The justice system is absolutely fucking broken. I fear that in 7-10 years the child murderer will be walking the streets after being granted lifetime anonymity by some soft touch judge.
2 year suspended sentence plus community service and rehab and alcohol treatment order, so whatever your view of the sentence he still was not let off exactly.
On current tariffs the Southport murderer could get a whole life order if proved it was premeditated as it involved 2 or more murders or had a sadistic nature or political or ideological cause
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
Got offered 2 E's by Manchester. Was good mates with Bez then. How he laughed!
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
Manchester is still a top University. Of course it depends on subjects. Manchester, Leeds, Imperial were always very good for geology. Oxford and Cambridge frankly were not.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
Manchester is still a top University. Of course it depends on subjects. Manchester, Leeds, Imperial were always very good for geology. Oxford and Cambridge frankly were not.
That’s surprising, given the number of old fossils that went to Oxford and Cambridge.
Fanning the flames ! Hasn’t Farage got a Maga rally to fuck off to .
Not all that sure Nigel Farage will get as warm a welcome in MAGA-maniac-land this fall. Seems they've got an over-supply of ego-mad right-wing smart-asses at present, so demand for one resembling a neo-fascist Mr Bean slackening by the nano-second.
I am not really big on the police policing people saying hurty words on the t'interweb, but people don't seem to realise or learn that identifying suspect that can't be identified under the law might be errrh be problematic.
What if everyone knows because of t'net, anyway?
This is not with particular reference to Southport, but more generally. If a fact becomes universally known online, is there a juncture at which a polite fiction from the authorities becomes more ridiculous than it is worth?
A philosophical point more than a criminological point
I think of Princess Kate's cancer (God speed her recovery). In the end it became so obvious something was wrong, and the speculation online so wild, bizarre and corrosive, they had to drop the veil of secrecy. That is a sad thing, but it is the nature of modern life with social media
The problem you have is that polite fiction is also necessary to ensure that whoever the suspect is doesn't get off ona technicality. If there name has already been splashed alll over the internet then it is entirely possible that any future conviction could be challenged on the grounds of inability to get a fair trial.
Even on that new battleground states poll Trump wins 270 to 268 if he wins Georgia, which is tied
You sound as authoritative as ever. Like you do about schools and colleges and universities which I have been to and you, not so much.
Yes well I don't subscribe to left liberal centrist groupthink on here and never will, this board is supposed to incorporate all opinions and views not be an echo chamber!
Sure. But analogously, if you put a lot of time into hilariously inaccurate exposition about every day life in Tibet to people who have spent decades in Tibet when you yourself have never been east of Harwich, it makes believing a word you say about anything else a rash move.
The justice system is absolutely fucking broken. I fear that in 7-10 years the child murderer will be walking the streets after being granted lifetime anonymity by some soft touch judge.
The scrote didn’t even plead guilty. No prison places, though. You’re right that the last decade has crashed the criminal justice system.
…Judge Aaronberg criticised him for pleading not guilty to the assault charge, in the face of “overwhelming” evidence, and subjecting the woman to cross- examination at trial. The court heard a doctor said Rafferty may have been suffering from psychosis at the time of the incident and that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The judge took into account Rafferty’s mental health struggles, his ongoing alcohol treatment, the delays in the court case, the shortage of prison places and his lack of previous convictions when deciding to suspend the jail term for two years…
As for the future, that’s another pass/fail test for the new lot in charge.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
I’m not sure you weren’t just being wound up. TweedleD does appear to have a penchant for sly humour.
On the headline article, with 6/4 still hanging about in recent days its a good bet on Harris on what is 50-50 contest.
My own gut is that Trump has a much harder ceiling on his support and the only thing that can win it for him is differential turnout (ie enthusiasm). This remains central to any betting that I'd do. The big worry for the Democrats remains the economy, or more precisely peoples perception of their own personal economy.
On a couple of other notes, if Israel has killed off the very senior Hezbollah figure of Fuad Shukr in Beirut tonight, there will be plenty of Western and Middle Eastern security officials well pleased. Hezbollah though needs to ask why the Israelis seem to be able to bump off so many mid and senior people in Lebanon.
Most important though in a world that some like to claim is in turmoil. Andy Murray. It doesnt matter whether he wins a medal or not, the bloke is just a joy to watch at the moment.
Are Labour really going to bring in the school fees VAT in January mid way through a school year?
That feels bizarre to me.
They’re attempting to make it retrospective to this September, but can’t get the legislation through in time.
Which I suspect will lead to a well-funded legal challenge.
Any evidence to back the September claim up?
Because if they were doing that they would have had to do it yesterday and instead all they said January.. (Remember this sort of trick is something I'm very aware of - so the wording yesterday was interesting and carefully created a distinct line)...
Reality is that by implementing it in January and announcing yesterday after the school year and finished it's designed to minimise the number of people able to move schools before September which is probably a relief to both State and Private schools...
Although it does rather mess up people who are already struggling to pay school fees...
So we’ll get a winter of freezing pensioner headlines followed by a January of taking the little darlings out of school/could state schools be overwhelmed headlines. Plus whatever comes down the line in the budget in October.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much by way of a Labour honeymoon. That doesn’t mean that the Tories are going to suddenly look amazing (they’re not). But it will be interesting to see what the polls are coming out with early next year.
Not optimal… but then I guess they’re getting these hits out of the way early.
I LOL at Labour for the private school fees move.
I think Starmer reckons it'll be another foxhunting ban moment. But foxhunting was directly supported by very few people, and this move will affect many, many more people directly. It'll cheer those who hate people who are richer than them; but dismay many more.
Personally I’m a VAT supremacist, so this is grist to the mill. VAT on everything!
VAT on everything is a fair argument. But this is VAT on something very specific and targeted, mostly for ideological reasons rather than attempting to raise revenue.
It’s red meat to an activist base who think every private school is just like “Boris Johnson’s Eton”.
And it may well work out that Boris Johnson Eton comes out ahead on the changes, and it small / special needs schools that are the ones most effected.
If you want an extra £1bn from rich people there are much easier ways to get it.
Starmer doesn’t give a fuck how much money it raises. It was a high protein plant based meat substitute policy for his base that doesn’t repel centrist dickheads and can't be proved to cost a shitload of cash. He needed his base as hard as a fucking brick to work the GE for him.
It was and is smart politics. All of this wanking off about how much it will raise or cost totally misses the point of it. The lachrymose grief of the bottom half of the bourgeoisie is a splendid by-product, not the prime intent.
And the children with disrupted education, the good teachers now unemployed and the closed businesses?
All for a spiteful and envious policy that will damage the country overall.
And we've got five years of the crap that 20% of the electorate foisted on us.
This could be a re-run of the Wilson administration 1974-1979, just with a bigger majority.
Not really, to have a re-run like that you need a slender majority forcing decisions in a particular direction...
Well with talk like this, they had better deliver. If they don't, it's not entirely impossible to see them losing their majority in five years.
Rayner accuses Badenoch of not understanding why Tories lost election, with housing key factor Rayner starts by wishing Badenoch luck with her leadership bid. She says it was Badenoch’s ambition to be leader of the opposition, not hers.
She says she thinks there are a few things Badenoch “has not understood”.
One is that the Tories lost the election. Another is that they left services in a mess, including failing to meet their housing targets.
She says the Conservatives '“are talking to themselves, not the country”...
OTOH, if they do, then it's going to be a very long stint in opposition for Kemi.
If Labour manage to deliver a Britain in which housing is as affordable as it was for our parents' generation they will deserve a long spell in power. Can't disagree - housing is possibly the biggest issue there is right now.
They won't.
They could of course but the only way to do that is to effectvely nationalise housebuilding and have local councils or Central Government build hundreds of thousands of houses themselves. It won't happen - even though actually it would be a good idea if it did. People continue to refuse tounderstand that the problem with housebuilding is the housebuilders. When prices stagnate they stop building to ensure the prices start rising again.
You're almost there Richard at recognising the problem. So close and yet so far away.
We need to break the oligopoly of the housing developers. Which means planning reform.
It doesn't matter how much planning permission is given out, if its given out to an oligopoly who can constrain supply and competitors can't get involved as getting permission for a tiny number of homes is so difficult.
Getting permission is expensive and laborious which only makes sense if you can divide that cost between a large number of homes, so it doesn't cost as much per home, which only the oligopoly of large developers with expertise at playing the planning game can do.
Get rid of planning permission, let anyone build, and the developers would face competition. If they refuse to build, then anyone else can do so instead. One house at a time, without waiting for permission first.
Sigh. Still droning on about planning when it is a complete red herring. All you are doing is showing your utter ignorance of how the planning system works. Very few planning applications for development get turned down by the planning system. They are simply there to make sure that the houses built are fit for purpose, do not cause harm to others (for example by building on flood plains and then building flood defences which push the problem down stream to flood other existing properties) and that the right measures are taken in advance to protect/record archaeology and natural resources/nature.
Of course those who are in any way involved in the planning system or in local government know this already. It is just the ignorant like you who need it explained to them time and time again and who still won't listen.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Wrong. It was always Uni when I was there in the early 80s.
Even on that new battleground states poll Trump wins 270 to 268 if he wins Georgia, which is tied
You sound as authoritative as ever. Like you do about schools and colleges and universities which I have been to and you, not so much.
Yes well I don't subscribe to left liberal centrist groupthink on here and never will, this board is supposed to incorporate all opinions and views not be an echo chamber!
Sure. But analogously, if you put a lot of time into hilariously inaccurate exposition about every day life in Tibet to people who have spent decades in Tibet when you yourself have never been east of Harwich, it makes believing a word you say about anything else a rash move.
I have been posting on here a lot longer than you have. You may well be a pompous bore as your post to kjh also suggests but you don't get any respect on here automatically you have to earn it first!
Some quite interesting stuff there, and some caution.
The solar farms one will make potentially a big difference. The Green Belt stuff looks sensible, which is one that could blow up unpredictably in Nimbyland.
The prisons one is an interesting one.
Changing the NPPF is always fraught, as the word by word nuances have a major impact on Planning Appeals.
Some things not addressed that need to be addressed - notable rural housing in small communities, but a lot of that requires action outside Planning Law.
Watch how the CPO reforms work with this.
Just had a quick flick through. Couldn't find anything about prisons except under 'Flood risk vulnerability classification'. Am I looking at the right document?
Do you know why councils currently don't spend time doing pre-application work. It's because they don't have the qualified staff to do it...
These are sensible proposals but not game changers, aside perhaps for onshore wind. It is really just the labour party reinstating a deeply unpopular system of housing targets, and then making some tweaks to the wording of the NPPF, which will be slowly litigated over the next ten years. The speculative planning applications will start coming forward again but this won't necessarily lead to the rapid delivery of housing in the way that is hoped; the delivery of housing depends on demand, and there isn't much of this.
The thing the FT picked up on is that the changes in new housing numbers seems to massively impact Redcar and Cumbria while areas that actually need a lot of housing (London) come away relatively unscathed.
I'm curious, why don't Redcar and Cumbria need housing in your eyes?
We need a lot of housing everywhere.
No we really don't. See Fig 3 of this ONS post, which shows clearly that affordability is appalling in the SE around London, and not really a problem in the north, especially the far north.
And that's despite the huge subsidies that southern England dishes out to the rest of the country every year, when the best thing to do would be to cut those off and let the regions find their natural population and economy activity levels.
Excuse me but Fig 3 of the ONS post clearly shows that affordability is an appalling problem in the entire country, including the North.
I've already used my one picture of the day, but if you look at Redcar on that chart affordability has gotten worse in Redcar (as it has in the entire country) and is now well, well, well above 3x incomes that should be the upper limit.
In fact its now at 5x incomes which means Redcar today is even worse than say Guildford was a quarter of a century ago.
The idea that over 5x income ratios is not extreme or too high, just because they're even higher elsewhere, is just absurd.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
Manchester is still a top University. Of course it depends on subjects. Manchester, Leeds, Imperial were always very good for geology. Oxford and Cambridge frankly were not.
That’s surprising, given the number of old fossils that went to Oxford and Cambridge.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
I know you're dicking about, but they said it all the time in the Young Ones.
Are Labour really going to bring in the school fees VAT in January mid way through a school year?
That feels bizarre to me.
They’re attempting to make it retrospective to this September, but can’t get the legislation through in time.
Which I suspect will lead to a well-funded legal challenge.
Any evidence to back the September claim up?
Because if they were doing that they would have had to do it yesterday and instead all they said January.. (Remember this sort of trick is something I'm very aware of - so the wording yesterday was interesting and carefully created a distinct line)...
Reality is that by implementing it in January and announcing yesterday after the school year and finished it's designed to minimise the number of people able to move schools before September which is probably a relief to both State and Private schools...
Although it does rather mess up people who are already struggling to pay school fees...
So we’ll get a winter of freezing pensioner headlines followed by a January of taking the little darlings out of school/could state schools be overwhelmed headlines. Plus whatever comes down the line in the budget in October.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much by way of a Labour honeymoon. That doesn’t mean that the Tories are going to suddenly look amazing (they’re not). But it will be interesting to see what the polls are coming out with early next year.
Not optimal… but then I guess they’re getting these hits out of the way early.
I LOL at Labour for the private school fees move.
I think Starmer reckons it'll be another foxhunting ban moment. But foxhunting was directly supported by very few people, and this move will affect many, many more people directly. It'll cheer those who hate people who are richer than them; but dismay many more.
Personally I’m a VAT supremacist, so this is grist to the mill. VAT on everything!
VAT on everything is a fair argument. But this is VAT on something very specific and targeted, mostly for ideological reasons rather than attempting to raise revenue.
It’s red meat to an activist base who think every private school is just like “Boris Johnson’s Eton”.
And it may well work out that Boris Johnson Eton comes out ahead on the changes, and it small / special needs schools that are the ones most effected.
If you want an extra £1bn from rich people there are much easier ways to get it.
Starmer doesn’t give a fuck how much money it raises. It was a high protein plant based meat substitute policy for his base that doesn’t repel centrist dickheads and can't be proved to cost a shitload of cash. He needed his base as hard as a fucking brick to work the GE for him.
It was and is smart politics. All of this wanking off about how much it will raise or cost totally misses the point of it. The lachrymose grief of the bottom half of the bourgeoisie is a splendid by-product, not the prime intent.
And the children with disrupted education, the good teachers now unemployed and the closed businesses?
All for a spiteful and envious policy that will damage the country overall.
And we've got five years of the crap that 20% of the electorate foisted on us.
This could be a re-run of the Wilson administration 1974-1979, just with a bigger majority.
Not really, to have a re-run like that you need a slender majority forcing decisions in a particular direction...
Well with talk like this, they had better deliver. If they don't, it's not entirely impossible to see them losing their majority in five years.
Rayner accuses Badenoch of not understanding why Tories lost election, with housing key factor Rayner starts by wishing Badenoch luck with her leadership bid. She says it was Badenoch’s ambition to be leader of the opposition, not hers.
She says she thinks there are a few things Badenoch “has not understood”.
One is that the Tories lost the election. Another is that they left services in a mess, including failing to meet their housing targets.
She says the Conservatives '“are talking to themselves, not the country”...
OTOH, if they do, then it's going to be a very long stint in opposition for Kemi.
If Labour manage to deliver a Britain in which housing is as affordable as it was for our parents' generation they will deserve a long spell in power. Can't disagree - housing is possibly the biggest issue there is right now.
They won't.
They could of course but the only way to do that is to effectvely nationalise housebuilding and have local councils or Central Government build hundreds of thousands of houses themselves. It won't happen - even though actually it would be a good idea if it did. People continue to refuse tounderstand that the problem with housebuilding is the housebuilders. When prices stagnate they stop building to ensure the prices start rising again.
You're almost there Richard at recognising the problem. So close and yet so far away.
We need to break the oligopoly of the housing developers. Which means planning reform.
It doesn't matter how much planning permission is given out, if its given out to an oligopoly who can constrain supply and competitors can't get involved as getting permission for a tiny number of homes is so difficult.
Getting permission is expensive and laborious which only makes sense if you can divide that cost between a large number of homes, so it doesn't cost as much per home, which only the oligopoly of large developers with expertise at playing the planning game can do.
Get rid of planning permission, let anyone build, and the developers would face competition. If they refuse to build, then anyone else can do so instead. One house at a time, without waiting for permission first.
Sigh. Still droning on about planning when it is a complete red herring. All you are doing is showing your utter ignorance of how the planning system works. Very few planning applications for development get turned down by the planning system. They are simply there to make sure that the houses built are fit for purpose, do not cause harm to others (for example by building on flood plains and then building flood defences which push the problem down stream to flood other existing properties) and that the right measures are taken in advance to protect/record archaeology and natural resources/nature.
Of course those who are in any way involved in the planning system or in local government know this already. It is just the ignorant like you who need it explained to them time and time again and who still won't listen.
A significant proportion of planning applications for homes (as opposed to renovations) gets rejected as we've discussed before.
Though yes, you're not keen on new housing actually happening and want to compel the construction of public services onto new builds rather than have the entire public pay for public services, so disagreeing with that is a difference of priorities and opinion, not understanding.
Hence your laughable claim last time we spoke that a school has the catchment area of a new build estate.
If you check the history of surrounding houses the price is the same as other houses went for back in 2005 - because house prices round there haven’t changed in the past 20 years
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Wouldn't know, never watched it. Is it any good? Uni is a term that had been used my whole life by everyone I know including my children. Maybe not used in your posh circles where you despise a Uni that boasts 25 Nobel prize winners and was at the forefront of Computer Technology including the work of Turing.
I don't know but I suspect it might not be great for Latin though.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
Tweeds was being a mischievous little tinker I think..
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Are Labour really going to bring in the school fees VAT in January mid way through a school year?
That feels bizarre to me.
They’re attempting to make it retrospective to this September, but can’t get the legislation through in time.
Which I suspect will lead to a well-funded legal challenge.
Any evidence to back the September claim up?
Because if they were doing that they would have had to do it yesterday and instead all they said January.. (Remember this sort of trick is something I'm very aware of - so the wording yesterday was interesting and carefully created a distinct line)...
Reality is that by implementing it in January and announcing yesterday after the school year and finished it's designed to minimise the number of people able to move schools before September which is probably a relief to both State and Private schools...
Although it does rather mess up people who are already struggling to pay school fees...
So we’ll get a winter of freezing pensioner headlines followed by a January of taking the little darlings out of school/could state schools be overwhelmed headlines. Plus whatever comes down the line in the budget in October.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much by way of a Labour honeymoon. That doesn’t mean that the Tories are going to suddenly look amazing (they’re not). But it will be interesting to see what the polls are coming out with early next year.
Not optimal… but then I guess they’re getting these hits out of the way early.
I LOL at Labour for the private school fees move.
I think Starmer reckons it'll be another foxhunting ban moment. But foxhunting was directly supported by very few people, and this move will affect many, many more people directly. It'll cheer those who hate people who are richer than them; but dismay many more.
Personally I’m a VAT supremacist, so this is grist to the mill. VAT on everything!
VAT on everything is a fair argument. But this is VAT on something very specific and targeted, mostly for ideological reasons rather than attempting to raise revenue.
It’s red meat to an activist base who think every private school is just like “Boris Johnson’s Eton”.
And it may well work out that Boris Johnson Eton comes out ahead on the changes, and it small / special needs schools that are the ones most effected.
If you want an extra £1bn from rich people there are much easier ways to get it.
Starmer doesn’t give a fuck how much money it raises. It was a high protein plant based meat substitute policy for his base that doesn’t repel centrist dickheads and can't be proved to cost a shitload of cash. He needed his base as hard as a fucking brick to work the GE for him.
It was and is smart politics. All of this wanking off about how much it will raise or cost totally misses the point of it. The lachrymose grief of the bottom half of the bourgeoisie is a splendid by-product, not the prime intent.
And the children with disrupted education, the good teachers now unemployed and the closed businesses?
All for a spiteful and envious policy that will damage the country overall.
And we've got five years of the crap that 20% of the electorate foisted on us.
This could be a re-run of the Wilson administration 1974-1979, just with a bigger majority.
Not really, to have a re-run like that you need a slender majority forcing decisions in a particular direction...
Well with talk like this, they had better deliver. If they don't, it's not entirely impossible to see them losing their majority in five years.
Rayner accuses Badenoch of not understanding why Tories lost election, with housing key factor Rayner starts by wishing Badenoch luck with her leadership bid. She says it was Badenoch’s ambition to be leader of the opposition, not hers.
She says she thinks there are a few things Badenoch “has not understood”.
One is that the Tories lost the election. Another is that they left services in a mess, including failing to meet their housing targets.
She says the Conservatives '“are talking to themselves, not the country”...
OTOH, if they do, then it's going to be a very long stint in opposition for Kemi.
If Labour manage to deliver a Britain in which housing is as affordable as it was for our parents' generation they will deserve a long spell in power. Can't disagree - housing is possibly the biggest issue there is right now.
They won't.
They could of course but the only way to do that is to effectvely nationalise housebuilding and have local councils or Central Government build hundreds of thousands of houses themselves. It won't happen - even though actually it would be a good idea if it did. People continue to refuse tounderstand that the problem with housebuilding is the housebuilders. When prices stagnate they stop building to ensure the prices start rising again.
You're almost there Richard at recognising the problem. So close and yet so far away.
We need to break the oligopoly of the housing developers. Which means planning reform.
It doesn't matter how much planning permission is given out, if its given out to an oligopoly who can constrain supply and competitors can't get involved as getting permission for a tiny number of homes is so difficult.
Getting permission is expensive and laborious which only makes sense if you can divide that cost between a large number of homes, so it doesn't cost as much per home, which only the oligopoly of large developers with expertise at playing the planning game can do.
Get rid of planning permission, let anyone build, and the developers would face competition. If they refuse to build, then anyone else can do so instead. One house at a time, without waiting for permission first.
Sigh. Still droning on about planning when it is a complete red herring. All you are doing is showing your utter ignorance of how the planning system works. Very few planning applications for development get turned down by the planning system. They are simply there to make sure that the houses built are fit for purpose, do not cause harm to others (for example by building on flood plains and then building flood defences which push the problem down stream to flood other existing properties) and that the right measures are taken in advance to protect/record archaeology and natural resources/nature.
Of course those who are in any way involved in the planning system or in local government know this already. It is just the ignorant like you who need it explained to them time and time again and who still won't listen.
A significant proportion of planning applications for homes (as opposed to renovations) gets rejected as we've discussed before.
Though yes, you're not keen on new housing actually happening and want to compel the construction of public services onto new builds rather than have the entire public pay for public services, so disagreeing with that is a difference of priorities and opinion, not understanding.
Hence your laughable claim last time we spoke that a school has the catchment area of a new build estate.
Completely wrong. I want lots of new houses built. I am the one who has been proposing new towns/cities in my own county. I can always tell when you feel you are losing the argument. You start lying about other people's views even when they have been perfectly clear for years.
My argument is not about the need for new housing, it is about your idiotic and unsupportable views on the causes of the problems. You have your own very particular antipathy towards planning and so make that the root of all evil even when you don't have the first idea how it works or what it does.
If you check the history of surrounding houses the price is the same as other houses went for back in 2005 - because house prices round there haven’t changed in the past 20 years
See Redcar here, I won't embed as already done 1 pic today but here's a link: https://i.ibb.co/429VZ8m/image.png - Redcar today costs well over what England as a whole cost in the past.
As for that link, it seems run-down and in need of major refurbishment. being marketed as "ready to be improved" but even then its over 3x income ratio for the area, which is more what a typical house should cost not a fixer-upper.
Even on that new battleground states poll Trump wins 270 to 268 if he wins Georgia, which is tied
You sound as authoritative as ever. Like you do about schools and colleges and universities which I have been to and you, not so much.
Yes well I don't subscribe to left liberal centrist groupthink on here and never will, this board is supposed to incorporate all opinions and views not be an echo chamber!
Sure. But analogously, if you put a lot of time into hilariously inaccurate exposition about every day life in Tibet to people who have spent decades in Tibet when you yourself have never been east of Harwich, it makes believing a word you say about anything else a rash move.
I have been posting on here a lot longer than you have. You may well be a pompous bore as your post to kjh also suggests but you don't get any respect on here automatically you have to earn it first!
Thank you @HYUFD . Appreciated. @Tweedledee in his current form and under his previous names seems to has a mysterious thing about me. Don't know why, although in his previous guise he upset quite a few people. Seems rather unpleasant.
Are Labour really going to bring in the school fees VAT in January mid way through a school year?
That feels bizarre to me.
They’re attempting to make it retrospective to this September, but can’t get the legislation through in time.
Which I suspect will lead to a well-funded legal challenge.
Any evidence to back the September claim up?
Because if they were doing that they would have had to do it yesterday and instead all they said January.. (Remember this sort of trick is something I'm very aware of - so the wording yesterday was interesting and carefully created a distinct line)...
Reality is that by implementing it in January and announcing yesterday after the school year and finished it's designed to minimise the number of people able to move schools before September which is probably a relief to both State and Private schools...
Although it does rather mess up people who are already struggling to pay school fees...
So we’ll get a winter of freezing pensioner headlines followed by a January of taking the little darlings out of school/could state schools be overwhelmed headlines. Plus whatever comes down the line in the budget in October.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much by way of a Labour honeymoon. That doesn’t mean that the Tories are going to suddenly look amazing (they’re not). But it will be interesting to see what the polls are coming out with early next year.
Not optimal… but then I guess they’re getting these hits out of the way early.
I LOL at Labour for the private school fees move.
I think Starmer reckons it'll be another foxhunting ban moment. But foxhunting was directly supported by very few people, and this move will affect many, many more people directly. It'll cheer those who hate people who are richer than them; but dismay many more.
Personally I’m a VAT supremacist, so this is grist to the mill. VAT on everything!
VAT on everything is a fair argument. But this is VAT on something very specific and targeted, mostly for ideological reasons rather than attempting to raise revenue.
It’s red meat to an activist base who think every private school is just like “Boris Johnson’s Eton”.
And it may well work out that Boris Johnson Eton comes out ahead on the changes, and it small / special needs schools that are the ones most effected.
If you want an extra £1bn from rich people there are much easier ways to get it.
Starmer doesn’t give a fuck how much money it raises. It was a high protein plant based meat substitute policy for his base that doesn’t repel centrist dickheads and can't be proved to cost a shitload of cash. He needed his base as hard as a fucking brick to work the GE for him.
It was and is smart politics. All of this wanking off about how much it will raise or cost totally misses the point of it. The lachrymose grief of the bottom half of the bourgeoisie is a splendid by-product, not the prime intent.
And the children with disrupted education, the good teachers now unemployed and the closed businesses?
All for a spiteful and envious policy that will damage the country overall.
And we've got five years of the crap that 20% of the electorate foisted on us.
This could be a re-run of the Wilson administration 1974-1979, just with a bigger majority.
Not really, to have a re-run like that you need a slender majority forcing decisions in a particular direction...
Well with talk like this, they had better deliver. If they don't, it's not entirely impossible to see them losing their majority in five years.
Rayner accuses Badenoch of not understanding why Tories lost election, with housing key factor Rayner starts by wishing Badenoch luck with her leadership bid. She says it was Badenoch’s ambition to be leader of the opposition, not hers.
She says she thinks there are a few things Badenoch “has not understood”.
One is that the Tories lost the election. Another is that they left services in a mess, including failing to meet their housing targets.
She says the Conservatives '“are talking to themselves, not the country”...
OTOH, if they do, then it's going to be a very long stint in opposition for Kemi.
If Labour manage to deliver a Britain in which housing is as affordable as it was for our parents' generation they will deserve a long spell in power. Can't disagree - housing is possibly the biggest issue there is right now.
They won't.
They could of course but the only way to do that is to effectvely nationalise housebuilding and have local councils or Central Government build hundreds of thousands of houses themselves. It won't happen - even though actually it would be a good idea if it did. People continue to refuse tounderstand that the problem with housebuilding is the housebuilders. When prices stagnate they stop building to ensure the prices start rising again.
You're almost there Richard at recognising the problem. So close and yet so far away.
We need to break the oligopoly of the housing developers. Which means planning reform.
It doesn't matter how much planning permission is given out, if its given out to an oligopoly who can constrain supply and competitors can't get involved as getting permission for a tiny number of homes is so difficult.
Getting permission is expensive and laborious which only makes sense if you can divide that cost between a large number of homes, so it doesn't cost as much per home, which only the oligopoly of large developers with expertise at playing the planning game can do.
Get rid of planning permission, let anyone build, and the developers would face competition. If they refuse to build, then anyone else can do so instead. One house at a time, without waiting for permission first.
Sigh. Still droning on about planning when it is a complete red herring. All you are doing is showing your utter ignorance of how the planning system works. Very few planning applications for development get turned down by the planning system. They are simply there to make sure that the houses built are fit for purpose, do not cause harm to others (for example by building on flood plains and then building flood defences which push the problem down stream to flood other existing properties) and that the right measures are taken in advance to protect/record archaeology and natural resources/nature.
Of course those who are in any way involved in the planning system or in local government know this already. It is just the ignorant like you who need it explained to them time and time again and who still won't listen.
A significant proportion of planning applications for homes (as opposed to renovations) gets rejected as we've discussed before.
Though yes, you're not keen on new housing actually happening and want to compel the construction of public services onto new builds rather than have the entire public pay for public services, so disagreeing with that is a difference of priorities and opinion, not understanding.
Hence your laughable claim last time we spoke that a school has the catchment area of a new build estate.
Completely wrong. I want lots of new houses built. I am the one who has been proposing new towns/cities in my own county. I can always tell when you feel you are losing the argument. You start lying about other people's views even when they have been perfectly clear for years.
My argument is not about the need for new housing, it is about your idiotic and unsupportable views on the causes of the problems. You have your own very particular antipathy towards planning and so make that the root of all evil even when you don't have the first idea how it works or what it does.
Not lying, when we first debated planning you were mortified at the idea of more houses being built near you, though you've segued into recognising the need for more housing but elsewhere and oh planning doesn't restrict it but lets not change it anyway ...
Even on that new battleground states poll Trump wins 270 to 268 if he wins Georgia, which is tied
You sound as authoritative as ever. Like you do about schools and colleges and universities which I have been to and you, not so much.
Yes well I don't subscribe to left liberal centrist groupthink on here and never will, this board is supposed to incorporate all opinions and views not be an echo chamber!
Sure. But analogously, if you put a lot of time into hilariously inaccurate exposition about every day life in Tibet to people who have spent decades in Tibet when you yourself have never been east of Harwich, it makes believing a word you say about anything else a rash move.
I have been posting on here a lot longer than you have. You may well be a pompous bore as your post to kjh also suggests but you don't get any respect on here automatically you have to earn it first!
Thank you @HYUFD . Appreciated. @Tweedledee in his current form and under his previous names seems to has a mysterious thing about me. Don't know why, although in his previous guise he upset quite a few people. Seems rather unpleasant.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
Tweeds was being a mischievous little tinker I think..
Maybe, but under a different name s fee months ago he was particularly obnoxious and brought it up again more recently so I'm not taking any crap from him. He is obnoxious.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Sorry eek, I made a mistake. I underestimated earnings in Redcar, seems that "ready to be improved" house on Rightmove is a bit over 4.2x typical income, not 3x it. Median income in Redcar it seems is £32k.
A fixer upper that is "ready to be improved" in Redcar should be selling for more like £60k than £135k.
It says something about the unaffordability of the entire country that you look at that link and think "that's affordable".
Based on Figure 3 of the ONS link it seems we have unaffordable housing in the entire country, with the notable exception of Copeland. Not sure what has happened in Copeland, but it is the remarkable exception.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Heard and used the abbreviation lots - UCL in the early 90s.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Other people may have heard of, or used, the term before you did
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
Manchester is still a top University. Of course it depends on subjects. Manchester, Leeds, Imperial were always very good for geology. Oxford and Cambridge frankly were not.
This rungs true. As part of my computer science degree at Cambridge, I (unusually) opted to do geology as an elective the first year because there was a field trip to Arran promised, with lots of drinking, and physics (the "normal" option) was a piece of piss, just applied maths basically and I had enough of that.
About half the other participants were doing geology for very similar reasons. The promise was upheld, btw. Only lasting thing of use from it is that I stayed at the station hotel in Ayr before the, er, various incidents so I can follow that saga still for fun.
Anyway I can confirm I was absolutely useless at it. Amazing lectures though - much more fun that computer science. Simon Conway Morris's lecture notes were hilarious - basically at least 50% rants against people he didn't like.
I don't think much changes there year to year so it doesn't surprise me at all that geology undergraduates from Cam are rubbish. It wasn't set up to make decent ones. It was basically a pisshead or amateur enthusiast option, with a very small number of people who took it seriously.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Other people may have heard of, or used, the term before you did
I don’t recall saying otherwise. Perhaps it was popularised by Australian soaps?
Some quite interesting stuff there, and some caution.
The solar farms one will make potentially a big difference. The Green Belt stuff looks sensible, which is one that could blow up unpredictably in Nimbyland.
The prisons one is an interesting one.
Changing the NPPF is always fraught, as the word by word nuances have a major impact on Planning Appeals.
Some things not addressed that need to be addressed - notable rural housing in small communities, but a lot of that requires action outside Planning Law.
Watch how the CPO reforms work with this.
Just had a quick flick through. Couldn't find anything about prisons except under 'Flood risk vulnerability classification'. Am I looking at the right document?
Do you know why councils currently don't spend time doing pre-application work. It's because they don't have the qualified staff to do it...
These are sensible proposals but not game changers, aside perhaps for onshore wind. It is really just the labour party reinstating a deeply unpopular system of housing targets, and then making some tweaks to the wording of the NPPF, which will be slowly litigated over the next ten years. The speculative planning applications will start coming forward again but this won't necessarily lead to the rapid delivery of housing in the way that is hoped; the delivery of housing depends on demand, and there isn't much of this.
The thing the FT picked up on is that the changes in new housing numbers seems to massively impact Redcar and Cumbria while areas that actually need a lot of housing (London) come away relatively unscathed.
I'm curious, why don't Redcar and Cumbria need housing in your eyes?
We need a lot of housing everywhere.
Because the previous target was 46 homes and now its over 600 - I'm questioning whether the demand exists because 1) I don't think it does, 2) the profit doesn't exist given the price of existing homes...
It absolutely exists in Cumbria (is it as vague as "Cumbria"? Haven't read article).
I struggle to think why anyone would want to live in Redcar.
Because it’s one of the few places that first time buyers can afford to buy a home. We need to build enough homes that first time buyers can afford to buy everywhere, even in NIMBY Lib Dem constituencies.
I'm fine with that, but that still doesn't explain why anyone would want to live in Redcar, given the choice. Indeed even given the price motive, there's plenty of equally cheap frankly lovely areas in the North East that aren't Redcar.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Other people may have heard of, or used, the term before you did
I don’t recall saying otherwise. Perhaps it was popularised by Australian soaps?
"Uni" to mean "university" has been used in American English since c.1895-1900.
Some quite interesting stuff there, and some caution.
The solar farms one will make potentially a big difference. The Green Belt stuff looks sensible, which is one that could blow up unpredictably in Nimbyland.
The prisons one is an interesting one.
Changing the NPPF is always fraught, as the word by word nuances have a major impact on Planning Appeals.
Some things not addressed that need to be addressed - notable rural housing in small communities, but a lot of that requires action outside Planning Law.
Watch how the CPO reforms work with this.
Just had a quick flick through. Couldn't find anything about prisons except under 'Flood risk vulnerability classification'. Am I looking at the right document?
Do you know why councils currently don't spend time doing pre-application work. It's because they don't have the qualified staff to do it...
These are sensible proposals but not game changers, aside perhaps for onshore wind. It is really just the labour party reinstating a deeply unpopular system of housing targets, and then making some tweaks to the wording of the NPPF, which will be slowly litigated over the next ten years. The speculative planning applications will start coming forward again but this won't necessarily lead to the rapid delivery of housing in the way that is hoped; the delivery of housing depends on demand, and there isn't much of this.
The thing the FT picked up on is that the changes in new housing numbers seems to massively impact Redcar and Cumbria while areas that actually need a lot of housing (London) come away relatively unscathed.
I'm curious, why don't Redcar and Cumbria need housing in your eyes?
We need a lot of housing everywhere.
Because the previous target was 46 homes and now its over 600 - I'm questioning whether the demand exists because 1) I don't think it does, 2) the profit doesn't exist given the price of existing homes...
It absolutely exists in Cumbria (is it as vague as "Cumbria"? Haven't read article).
I struggle to think why anyone would want to live in Redcar.
Because it’s one of the few places that first time buyers can afford to buy a home. We need to build enough homes that first time buyers can afford to buy everywhere, even in NIMBY Lib Dem constituencies.
I'm fine with that, but that still doesn't explain why anyone would want to live in Redcar, given the choice. Indeed even given the price motive, there's plenty of equally cheap frankly lovely areas in the North East that aren't Redcar.
Because there aren't enough houses in Staithes, and Staithes wouldn't be Staithes if there were?
I think the government will have to be very careful not to hollow out existing towns even further.
If nobody wants to live in Redcar then it needs improving rather than a new version building 5 miles up the road on the green fields around Guisborough.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Other people may have heard of, or used, the term before you did
I don’t recall saying otherwise. Perhaps it was popularised by Australian soaps?
"Uni" to mean "university" has been used in American English since c.1895-1900.
Badenoch responds robustly to what she says are smears. The Tories need to plump for her if they want to get back in next time I think.
Another blue Lib Dem isn’t going to cut it after the next 5 years. The votes market is going to be for a radically smaller state both economically and socially. And if it comes with a hard edge it will be all the more popular.
Let’s be clear: these allegations are smears from former staff who I sacked after they were accused of bullying behaviour, lying about other colleagues to cover up their own failures and general gross incompetence. Intolerable behaviour I would not stand for (2/3)
Would definitely be a red flag in any normal organisation
This reported account of her spokesperson in the Guardian is a little different from “I sacked..”:
.. A spokesperson for Badenoch said the allegations were “completely false and a flagrant smear”. They confirmed that the business secretary “had to let go of” some senior officials and suggested she had found examples of “underperformance, complaints and bad behaviour” within her department. They added that she has “high standards and expectations….
Black women, especially black women of recent African heritage, get an awful lot of stick for being direct and not taking shit. Largely because they are direct and don't take any shit. I should know, I'm married to one.
Almost certainly these were pathetic civil servants who couldn't stand the heat and have therefore been rightly removed from the kitchen. If they hadn't done anything wrong, then the key is to give as good as you get. You'll be respected for that. But I bet they had cause civil servants.
Being a black woman of African heritage doesn't remove the requirement to treat staff with due process and according to the law.
Not wishing to stereotype, I can only think of one such woman out of many I have worked with professionally who would dream of doing something like this.
It became a badge of honour to sack civil servants. Cummings did it. Liz Truss did it. Boris did it. And New Labour was almost as bad.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Other people may have heard of, or used, the term before you did
I don’t recall saying otherwise. Perhaps it was popularised by Australian soaps?
"Uni" to mean "university" has been used in American English since c.1895-1900.
Really? Never heard anyone say "uni" for "university" on these shores.
Possibly used in very limited circumstances, but NOT generally.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Other people may have heard of, or used, the term before you did
I don’t recall saying otherwise. Perhaps it was popularised by Australian soaps?
"Uni" to mean "university" has been used in American English since c.1895-1900.
Really? Never heard anyone say "uni" for "university" on these shores.
Possibly used in very limited circumstances, but NOT generally.
College is far more common in the US to refer to university, surely?
Are Labour really going to bring in the school fees VAT in January mid way through a school year?
That feels bizarre to me.
They’re attempting to make it retrospective to this September, but can’t get the legislation through in time.
Which I suspect will lead to a well-funded legal challenge.
Any evidence to back the September claim up?
Because if they were doing that they would have had to do it yesterday and instead all they said January.. (Remember this sort of trick is something I'm very aware of - so the wording yesterday was interesting and carefully created a distinct line)...
Reality is that by implementing it in January and announcing yesterday after the school year and finished it's designed to minimise the number of people able to move schools before September which is probably a relief to both State and Private schools...
Although it does rather mess up people who are already struggling to pay school fees...
So we’ll get a winter of freezing pensioner headlines followed by a January of taking the little darlings out of school/could state schools be overwhelmed headlines. Plus whatever comes down the line in the budget in October.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much by way of a Labour honeymoon. That doesn’t mean that the Tories are going to suddenly look amazing (they’re not). But it will be interesting to see what the polls are coming out with early next year.
Not optimal… but then I guess they’re getting these hits out of the way early.
I LOL at Labour for the private school fees move.
I think Starmer reckons it'll be another foxhunting ban moment. But foxhunting was directly supported by very few people, and this move will affect many, many more people directly. It'll cheer those who hate people who are richer than them; but dismay many more.
Personally I’m a VAT supremacist, so this is grist to the mill. VAT on everything!
VAT on everything is a fair argument. But this is VAT on something very specific and targeted, mostly for ideological reasons rather than attempting to raise revenue.
It’s red meat to an activist base who think every private school is just like “Boris Johnson’s Eton”.
And it may well work out that Boris Johnson Eton comes out ahead on the changes, and it small / special needs schools that are the ones most effected.
If you want an extra £1bn from rich people there are much easier ways to get it.
Starmer doesn’t give a fuck how much money it raises. It was a high protein plant based meat substitute policy for his base that doesn’t repel centrist dickheads and can't be proved to cost a shitload of cash. He needed his base as hard as a fucking brick to work the GE for him.
It was and is smart politics. All of this wanking off about how much it will raise or cost totally misses the point of it. The lachrymose grief of the bottom half of the bourgeoisie is a splendid by-product, not the prime intent.
And the children with disrupted education, the good teachers now unemployed and the closed businesses?
All for a spiteful and envious policy that will damage the country overall.
And we've got five years of the crap that 20% of the electorate foisted on us.
This could be a re-run of the Wilson administration 1974-1979, just with a bigger majority.
Not really, to have a re-run like that you need a slender majority forcing decisions in a particular direction...
Well with talk like this, they had better deliver. If they don't, it's not entirely impossible to see them losing their majority in five years.
Rayner accuses Badenoch of not understanding why Tories lost election, with housing key factor Rayner starts by wishing Badenoch luck with her leadership bid. She says it was Badenoch’s ambition to be leader of the opposition, not hers.
She says she thinks there are a few things Badenoch “has not understood”.
One is that the Tories lost the election. Another is that they left services in a mess, including failing to meet their housing targets.
She says the Conservatives '“are talking to themselves, not the country”...
OTOH, if they do, then it's going to be a very long stint in opposition for Kemi.
If Labour manage to deliver a Britain in which housing is as affordable as it was for our parents' generation they will deserve a long spell in power. Can't disagree - housing is possibly the biggest issue there is right now.
They won't.
They could of course but the only way to do that is to effectvely nationalise housebuilding and have local councils or Central Government build hundreds of thousands of houses themselves. It won't happen - even though actually it would be a good idea if it did. People continue to refuse tounderstand that the problem with housebuilding is the housebuilders. When prices stagnate they stop building to ensure the prices start rising again.
You're almost there Richard at recognising the problem. So close and yet so far away.
We need to break the oligopoly of the housing developers. Which means planning reform.
It doesn't matter how much planning permission is given out, if its given out to an oligopoly who can constrain supply and competitors can't get involved as getting permission for a tiny number of homes is so difficult.
Getting permission is expensive and laborious which only makes sense if you can divide that cost between a large number of homes, so it doesn't cost as much per home, which only the oligopoly of large developers with expertise at playing the planning game can do.
Get rid of planning permission, let anyone build, and the developers would face competition. If they refuse to build, then anyone else can do so instead. One house at a time, without waiting for permission first.
Sigh. Still droning on about planning when it is a complete red herring. All you are doing is showing your utter ignorance of how the planning system works. Very few planning applications for development get turned down by the planning system. They are simply there to make sure that the houses built are fit for purpose, do not cause harm to others (for example by building on flood plains and then building flood defences which push the problem down stream to flood other existing properties) and that the right measures are taken in advance to protect/record archaeology and natural resources/nature.
Of course those who are in any way involved in the planning system or in local government know this already. It is just the ignorant like you who need it explained to them time and time again and who still won't listen.
A significant proportion of planning applications for homes (as opposed to renovations) gets rejected as we've discussed before.
Though yes, you're not keen on new housing actually happening and want to compel the construction of public services onto new builds rather than have the entire public pay for public services, so disagreeing with that is a difference of priorities and opinion, not understanding.
Hence your laughable claim last time we spoke that a school has the catchment area of a new build estate.
Abolishing planning permission won't get house prices down to 3x median wages in Redcar. The costs imposed by modern buildings regs mean you can't build a 3 bed house for £100k even if you were given the site.
I think it might just about be possible to get build cost down to the sort of level, but we'd have to roll building regs back 25 years - that's going to involve the wholesale slaughter of the net zero sacred cow, plus a pile of other bunken shoved in there by well meaning idiots who don't understand the cost implications of gold plating everything.
To actually build nice houses, the sort that people really want to live in, to current regs, costs vastly more. My parents had an attractive 4 bed built on a single plot in a Welsh village, which was finished about a year ago. The final bill was about £400k, not including the plot. There were areas where costs could have been trimmed a bit, but I think it would have been pretty much impossible to build it for less than £300k. That's over 10x average wages, if you give the building land away with planning permission granted.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Other people may have heard of, or used, the term before you did
I don’t recall saying otherwise. Perhaps it was popularised by Australian soaps?
"Uni" to mean "university" has been used in American English since c.1895-1900.
Really? Never heard anyone say "uni" for "university" on these shores.
Possibly used in very limited circumstances, but NOT generally.
College is far more common in the US to refer to university, surely?
"College" and "university" are used pretty interchangably.
As in, "Where are you going to college?" "At the University of Washington." (Though most know there's a difference between a college and a university.
OR if this conversation was in Seattle, the response might be, "I'm going to the U". As in "U Dub" = UW.
Nate Silver relaunches his model with Kamala Harris at 38.1% to win the Electoral College and 53.5% to win the popular vote (what a country!). When he retired the Biden-Trump model Biden was down to 27%
Israel striking in the heart of Tehran to assassinate the Hamas leader. Brace brace brace.
"Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he had been targeted in his residence along with an Iranian bodyguard. It said he had been in Iran to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. It said it was investigating the circumstances of the “incident”."
Israel striking in the heart of Tehran to assassinate the Hamas leader. Brace brace brace.
"Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he had been targeted in his residence along with an Iranian bodyguard. It said he had been in Iran to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. It said it was investigating the circumstances of the “incident”."
On the same day they also hit Hezbollah leaders in Beirut.
Israel striking in the heart of Tehran to assassinate the Hamas leader. Brace brace brace.
"Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he had been targeted in his residence along with an Iranian bodyguard. It said he had been in Iran to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. It said it was investigating the circumstances of the “incident”."
On the same day they also hit Hezbollah leaders in Beirut.
The Israelis really aren't f##king around. Any thoughts from a couple of weeks ago that we were just about reaching the end of the current war, I think we can forget about that.
Warnock: A Florida man called into Georgia and said I need 11,780 votes. I want you to think about that. Georgia, Donald Trump tried to steal your vote. Kamala Harris is trying to earn your vote. https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1818410890410225967
I see people are reading too much into why the PM was booed at Southport.
Some people are twats. That is all.
That's being a bit unfair. I was angry about it tis morning (see my post about the death sentence...), but it was an impotent anger. The story was devastating, but I was powerless. If it had happened in my town, I don't know if I'd go to the scene to pay respects. But if I did, and a figure of authority came by, might I boo them? Perhaps. Would I be able to articulate why I was booing them? Probably not.
People in that town will be feeling devastated and more than a little scared. Emotions are understandably high. Give them a break.
Would you boo someone who came to the scene to pay respects? No, I don't think you would.
Emotions are high I agree, and I don't think those who are seeking to exploit a tragedy are anything other than twats. Those who are sad and paying their respects are not.
Some people's first response to a tragedy is to be sad, have sympathy for the victims and want to find out what actually happened and try to prevent it happening again.
Some people's first response to any tragedy, is to grab it with both hands and try to force it into something its not in order to fit their agenda, ignoring any inconvenient truths that don't fit their agenda.
The latter are . . . twats.
If it's local people struggling to process something utterly horrible and horrifying, they deserve some slack. And part of being the adult, the one in charge, is standing there absorbing the incoherent rage that others are experiencing. And from what I've seen, Starmer did that fine. I'm sure that, in this situation, Sunak would have done as well, though he didn't always while PM.
What's not on is political opportunists coming in and saying "this proves what I've said all along", or "I'm not saying this myself, but makes you think , doesn't it?" And as for those extrapolating Starmer's inevitable political demise... pace yourself, darlings. The worse things go now, the more likely you are going to have five years to wait.
Yeah, I doubt that any booing happened by or was representative of locals, I suspect its the usual suspects of trouble-makers who find their way to getting attention wherever they can.
Far-right thugs are now using this tragedy as an excuse for a riot by the sounds of it. As if the town hasn't got enough to cope with already. Vile shitheads.
Another expert from the comfort of his armchair hundreds of miles away.
Apologies, I didn't appreciate you were there with the rioters in Southport.
Apologies accepted.
If I was Bart would have seen me.
So you are in Southport? Thought not…
Never said I was, no one is, but I’m not the one making unfounded allegations about the people booing Starmer earlier today.
Its unfounded to suggest those doing to booing were locals.
That shitheads travel to scenes of tragedies is not an unfounded allegation, its a well known fact.
From your man on the scene.
Never claimed to be on the scene.
You're the one making definitive unsubstantiated claims like these were "locals".
I'm saying I suspect (not know) that they're not, based on past events and knowledge, which is the only reasonable thing to do.
Such events do, indeed, draw the imitators and worshipers of Yaxley-Lennon.
For anyone with actual footage - how many drunk football hooligans types are present?
To be fair, drunk football hooligan types are not unknown in Southport. I havr vague memories of a Steven-Gerard-related incident there a few years ago.
That was a Ken Dodd-esque trial. As if a jury in Liverpool was going to find Steven Gerrard guilty of anything more serious than inadvertently dropping a crisp packet on the ground.
I went to university 40 years ago - I remember telling a girlfriends mother I was going to 'college' in Cardiff and she thought I was going to be a teacher. She was mortified that I actually meant university. I don't ever recall saying 'Uni' but I remember it being used in 'The Young Ones' at the time.
I think we should put in our own claim to Crimean territory.
"New England (Latin: Nova Anglia) was a colony..by Anglo-Saxon refugees fleeing the Norman invasion of England...English refugees fought off a siege by heathens and were rewarded by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus. A group was given land to the northeast of the Black Sea, reconquering it and renaming their territory 'New England'." https://x.com/lefineder/status/1818340602624213377
So whoever the pick, it makes sense to announce there.
I’d be tempted to lay Shapiro at current odds. Though there’s only a week to go, so it’s hardly a trading bet.
Who’s going to go down best in the other six states ?
If Mark Kelly wants it she should choose him. The ideal balancing pick for the Harris ticket is a white man with an unimpeachable military background; Kelly is ex-Navy and an astronaut and (because of what happened to his wife) a gun control campaigner as well. The Dem base will approve strongly and he has bi-partisan appeal.
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
I know you're dicking about, but they said it all the time in the Young Ones.
Though thier institute of learning was "Scumbag College".
Israel striking in the heart of Tehran to assassinate the Hamas leader. Brace brace brace.
"Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he had been targeted in his residence along with an Iranian bodyguard. It said he had been in Iran to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. It said it was investigating the circumstances of the “incident”."
Woah, that’s not likely to set the whole Middle East on fire… umm…
So whoever the pick, it makes sense to announce there.
I’d be tempted to lay Shapiro at current odds. Though there’s only a week to go, so it’s hardly a trading bet.
Who’s going to go down best in the other six states ?
If Mark Kelly wants it she should choose him. The ideal balancing pick for the Harris ticket is a white man with an unimpeachable military background; Kelly is ex-Navy and an astronaut and (because of what happened to his wife) a gun control campaigner as well. The Dem base will approve strongly and he has bi-partisan appeal.
Shapiro is a great speaker , on the other hand Kelly has a much more interesting back story which I think is more helpful across the swing states .
England… wasn’t like this? Was it? We were the orderly quiet society of Orwell. A little dull, perhaps, but quaint, respectful and safe
They have to go
Good grief you aren't that much younger than me and you don't remember the violence of the 70s. The skin heads, the NF, the football hooligans. I wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday. When I was at Uni at Manchester you didn't go out on a Sat afternoon if United were playing at home. The National Front trashed the UMIST union on one occasion and the police wouldn't turn up until it was over.
Life is much safer these days.
I still wouldn't go into Woking centre on a Saturday or a Sunday to Friday inclusive. And are you sure Manchester has a university?
Yep one of the oldest and most highly rated both in my day as well as now, particularly for Mathematics. Surprised you are unaware.
LOL
Why the LOL? Are you are snob that can't accept a Northern Uni can be any good? In my day the top options were Oxbridge (which wasn't really an option from my background) then Imperial which would have meant living at home, which I didn't want to do. Next on the list was Manchester in the rankings and expected the highest grades for the offers I got.
LOL
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
Er, yeah we did. “What uni you applying for” was totes normal lingo in provincial England in 1980. We didn’t acquire it from Aussie soaps
I’d never heard the term ‘uni’ until I heard it on Neighbours. And I speak as one who went to uni(versity) in the nineties.
Other people may have heard of, or used, the term before you did
I don’t recall saying otherwise. Perhaps it was popularised by Australian soaps?
Otherwise has been common parlance for centuries, I don't know why you've never said it.
So whoever the pick, it makes sense to announce there.
I’d be tempted to lay Shapiro at current odds. Though there’s only a week to go, so it’s hardly a trading bet.
Who’s going to go down best in the other six states ?
If Mark Kelly wants it she should choose him. The ideal balancing pick for the Harris ticket is a white man with an unimpeachable military background; Kelly is ex-Navy and an astronaut and (because of what happened to his wife) a gun control campaigner as well. The Dem base will approve strongly and he has bi-partisan appeal.
Shapiro is a great speaker , on the other hand Kelly has a much more interesting back story which I think is more helpful across the swing states .
Shapiro has also been less than conciliatory towards pro-Palestinian voices. I'm not sure that putting him on the ticket is worth the trouble of antagonising the youth vote, which she needs.
What the hell happened in Southport? A rent-a-mob from outside, or local residents upset with the murders and the police response?
So many violent incidents in the UK in the past couple of weeks, hopefully not a sign of things to come for the rest of the summer.
It's being pinned firmly on the EDL. They decided to kick off outside the local mosque, which suggests that (irrespective of whether or not there's any element of truth to it) they've decided to claim that the motivation of the killer was Islamist in nature. Basically, any excuse to stir up trouble and have a scrap.
So whoever the pick, it makes sense to announce there.
I’d be tempted to lay Shapiro at current odds. Though there’s only a week to go, so it’s hardly a trading bet.
Who’s going to go down best in the other six states ?
If Mark Kelly wants it she should choose him. The ideal balancing pick for the Harris ticket is a white man with an unimpeachable military background; Kelly is ex-Navy and an astronaut and (because of what happened to his wife) a gun control campaigner as well. The Dem base will approve strongly and he has bi-partisan appeal.
Shapiro is a great speaker , on the other hand Kelly has a much more interesting back story which I think is more helpful across the swing states .
Kelly was an astronaut. Every young man in America wanted to be an astronaut at some point in his life. He’d be a great choice for appealing to a very different demographic to Harris.
What the hell happened in Southport? A rent-a-mob from outside, or local residents upset with the murders and the police response?
So many violent incidents in the UK in the past couple of weeks, hopefully not a sign of things to come for the rest of the summer.
It's being pinned firmly on the EDL. They decided to kick off outside the local mosque, which suggests that (irrespective of whether or not there's any element of truth to it) they've decided to claim that the motivation of the killer was Islamist in nature. Basically, any excuse to stir up trouble and have a scrap.
Though it did produce this entertaining video of a concerned citizen.
So whoever the pick, it makes sense to announce there.
I’d be tempted to lay Shapiro at current odds. Though there’s only a week to go, so it’s hardly a trading bet.
Who’s going to go down best in the other six states ?
If Mark Kelly wants it she should choose him. The ideal balancing pick for the Harris ticket is a white man with an unimpeachable military background; Kelly is ex-Navy and an astronaut and (because of what happened to his wife) a gun control campaigner as well. The Dem base will approve strongly and he has bi-partisan appeal.
Shapiro is a great speaker , on the other hand Kelly has a much more interesting back story which I think is more helpful across the swing states .
Someone who knew about this stuff pointed out that you choose a VP to shore up this or that demographic or state but those people aren't interested in the VP, only the president. Given that you might as well choose someone you get on with. You will be spending a lot of time in their company, on the campaign trail, and hopefully also in the White House.
Fantastic and incisive analysis from the BBC on the Hamas news.
The attack which killed Haniyeh was, they say in a special report, "carefully planned".
Worth the license fee alone.
Well I supposed it is better than running yet another dodgy story fed to them by Hamas / Islamic Jihad supporters.
It took them several days after the attack in the Golan Heights to realise that another, perhaps more relevant word for "young people" is in fact "children".
It's all about Labour for Paul, 24/7. If there's one thing certain about the far right, they only started looking for street confrontations with minority communities and refugees after 04/07/24.
Paul Mason @paulmasonnews In case it's not obvious: from the moment Labour took office the far right have been looking for street confrontations with minority communities and refugees - It's clearly organised and it's likely manipulated by foreign powers. 8:49 pm · 30 Jul 2024
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late to her count, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
TBH she sounds to me like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years cranking out books and articles explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
I wonder if her future is in reform. I expect they would not let her in, and may go phut before reaching a stage where she would consider them Truss-worthy.
Comments
On current tariffs the Southport murderer could get a whole life order if proved it was premeditated as it involved 2 or more murders or had a sadistic nature or political or ideological cause
Was good mates with Bez then. How he laughed!
The people of Southport are reeling after the horror inflicted on them yesterday.
They deserve our support and our respect.
Those who have hijacked the vigil for the victims with violence and thuggery have insulted the community as it grieves.
They will feel the full force of the law.
And the most recent data I can find for Redcar (though its out of date) suggests an insufficient 5% vacancy rate in dwellings, so far, far too low.
So yes, it does look like Redcar has too high prices and needs homes too, just like Cumbria.
Just because London needs homes more doesn't mean that Redcar and Cumbria and other places across the North aren't short on homes too.
No prison places, though. You’re right that the last decade has crashed the criminal justice system.
…Judge Aaronberg criticised him for pleading not guilty to the assault charge, in the face of “overwhelming” evidence, and subjecting the woman to cross- examination at trial.
The court heard a doctor said Rafferty may have been suffering from psychosis at the time of the incident and that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The judge took into account Rafferty’s mental health struggles, his ongoing alcohol treatment, the delays in the court case, the shortage of prison places and his lack of previous convictions when deciding to suspend the jail term for two years…
As for the future, that’s another pass/fail test for the new lot in charge.
And are you for real anyway? Nobody said Uni until Neighbours caught on in the 90s.
TweedleD does appear to have a penchant for sly humour.
My own gut is that Trump has a much harder ceiling on his support and the only thing that can win it for him is differential turnout (ie enthusiasm). This remains central to any betting that I'd do. The big worry for the Democrats remains the economy, or more precisely peoples perception of their own personal economy.
On a couple of other notes, if Israel has killed off the very senior Hezbollah figure of Fuad Shukr in Beirut tonight, there will be plenty of Western and Middle Eastern security officials well pleased. Hezbollah though needs to ask why the Israelis seem to be able to bump off so many mid and senior people in Lebanon.
Most important though in a world that some like to claim is in turmoil. Andy Murray. It doesnt matter whether he wins a medal or not, the bloke is just a joy to watch at the moment.
Of course those who are in any way involved in the planning system or in local government know this already. It is just the ignorant like you who need it explained to them time and time again and who still won't listen.
I've already used my one picture of the day, but if you look at Redcar on that chart affordability has gotten worse in Redcar (as it has in the entire country) and is now well, well, well above 3x incomes that should be the upper limit.
In fact its now at 5x incomes which means Redcar today is even worse than say Guildford was a quarter of a century ago.
The idea that over 5x income ratios is not extreme or too high, just because they're even higher elsewhere, is just absurd.
Tim Walz
@Tim_Walz
·
7h
Who is sitting in a bar in Wisconsin saying we need to ban Animal Farm?
https://x.com/Tim_Walz/status/1818305440280613082
Though yes, you're not keen on new housing actually happening and want to compel the construction of public services onto new builds rather than have the entire public pay for public services, so disagreeing with that is a difference of priorities and opinion, not understanding.
Hence your laughable claim last time we spoke that a school has the catchment area of a new build estate.
If you check the history of surrounding houses the price is the same as other houses went for back in 2005 - because house prices round there haven’t changed in the past 20 years
https://nitter.poast.org/PoliticoForYou/status/1816762778251579832#m
I know including my children. Maybe not used in your posh circles where you despise a Uni that boasts 25 Nobel prize winners and was at the forefront of Computer Technology including the work of Turing.
I don't know but I suspect it might not be great for Latin though.
My argument is not about the need for new housing, it is about your idiotic and unsupportable views on the causes of the problems. You have your own very particular antipathy towards planning and so make that the root of all evil even when you don't have the first idea how it works or what it does.
See Redcar here, I won't embed as already done 1 pic today but here's a link: https://i.ibb.co/429VZ8m/image.png - Redcar today costs well over what England as a whole cost in the past.
As for that link, it seems run-down and in need of major refurbishment. being marketed as "ready to be improved" but even then its over 3x income ratio for the area, which is more what a typical house should cost not a fixer-upper.
A fixer upper that is "ready to be improved" in Redcar should be selling for more like £60k than £135k.
It says something about the unaffordability of the entire country that you look at that link and think "that's affordable".
Based on Figure 3 of the ONS link it seems we have unaffordable housing in the entire country, with the notable exception of Copeland. Not sure what has happened in Copeland, but it is the remarkable exception.
About half the other participants were doing geology for very similar reasons. The promise was upheld, btw. Only lasting thing of use from it is that I stayed at the station hotel in Ayr before the, er, various incidents so I can follow that saga still for fun.
Anyway I can confirm I was absolutely useless at it. Amazing lectures though - much more fun that computer science. Simon Conway Morris's lecture notes were hilarious - basically at least 50% rants against people he didn't like.
I don't think much changes there year to year so it doesn't surprise me at all that geology undergraduates from Cam are rubbish. It wasn't set up to make decent ones. It was basically a pisshead or amateur enthusiast option, with a very small number of people who took it seriously.
I think the government will have to be very careful not to hollow out existing towns even further.
If nobody wants to live in Redcar then it needs improving rather than a new version building 5 miles up the road on the green fields around Guisborough.
@RedfieldWilton
NEW: Harris leads Trump by 2% in our first national poll since Joe Biden ended his campaign.
🇺🇸 Presidential Election VI (29 July):
Kamala Harris: 45%
Donald Trump: 43%
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: 5%
Other: 1%
Don't Know: 4%
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/joe-biden-administration-approval-ratings-and-hypothetical-voting-intention-29-july-2024"
https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1818315624441069679
Possibly used in very limited circumstances, but NOT generally.
I think it might just about be possible to get build cost down to the sort of level, but we'd have to roll building regs back 25 years - that's going to involve the wholesale slaughter of the net zero sacred cow, plus a pile of other bunken shoved in there by well meaning idiots who don't understand the cost implications of gold plating everything.
To actually build nice houses, the sort that people really want to live in, to current regs, costs vastly more. My parents had an attractive 4 bed built on a single plot in a Welsh village, which was finished about a year ago. The final bill was about £400k, not including the plot. There were areas where costs could have been trimmed a bit, but I think it would have been pretty much impossible to build it for less than £300k. That's over 10x average wages, if you give the building land away with planning permission granted.
As in, "Where are you going to college?" "At the University of Washington." (Though most know there's a difference between a college and a university.
OR if this conversation was in Seattle, the response might be, "I'm going to the U". As in "U Dub" = UW.
Vice President Harris is expected to announce her running mate by Tuesday, when she will hold her first rally with her pick in Philadelphia.
The two will barnstorm cities in seven swing states in four days. In addition to Philadelphia, they'll hit western Wisconsin, Detroit, Raleigh, Savannah, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. https://t.co/tQ6OigTaaz
2:10 AM · Jul 31, 2024
·
243Khttps://x.com/kylegriffin1/status/1818454058270704075
@jessesingal
Nate Silver relaunches his model with Kamala Harris at 38.1% to win the Electoral College and 53.5% to win the popular vote (what a country!). When he retired the Biden-Trump model Biden was down to 27%
https://natesilver.net/p/harris-trump-electoral-college"
https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1818326069910671640
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.190716127
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1818415530757226802/
If not, is it right to assume Shapiro - or is it simply that PA makes sense whomever she picks ?
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4800420-harris-lead-pennsylvania-casey-mccormick-poll/
Which VP is more likely to help deliver Georgia or Arizona etc ?
Ir just be her preferred VP ?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jul/31/middle-east-crisis-live-updates-hamas-leader-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran-israel-gaza-war
"Woman Gets Cosmetic Surgery to Look Like Kamala Harris"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1FwCUsW3tw
"Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he had been targeted in his residence along with an Iranian bodyguard. It said he had been in Iran to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. It said it was investigating the circumstances of the “incident”."
https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1818410890410225967
Fox News' Jesse Watters: “When a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman."
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1818457133752434808
Some weird combination of misogyny and transphobia going on there.
So whoever the pick, it makes sense to announce there.
I’d be tempted to lay Shapiro at current odds. Though there’s only a week to go, so it’s hardly a trading bet.
Who’s going to go down best in the other six states ?
NEW JD VANCE VIDEO RELEASED
JD Vance says people who don’t have children are “sociopathic,” “psychotic,” “deranged,” and “less mentally stable.”
There are endless receipts of Vance’s weird and creepy comments. He is obsessed with this topic.
https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1818285133042208897
I’d ask who the hell vetted this guy, if I didn’t know it was one of Trump’s less than brilliant sons.
"New England (Latin: Nova Anglia) was a colony..by Anglo-Saxon refugees fleeing the Norman invasion of England...English refugees fought off a siege by heathens and were rewarded by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus. A group was given land to the northeast of the Black Sea, reconquering it and renaming their territory 'New England'."
https://x.com/lefineder/status/1818340602624213377
https://youtu.be/Wi5SJKI6RpU?feature=shared
On that general topic, some of our own extremist loons have started a riot in Southport. Far right rent-a-mob, police pelted with missiles. Vile.
So many violent incidents in the UK in the past couple of weeks, hopefully not a sign of things to come for the rest of the summer.
https://x.com/KosherCockney/status/1818367487731442097
https://x.com/soundmigration/status/1818398235704119739?t=ASvXR3tJxtGrmqfjsUlTkA&s=19
Surely the answer is Kelly for president, Shapiro for VP?
The EDL was born from football Casual Culture. It is no wonder they go looking for fights.
The attack which killed Haniyeh was, they say in a special report, "carefully planned".
Worth the license fee alone.
If there's one thing certain about the far right, they only started looking for street confrontations with minority communities and refugees after 04/07/24.
Paul Mason
@paulmasonnews
In case it's not obvious: from the moment Labour took office the far right have been looking for street confrontations with minority communities and refugees -
It's clearly organised and it's likely manipulated by foreign powers.
8:49 pm · 30 Jul 2024
A Telegraph podcast interview with Liz Truss.
I don't think I've ever seen a more creative list of other people who's fault it was (including sundry institutions, a level crossing for making her late to her count, and the Returning Officer for preventing her making a speech); I can't see that she has resiled from a single thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIjg0ow4UW4
TBH she sounds to me like General Paulus in about 1953, spending his declining years cranking out books and articles explaining why Stalingrad was not his responsibility. Imo the difference is that he had some reasonable excuses.
I wonder if her future is in reform. I expect they would not let her in, and may go phut before reaching a stage where she would consider them Truss-worthy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Mabhouh
26 identified suspects, all of whom were out of the country before they found the body.
“Carefully planned” is something of an understatement when it comes to organisations such as Mossad.