I am determined to smash the business model used by people smugglers, and I'm taking joint action with our allies to make it happen.
Building on our deal with France and renewed international cooperation, our strengthened partnership with Iraq will deter small boat arrivals and secure our borders.
Iraq, is this some new deal? How many boat arrivals are from there?
They're in the top 10 of countries asylum seekers come from.
EDIT: Well, they were 10th on 2024 numbers, with 3469 applications.
That's asylum seekers and boat arrivals only make up about a third of asylum applications.
Not sure how terminally nerdy @Leon is being, or whether he wants obscure walk-on curios that his readers may not want to visit.
There's the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley" in SF, which is the garage where Hewlett-Packard were founded in the 1950s. This is like many of the bizarre things to be found in London eg the original Samaritans' telephone - Mansion House 9000.
If you want to truly experience Silicon Valley, you need to drive from San Jose to San Francisco at 330pm on workday. You - along with hundreds of thousands of Googlers, Appleites, Facebookers, Netflixians and the like - will be stuck in traffic for one of the most miserable two hour drives of your life.
You will see the logos of every Silicon Valley firm pass, very slowly, as you inch down the freeway.
When I was first able to fly direct into San Jose (which is less hassle to navigate as an airport anyway), and avoid the trip from SFO, it made the trip to see family in the US considerably less stressful.
There's a little bit of hype in the piece, and it is more complex. It quotes 720k empties, which will include eg all the ones on sale, stuck in estates and so on aiui, and 265k >6 month empties - which are the real targets, which is not actually THAT many. It's only 1% of stock, which is massively lower than comparable countries.
In depth personal renovation is not so much a thing these days with eg 2 earner couples, and small LLs who would take on wrecks for rental have been hit really hard since Osborne's 2015 targeting, and increasingly savage regulation, plus all the politics. Corporate LLs won't touch small projects.
These days you will be paying expenses such as Council Tax on it as you renovate, since there will only be one lot of exemption and the previous owner will have had that and it may only have been one month ... unless eg very difficult to obtain exceptions.
Plus Council Grants, especially in London, tend to have onerous conditions (eg rent it to the Council for X years, by which time it will need another renovation).
And is it another non-statutory thing Councils have no money for?
Not sure how terminally nerdy @Leon is being, or whether he wants obscure walk-on curios that his readers may not want to visit.
There's the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley" in SF, which is the garage where Hewlett-Packard were founded in the 1950s. This is like many of the bizarre things to be found in London eg the original Samaritans' telephone - Mansion House 9000.
I actually do intend to go to Silicon Valley, just to see it. To get the vibe, I understand there is virtually nothing there to ACTUALLY see and do but that's fine. Also you've now given me a target, an obscure but fascinating location, so thanks!
See if you can find a way to go to the new Apple HQ, Norman Foster’s big donut and supposedly the world’s best office building.
Facebook's potemkin village is also worth a visit, if you can garner an invitation. Google is boring and entirely missable.
I understand Amazon's Seattle HQ is worth a visit; it might be a fun way to bookend the trip - two of the world's largest tech companies, from one HQ to another.
The Boeing factory near Seattle is quite something to tour. Not least its cleanliness. (The original 1910s factory is still there in south Seattle, too, used as part of the aerospace museum on another Boeing airfield there.)
Absent major cuts to public spending (taking the pension age to 75, say, or means-testing the NHS) taxation of property wealth is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to balancing the national budget.
The public are there to be led, if there's a politician who dares to lead them.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
People are not being arrested for excercising their freedom of speech.
They’re being arrested for supporting, openly supporting, a proscribed terrorist group. That’s not wrong and as to their innocence or otherwise that’s for a court to decide.
The odd case where an innocent person has been arrested, like the Plasticene action guy, then clearly that’s fine.
Yes, we know what the law is. People supporting Palestine Action are breaking the law. The people protesting are protesting the law, they think the law is wrong, that we should not use terrorism legislation in this manner.
People have been arrested for their speech. They were not arrested for sabotage or vandalism or violence. They were arrested for expressing an opinion.
Davey notes serious concerns with Palestine Action, but also feels that criminalising peaceful support for them is the wrong way to go and contrary to traditions around freedom of speech.
What would you say if they were supporting Al Quaida, or the IRA, or the Nazi party? All good for you? Because if it isn't then you are basically saying you don't think Palestine Action count as proper terrorists.
I was trying to explain Davey's position. I don't necessarily agree with it.
Al Qa’ida and the IRA are on the same list of proscribed organisations as Palestine Action. Expressing support for any of them is illegal. The Nazi Party is not on the list. It is legal in the UK, as I understand it, to express support for the Nazi Party.
I see both sides of the argument around Palestine Action. They don't seem to me to be in the same category as Al Qa’ida and the IRA. The other proscribed organisations generally seem to promote more violence towards individuals than Palestine Action do, but I don't have any detailed knowledge of Palestine Action. So, no, I don't think Palestine Action count as "proper terrorists", but happy to hear counter-arguments. Generally, I don't really see "terrorist" as being a useful term because it is always contested.
The Nazi party still exists? Big news if so.
The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat) are on the proscribed list, and they don't exist any more, so existing is not a requirement to be on the list.
There's a little bit of hype in the piece, and it is more complex. It quotes 720k empties, which will include eg all the ones on sale, stuck in estates and so on aiui, and 265k >6 month empties - which are the real targets, which is not actually THAT many. It's only 1% of stock, which is massively lower than comparable countries.
In depth personal renovation is not so much a thing these days with eg 2 earner couples, and small LLs who would take on wrecks for rental have been hit really hard since Osborne's 2015 targeting, and increasingly savage regulation, plus all the politics. Corporate LLs won't touch small projects.
These days you will be paying expenses such as Council Tax on it as you renovate, since there will only be one lot of exemption and the previous owner will have had that and it may only have been one month ... unless eg very difficult to obtain exceptions.
Plus Council Grants, especially in London, tend to have onerous conditions (eg rent it to the Council for X years, by which time it will need another renovation).
And is it another non-statutory thing Councils have no money for?
The other thing that struck me (having had to deal with a relative's demise and house sale overlapping with the covid period) is the definition of the short term empties category,, which as you say are to be expected (and indeed a good sign of housing turnover, cf. the perennial complaints about house-blocking oldies sans families on here). But it ought also to inclide those bona fide houses which were intended to be short term for sale but which have encountered the delays of late, for instance in probate. Even a month or two delay in probate would shift a case from the short term to the long term, without really changing the actual situation. So the rise might be an aretefact of probate/bank/legal delays.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
It may be relevant to suggest that the group has been proscribed for reasons of political theatre rather than because it is a genuine security threat. Just because the government of the day makes something illegal and then prosecutes those who are now deemed to be breaking the law does not also mean that the government is immune from profound criticism for its action in banning the thing in the first place.
The trespassers at Brize should be maximally punished, and if the PA organisation is deemed to be receiving covert support from Russia, then that should also be rooted out. However using blanket "anti terror" legislation in the way the government has chosen to do is a misuse of the legislation and profoundly corrosive to free speech and our democracy. Ed Davey is right to criticize Starmer's use of the legislation and to call him out on it.
"It may be relevant to suggest that the group has been proscribed for reasons of political theatre rather than because it is a genuine security threat."
Nope - attacking military equipment is not political theatre. We could be at war tomorrow. That equipment isn't available.
The trial is going to be interesting to watch. I’m going to guess that the defence will be that they didn’t realise emptying a can of spray paint into an aircraft’s engine would cause up to £10m of damage, that they thought it would all be cleaned off the next day rather than having to totally strip down and rebuild the engines.
Ignorance is no defence. "I had no idea shoving a knife into his leg might sever an artery and see him bleed out in minutes in front of me, guv."
There is a philosophy thought-experiment which could be applied to your scenario:
Man A shoves a knife into a man's leg and severs an artery and the man dies Man B With equivalent force and intent shoves a knife into a man's leg and misses an artery and the man is just injured
Is there a difference in the two crimes?
Intent is the usual separator. What was the intent in doing it and the events leading up to it.
Intent is nonsense, it should be risk based. Anyone who decides that they will attack someone with a deadly weapon is risking another person's life, regardless of where they aim that weapon. It should be life in prison as someone who is willing to take that kind of risk with someone else's life is a danger to the public. Whether or not they hit the artery, intentionally or otherwise, is immaterial.
As I understand it, you can be convicted of murder if your victim dies and you only intended to cause serious injury, but for attempted murder the prosecution would have to prove that the intent was to kill.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
People are not being arrested for excercising their freedom of speech.
They’re being arrested for supporting, openly supporting, a proscribed terrorist group. That’s not wrong and as to their innocence or otherwise that’s for a court to decide.
The odd case where an innocent person has been arrested, like the Plasticene action guy, then clearly that’s fine.
We will have to disagree on this.
It's certainly the effect of the law - and the Home Secretary's proscription of the group - that there is a prima facie case for their arrest. What Davey was saying very clearly, and I agree with him, is that the Home Secretary simply hasn't made a convincing case for proscribing Palestine Action in this manner.
The law in question is an exceedingly blunt instrument, which effectively gives the HS the power to criminalise legitimate protest. Quite which side of legitimate/illegitimate this particular case falls is very much a matter of debate. But that, surely is the point ?
I find is amusing that the following position on Begum (another culture war case) upsets nearly everyone.
1) she should be bought back to this country 2) and prosecuted for the war crimes that she has stated, in multiple TV interviews she committed.
Why? She is our responsibility (so 1 is true) and 2 is equally true - as she seemingly has committed and admitted to those crimes
The culture war positions are
1) Liberal Immigration/Human Rights - Begum should be bought home and treated as a victim 2) Anti-Immigration - offshoring her is a start.
I’ve had very aggressive pushback from group 1 on the above.
There's a little bit of hype in the piece, and it is more complex. It quotes 720k empties, which will include eg all the ones on sale, stuck in estates and so on aiui, and 265k >6 month empties - which are the real targets, which is not actually THAT many. It's only 1% of stock, which is massively lower than comparable countries.
In depth personal renovation is not so much a thing these days with eg 2 earner couples, and small LLs who would take on wrecks for rental have been hit really hard since Osborne's 2015 targeting, and increasingly savage regulation, plus all the politics. Corporate LLs won't touch small projects.
These days you will be paying expenses such as Council Tax on it as you renovate, since there will only be one lot of exemption and the previous owner will have had that and it may only have been one month ... unless eg very difficult to obtain exceptions.
Plus Council Grants, especially in London, tend to have onerous conditions (eg rent it to the Council for X years, by which time it will need another renovation).
And is it another non-statutory thing Councils have no money for?
According to many authorities, in a functioning housing market, something like 10% of housing should be empty at any one time.
1%+ of houses local to me (1/2 mile radius) are being ripped out and are uninhabitable, for instance.
I am determined to smash the business model used by people smugglers, and I'm taking joint action with our allies to make it happen.
Building on our deal with France and renewed international cooperation, our strengthened partnership with Iraq will deter small boat arrivals and secure our borders.
Iraq, is this some new deal? How many boat arrivals are from there?
How the blinkin' flip did the Starmer Government let so many in during 2020 and 2021. I wasn't allowed to walk further than 5km from home without South Wales Police challenging me let alone cross the channel by Zodiac inflatable.
There's a little bit of hype in the piece, and it is more complex. It quotes 720k empties, which will include eg all the ones on sale, stuck in estates and so on aiui, and 265k >6 month empties - which are the real targets, which is not actually THAT many. It's only 1% of stock, which is massively lower than comparable countries.
In depth personal renovation is not so much a thing these days with eg 2 earner couples, and small LLs who would take on wrecks for rental have been hit really hard since Osborne's 2015 targeting, and increasingly savage regulation, plus all the politics. Corporate LLs won't touch small projects.
These days you will be paying expenses such as Council Tax on it as you renovate, since there will only be one lot of exemption and the previous owner will have had that and it may only have been one month ... unless eg very difficult to obtain exceptions.
Plus Council Grants, especially in London, tend to have onerous conditions (eg rent it to the Council for X years, by which time it will need another renovation).
And is it another non-statutory thing Councils have no money for?
Generally that article is quite good, but it misses out the impact of tax changes and politics.
Like so many things, this is something that was better in the coalition.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
It may be relevant to suggest that the group has been proscribed for reasons of political theatre rather than because it is a genuine security threat. Just because the government of the day makes something illegal and then prosecutes those who are now deemed to be breaking the law does not also mean that the government is immune from profound criticism for its action in banning the thing in the first place.
The trespassers at Brize should be maximally punished, and if the PA organisation is deemed to be receiving covert support from Russia, then that should also be rooted out. However using blanket "anti terror" legislation in the way the government has chosen to do is a misuse of the legislation and profoundly corrosive to free speech and our democracy. Ed Davey is right to criticize Starmer's use of the legislation and to call him out on it.
"It may be relevant to suggest that the group has been proscribed for reasons of political theatre rather than because it is a genuine security threat."
Nope - attacking military equipment is not political theatre. We could be at war tomorrow. That equipment isn't available.
The trial is going to be interesting to watch. I’m going to guess that the defence will be that they didn’t realise emptying a can of spray paint into an aircraft’s engine would cause up to £10m of damage, that they thought it would all be cleaned off the next day rather than having to totally strip down and rebuild the engines.
Ignorance is no defence. "I had no idea shoving a knife into his leg might sever an artery and see him bleed out in minutes in front of me, guv."
There is a philosophy thought-experiment which could be applied to your scenario:
Man A shoves a knife into a man's leg and severs an artery and the man dies Man B With equivalent force and intent shoves a knife into a man's leg and misses an artery and the man is just injured
Is there a difference in the two crimes?
Intent is the usual separator. What was the intent in doing it and the events leading up to it.
Intent is nonsense, it should be risk based. Anyone who decides that they will attack someone with a deadly weapon is risking another person's life, regardless of where they aim that weapon. It should be life in prison as someone who is willing to take that kind of risk with someone else's life is a danger to the public. Whether or not they hit the artery, intentionally or otherwise, is immaterial.
As I understand it, you can be convicted of murder if your victim dies and you only intended to cause serious injury, but for attempted murder the prosecution would have to prove that the intent was to kill.
Yes. It is an odd dictat of logic+realism.
If you had to prove beyond reasonable doubt an intent to kill then lots of murderers would get off on a lesser charge by running the defence of lack of intent. OTOH you can't convict people of murder when they have given someone a bit of a shove and they fall over and die.
But it's obviously irrational to convict someone of attempting to kill if (a) they didn't die and (b) you weren't attempting to kill them.
Hence, if they didn't die you have to have been trying to kill; if they did die, you don't. That's English law. No idea how other jurisdictions deal with this one.
FLINT FLICKERS FORTNIGHTLY has commissioned me to do a road trip from San Francisco to Seattle. *which is nice*
However I don’t know this coast at all. Or indeed inland of this coast. I’ve been to Seattle and environs - I’ve done Mount Saint Helens - but that’s it. Any ideas what I should do? Any must-sees?
NW of SF you have Point Reyes, where the lighthouse featured in Carpenters "The Fog".
Fort Lewis is near Tacoma. You can see the Military Museum there. I was disappointed it was named after but not founded by the Lewis and Clark guy. Tacoma was also where a quite remarkable number of serial killers hail from. I was advised the best way to go between San Diego and Vancouver is. To SF by road. Fly to Sea-Tac. To Vancouver by road. Best of both worlds.
I’ve been to Tacoma. Famous for the “Tacoma aroma” - and not in a good way. Also that bridge collapsing - incredible video - when the wind hit the critical frequency IIRC
However on the same trip I stayed with friends (a wedding) in an idyllic seaside cabin on Puget Sound where you could eat oysters gathered from the beach and shucked there and then, and as you say back with your half dozen you could watch sea otters playing on the islets
Sublime part of the world when the sun shines
Agreed. Puget Sound is gorgeous. However. It soon gets old if you don't like the outdoor pursuits too much. And it isn't really between SF and Seattle. It's more near Seattle.
Yes. It was all based in Seattle. Mount st Helen’s is also incredible to visit (or it was back then). Mile after mile of flattened trees and total desolation. Wild
How about visiting Drake’s Bay and musing on what life would be like if California were an independent country (Drake’s Plate)
There's a little bit of hype in the piece, and it is more complex. It quotes 720k empties, which will include eg all the ones on sale, stuck in estates and so on aiui, and 265k >6 month empties - which are the real targets, which is not actually THAT many. It's only 1% of stock, which is massively lower than comparable countries.
In depth personal renovation is not so much a thing these days with eg 2 earner couples, and small LLs who would take on wrecks for rental have been hit really hard since Osborne's 2015 targeting, and increasingly savage regulation, plus all the politics. Corporate LLs won't touch small projects.
These days you will be paying expenses such as Council Tax on it as you renovate, since there will only be one lot of exemption and the previous owner will have had that and it may only have been one month ... unless eg very difficult to obtain exceptions.
Plus Council Grants, especially in London, tend to have onerous conditions (eg rent it to the Council for X years, by which time it will need another renovation).
And is it another non-statutory thing Councils have no money for?
The other thing that struck me (having had to deal with a relative's demise and house sale overlapping with the covid period) is the definition of the short term empties category,, which as you say are to be expected (and indeed a good sign of housing turnover, cf. the perennial complaints about house-blocking oldies sans families on here). But it ought also to inclide those bona fide houses which were intended to be short term for sale but which have encountered the delays of late, for instance in probate. Even a month or two delay in probate would shift a case from the short term to the long term, without really changing the actual situation. So the rise might be an aretefact of probate/bank/legal delays.
I'd be interested to hear from PBers who have handled parent's houses as to what happened with Council Tax.
I avoided that since mum lived with me and the house was jointly owned. That caused complications as it left a family member inheriting the other half, and there was some unpleasantness with attempted leverage, and also she died 6 years after gifting me half.
Note the neither the UK nor the US ever formally recognised the annexation of the Baltic states.
We should likewise not formally recognise any Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory.
Eerik-Niles Kross is the son of the brilliant Estonian novelist Jaan Kross. You can understand a lot of modern Russia in his historical novel, The Czer's madman.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
People are not being arrested for excercising their freedom of speech.
They’re being arrested for supporting, openly supporting, a proscribed terrorist group. That’s not wrong and as to their innocence or otherwise that’s for a court to decide.
The odd case where an innocent person has been arrested, like the Plasticene action guy, then clearly that’s fine.
We will have to disagree on this.
It's certainly the effect of the law - and the Home Secretary's proscription of the group - that there is a prima facie case for their arrest. What Davey was saying very clearly, and I agree with him, is that the Home Secretary simply hasn't made a convincing case for proscribing Palestine Action in this manner.
The law in question is an exceedingly blunt instrument, which effectively gives the HS the power to criminalise legitimate protest. Quite which side of legitimate/illegitimate this particular case falls is very much a matter of debate. But that, surely is the point ?
I find is amusing that the following position on Begum (another culture war case) upsets nearly everyone.
1) she should be bought back to this country 2) and prosecuted for the war crimes that she has stated, in multiple TV interviews she committed.
Why? She is our responsibility (so 1 is true) and 2 is equally true - as she seemingly has committed and admitted to those crimes
Why she is put responsibility? She left this country to join an enemy and is no longer a citizen
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
It may be relevant to suggest that the group has been proscribed for reasons of political theatre rather than because it is a genuine security threat. Just because the government of the day makes something illegal and then prosecutes those who are now deemed to be breaking the law does not also mean that the government is immune from profound criticism for its action in banning the thing in the first place.
The trespassers at Brize should be maximally punished, and if the PA organisation is deemed to be receiving covert support from Russia, then that should also be rooted out. However using blanket "anti terror" legislation in the way the government has chosen to do is a misuse of the legislation and profoundly corrosive to free speech and our democracy. Ed Davey is right to criticize Starmer's use of the legislation and to call him out on it.
"It may be relevant to suggest that the group has been proscribed for reasons of political theatre rather than because it is a genuine security threat."
Nope - attacking military equipment is not political theatre. We could be at war tomorrow. That equipment isn't available.
The trial is going to be interesting to watch. I’m going to guess that the defence will be that they didn’t realise emptying a can of spray paint into an aircraft’s engine would cause up to £10m of damage, that they thought it would all be cleaned off the next day rather than having to totally strip down and rebuild the engines.
Ignorance is no defence. "I had no idea shoving a knife into his leg might sever an artery and see him bleed out in minutes in front of me, guv."
There is a philosophy thought-experiment which could be applied to your scenario:
Man A shoves a knife into a man's leg and severs an artery and the man dies Man B With equivalent force and intent shoves a knife into a man's leg and misses an artery and the man is just injured
Is there a difference in the two crimes?
Intent is the usual separator. What was the intent in doing it and the events leading up to it.
Intent is nonsense, it should be risk based. Anyone who decides that they will attack someone with a deadly weapon is risking another person's life, regardless of where they aim that weapon. It should be life in prison as someone who is willing to take that kind of risk with someone else's life is a danger to the public. Whether or not they hit the artery, intentionally or otherwise, is immaterial.
As I understand it, you can be convicted of murder if your victim dies and you only intended to cause serious injury, but for attempted murder the prosecution would have to prove that the intent was to kill.
Surely if the action is so severe that death is the probable result for any reasonable thinking person to expect then it is more than manslaughter and is murder. Suppose say you held someone's head under water for 10 secs then that would not be murder even if he died. But 10 mins then it would be murder surely
There's a little bit of hype in the piece, and it is more complex. It quotes 720k empties, which will include eg all the ones on sale, stuck in estates and so on aiui, and 265k >6 month empties - which are the real targets, which is not actually THAT many. It's only 1% of stock, which is massively lower than comparable countries.
In depth personal renovation is not so much a thing these days with eg 2 earner couples, and small LLs who would take on wrecks for rental have been hit really hard since Osborne's 2015 targeting, and increasingly savage regulation, plus all the politics. Corporate LLs won't touch small projects.
These days you will be paying expenses such as Council Tax on it as you renovate, since there will only be one lot of exemption and the previous owner will have had that and it may only have been one month ... unless eg very difficult to obtain exceptions.
Plus Council Grants, especially in London, tend to have onerous conditions (eg rent it to the Council for X years, by which time it will need another renovation).
And is it another non-statutory thing Councils have no money for?
The other thing that struck me (having had to deal with a relative's demise and house sale overlapping with the covid period) is the definition of the short term empties category,, which as you say are to be expected (and indeed a good sign of housing turnover, cf. the perennial complaints about house-blocking oldies sans families on here). But it ought also to inclide those bona fide houses which were intended to be short term for sale but which have encountered the delays of late, for instance in probate. Even a month or two delay in probate would shift a case from the short term to the long term, without really changing the actual situation. So the rise might be an aretefact of probate/bank/legal delays.
I'd be interested to hear from PBers who have handled parent's houses as to what happened with Council Tax.
I avoided that since mum lived with me and the house was jointly owned. That caused complications as it left a family member inheriting the other half, and there was some unpleasantness with attempted leverage, and also she died 6 years after gifting me half.
Council tax? The relative was old and living on his own. I forget the precise details but I think basically we had a free grace period of 6 months after death, then a full rate period, then a double rate for a bit and when it went on the market it reset to normal rate. Something of the sort, anyway.
Generally efficiently dealt with at the council end, the original overpayment (by the deceased) refunded in good time, and later one hiccup remedied acceptably quickly. They also chased me up at times to make sure things hadn't changed since I last reported.
Can't complain too much, given the public policy issues over empty houses. It was mildly annoying that a lot of the delay was outwith our control (e.g. probate, covid etc. ) but that wasn't the council's fault, and it all came out in the wash in the end.
The details vary from council to council anyway. NB the common 12 month exemption for work being done on the house.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
People are not being arrested for excercising their freedom of speech.
They’re being arrested for supporting, openly supporting, a proscribed terrorist group. That’s not wrong and as to their innocence or otherwise that’s for a court to decide.
The odd case where an innocent person has been arrested, like the Plasticene action guy, then clearly that’s fine.
We will have to disagree on this.
It's certainly the effect of the law - and the Home Secretary's proscription of the group - that there is a prima facie case for their arrest. What Davey was saying very clearly, and I agree with him, is that the Home Secretary simply hasn't made a convincing case for proscribing Palestine Action in this manner.
The law in question is an exceedingly blunt instrument, which effectively gives the HS the power to criminalise legitimate protest. Quite which side of legitimate/illegitimate this particular case falls is very much a matter of debate. But that, surely is the point ?
I find is amusing that the following position on Begum (another culture war case) upsets nearly everyone.
1) she should be bought back to this country 2) and prosecuted for the war crimes that she has stated, in multiple TV interviews she committed.
Why? She is our responsibility (so 1 is true) and 2 is equally true - as she seemingly has committed and admitted to those crimes
Why she is put responsibility? She left this country to join an enemy and is no longer a citizen
She was born here - and currently we are trying to dump our issue on someone else..
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
People are not being arrested for excercising their freedom of speech.
They’re being arrested for supporting, openly supporting, a proscribed terrorist group. That’s not wrong and as to their innocence or otherwise that’s for a court to decide.
The odd case where an innocent person has been arrested, like the Plasticene action guy, then clearly that’s fine.
We will have to disagree on this.
It's certainly the effect of the law - and the Home Secretary's proscription of the group - that there is a prima facie case for their arrest. What Davey was saying very clearly, and I agree with him, is that the Home Secretary simply hasn't made a convincing case for proscribing Palestine Action in this manner.
The law in question is an exceedingly blunt instrument, which effectively gives the HS the power to criminalise legitimate protest. Quite which side of legitimate/illegitimate this particular case falls is very much a matter of debate. But that, surely is the point ?
I find is amusing that the following position on Begum (another culture war case) upsets nearly everyone.
1) she should be bought back to this country 2) and prosecuted for the war crimes that she has stated, in multiple TV interviews she committed.
Why? She is our responsibility (so 1 is true) and 2 is equally true - as she seemingly has committed and admitted to those crimes
Why she is put responsibility? She left this country to join an enemy and is no longer a citizen
She left as a trafficked minor.
Besides @Leon has a mate who has interviewed her and apparently she is "hot".
BBC Explainer on property CGT. This seems a bit of a tough hurdle
Capital gains tax (CGT) is a charge on the increase in the value of an asset when you sell it.
It applies to the sale of things like paintings, second homes, and stocks and shares, but main homes are currently exempt from GCT.
So, if you bought the main home you live in for £200,000 and sold it for £210,000, you are entitled to all of that £10,000 - barring some exceptions such as for those whose main homes are over 5,000 acres or who have let part of it to lodgers.
King Charles and the Duke of Westminster only it seems.
No takers on my question about what's the best place you've been but haven't been back to since the 1990s or thereabouts?
Nepal - Kathmandu, the Himalayas. I remember trekking up to Annapurna base camp on my own in the off-season. The occasional rains meant having to regularly pick leeches off. Good times.
Mine would be Sana'a and the surrounding area, Yemen. Loved going there in the early 90's - had an edge, but was safe enough to walk around the ancient city and the Souk without issue. Remarkable architecture, houses built a thousand years ago still occupied by the same families, a camel or a donkey on the ground floor working a grind stone. Going to the top storey in the afternoon to be social and chew khat (once with the head of the Yemeni secret police, a man with dead, shark-like eyes). So many stories, so many memories.
And now a brutal war zone.
Ha, probably Bristol for me as I never left the country til 2001
hard to choose, Paris , Rome , Munich and Salzburg for Europe, sanFrancisco , lake Tahoe and Austin for USA, 80's and 90's. Many other lovely places as well.
Comments
EDIT: Well, they were 10th on 2024 numbers, with 3469 applications.
That's asylum seekers and boat arrivals only make up about a third of asylum applications.
101 or 280 ?
In depth personal renovation is not so much a thing these days with eg 2 earner couples, and small LLs who would take on wrecks for rental have been hit really hard since Osborne's 2015 targeting, and increasingly savage regulation, plus all the politics. Corporate LLs won't touch small projects.
These days you will be paying expenses such as Council Tax on it as you renovate, since there will only be one lot of exemption and the previous owner will have had that and it may only have been one month ... unless eg very difficult to obtain exceptions.
Plus Council Grants, especially in London, tend to have onerous conditions (eg rent it to the Council for X years, by which time it will need another renovation).
And is it another non-statutory thing Councils have no money for?
The public are there to be led, if there's a politician who dares to lead them.
1) Liberal Immigration/Human Rights - Begum should be bought home and treated as a victim
2) Anti-Immigration - offshoring her is a start.
I’ve had very aggressive pushback from group 1 on the above.
1%+ of houses local to me (1/2 mile radius) are being ripped out and are uninhabitable, for instance.
Like so many things, this is something that was better in the coalition.
If you had to prove beyond reasonable doubt an intent to kill then lots of murderers would get off on a lesser charge by running the defence of lack of intent. OTOH you can't convict people of murder when they have given someone a bit of a shove and they fall over and die.
But it's obviously irrational to convict someone of attempting to kill if (a) they didn't die and (b) you weren't attempting to kill them.
Hence, if they didn't die you have to have been trying to kill; if they did die, you don't. That's English law. No idea how other jurisdictions deal with this one.
NEW THREAD
I avoided that since mum lived with me and the house was jointly owned. That caused complications as it left a family member inheriting the other half, and there was some unpleasantness with attempted leverage, and also she died 6 years after gifting me half.
My late FiL's workplace back in the 70s.
IBM to close South Bay research lab that created first inkjet printer, pioneered data mining and AI
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2025/07/10/ibm-san-jose-tech-data-ai-internet-property-real-estate-economy-web/
Take off and nuke it from space.
[Joking a bit. They are actually useful when they work.]
Generally efficiently dealt with at the council end, the original overpayment (by the deceased) refunded in good time, and later one hiccup remedied acceptably quickly. They also chased me up at times to make sure things hadn't changed since I last reported.
Can't complain too much, given the public policy issues over empty houses. It was mildly annoying that a lot of the delay was outwith our control (e.g. probate, covid etc. ) but that wasn't the council's fault, and it all came out in the wash in the end.
The details vary from council to council anyway. NB the common 12 month exemption for work being done on the house.
https://www.mygov.scot/council-tax/empty-and-second-homes
Besides @Leon has a mate who has interviewed her and apparently she is "hot".
It applies to the sale of things like paintings, second homes, and stocks and shares, but main homes are currently exempt from GCT.
So, if you bought the main home you live in for £200,000 and sold it for £210,000, you are entitled to all of that £10,000 - barring some exceptions such as for those whose main homes are over 5,000 acres or who have let part of it to lodgers.
King Charles and the Duke of Westminster only it seems.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2k1m56xgjo
Many other lovely places as well.