No future for LD's on the soft centre left. Starmer's parked there. Their fight is with the Tories. That is not an ideological point, but a purely psephological one. Attacking this government on sound money, liberal values, internatiomalism, free trade and good governance could win sufficient votes in productive places. The future's Orange (book).
Indeed, for the LDs the future is wealthy Home Counties and west London, Esher and Walton, Richmond Park, Oxford West and Abingdon, Wokingham, Cities of London and Westminster etc.
Reaching voters Labour cannot, even with Starmer
Exactly. There are seats where LAB can never do it and from Stamrer's perspective it is best for them not to return Tories. What GE2019 showed is that is is hard to take seats from third place and Davey/Moran will have perhaps 50+ serious prospects.
So much for the Tories depends on Brexit not being a disaster.
No future for LD's on the soft centre left. Starmer's parked there. Their fight is with the Tories. That is not an ideological point, but a purely psephological one. Attacking this government on sound money, liberal values, internatiomalism, free trade and good governance could win sufficient votes in productive places. The future's Orange (book).
Indeed, for the LDs the future is wealthy Home Counties and west London, Esher and Walton, Richmond Park, Oxford West and Abingdon, Wokingham, Cities of London and Westminster etc.
Reaching voters Labour cannot, even with Starmer
Exactly. There are seats where LAB can never do it and from Stamrer's perspective it is best for them not to return Tories. What GE2019 showed is that is is hard to take seats from third place and Davey/Moran will have perhaps 50+ serious prospects.
So much for the Tories depends on Brexit not being a disaster.
Starmer might find Ed Davey ends up Nick Clegg to his David Cameron if Brexit does turn out badly
Quality of life for ordinary people in most western countries has declined since the 1990s. Why and how? I never hear politicians talking about this subject.
It's arguable (there is a lot of non-economic quality of life added since the 1990s)
If true, it's probably economic. There are many more workers in advanced economies now, almost all willing to work for lower wages than the average Belgian or Brit; there are many more state benefits recipients in old Western countries, who need to be paid for by tax or extra labour among the young; machines and computers do more work, and their creators and managers are few, and reap massive rewards. Take your pick, but the answers are not easy to reconcile with continuing economic growth.
Quality of life for ordinary people in most western countries has declined since the 1990s. Why and how? I never hear politicians talking about this subject.
It's arguable (there is a lot of non-economic quality of life added since the 1990s)
If true, it's probably economic. There are many more workers in advanced economies now, almost all willing to work for lower wages than the average Belgian or Brit; there are many more state benefits recipients in old Western countries, who need to be paid for by tax or extra labour among the young; machines and computers do more work, and their creators and managers are few, and reap massive rewards. Take your pick, but the answers are not easy to reconcile with continuing economic growth.
While it is true that a privileged few are racking up huge rewards, there is also a paradox that if machines are doing more work then productivity should have risen, but it has lagged since the global financial crisis.
Quality of life for ordinary people in most western countries has declined since the 1990s. Why and how? I never hear politicians talking about this subject.
Largely because it isn't the case. Even if it wasn't the case, you gain very little from saying 'sorry past us were so awful' (a lesson parts of Labour haven't learnt).
Daily deaths definitely creeping up. While the overall mortality rate will be lower than early on (due to a combo of better treatment and increased detection), deaths will increase.
As for the US v UK debate, as a young white man with some level of desirable skills there's not much contest. You can net twice as much per hour with a comparable CoL if my peers' experiences are anything to go by.
If anyone wants a tip, try to work in the US office of British firms, you usually get to have the full UK holiday allotment.
Quality of life for ordinary people in most western countries has declined since the 1990s. Why and how? I never hear politicians talking about this subject.
Globalisation, competition from Asia and transfer of manufacturing jobs outside the west or loss of them through automation coupled with lack of controls of low skilled immigration. Hence Trump, Corbyn and Brexit and the rise of populist movements across the west
I'm not a fan of America for some of the reasons Lady G outlines, but I do think Americans are often admirable in a slightly innocent way that we've rather lost sight of - more generous, more optimistic, more innocently keen to do the right thing. It's an interesting question for us atheist lefties whether (if that's true) it's because religion and pioneering spirit are part of what gives that quality?
Yes, on average Americans tend to be, on first encounter, nicer - more hospitable, friendly, warmer - than Europeans. I’m not sure why. But it is the case.
It depends which Europeans. Italians or Portuguese are always very warm, swedes or Germans much less so.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
The suburbs between Knightsbridge and Chelsea and Richmond on the District and Piccadilly lines really are some of the nicest in the country. You have Kensington and Chiswick too. Even Hammersmith isn't too bad once you get away from the centre.
Nor is there any mystery as to why: the royal palaces and aristocratic houses in the early modern era made for good housing for courtiers and hangers on which have turned into hugely desirable properties because modern architects are shit.
With Boris, the impression is of a man with a joke he’d like to make at some point during the next half hour, waiting patiently for about 56 seconds, then losing all control and spaffing it at the wrong moment.
Consider the moment at prime minister’s questions this week when Keir Starmer asked him if he had a message for the bereaved families of coronavirus victims. As a spectator, your only thought is: don’t do the joke now. Just say a message for the dead people. But Johnson was powerless to resist himself. The leader of the opposition needed to decide which brief he was going to take, he began … Don’t do it now. Don’t do it now. Don’t do it now. “Because at the moment – please please please don’t do it now – “he’s got more briefs than Calvin Klein!”
There it is. Another premature ejaculation by the prime minister – as the promise of this all being over by Christmas may very well turn out to be.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
Not disagreeing, given I live 10 minutes walk away, but at least part of his decision is surely due to the fact that he grew up here. Of course, and again I speak from personal experience, once you grow up here it’s very difficult to find the desire to move away. Which is a problem if you don’t have quite the same money...
Stupid, sinister, and already in the manifesto after the repeated duffings up Boris got at the hands of spider brooch woman. I'm pretty sure we had a PB thread on it.
Stupid, sinister, and already in the manifesto after the repeated duffings up Boris got at the hands of spider brooch woman. I'm pretty sure we had a PB thread on it.
Wonder what a “commission of independent legal experts” looks like?
More generally what the hell is a “political” ruling? One that the Government might disagree with? Bad news for Government lawyers, no jobs for them any more.
Stupid, sinister, and already in the manifesto after the repeated duffings up Boris got at the hands of spider brooch woman. I'm pretty sure we had a PB thread on it.
Wonder what a “commission of independent legal experts” looks like?
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
The suburbs between Knightsbridge and Chelsea and Richmond on the District and Piccadilly lines really are some of the nicest in the country. You have Kensington and Chiswick too. Even Hammersmith isn't too bad once you get away from the centre.
Nor is there any mystery as to why: the royal palaces and aristocratic houses in the early modern era made for good housing for courtiers and hangers on which have turned into hugely desirable properties because modern architects are shit.
But, yes, none of them are exactly under-priced.
Oh please. They're perfectly nice and all, but they're not exactly Hampstead.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
No future for LD's on the soft centre left. Starmer's parked there. Their fight is with the Tories. That is not an ideological point, but a purely psephological one. Attacking this government on sound money, liberal values, internatiomalism, free trade and good governance could win sufficient votes in productive places. The future's Orange (book).
Indeed, for the LDs the future is wealthy Home Counties and west London, Esher and Walton, Richmond Park, Oxford West and Abingdon, Wokingham, Cities of London and Westminster etc. Reaching voters Labour cannot, even with Starmer
You're missing something there, young HY. The Lib Dem campaign at the last election was tailor-made for seats such as those you mention. And it very nearly came off, in spades. But that was in the very special circumstances of the aftermath of the EU referendum. Not to be repeated, I imagine.
Central to the next election will be, I think, the question of good government, of responsible leadership - and everything that goes with them. The Conservatives are on to a sure-fire loser there.
Central to the next election will be, I think, the question of good government, of responsible leadership - and everything that goes with them. The Conservatives are on to a sure-fire loser there.
The point about the Mafia is that people must be scared. As Boris Johnson approaches his first anniversary as prime minister next week, he could do worse than remind himself of the 1972 blockbuster, The Godfather. The film brings it home. The important thing is not to be disregarded. You can do some seriously crazy stuff with horses’ heads in victims’ beds but only so long as people can see there’s method in your madness.
Only a year into Mr Johnson’s tenure at Downing Street the outside world has noticed the madness but begins to doubt the method. And once people start deriding you, you’ve lost it.
Stupid, sinister, and already in the manifesto after the repeated duffings up Boris got at the hands of spider brooch woman. I'm pretty sure we had a PB thread on it.
Wonder what a “commission of independent legal experts” looks like?
In Cummings's world, it's a small black box with a power switch.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
"That's not that expensive?"
The man on the Clapham Omnibus speaks.
Poorly phrased perhaps but in London terms 1,300 psf is not that expensive
My point was that @LadyG highlighted a house 4x larger than the average house and used it to “demonstrate” that it’s an expensive area.
News flash: big houses cost more than little houses
Is square footage measured internally or externally? If the latter, I would imagine the likes of cavity walls and cladding could make a significant difference.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
"That's not that expensive?"
The man on the Clapham Omnibus speaks.
Poorly phrased perhaps but in London terms 1,300 psf is not that expensive
My point was that @LadyG highlighted a house 4x larger than the average house and used it to “demonstrate” that it’s an expensive area.
News flash: big houses cost more than little houses
Is square footage measured internally or externally? If the latter, I would imagine the likes of cavity walls and cladding could make a significant difference.
It should be internally excluding stairs and corridors
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
"That's not that expensive?"
The man on the Clapham Omnibus speaks.
Poorly phrased perhaps but in London terms 1,300 psf is not that expensive
My point was that @LadyG highlighted a house 4x larger than the average house and used it to “demonstrate” that it’s an expensive area.
News flash: big houses cost more than little houses
Is square footage measured internally or externally? If the latter, I would imagine the likes of cavity walls and cladding could make a significant difference.
It should be internally excluding stairs and corridors
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
bollox, it has sucked the rest of the country dry. An abomination.
So it turns out that the UK’s near unique position of not recording numbers of those ‘recovered’ from COVID had both a reason and a consequence for comparatives with other countries. PHE death stats include those who not just recently had the virus, but who have ever had it (however unrelated the cause of death). No wonder our numbers continue to appear to be so high compared with our countries.
After Boris' victory speech last evening, I am not sure what we have to complain about now. Virus beaten and life back to normal by Christmas. What's not to like?
So it turns out that the UK’s near unique position of not recording numbers of those ‘recovered’ from COVID had both a reason and a consequence for comparatives with other countries. PHE death stats include those who not just recently had the virus, but who have ever had it (however unrelated the cause of death). No wonder our numbers continue to appear to be so high compared with our countries.
Forget the froth about over reporting fatalities.
The only number of any consequence is excess deaths. It is the only statistic that paints a reasonably accurate picture. That number still looks sub optimal for the UK.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It's crowded, parking is difficult, prices are ridiculous - I love the area but living a US lifestyle is impossible there. The housing stock is tiny - I have a 5 bedroom 3 bathroom 2 garage air conditioned home here for $225k. I can think of many places in the US that match it. It all depends on what you want. We wanted US style living. That's unavailable in the UK. Residents parking was a deal killer.
The constant emphasis on "parking" is quite revealing. In a world of Uber, and, soon, self driving cars, you won't need a bloody car, and we can get rid of their pollution. This will be a wonderful moment.
Also, to be brutal, a US lifestyle no longer looks that appealing, to a lot people outside America.
You have a poisonous racial divide (which you are trying to export: thanks), you have uniquely terrible gun violence, you live evidently shorter lives, your health system is utterly insane, and shit, you have worse poverty than anywhere in western Europe, you are led by a lunatic, about to be supplanted by a demented old man. And your precious role as world economic superpower is about to be toppled by China.
Don't get me wrong. I love America. There is still much to admire about it. eg the dominance of mighty American internet companies, from Facebook to Amazon.
But its best days are gone and I see much evidence of rampant decay, from homelessness to opioids.
This was really brought home to me on my last trip there, when I toured all around. I went to small towns where Italians, Germans, Koreans, Irish, English, Norwegians had once emigrated to, with much hope for a better life.
And I thought, would they still come? No, they would not. They would be better off at home, where life is superior, the food is better, the urbanity is kinder and they are less likely to be shot dead.
For much of the world, the American dream is over.
Did you overlook that mass emigration to the US came not from Europe’s Oslos and Richmonds-upon-Thames, people driven to emigration for want of a parking space for their SUVs, but from landless peasants and the urban unemployed?
The deciding factor, then as now, was the availability of opportunity and gainful employment. How Europe fares going forward in relation to the US in that respect remains to be seen.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Your every being is upset by Boris and Cumings as evidenced by your 24/7 posting
Boris is a shambles, the Grayling affair absurd, but ordinary people are not political obsessives and Boris success or failure will not depend on how many anti post you do, but how covid progresses, the economy and of course brexit
Listening to Sky's report on yesterday's EU meeting it seems they are split over the economic response to covid and not at all in a good place.
Many in this country will be relieved we are not on the hook for EU payments
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
So it turns out that the UK’s near unique position of not recording numbers of those ‘recovered’ from COVID had both a reason and a consequence for comparatives with other countries. PHE death stats include those who not just recently had the virus, but who have ever had it (however unrelated the cause of death). No wonder our numbers continue to appear to be so high compared with our countries.
It seems if you are knocked down and killed if you have had covid it is a covid death
That is just nonsense and the figures must be corrected
Monday I’ve gone into Downing Street for a very important meeting with Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, but it’s all quite hush-hush and informal.
I’m pouring the tea.
“The thing is, Chris,” says Cummings, “Boris knows you’re a safe pair of hands.”
I nod, gravely, and then I fumble with the teapot and pour scalding liquid straight into his crotch and he runs out of the room screaming. Then I try to put the teapot down, but I bash it and the handle falls off and all the tea glugs out on to the floor.
“Whoops,” I say.
“Er, anyway,” says the PM. “Um. Trust! That’s what matters with this spy committee. Foresight. Awareness. Unspoken codes.”
“Is there something wrong with your nose?” I say. “Because you keep tapping it.”
Then Boris says this committee will be dealing with Russia, and Huawei, and all sorts of difficult, sensitive stuff like that, so he needs to know it’s being headed by the right sort of person.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
Oh Charles. For £12.5m you could buy something like 50 fairly decent houses (not as nice as that one admittedly) in Dundee. A house like that would be £500k tops.
Glad that we're not on the hook for the new EU bailout fund. Would have been around €150bn in grants/loans. Though I'm not sure such a scheme would have been proposed had we still been members because there would be a 100% chance of a veto.
After Boris' victory speech last evening, I am not sure what we have to complain about now. Virus beaten and life back to normal by Christmas. What's not to like?
So it turns out that the UK’s near unique position of not recording numbers of those ‘recovered’ from COVID had both a reason and a consequence for comparatives with other countries. PHE death stats include those who not just recently had the virus, but who have ever had it (however unrelated the cause of death). No wonder our numbers continue to appear to be so high compared with our countries.
Forget the froth about over reporting fatalities.
The only number of any consequence is excess deaths. It is the only statistic that paints a reasonably accurate picture. That number still looks sub optimal for the UK.
That’s not the point. Whether we as a country managed the virus well overall is a matter for debate (and should actually be about more than just numbers, although if you are using numbers you do need to be confident that you are working to a common base). But as a country trying to encourage people out of their homes to restore a degree of economic normality the methodology is an obvious cause of concern going forward. Because if “comparatively” our death numbers continue to look high, then people will draw conclusions that comparatively the country continues to look less safe than others who are apparently successfully opening up to a greater degree.
The English approach may be justified partly on the grounds that COVID is apparently causing health issues way beyond the point at which an individual is clear of the virus. But it is also very much maximalist, rather than based on accuracy - it assumes that if there is a possibility that COVID-19 may have had a contributing factor (but only by virtue of an historic positive test - so even at an extreme, apparently for a death in a road traffic accident!) then it gets reported in the figures.
One can see why the Govt is very concerned about this - deaths will naturally begin to increase as autumn moves into winter - and it is perfectly possible that the death figures as currently put together will start to show large spikes as a consequence.
Glad that we're not on the hook for the new EU bailout fund. Would have been around €150bn in grants/loans. Though I'm not sure such a scheme would have been proposed had we still been members because there would be a 100% chance of a veto.
Actually the fact we are not on the hook was expressed by the Sky reporter who did say it does play into the justification for leaving
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
Oh Charles. For £12.5m you could buy something like 50 fairly decent houses (not as nice as that one admittedly) in Dundee. A house like that would be £500k tops.
Even in London you could easily buy 2 of the buggers for that.
Your every being is upset by Boris and Cumings as evidenced by your 24/7 posting
Boris is a shambles, the Grayling affair absurd, but ordinary people are not political obsessives and Boris success or failure will not depend on how many anti post you do, but how covid progresses, the economy and of course brexit
Listening to Sky's report on yesterday's EU meeting it seems they are split over the economic response to covid and not at all in a good place.
Many in this country will be relieved we are not on the hook for EU payments
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
There speaks Old Money. I rather agree with you, though I quite like the City aesthetically. Also, while I'm not awed by someone habing a yacht or a mansion, I don't mind it either, so long as they're paying taxes appropriately - there's a sort of hairshirt view that rich people should pay up AND live frugally, and I don't see the need for that.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
But they should spend it. That's what keeps the wheels of the economy turning.
Glad that we're not on the hook for the new EU bailout fund. Would have been around €150bn in grants/loans. Though I'm not sure such a scheme would have been proposed had we still been members because there would be a 100% chance of a veto.
Actually the fact we are not on the hook was expressed by the Sky reporter who did say it does play into the justification for leaving
True, but it's a simplistic look at it, I doubt the road not taken includes an EU wide bailout, it's more likely to have been limited to Eurozone countries because the UK would absolutely veto anything which would cost €150bn.
After Boris' victory speech last evening, I am not sure what we have to complain about now. Virus beaten and life back to normal by Christmas. What's not to like?
So it turns out that the UK’s near unique position of not recording numbers of those ‘recovered’ from COVID had both a reason and a consequence for comparatives with other countries. PHE death stats include those who not just recently had the virus, but who have ever had it (however unrelated the cause of death). No wonder our numbers continue to appear to be so high compared with our countries.
Forget the froth about over reporting fatalities.
The only number of any consequence is excess deaths. It is the only statistic that paints a reasonably accurate picture. That number still looks sub optimal for the UK.
That’s not the point. Whether we as a country managed the virus well overall is a matter for debate (and should actually be about more than just numbers, although if you are using numbers you do need to be confident that you are working to a common base). But as a country trying to encourage people out of their homes to restore a degree of economic normality the methodology is an obvious cause of concern going forward. Because if “comparatively” our death numbers continue to look high, then people will draw conclusions that comparatively the country continues to look less safe than others who are apparently successfully opening up to a greater degree.
The English approach may be justified partly on the grounds that COVID is apparently causing health issues way beyond the point at which an individual is clear of the virus. But it is also very much maximalist, rather than based on accuracy - it assumes that if there is a possibility that COVID-19 may have had a contributing factor (but only by virtue of an historic positive test - so even at an extreme, apparently for a death in a road traffic accident!) then it gets reported in the figures.
One can see why the Govt is very concerned about this - deaths will naturally begin to increase as autumn moves into winter - and it is perfectly possible that the death figures as currently put together will start to show large spikes as a consequence.
The last point is the key to this. We cannot have more lockdowns because of an apparent spike in cases which has not actually been caused by the virus at all.
I ventured for my first haircut in four months yesteday and all was good.
Appointment only, hand sanitised at door, face mask worn at all times, staff in ppe, and payment at the chair in cash as they are waiting for a contact less machine
Cost £10 and I gave her a £5 tip wishing her every success.
It is a high tip but they are only doing 2 haircuts per hour rather than 4 and I really want them to succeed
Post work drinks was a bit sparsely attended in the square mile. Ended up in the Kings Stores and it was basically just us and one other group. Usually on Friday it would be packed. Sort of wish we'd gone to the Crown and Shuttle now, apparently the number of people there was in double figures.
This needs to improve fast or London's amazing hospitality scene is going to die.
Post work drinks was a bit sparsely attended in the square mile. Ended up in the Kings Stores and it was basically just us and one other group. Usually on Friday it would be packed. Sort of wish we'd gone to the Crown and Shuttle now, apparently the number of people there was in double figures.
This needs to improve fast or London's amazing hospitality scene is going to die.
Anecdote alert: her ladyship hit the shops yesterday to update her summer wardrobe. Reckoned the womenswear shops in the West End were much busier than her last trip, which took place almost immediately after they reopened. Somewhat encouraging.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
Not sure about that as long as they are not disrespectful to the less wealthy. Most people find it a novelty to gawp at wealth and a break from everyday life. Just look at the popularity of shows like Dallas and Dynasty in the past and the Crown today. People like to know about lottery winners and how they are planning to spend it.Its a sort of wealth by proxy mentality. Its escapism for many and thats why I like areas like the Docklands etc . Combines that with ambition etc. That's my take on it and I am not that wealthy or even materialistic in terms of my own needs .
As so often the key word here is 'could'. This is a story suggesting that somehow judges could be stopped from making legal judgements in accordance with, um, the laws parliament have the power to make and unmake.
In general the word 'could' kills any story, just as the word 'somehow' kills the force of any argument, as in:
'Shock claim that Martians could land in Scunthorpe'.
'The Middle East should somehow find a way to play nicely'.
Your every being is upset by Boris and Cumings as evidenced by your 24/7 posting
Boris is a shambles, the Grayling affair absurd, but ordinary people are not political obsessives and Boris success or failure will not depend on how many anti post you do, but how covid progresses, the economy and of course brexit
Listening to Sky's report on yesterday's EU meeting it seems they are split over the economic response to covid and not at all in a good place.
Many in this country will be relieved we are not on the hook for EU payments
I used to think that the post Covid economic collapse exacerbated by Brexit would finish Johnson and see Starmer through the doors of No10. After my visit to the North West I realise this is probably not true.
However deep the financial hole Johnson can dig, with some carefully directed racial dog whistles, Boris is back on solid ground. Labour are not the party to turn to for the former red wallers in the event of mass unemployment. Should Boris fail, the answer could well be Yaxley-Lennon shaped
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
Oh Charles. For £12.5m you could buy something like 50 fairly decent houses (not as nice as that one admittedly) in Dundee. A house like that would be £500k tops.
My point was he’s chosen the biggest house in Richmond to illustrate how expensive it is.
One of my team has just bought a house in the area. Slightly over £1.2m.
London is expensive, that’s just the way it is. But he was being very misleading
Post work drinks was a bit sparsely attended in the square mile. Ended up in the Kings Stores and it was basically just us and one other group. Usually on Friday it would be packed. Sort of wish we'd gone to the Crown and Shuttle now, apparently the number of people there was in double figures.
This needs to improve fast or London's amazing hospitality scene is going to die.
Anecdote alert: her ladyship hit the shops yesterday to update her summer wardrobe. Reckoned the womenswear shops in the West End were much busier than her last trip, which took place almost immediately after they reopened. Somewhat encouraging.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
But they should spend it. That's what keeps the wheels of the economy turning.
Post work drinks was a bit sparsely attended in the square mile. Ended up in the Kings Stores and it was basically just us and one other group. Usually on Friday it would be packed. Sort of wish we'd gone to the Crown and Shuttle now, apparently the number of people there was in double figures.
This needs to improve fast or London's amazing hospitality scene is going to die.
Anecdote alert: her ladyship hit the shops yesterday to update her summer wardrobe. Reckoned the womenswear shops in the West End were much busier than her last trip, which took place almost immediately after they reopened. Somewhat encouraging.
Could be a rush before mandatory face coverings.
Yes also noted that mid-week Nottingham city centre was as busy as a weekend nearly. If governments really want to protect city centres and especially gems like Central London then they need to get rid of this mask policy . Its not about financial support its about instilliing confidence and drive in people again ,not paranoia
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
Not sure about that as long as they are not disrespectful to the less wealthy. Most people find it a novelty to gawp at wealth and a break from everyday life. Just look at the popularity of shows like Dallas and Dynasty in the past and the Crown today. People like to know about lottery winners and how they are planning to spend it.Its a sort of wealth by proxy mentality. Its escapism for many and thats why I like areas like the Docklands etc . Combines that with ambition etc. That's my take on it and I am not that wealthy or even materialistic in terms of my own needs .
It’s so shallow. At the end of the day a house is a house and a boat a boat. What matters more is a home with family a friends. We’ve taken the approach (since the days of Good Henry) of founding and endowing local organisation - and then supporting them over time. That’s far more useful for people than flash materialism and escapism
Bercow makes a comment about Grayling, and you think it's about Cummings?
Get a grip, man.
With you everything is Cummings and as for Bercow, how many speakers have been declined a peerage
Everything this government does is about Cummings. It is a one-man ego trip by a man who knows, deep down, that he is even more of a disastrous failure than Richard Burgon. The ciphers in the cabinet are just that.
So we will talk about Cummings until the happy hour when we learn he is Goings.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
Oh Charles. For £12.5m you could buy something like 50 fairly decent houses (not as nice as that one admittedly) in Dundee. A house like that would be £500k tops.
My point was he’s chosen the biggest house in Richmond to illustrate how expensive it is.
One of my team has just bought a house in the area. Slightly over £1.2m.
London is expensive, that’s just the way it is. But he was being very misleading
£1.2m?
I know that will only get one a cupboard under the stairs in Carlton Hill, St Johns Wood or a car parking space in Mayfair, but it is hardly modest.
As so often the key word here is 'could'. This is a story suggesting that somehow judges could be stopped from making legal judgements in accordance with, um, the laws parliament have the power to make and unmake.
In general the word 'could' kills any story, just as the word 'somehow' kills the force of any argument, as in:
'Shock claim that Martians could land in Scunthorpe'.
'The Middle East should somehow find a way to play nicely'.
I don’t know the details of the law, but it seems very reasonable that she should have the right to appeal the judgement and if that needs to be in the U.K. then so be it.
What will he more troubling is if, say, she loses the case and then claims asylum for example. I think it would be entirely reasonable to give her a limited license to return, solely for the purpose of the appeal.
OT -Does every senior (usually on the right) politician's speech have to be featured by the BBC as being FACT CHECKED (see website currently)? It sort of implies that the default of senior politicians is to lie and they cannot be trusted. It also sort of implies the BBC is the only one who can verify the TRUTH. Its arrogant and cynical and also patronising to the public who can make up their own minds or research if they want to.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
Oh Charles. For £12.5m you could buy something like 50 fairly decent houses (not as nice as that one admittedly) in Dundee. A house like that would be £500k tops.
My point was he’s chosen the biggest house in Richmond to illustrate how expensive it is.
One of my team has just bought a house in the area. Slightly over £1.2m.
London is expensive, that’s just the way it is. But he was being very misleading
£1.2m doesn't buy very much around these parts, Charles. The downstairs flat a few doors away went for that much and it's a 2-bed.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
Oh Charles. For £12.5m you could buy something like 50 fairly decent houses (not as nice as that one admittedly) in Dundee. A house like that would be £500k tops.
My point was he’s chosen the biggest house in Richmond to illustrate how expensive it is.
One of my team has just bought a house in the area. Slightly over £1.2m.
London is expensive, that’s just the way it is. But he was being very misleading
£1.2m?
I know that will only get one a cupboard under the stairs in Carlton Hill, St Johns Wood or a car parking space in Mayfair, but it is hardly modest.
The man on the Clapham Omnibus speaks...again.
Hence the comment “London is expensive”.
I was criticising the evidence provided not the conclusion.
I don’t know why you feel the need to make personal attacks.
Post work drinks was a bit sparsely attended in the square mile. Ended up in the Kings Stores and it was basically just us and one other group. Usually on Friday it would be packed. Sort of wish we'd gone to the Crown and Shuttle now, apparently the number of people there was in double figures.
This needs to improve fast or London's amazing hospitality scene is going to die.
Anecdote alert: her ladyship hit the shops yesterday to update her summer wardrobe. Reckoned the womenswear shops in the West End were much busier than her last trip, which took place almost immediately after they reopened. Somewhat encouraging.
Hopefully everyone has realised it's summer and they're getting in the spirit of things. Last night was a bit depressing tbh, hopefully it will be better next month when we do the same thing.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
But they should spend it. That's what keeps the wheels of the economy turning.
Giving it away is more fun than spending
Nice to hear. And I'm guessing it's because in your younger days your father told you that whenever you feel like blowing money on baubles and expensive indulgences you should just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.
I'm on Davey at 1.8 and it's a bet I'm confident of. Target 1.33 for possible close out.
Fpt.
Life was so shit for Northern working class types during the Tory years.
But wait. You got out, made good down south. Why didn't everyone else?
I was born and raised in the north, and moved to London at age 17 in 1968 to join IBM. I lived there for 7 years and hated it in Richmond and Twickenham area. Left there to move back north to get married. In 1978 we gave up on a future in the UK and moved to North America. We so much wanted to try again in the UK, moved back in 1998 with our daughter and eventually gave up and moved back here in 2005. Living in the UK is hard and expensive. We lived in Yorkshire. Where I was from everything from parking to eating out to medical care was so difficult and involved needless delays that we just gave up and came home. Even the price of petrol was nose bleed time.
I know. It can be tough. But people make their own decisions. You decided to leave the country which is absolutely fair enough.
But your hell of Richmond and Twickenham will be someone else's idea of heaven on earth. Especially if they bought their house there in 1975.
Yes, if you own a house or flat (crucial) and have an OK income (you don't need much, if the property is sorted) then Richmond-upon-Thames is one of the nicest places to live, in the entire world.
And I have seen a lot of the world.
You have a global city on your doorstep, great natural beauty a walk away, endless enormous parks, lots of history, beautiful world-class architecture. Also bars, restaurants, etc etc
It's a gorgeous spot. I cannot think of anywhere in America that matches it.
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
Oh Charles. For £12.5m you could buy something like 50 fairly decent houses (not as nice as that one admittedly) in Dundee. A house like that would be £500k tops.
My point was he’s chosen the biggest house in Richmond to illustrate how expensive it is.
One of my team has just bought a house in the area. Slightly over £1.2m.
London is expensive, that’s just the way it is. But he was being very misleading
£1.2m doesn't buy very much around these parts, Charles. The downstairs flat a few doors away went for that much and it's a 2-bed.
She is only a Director so couldn’t afford much more. But she got a nice house in a slightly less fashionable part of Richmond with a small garden and a park nearby.
Even where my parents live in outer London £1.2m will buy a bog standard 4 bedroom semi at the moment. It's not going to get anything spectacular worth the money.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
Not sure about that as long as they are not disrespectful to the less wealthy. Most people find it a novelty to gawp at wealth and a break from everyday life. Just look at the popularity of shows like Dallas and Dynasty in the past and the Crown today. People like to know about lottery winners and how they are planning to spend it.Its a sort of wealth by proxy mentality. Its escapism for many and thats why I like areas like the Docklands etc . Combines that with ambition etc. That's my take on it and I am not that wealthy or even materialistic in terms of my own needs .
It’s so shallow. At the end of the day a house is a house and a boat a boat. What matters more is a home with family a friends. We’ve taken the approach (since the days of Good Henry) of founding and endowing local organisation - and then supporting them over time. That’s far more useful for people than flash materialism and escapism
I don't think its shallow - most people like to see nice things even if they don't own them - most people are curious and on average the life of the wealthy are more interesting (even if only because they are different to the lifestyle normally encountered) . Its the same with other "lucky" attributes like intelligence, sporting talent or beauty - people like to see these extremes -its why people watch the Olympics , watch University Challenge or admire Newton or Einstein or want to go out with a supermodel.
Bercow makes a comment about Grayling, and you think it's about Cummings?
Get a grip, man.
With you everything is Cummings and as for Bercow, how many speakers have been declined a peerage
Everything this government does is about Cummings. It is a one-man ego trip by a man who knows, deep down, that he is even more of a disastrous failure than Richard Burgon. The ciphers in the cabinet are just that.
So we will talk about Cummings until the happy hour when we learn he is Goings.
Come, come, or even cumm, cumm, the Richard Burgon analogy really is a step too far.
They say the art of leadership is delegation. The fact that Johnson has delegated his (almost) entire burden of responsibility to Cummings confirms Johnson's great leadership credentials.
Johnson's wisdom, in such delegation allows himself to savour his tied homes and the patronage of obedient servants. A lifestyle for which he was undoubtedly born. I do wish however he wouldn't shuffle out every now and again to make some off the cuff speech, the ramifications of which could get us all killed by Covid-19. That too is best left to Cummings.
This is why I pray that London survives the virus. Yes it gets too much money and too much attention. It is annoying. It's inhabitants vex and kvetch. Fuck bloody London.
And yet, in my lifetime, amazing regeneration has been done here, and, more to the point, this has generated enormous sums of money for the whole country
"Regeneration" - putting up characterless glass and steel boxes and overpriced chain restaurants and bars? Sure it's good for employment and tax revenue but it's not amazing regeneration, which involves building well-planned and balanced communities.
Still, it's better than what was there before.
Well, er, yeah. What was there before was literally wasteland. Deindustrialised nothingness. Much of it actually poisoned by arsenic and so on. ANYTHING would be better
I guess they could have built a series of dreary suburban cul de sacs. Identikit Wimpey homes. Would you have preferred that?
No, as I wrote, I would have preferred well-planned and balanced communities.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Love the Docklands area personally. It shows ambition, creativity ,escapism and its past history is preserved well in names and features. If this is a victim of everyone preferring to WFH then it shows we will have chosen a duller if more comfortable life
I agree. When you fly into London City and take the DLR into Bank it just looks absolutely incredible now. And even 30 years on from my first visit there are still always cranes working away. I just don't believe you can get that dynamism, that hubris, the whole arrogant mentality for good or ill working in a converted bedroom speaking to a laptop. It is not just consumption, its conspicuous consumption including the yachts parked up by the expensive flats. Without the conspicuous part it will lose a lot.
Good. The wealthy shouldn’t flaunt their good fortune
But they should spend it. That's what keeps the wheels of the economy turning.
Giving it away is more fun than spending
Nice to hear. And I'm guessing it's because in your younger days your father told you that whenever you feel like blowing money on baubles and expensive indulgences you should just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.
He took the simpler approach of not giving me a lot of money when I was young! My pocket money was about a third of my peers! It felt crap at the time, but in hindsight the amount that went up in smoke or up their noses... and the impact it had on their future life opportunities... he was right.
My inheritance is the charitable trust he founded.
Comments
So much for the Tories depends on Brexit not being a disaster.
Advances in a number of treatments appears to have contained the death rate as records continue to be broken for new infections" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/17/coronavirus-deaths-stubbornly-low-us-new-cases-soar/
If true, it's probably economic. There are many more workers in advanced economies now, almost all willing to work for lower wages than the average Belgian or Brit; there are many more state benefits recipients in old Western countries, who need to be paid for by tax or extra labour among the young; machines and computers do more work, and their creators and managers are few, and reap massive rewards. Take your pick, but the answers are not easy to reconcile with continuing economic growth.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
As for the US v UK debate, as a young white man with some level of desirable skills there's not much contest. You can net twice as much per hour with a comparable CoL if my peers' experiences are anything to go by.
If anyone wants a tip, try to work in the US office of British firms, you usually get to have the full UK holiday allotment.
Demographics.
Demographics.
Ah, but it's all the fault of immigrants.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't a place for the Canary Wharfs of this world. Just as long as I can enjoy the services funded by the tax revenue and don't have to live there or look at them too often.
Nor is there any mystery as to why: the royal palaces and aristocratic houses in the early modern era made for good housing for courtiers and hangers on which have turned into hugely desirable properties because modern architects are shit.
But, yes, none of them are exactly under-priced.
Consider the moment at prime minister’s questions this week when Keir Starmer asked him if he had a message for the bereaved families of coronavirus victims. As a spectator, your only thought is: don’t do the joke now. Just say a message for the dead people. But Johnson was powerless to resist himself. The leader of the opposition needed to decide which brief he was going to take, he began … Don’t do it now. Don’t do it now. Don’t do it now. “Because at the moment – please please please don’t do it now – “he’s got more briefs than Calvin Klein!”
There it is. Another premature ejaculation by the prime minister – as the promise of this all being over by Christmas may very well turn out to be.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/17/christmas-johnson-slogan-prime-minister-pmqs
And a very pleasant weekend to everyone, and a successful one to Mr Root!
It’s 9,000 sq ft - that’s 3x larger than my house which is already on the large side. It’s only 1,300 psf
The man on the Clapham Omnibus speaks.
My point was that @LadyG highlighted a house 4x larger than the average house and used it to “demonstrate” that it’s an expensive area.
News flash: big houses cost more than little houses
Central to the next election will be, I think, the question of good government, of responsible leadership - and everything that goes with them. The Conservatives are on to a sure-fire loser there.
Only a year into Mr Johnson’s tenure at Downing Street the outside world has noticed the madness but begins to doubt the method. And once people start deriding you, you’ve lost it.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/boris-johnson-s-authority-is-slipping-away-25ft0wwzw
https://twitter.com/SkyNewsPolitics/status/1283858945895997460
(I’ll get my coat online)
Laughing at BoZo
https://thebulletin.org/2020/01/press-release-it-is-now-100-seconds-to-midnight/
The only number of any consequence is excess deaths. It is the only statistic that paints a reasonably accurate picture. That number still looks sub optimal for the UK.
The deciding factor, then as now, was the availability of opportunity and gainful employment. How Europe fares going forward in relation to the US in that respect remains to be seen.
Boris is a shambles, the Grayling affair absurd, but ordinary people are not political obsessives and Boris success or failure will not depend on how many anti post you do, but how covid progresses, the economy and of course brexit
Listening to Sky's report on yesterday's EU meeting it seems they are split over the economic response to covid and not at all in a good place.
Many in this country will be relieved we are not on the hook for EU payments
That is just nonsense and the figures must be corrected
I’ve gone into Downing Street for a very important meeting with Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, but it’s all quite hush-hush and informal.
I’m pouring the tea.
“The thing is, Chris,” says Cummings, “Boris knows you’re a safe pair of hands.”
I nod, gravely, and then I fumble with the teapot and pour scalding liquid straight into his crotch and he runs out of the room screaming. Then I try to put the teapot down, but I bash it and the handle falls off and all the tea glugs out on to the floor.
“Whoops,” I say.
“Er, anyway,” says the PM. “Um. Trust! That’s what matters with this spy committee. Foresight. Awareness. Unspoken codes.”
“Is there something wrong with your nose?” I say. “Because you keep tapping it.”
Then Boris says this committee will be dealing with Russia, and Huawei, and all sorts of difficult, sensitive stuff like that, so he needs to know it’s being headed by the right sort of person.
“Somebody trustworthy,” I say.
“Absolutely,” says Boris.
“And loyal,” I say.
“Good man,” says Boris.
“And competent,” I say, warming to my theme.
“Less important,” says Boris.
https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1284394368938500098
Get a grip, man.
Oh Charles. For £12.5m you could buy something like 50 fairly decent houses (not as nice as that one admittedly) in Dundee. A house like that would be £500k tops.
The English approach may be justified partly on the grounds that COVID is apparently causing health issues way beyond the point at which an individual is clear of the virus. But it is also very much maximalist, rather than based on accuracy - it assumes that if there is a possibility that COVID-19 may have had a contributing factor (but only by virtue of an historic positive test - so even at an extreme, apparently for a death in a road traffic accident!) then it gets reported in the figures.
One can see why the Govt is very concerned about this - deaths will naturally begin to increase as autumn moves into winter - and it is perfectly possible that the death figures as currently put together will start to show large spikes as a consequence.
Appointment only, hand sanitised at door, face mask worn at all times, staff in ppe, and payment at the chair in cash as they are waiting for a contact less machine
Cost £10 and I gave her a £5 tip wishing her every success.
It is a high tip but they are only doing 2 haircuts per hour rather than 4 and I really want them to succeed
This needs to improve fast or London's amazing hospitality scene is going to die.
In general the word 'could' kills any story, just as the word 'somehow' kills the force of any argument, as in:
'Shock claim that Martians could land in Scunthorpe'.
'The Middle East should somehow find a way to play nicely'.
However deep the financial hole Johnson can dig, with some carefully directed racial dog whistles, Boris is back on solid ground. Labour are not the party to turn to for the former red wallers in the event of mass unemployment. Should Boris fail, the answer could well be Yaxley-Lennon shaped
One of my team has just bought a house in the area. Slightly over £1.2m.
London is expensive, that’s just the way it is. But he was being very misleading
So we will talk about Cummings until the happy hour when we learn he is Goings.
I know that will only get one a cupboard under the stairs in Carlton Hill, St Johns Wood or a car parking space in Mayfair, but it is hardly modest.
The man on the Clapham Omnibus speaks...again.
What will he more troubling is if, say, she loses the case and then claims asylum for example. I think it would be entirely reasonable to give her a limited license to return, solely for the purpose of the appeal.
I was criticising the evidence provided not the conclusion.
I don’t know why you feel the need to make personal attacks.
step too far.
They say the art of leadership is delegation. The fact that Johnson has delegated his (almost) entire burden of responsibility to Cummings confirms Johnson's great leadership credentials.
Johnson's wisdom, in such delegation allows himself to savour his tied homes and the patronage of obedient servants. A lifestyle for which he was undoubtedly born. I do wish however he wouldn't shuffle out every now and again to make some off the cuff speech, the ramifications of which could get us all killed by Covid-19. That too is best left to Cummings.
My inheritance is the charitable trust he founded.