD
It’s the only place I have ever been to that I will never return to. There was a heaviness in the air, a palpable sense of evil that had sunk into the very walls
(The only other place I have had a similar sense was in Nissim de Camondo - there it was an intense sadness and grief.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musée_Nissim_de_Camondo
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_Ghetto
Hence why culture wars have less purchase here. Yes it's annoying, but a second order rather than a first order problem.
On housing, it's build more of them. Build more infrastructure. We'd still have a housing crisis if immigration levels were down to the fabled 'tens of thousands'.
Any buyer of the property takes on the liability which will be reflected in the purchase price.