NEW: India reports more than 300,000 new coronavirus cases for fifth day in a row, with some states yet to report. If the remaining states report at least as many new cases as they did yesterday, it would be a new record at nearly 358K
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
I would agree with you in most circumstances but I'm not sure the Treasury should themselves be creating these situations.
I'm not sure how they have, something doesn't add up there.
Supposedly she took a loan out high loan-to-value in 2006 and its that high loan to value that is stopping her from remortgaging supposedly.
Except it is now 2021. She ought to be 15 years into paying off her mortgage already, so the capital outstanding really ought to be much lower now.
Plus of course the value of the home really should have appreciated in the past 15 years.
Even if she took out a 95% mortgage in 2006, it really ought to be no more than about 50% of present value by now, meaning remortgaging should be possible. Unless there's more to it than meets the eye.
Isn't the issue that you can always switch to a new fixed-rate detail with your bank without the LTV being recalculated? So because the treasury have sold these loans to a non-bank, they have no possibility of remortgaging so they're stuck with whatever variable or otherwise rate and are thus at a disadvantage.
But the point I was making is that if you're 15 years into paying off a mortgage - and you've got 15 years of capital appreciation - you should want the LTV recalculating. The LTV should be much, much, much lower by now.
If you've kept up your repayments for fifteen years and the value of the house has gone up with fifteen years of house price changes, why would you not want the LTV recalculating?
Unless there's more to it than meets the eye. Like she hasn't kept up with her repayments which is why she's being rejected.
Maybe she lives in your post-planning permission fantasy world and her next door neighbour built a nuclear power plant on their land and thus her home is now worthless?
At least the housing market has been solved then. 😉
(Nuclear plants or other polluting industry would not fall under the preset building restrictions that can avoid the planning requirement)
As someone who uses the gig economy a fair bit I do have to admit the more I read about the guiltier I feel.
As someone who understands how the gig economy works -I actively avoid going anywhere near it.
If a local takeaway does its own delivery I will use that otherwise I will get in the car and collect.
Prices are usually cheaper as well
There is something a bit parasitical and sinister with uber eats deliveroo just eats etc. They've very cleverly used SEO to grab search queries for local business, which they then have to pay commission for for purchases that they think are part of the fast food place's business. They have become so ubiquitous that an app like just eat now has replaced a traditional menu for many younger people.
That 15%-20% off the top is enormous, but the owners know that not signing up will result in much less business.
It's the same parasitical thing as with Uber, of course. Instead of you having the numbers of a couple of local minicab firms, you just have the Uber app.
Hailo launched in the UK in 2011, and I thought "wow! somebody should do this for minicabs too. they already have radios in, if you gave cheap android phones, you could do Hailo for mini cabs." And then I trailed around half a dozen firms in North London - places with 50 to 150 drivers.
And I pitched that we could create them a software plaftorm (an app) that would mean that drivers would be able to be automatically routed, that could automatically select the nearest driver to go to a job, and which (in the future!) would allow passengers to book directly through their special Swiss Cottage Cars app or the web.
My model was simple - we'd supply the app and the technology, they'd pay 50k per year per firm, plus 1% of the total value of rides throuh the system. They'd be up 100-250k in the first year.
I got no takers. Not even a smidgen of interest.
And then 18 months later Uber launched and killed all the mini cab busineses.
A man who spent 17 years in prison for rape and maintained his innocence is a step closer to clearing his name after a fresh DNA breakthrough in his case.
Andrew Malkinson was convicted of raping a 33-year-old mother left for dead on a Manchester roadside in the middle of the night in July 2003.
There was never any forensic evidence against him and his conviction depended on an identity parade and testimony from witnesses whose criminal pasts were hidden from the court.
Malkinson, 55, who was 37 when he went to jail, was released from prison last December for good behaviour. He was locked up for ten years beyond his tariff because he refused to admit to the crime.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) have now admitted that they misled the court by presenting two key witnesses, a couple, as honest. In fact, they had 16 convictions for 38 offences between them. They claimed they were able to identify Malkinson having seen him on a dark street in the middle of the night.
Despite this, GMP continue to spend public money fighting Malkinson’s lawyers in the courts to prevent more information being revealed about the witnesses and their interaction with police. The couple came forward to say they were witnesses shortly after police put out a call to their sources, raising the possibility that they were police informants.
Sounds very strange. What I'd be interested to know is, what took the police to Malkinson in the first place that resulted in them putting him an ID parade?
Malkinson, who worked as a security guard at the Ellesmere Shopping Centre, in Walkden, had been living in a flat close to where the woman was attacked.
Four weeks prior to the attack, he was stopped by police officers in Little Hulton while riding pillion on an off-road motorbike.
Both Malkinson and the driver had their details taken.
A month later, when an E-fit of the man who committed the rape and his description was circulated among police, the officers said they were reminded of Malkinson.
Okay, so not friends/relatives calling into Crimewatch or somethng. And presumably the witnesses came forward and picked him out in a parade (how many?).
I suppose it could have been that they picked him out by chance. But presumably the suggestion is that this bloke was properly fitted up. That is, the police went to their informants and told them who to pick.
If so, that's incredibly serious.
Otherwise, I'm not sure their records or who they are is especially relevant.
EDIT: though, that really ought to be for the judge to decide, so if the police didn't disclose it, then that is bad in its own right.
The victim had told the court she was “more than 100 per cent certain” that he was her attacker after she picked him out of an identity parade. No other suspects were put forward in the parade although he did not match her description of her assailant.
The victim said the man who raped her was 5ft 8in at most but Malkinson is 5ft 11in. She said she left a “deep scratch” on her attacker’s cheek but Malkinson was not seen with one. She also said he had a local Bolton accent “with a tinge of something else” but Malkinson grew up in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and had just arrived in the area.
So he was identified by her and witnesses?
It's a funny sort of logic, isn't it, that would put you on an identification parade because you resemble the description given by a witness. And then because they are able to pick you out of a random group of people, take that fact as conclusive of guilt.
The point being he didn’t resemble that description.
So why was he picked out?
Peoples' memories get confused, particularly if those in authority say they have the person.
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is coming under pressure from Europhile MPs and party activists to support sweeping changes to the Brexit deal as concern rises about the damage it is doing to Britain’s economy and jobs and the freedom to move and work across the continent.
A report for the leftwing group Another Europe is Possible and separate research by the non-aligned, internationalist Best for Britain organisation both strongly support the case for more active engagement with the EU to improve the deal and rebuild relations with member states.
A man who spent 17 years in prison for rape and maintained his innocence is a step closer to clearing his name after a fresh DNA breakthrough in his case.
Andrew Malkinson was convicted of raping a 33-year-old mother left for dead on a Manchester roadside in the middle of the night in July 2003.
There was never any forensic evidence against him and his conviction depended on an identity parade and testimony from witnesses whose criminal pasts were hidden from the court.
Malkinson, 55, who was 37 when he went to jail, was released from prison last December for good behaviour. He was locked up for ten years beyond his tariff because he refused to admit to the crime.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) have now admitted that they misled the court by presenting two key witnesses, a couple, as honest. In fact, they had 16 convictions for 38 offences between them. They claimed they were able to identify Malkinson having seen him on a dark street in the middle of the night.
Despite this, GMP continue to spend public money fighting Malkinson’s lawyers in the courts to prevent more information being revealed about the witnesses and their interaction with police. The couple came forward to say they were witnesses shortly after police put out a call to their sources, raising the possibility that they were police informants.
Sounds very strange. What I'd be interested to know is, what took the police to Malkinson in the first place that resulted in them putting him an ID parade?
Malkinson, who worked as a security guard at the Ellesmere Shopping Centre, in Walkden, had been living in a flat close to where the woman was attacked.
Four weeks prior to the attack, he was stopped by police officers in Little Hulton while riding pillion on an off-road motorbike.
Both Malkinson and the driver had their details taken.
A month later, when an E-fit of the man who committed the rape and his description was circulated among police, the officers said they were reminded of Malkinson.
Okay, so not friends/relatives calling into Crimewatch or somethng. And presumably the witnesses came forward and picked him out in a parade (how many?).
I suppose it could have been that they picked him out by chance. But presumably the suggestion is that this bloke was properly fitted up. That is, the police went to their informants and told them who to pick.
If so, that's incredibly serious.
Otherwise, I'm not sure their records or who they are is especially relevant.
EDIT: though, that really ought to be for the judge to decide, so if the police didn't disclose it, then that is bad in its own right.
The victim had told the court she was “more than 100 per cent certain” that he was her attacker after she picked him out of an identity parade. No other suspects were put forward in the parade although he did not match her description of her assailant.
The victim said the man who raped her was 5ft 8in at most but Malkinson is 5ft 11in. She said she left a “deep scratch” on her attacker’s cheek but Malkinson was not seen with one. She also said he had a local Bolton accent “with a tinge of something else” but Malkinson grew up in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and had just arrived in the area.
So he was identified by her and witnesses?
It's a funny sort of logic, isn't it, that would put you on an identification parade because you resemble the description given by a witness. And then because they are able to pick you out of a random group of people, take that fact as conclusive of guilt.
The point being he didn’t resemble that description.
So why was he picked out?
Peoples' memories get confused, particularly if those in authority say they have the person.
Yes, but I’m wondering if somebody coughed and pointed.
As someone who uses the gig economy a fair bit I do have to admit the more I read about the guiltier I feel.
As someone who understands how the gig economy works -I actively avoid going anywhere near it.
If a local takeaway does its own delivery I will use that otherwise I will get in the car and collect.
Prices are usually cheaper as well
There is something a bit parasitical and sinister with uber eats deliveroo just eats etc. They've very cleverly used SEO to grab search queries for local business, which they then have to pay commission for for purchases that they think are part of the fast food place's business. They have become so ubiquitous that an app like just eat now has replaced a traditional menu for many younger people.
That 15%-20% off the top is enormous, but the owners know that not signing up will result in much less business.
The really naughty thing for the drivers / riders is the gamification. If you go to work at Sports Direct warehouse on ZHC, you are told upfront its £x / hr. Its going to come clear pretty quickly what a regular week is in terms of hours they need you and thus you can have some idea about your likely wage. As a student, I did this kind of work in the holidays and it was fine. Yes there is some uncertainty over just how many hours, but I found everything dropped into a fairly standard sort of pattern. If it was total unpredictable chaos the warehouses would never efficiently function, and I found if you were reliable and willing to work, the shift managers where I worked were decent with ensuring people go a fair go around.
With these delivery apps, every delivery is totally different money and then they had even further complexity by having daily "quests". It is totally impossible to get any sort of handle on what a shift will pay. You could say its not that different to a taxi driver doesn't know what rides he will get, but fees are normally mandated on a per mile basis and yes Uber have a "surge" pricing model, but the delivery apps seem particularly opaque about how the compensation for a drop is worked out, combined with ever changing multipliers and quests.
That's not the only reason they have those 'quests': it's because they want you on Uber all the time, and not flitting between them and Lyft. They therefore want to encourage you to become an Uber-only driver by putting in place the right incentives.
A man who spent 17 years in prison for rape and maintained his innocence is a step closer to clearing his name after a fresh DNA breakthrough in his case.
Andrew Malkinson was convicted of raping a 33-year-old mother left for dead on a Manchester roadside in the middle of the night in July 2003.
There was never any forensic evidence against him and his conviction depended on an identity parade and testimony from witnesses whose criminal pasts were hidden from the court.
Malkinson, 55, who was 37 when he went to jail, was released from prison last December for good behaviour. He was locked up for ten years beyond his tariff because he refused to admit to the crime.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) have now admitted that they misled the court by presenting two key witnesses, a couple, as honest. In fact, they had 16 convictions for 38 offences between them. They claimed they were able to identify Malkinson having seen him on a dark street in the middle of the night.
Despite this, GMP continue to spend public money fighting Malkinson’s lawyers in the courts to prevent more information being revealed about the witnesses and their interaction with police. The couple came forward to say they were witnesses shortly after police put out a call to their sources, raising the possibility that they were police informants.
Sounds very strange. What I'd be interested to know is, what took the police to Malkinson in the first place that resulted in them putting him an ID parade?
Malkinson, who worked as a security guard at the Ellesmere Shopping Centre, in Walkden, had been living in a flat close to where the woman was attacked.
Four weeks prior to the attack, he was stopped by police officers in Little Hulton while riding pillion on an off-road motorbike.
Both Malkinson and the driver had their details taken.
A month later, when an E-fit of the man who committed the rape and his description was circulated among police, the officers said they were reminded of Malkinson.
Okay, so not friends/relatives calling into Crimewatch or somethng. And presumably the witnesses came forward and picked him out in a parade (how many?).
I suppose it could have been that they picked him out by chance. But presumably the suggestion is that this bloke was properly fitted up. That is, the police went to their informants and told them who to pick.
If so, that's incredibly serious.
Otherwise, I'm not sure their records or who they are is especially relevant.
EDIT: though, that really ought to be for the judge to decide, so if the police didn't disclose it, then that is bad in its own right.
The victim had told the court she was “more than 100 per cent certain” that he was her attacker after she picked him out of an identity parade. No other suspects were put forward in the parade although he did not match her description of her assailant.
The victim said the man who raped her was 5ft 8in at most but Malkinson is 5ft 11in. She said she left a “deep scratch” on her attacker’s cheek but Malkinson was not seen with one. She also said he had a local Bolton accent “with a tinge of something else” but Malkinson grew up in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and had just arrived in the area.
So he was identified by her and witnesses?
It's a funny sort of logic, isn't it, that would put you on an identification parade because you resemble the description given by a witness. And then because they are able to pick you out of a random group of people, take that fact as conclusive of guilt.
The point being he didn’t resemble that description.
So why was he picked out?
Peoples' memories get confused, particularly if those in authority say they have the person.
Yes, but I’m wondering if somebody coughed and pointed.
That was implicit as a possibility in the authority saying they have the person. The proverbial heavy thumb on the photo list and so on.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
As someone who uses the gig economy a fair bit I do have to admit the more I read about the guiltier I feel.
As someone who understands how the gig economy works -I actively avoid going anywhere near it.
If a local takeaway does its own delivery I will use that otherwise I will get in the car and collect.
Prices are usually cheaper as well
There is something a bit parasitical and sinister with uber eats deliveroo just eats etc. They've very cleverly used SEO to grab search queries for local business, which they then have to pay commission for for purchases that they think are part of the fast food place's business. They have become so ubiquitous that an app like just eat now has replaced a traditional menu for many younger people.
That 15%-20% off the top is enormous, but the owners know that not signing up will result in much less business.
The really naughty thing for the drivers / riders is the gamification. If you go to work at Sports Direct warehouse on ZHC, you are told upfront its £x / hr. Its going to come clear pretty quickly what a regular week is in terms of hours they need you and thus you can have some idea about your likely wage. As a student, I did this kind of work in the holidays and it was fine. Yes there is some uncertainty over just how many hours, but I found everything dropped into a fairly standard sort of pattern. If it was total unpredictable chaos the warehouses would never efficiently function, and I found if you were reliable and willing to work, the shift managers where I worked were decent with ensuring people go a fair go around.
With these delivery apps, every delivery is totally different money and then they had even further complexity by having daily "quests". It is totally impossible to get any sort of handle on what a shift will pay. You could say its not that different to a taxi driver doesn't know what rides he will get, but fees are normally mandated on a per mile basis and yes Uber have a "surge" pricing model, but the delivery apps seem particularly opaque about how the compensation for a drop is worked out, combined with ever changing multipliers and quests.
That's not the only reason they have those 'quests': it's because they want you on Uber all the time, and not flitting between them and Lyft. They therefore want to encourage you to become an Uber-only driver by putting in place the right incentives.
If one was extremely cynical you could imagine a situation where a bit like a mobile free to play game these quests were set so that even if you did stay on just that app that it might be just out of reach to complete certain tiers.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
I would agree with you in most circumstances but I'm not sure the Treasury should themselves be creating these situations.
I'm not sure how they have, something doesn't add up there.
Supposedly she took a loan out high loan-to-value in 2006 and its that high loan to value that is stopping her from remortgaging supposedly.
Except it is now 2021. She ought to be 15 years into paying off her mortgage already, so the capital outstanding really ought to be much lower now.
Plus of course the value of the home really should have appreciated in the past 15 years.
Even if she took out a 95% mortgage in 2006, it really ought to be no more than about 50% of present value by now, meaning remortgaging should be possible. Unless there's more to it than meets the eye.
Isn't the issue that you can always switch to a new fixed-rate detail with your bank without the LTV being recalculated? So because the treasury have sold these loans to a non-bank, they have no possibility of remortgaging so they're stuck with whatever variable or otherwise rate and are thus at a disadvantage.
But the point I was making is that if you're 15 years into paying off a mortgage - and you've got 15 years of capital appreciation - you should want the LTV recalculating. The LTV should be much, much, much lower by now.
If you've kept up your repayments for fifteen years and the value of the house has gone up with fifteen years of house price changes, why would you not want the LTV recalculating?
Unless there's more to it than meets the eye. Like she hasn't kept up with her repayments which is why she's being rejected.
I assumed that she was on an interest-only mortgage and had self-certified the income originally, so even if house price appreciation meant that it was now 75% LTV or whatever, she still can't get remortgage as she doesn't have sufficient income for the borrowing required.
They are Northern Rock Together mortgages, where I think the mortgage was often Interest Only, and there was an unsecured loan linked to it, which could take it up to 125%.
Unsecured Personal loan was something like 11%.
If the house is sold and the sale does not cover the secured element, what is left jumps to an unsecured rate.
More or less.
A lot got caught by the look of it by having gone high risk, and then houses stopped spiralling in value.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
"Reactionary reductives"
He's at it again, folks.
It is a good phrase, isn't it? Conjures up exactly what it's meant to, which is not always easy to do. But "at it again" is a tad unfair. I use it sparingly. First appearance for several weeks. Don't want it going "off".
And you'll be over the moon (I'd imagine) to discover that you aren't one! The reactionary bit, yes, oh yes indeedy, but not reductive. You are not as a rule overly reductive.
Nonsense. You've rolled it out three times on me this week, twice in the 24 hours.
I've come to the conclusion you're a dogmatist. You often initiate a discussion and then, after three or four exchanges (which sometimes even go somewhere with a constructive debate) you get to a place you're uncomfortable with and then just fall back on insults like "reactionary".
This makes it far easier for you to dismiss views you'd rather not engage with, and is the sign of a weak and insecure mind that harbours a secret doubt.
So, yes, you are a dogmatist.
That's not great for me if a tolerant, open-minded poster like you has concluded that I'm a dogmatist. But on the actual point - "rolled it out 3 times this week" - no siree. "Reactionary" yes. That's common or garden. But not the more bespoke "Reactionary Reductive". First outing for ages. And as I say, you're not one. Even if you want to be, I won't allow it. So you can take the accusation back or I'll see you in court.
As someone who uses the gig economy a fair bit I do have to admit the more I read about the guiltier I feel.
As someone who understands how the gig economy works -I actively avoid going anywhere near it.
If a local takeaway does its own delivery I will use that otherwise I will get in the car and collect.
Prices are usually cheaper as well
There is something a bit parasitical and sinister with uber eats deliveroo just eats etc. They've very cleverly used SEO to grab search queries for local business, which they then have to pay commission for for purchases that they think are part of the fast food place's business. They have become so ubiquitous that an app like just eat now has replaced a traditional menu for many younger people.
That 15%-20% off the top is enormous, but the owners know that not signing up will result in much less business.
The really naughty thing for the drivers / riders is the gamification. If you go to work at Sports Direct warehouse on ZHC, you are told upfront its £x / hr. Its going to come clear pretty quickly what a regular week is in terms of hours they need you and thus you can have some idea about your likely wage. As a student, I did this kind of work in the holidays and it was fine. Yes there is some uncertainty over just how many hours, but I found everything dropped into a fairly standard sort of pattern. If it was total unpredictable chaos the warehouses would never efficiently function, and I found if you were reliable and willing to work, the shift managers where I worked were decent with ensuring people go a fair go around.
With these delivery apps, every delivery is totally different money and then they had even further complexity by having daily "quests". It is totally impossible to get any sort of handle on what a shift will pay. You could say its not that different to a taxi driver doesn't know what rides he will get, but fees are normally mandated on a per mile basis and yes Uber have a "surge" pricing model, but the delivery apps seem particularly opaque about how the compensation for a drop is worked out, combined with ever changing multipliers and quests.
That's not the only reason they have those 'quests': it's because they want you on Uber all the time, and not flitting between them and Lyft. They therefore want to encourage you to become an Uber-only driver by putting in place the right incentives.
If one was extremely cynical you could imagine a situation where a bit like a mobile free to play game these quests were set so that even if you did stay on just that app that it might be just out of reach to complete certain tiers.
I'd like to add a couple of things in (vague) defence of Uber:
1. They treat their drivers a hell of a lot better than Addison Lee used to. AL used to require drivers to lease and insure their vehicles through AL. And so, although they were self employed, they needed to work 60-70 hours a week just to get through their obligations to the company. Almost no-one who worked for AL got to minimum wage without tips.
2. Most Uber drivers jumped ship from minicab companies, and their life was pretty much identical, it was them in their car, being told where to do pickups. The exception was that (a) Uber took a much smaller cut, and (b) they got surge pricing from time-to-time. I really struggle with why an Uber driver is an employee, but a Swiss Cottage Cars one is not, given the nature and structure of the work is identical.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
It is a very farfetched argument.
My mortgage went back to standard rate after the discount period and I demand the government bail me out
Hold on though - isn’t the government the reason they can’t move off the STV?
Which makes it a little different.
I had not looked into the unsecured loan element. However, that Vox Pop was complaining about gong back to SVR.
However, I don't see why the Govt are really stopping them moving off - somewhat tighter regulations aside.
And somewhat tighter regulations was what were being campaigned for to tighten the market for a number of years.
12-15 years is plenty of time to rebuild a credit rating. As pointed out it is time to walk away from debt and start from scratch, and this county is very lenient about walking away from debt.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
I would agree with you in most circumstances but I'm not sure the Treasury should themselves be creating these situations.
I'm not sure how they have, something doesn't add up there.
Supposedly she took a loan out high loan-to-value in 2006 and its that high loan to value that is stopping her from remortgaging supposedly.
Except it is now 2021. She ought to be 15 years into paying off her mortgage already, so the capital outstanding really ought to be much lower now.
Plus of course the value of the home really should have appreciated in the past 15 years.
Even if she took out a 95% mortgage in 2006, it really ought to be no more than about 50% of present value by now, meaning remortgaging should be possible. Unless there's more to it than meets the eye.
Isn't the issue that you can always switch to a new fixed-rate detail with your bank without the LTV being recalculated? So because the treasury have sold these loans to a non-bank, they have no possibility of remortgaging so they're stuck with whatever variable or otherwise rate and are thus at a disadvantage.
But the point I was making is that if you're 15 years into paying off a mortgage - and you've got 15 years of capital appreciation - you should want the LTV recalculating. The LTV should be much, much, much lower by now.
If you've kept up your repayments for fifteen years and the value of the house has gone up with fifteen years of house price changes, why would you not want the LTV recalculating?
Unless there's more to it than meets the eye. Like she hasn't kept up with her repayments which is why she's being rejected.
I assumed that she was on an interest-only mortgage and had self-certified the income originally, so even if house price appreciation meant that it was now 75% LTV or whatever, she still can't get remortgage as she doesn't have sufficient income for the borrowing required.
They are Northern Rock Together mortgages, where I think the mortgage was often Interest Only, and there was an unsecured loan linked to it, which could take it up to 125%.
Unsecured Personal loan was something like 11%.
If the house is sold and the sale does not cover the secured element, what is left jumps to an unsecured rate.
More or less.
A lot got caught by the look of it by having gone high risk, and then houses stopped spiralling in value.
Well the final line is a point.
People keep acting as if Quantitative Easing or low interest rates have caused high house prices when it isn't true, the fact is that house prices peaked in 2007 and its only essentially been inflation since then not spiralling house prices.
A home bought in 2006 will have increased in value by about 45% in the following fifteen years. Which is basically inflation.
In comparison a house bought in 1991 would have more tripled in price by 2006.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
The issue is that this has infected corporate thinking, and large and medium companies are completely obsessed with progressivism. So if you work for one of these companies, and/or have to spend time on LinkedIn, it is absolutely everywhere. And if you visibly dissent in any way, shape or form, it can be career ruining - so you are stuck going along with it.
There is an agenda that is being set out of fear of being the victim of a Twitter pile-on, driven by mostly well-meaning individuals and supported by those who either simplistically assume that the motives seem to be positive, or who are too scared of the consequences to speak out. If the objective was actually - as stated - to create a more inclusive environment for everyone to feel more comfortable in, then I don't think anyone would object. But, it is becoming clear that current policies are much more about advancing a political agenda than actually making life better for individuals.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
Not being funny but WTF is a "positive white identity" meant to be? What's that even mean?
I don't identify as white, I am white but I identify as myself. I share more in common with my politics for instance with Rishi Sunak than I do John McDonnell, so what has race or white identity got to do with it?
I agree that simply not being racist should be enough. But I'm curious why anyone would want a "white identity".
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
It is a very farfetched argument.
My mortgage went back to standard rate after the discount period and I demand the government bail me out
Hold on though - isn’t the government the reason they can’t move off the STV?
Which makes it a little different.
I had not looked into the unsecured loan element. However, that Vox Pop was complaining about gong back to SVR.
However, I don't see why the Govt are really stopping them moving off - somewhat tighter regulations aside.
And somewhat tighter regulations was what were being campaigned for to tighten the market for a number of years.
12-15 years is plenty of time to rebuild a credit rating. As pointed out it is time to walk away from debt and start from scratch, and this county is very lenient about walking away from debt.
Not everyone at Northern Rock had a 125% mortgage, plenty of them had LTVs at below <80%.
Think about it, you took out a mortgage in 2006 at the age of 26, you're now 41, default/bankrupt now and by your timeline they should be ok to apply for a new mortgage when they are 56, they are most unlikely to get a mortgage at that age.
Ultimately they took out a mortgage from a FSA/Government approved lender at the time people were encouraged to move providers once their initial deals had expired.
Right now they will be losing tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds if they walk away from their mortgage.
They don't need bailing out, they need the government to correct the error of selling their mortgages to someone who only does SVR.
A man who spent 17 years in prison for rape and maintained his innocence is a step closer to clearing his name after a fresh DNA breakthrough in his case.
Andrew Malkinson was convicted of raping a 33-year-old mother left for dead on a Manchester roadside in the middle of the night in July 2003.
There was never any forensic evidence against him and his conviction depended on an identity parade and testimony from witnesses whose criminal pasts were hidden from the court.
Malkinson, 55, who was 37 when he went to jail, was released from prison last December for good behaviour. He was locked up for ten years beyond his tariff because he refused to admit to the crime.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) have now admitted that they misled the court by presenting two key witnesses, a couple, as honest. In fact, they had 16 convictions for 38 offences between them. They claimed they were able to identify Malkinson having seen him on a dark street in the middle of the night.
Despite this, GMP continue to spend public money fighting Malkinson’s lawyers in the courts to prevent more information being revealed about the witnesses and their interaction with police. The couple came forward to say they were witnesses shortly after police put out a call to their sources, raising the possibility that they were police informants.
Sounds very strange. What I'd be interested to know is, what took the police to Malkinson in the first place that resulted in them putting him an ID parade?
Malkinson, who worked as a security guard at the Ellesmere Shopping Centre, in Walkden, had been living in a flat close to where the woman was attacked.
Four weeks prior to the attack, he was stopped by police officers in Little Hulton while riding pillion on an off-road motorbike.
Both Malkinson and the driver had their details taken.
A month later, when an E-fit of the man who committed the rape and his description was circulated among police, the officers said they were reminded of Malkinson.
Okay, so not friends/relatives calling into Crimewatch or somethng. And presumably the witnesses came forward and picked him out in a parade (how many?).
I suppose it could have been that they picked him out by chance. But presumably the suggestion is that this bloke was properly fitted up. That is, the police went to their informants and told them who to pick.
If so, that's incredibly serious.
Otherwise, I'm not sure their records or who they are is especially relevant.
EDIT: though, that really ought to be for the judge to decide, so if the police didn't disclose it, then that is bad in its own right.
The victim had told the court she was “more than 100 per cent certain” that he was her attacker after she picked him out of an identity parade. No other suspects were put forward in the parade although he did not match her description of her assailant.
The victim said the man who raped her was 5ft 8in at most but Malkinson is 5ft 11in. She said she left a “deep scratch” on her attacker’s cheek but Malkinson was not seen with one. She also said he had a local Bolton accent “with a tinge of something else” but Malkinson grew up in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and had just arrived in the area.
So he was identified by her and witnesses?
It's a funny sort of logic, isn't it, that would put you on an identification parade because you resemble the description given by a witness. And then because they are able to pick you out of a random group of people, take that fact as conclusive of guilt.
The point being he didn’t resemble that description.
So why was he picked out?
Peoples' memories get confused, particularly if those in authority say they have the person.
Yes, but I’m wondering if somebody coughed and pointed.
That was implicit as a possibility in the authority saying they have the person. The proverbial heavy thumb on the photo list and so on.
Identification evidence is rubbish. Most people are not very good at it, including, as here, the victim. The BBC is currently running a fly-on-the-wall documentary about police corruption called Line of Duty. Its viewers spent some time debating whether a bearded man was the well-known thespian Neil Morrissey. The programme could be freeze-framed and compared with hundreds of online photographs and people still got it wrong. Likewise whether the woman in a photograph is one of the recently-introduced characters.
And some police really are corrupt, especially if we include noble cause corruption. And for all that we venerate trial by jury, miscarriages of justice invariably include a jury which returned the wrong verdict, yet psychologists are forbidden from researching jury behaviour.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
I would agree with you in most circumstances but I'm not sure the Treasury should themselves be creating these situations.
I'm not sure how they have, something doesn't add up there.
Supposedly she took a loan out high loan-to-value in 2006 and its that high loan to value that is stopping her from remortgaging supposedly.
Except it is now 2021. She ought to be 15 years into paying off her mortgage already, so the capital outstanding really ought to be much lower now.
Plus of course the value of the home really should have appreciated in the past 15 years.
Even if she took out a 95% mortgage in 2006, it really ought to be no more than about 50% of present value by now, meaning remortgaging should be possible. Unless there's more to it than meets the eye.
Isn't the issue that you can always switch to a new fixed-rate detail with your bank without the LTV being recalculated? So because the treasury have sold these loans to a non-bank, they have no possibility of remortgaging so they're stuck with whatever variable or otherwise rate and are thus at a disadvantage.
But the point I was making is that if you're 15 years into paying off a mortgage - and you've got 15 years of capital appreciation - you should want the LTV recalculating. The LTV should be much, much, much lower by now.
If you've kept up your repayments for fifteen years and the value of the house has gone up with fifteen years of house price changes, why would you not want the LTV recalculating?
Unless there's more to it than meets the eye. Like she hasn't kept up with her repayments which is why she's being rejected.
I assumed that she was on an interest-only mortgage and had self-certified the income originally, so even if house price appreciation meant that it was now 75% LTV or whatever, she still can't get remortgage as she doesn't have sufficient income for the borrowing required.
They are Northern Rock Together mortgages, where I think the mortgage was often Interest Only, and there was an unsecured loan linked to it, which could take it up to 125%.
Unsecured Personal loan was something like 11%.
If the house is sold and the sale does not cover the secured element, what is left jumps to an unsecured rate.
More or less.
A lot got caught by the look of it by having gone high risk, and then houses stopped spiralling in value.
Yes, they should have been bankrupted at the point their original loan term ended (2009/10/11?)
Instead, they’ve been financial zombies ever since 2008.
Osborne didn’t want to be the cnut who bankrupted them, so he took the balance sheet hit and sold their loans on to the sharks.
In a more sane world, NR wouldn’t have been bailed out - and these people would have been forced into bankruptcy in 2009/10. Their lives would probably be back to normal by now, without the outrageous mortgage/loan around their necks.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
It is a very farfetched argument.
My mortgage went back to standard rate after the discount period and I demand the government bail me out
Hold on though - isn’t the government the reason they can’t move off the STV?
Which makes it a little different.
I had not looked into the unsecured loan element. However, that Vox Pop was complaining about gong back to SVR.
However, I don't see why the Govt are really stopping them moving off - somewhat tighter regulations aside.
And somewhat tighter regulations was what were being campaigned for to tighten the market for a number of years.
12-15 years is plenty of time to rebuild a credit rating. As pointed out it is time to walk away from debt and start from scratch, and this county is very lenient about walking away from debt.
Not everyone at Northern Rock had a 125% mortgage, plenty of them had LTVs at below below 80%.
Think about it, you took out a mortgage in 2006 at the age of 26, you're now 41, default/bankrupt now and by your timeline they should be ok to apply for a new mortgage when they are 56, they are most unlikely to get a mortgage at that age.
Ultimately they took out a mortgage from a FSA/Government approved lender at the time people were encouraged to move providers once their initial deals had expired.
Right now they will be loosing tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds if they walk away from their mortgage.
They don't need bailing out, they need the government to correct the error of selling their mortgages to someone who only does SVR.
LTV at 80% in 2006 should be LTV of 55% in 2021, even with interest-only loans.
If LTV was over 100% and they've not repaid any capital in fifteen years, then its difficult to see why this is not their responsibility.
Mortgages. Whoever is right or wrong, and however pure the free market, last time this happened on any scale, Labour swept to victory. Conservatives should be careful what they wish for.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
I would agree with you in most circumstances but I'm not sure the Treasury should themselves be creating these situations.
I'm not sure how they have, something doesn't add up there.
Supposedly she took a loan out high loan-to-value in 2006 and its that high loan to value that is stopping her from remortgaging supposedly.
Except it is now 2021. She ought to be 15 years into paying off her mortgage already, so the capital outstanding really ought to be much lower now.
Plus of course the value of the home really should have appreciated in the past 15 years.
Even if she took out a 95% mortgage in 2006, it really ought to be no more than about 50% of present value by now, meaning remortgaging should be possible. Unless there's more to it than meets the eye.
Isn't the issue that you can always switch to a new fixed-rate detail with your bank without the LTV being recalculated? So because the treasury have sold these loans to a non-bank, they have no possibility of remortgaging so they're stuck with whatever variable or otherwise rate and are thus at a disadvantage.
But the point I was making is that if you're 15 years into paying off a mortgage - and you've got 15 years of capital appreciation - you should want the LTV recalculating. The LTV should be much, much, much lower by now.
If you've kept up your repayments for fifteen years and the value of the house has gone up with fifteen years of house price changes, why would you not want the LTV recalculating?
Unless there's more to it than meets the eye. Like she hasn't kept up with her repayments which is why she's being rejected.
I assumed that she was on an interest-only mortgage and had self-certified the income originally, so even if house price appreciation meant that it was now 75% LTV or whatever, she still can't get remortgage as she doesn't have sufficient income for the borrowing required.
They are Northern Rock Together mortgages, where I think the mortgage was often Interest Only, and there was an unsecured loan linked to it, which could take it up to 125%.
Unsecured Personal loan was something like 11%.
If the house is sold and the sale does not cover the secured element, what is left jumps to an unsecured rate.
More or less.
A lot got caught by the look of it by having gone high risk, and then houses stopped spiralling in value.
Yes, they should have been bankrupted at the point their original loan term ended.
Instead, they’ve been financial zombies ever since 2008.
Osborne didn’t want to be the cnut who bankrupted them, so he took the balance sheet hit and sold their loans on to the sharks.
In a more sane world, NR wouldn’t have been bailed out - and these people would have been forced into bankruptcy in 2009/10. Their lives would probably be back to normal by now, without the outrageous mortgage/loan around their necks.
The tragedy was that Northern Rock was rescued and Lehman Brothers let go.
If it had been the other way around, things would have been much more manageable.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
I would agree with you in most circumstances but I'm not sure the Treasury should themselves be creating these situations.
I'm not sure how they have, something doesn't add up there.
Supposedly she took a loan out high loan-to-value in 2006 and its that high loan to value that is stopping her from remortgaging supposedly.
Except it is now 2021. She ought to be 15 years into paying off her mortgage already, so the capital outstanding really ought to be much lower now.
Plus of course the value of the home really should have appreciated in the past 15 years.
Even if she took out a 95% mortgage in 2006, it really ought to be no more than about 50% of present value by now, meaning remortgaging should be possible. Unless there's more to it than meets the eye.
Isn't the issue that you can always switch to a new fixed-rate detail with your bank without the LTV being recalculated? So because the treasury have sold these loans to a non-bank, they have no possibility of remortgaging so they're stuck with whatever variable or otherwise rate and are thus at a disadvantage.
But the point I was making is that if you're 15 years into paying off a mortgage - and you've got 15 years of capital appreciation - you should want the LTV recalculating. The LTV should be much, much, much lower by now.
If you've kept up your repayments for fifteen years and the value of the house has gone up with fifteen years of house price changes, why would you not want the LTV recalculating?
Unless there's more to it than meets the eye. Like she hasn't kept up with her repayments which is why she's being rejected.
I assumed that she was on an interest-only mortgage and had self-certified the income originally, so even if house price appreciation meant that it was now 75% LTV or whatever, she still can't get remortgage as she doesn't have sufficient income for the borrowing required.
They are Northern Rock Together mortgages, where I think the mortgage was often Interest Only, and there was an unsecured loan linked to it, which could take it up to 125%.
Unsecured Personal loan was something like 11%.
If the house is sold and the sale does not cover the secured element, what is left jumps to an unsecured rate.
More or less.
A lot got caught by the look of it by having gone high risk, and then houses stopped spiralling in value.
Yes, they should have been bankrupted at the point their original loan term ended.
Instead, they’ve been financial zombies ever since 2008.
Osborne didn’t want to be the cnut who bankrupted them, so he took the balance sheet hit and sold their loans on to the sharks.
In a more sane world, NR wouldn’t have been bailed out - and these people would have been forced into bankruptcy in 2009/10. Their lives would probably be back to normal by now, without the outrageous mortgage/loan around their necks.
The tragedy was that Northern Rock was rescued and Lehman Brothers let go.
If it had been the other way around, things would have been much more manageable.
The joke in the sector is that if it was called Southern Rock it would have never been bailed out but the fact it was in a strong Labour area is why they were bailed out.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
The issue is that this has infected corporate thinking, and large and medium companies are completely obsessed with progressivism. So if you work for one of these companies, and/or have to spend time on LinkedIn, it is absolutely everywhere. And if you visibly dissent in any way, shape or form, it can be career ruining - so you are stuck going along with it.
There is an agenda that is being set out of fear of being the victim of a Twitter pile-on, driven by mostly well-meaning individuals and supported by those who either simplistically assume that the motives seem to be positive, or who are too scared of the consequences to speak out. If the objective was actually - as stated - to create a more inclusive environment for everyone to feel more comfortable in, then I don't think anyone would object. But, it is becoming clear that current policies are much more about advancing a political agenda than actually making life better for individuals.
Okay, but if you're right then surely all the vitriol should be directed at the corporations who are perpetuating this culture, instead of rather lazily at 'the Labour Party' or 'the left' as many do. It would be a weird old world if the Labour movement was having that much influence on corporate culture.
Given you use the word "infected", maybe you need a vaccine to immunise corporate culture to the plague of wokeness.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
It is a very farfetched argument.
My mortgage went back to standard rate after the discount period and I demand the government bail me out
Hold on though - isn’t the government the reason they can’t move off the STV?
Which makes it a little different.
I had not looked into the unsecured loan element. However, that Vox Pop was complaining about gong back to SVR.
However, I don't see why the Govt are really stopping them moving off - somewhat tighter regulations aside.
And somewhat tighter regulations was what were being campaigned for to tighten the market for a number of years.
12-15 years is plenty of time to rebuild a credit rating. As pointed out it is time to walk away from debt and start from scratch, and this county is very lenient about walking away from debt.
Not everyone at Northern Rock had a 125% mortgage, plenty of them had LTVs at below <80%.
Think about it, you took out a mortgage in 2006 at the age of 26, you're now 41, default/bankrupt now and by your timeline they should be ok to apply for a new mortgage when they are 56, they are most unlikely to get a mortgage at that age.
Ultimately they took out a mortgage from a FSA/Government approved lender at the time people were encouraged to move providers once their initial deals had expired.
Right now they will be loosing tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds if they walk away from their mortgage.
They don't need bailing out, they need the government to correct the error of selling their mortgages to someone who only does SVR.</p>
On your last point, is it normal to offer a discount period after the first one has finished?
But it's not 15 years.
Credit rating is normally 6 years to rebuild. Not sure precisely how that works after an IVA. It is strange to let it run so long.
Agree on the suggestion that many were 80% LTV.
(Yes I have done it. I also at one time had to come to an arrangement with a mortgage company when my interest rate went up to 15%. )
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
I would agree with you in most circumstances but I'm not sure the Treasury should themselves be creating these situations.
I'm not sure how they have, something doesn't add up there.
Supposedly she took a loan out high loan-to-value in 2006 and its that high loan to value that is stopping her from remortgaging supposedly.
Except it is now 2021. She ought to be 15 years into paying off her mortgage already, so the capital outstanding really ought to be much lower now.
Plus of course the value of the home really should have appreciated in the past 15 years.
Even if she took out a 95% mortgage in 2006, it really ought to be no more than about 50% of present value by now, meaning remortgaging should be possible. Unless there's more to it than meets the eye.
Isn't the issue that you can always switch to a new fixed-rate detail with your bank without the LTV being recalculated? So because the treasury have sold these loans to a non-bank, they have no possibility of remortgaging so they're stuck with whatever variable or otherwise rate and are thus at a disadvantage.
But the point I was making is that if you're 15 years into paying off a mortgage - and you've got 15 years of capital appreciation - you should want the LTV recalculating. The LTV should be much, much, much lower by now.
If you've kept up your repayments for fifteen years and the value of the house has gone up with fifteen years of house price changes, why would you not want the LTV recalculating?
Unless there's more to it than meets the eye. Like she hasn't kept up with her repayments which is why she's being rejected.
I assumed that she was on an interest-only mortgage and had self-certified the income originally, so even if house price appreciation meant that it was now 75% LTV or whatever, she still can't get remortgage as she doesn't have sufficient income for the borrowing required.
They are Northern Rock Together mortgages, where I think the mortgage was often Interest Only, and there was an unsecured loan linked to it, which could take it up to 125%.
Unsecured Personal loan was something like 11%.
If the house is sold and the sale does not cover the secured element, what is left jumps to an unsecured rate.
More or less.
A lot got caught by the look of it by having gone high risk, and then houses stopped spiralling in value.
Yes, they should have been bankrupted at the point their original loan term ended.
Instead, they’ve been financial zombies ever since 2008.
Osborne didn’t want to be the cnut who bankrupted them, so he took the balance sheet hit and sold their loans on to the sharks.
In a more sane world, NR wouldn’t have been bailed out - and these people would have been forced into bankruptcy in 2009/10. Their lives would probably be back to normal by now, without the outrageous mortgage/loan around their necks.
The tragedy was that Northern Rock was rescued and Lehman Brothers let go.
If it had been the other way around, things would have been much more manageable.
The joke in the sector is that if it was called Southern Rock it would have never been bailed out but the fact it was in a strong Labour area is why they were bailed out.
That joke becomes significantly more funny if you know that there actually is a financial services company called Southern Rock, and (specifically) who owns it.
A man who spent 17 years in prison for rape and maintained his innocence is a step closer to clearing his name after a fresh DNA breakthrough in his case.
Andrew Malkinson was convicted of raping a 33-year-old mother left for dead on a Manchester roadside in the middle of the night in July 2003.
There was never any forensic evidence against him and his conviction depended on an identity parade and testimony from witnesses whose criminal pasts were hidden from the court.
Malkinson, 55, who was 37 when he went to jail, was released from prison last December for good behaviour. He was locked up for ten years beyond his tariff because he refused to admit to the crime.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) have now admitted that they misled the court by presenting two key witnesses, a couple, as honest. In fact, they had 16 convictions for 38 offences between them. They claimed they were able to identify Malkinson having seen him on a dark street in the middle of the night.
Despite this, GMP continue to spend public money fighting Malkinson’s lawyers in the courts to prevent more information being revealed about the witnesses and their interaction with police. The couple came forward to say they were witnesses shortly after police put out a call to their sources, raising the possibility that they were police informants.
Sounds very strange. What I'd be interested to know is, what took the police to Malkinson in the first place that resulted in them putting him an ID parade?
Malkinson, who worked as a security guard at the Ellesmere Shopping Centre, in Walkden, had been living in a flat close to where the woman was attacked.
Four weeks prior to the attack, he was stopped by police officers in Little Hulton while riding pillion on an off-road motorbike.
Both Malkinson and the driver had their details taken.
A month later, when an E-fit of the man who committed the rape and his description was circulated among police, the officers said they were reminded of Malkinson.
Okay, so not friends/relatives calling into Crimewatch or somethng. And presumably the witnesses came forward and picked him out in a parade (how many?).
I suppose it could have been that they picked him out by chance. But presumably the suggestion is that this bloke was properly fitted up. That is, the police went to their informants and told them who to pick.
If so, that's incredibly serious.
Otherwise, I'm not sure their records or who they are is especially relevant.
EDIT: though, that really ought to be for the judge to decide, so if the police didn't disclose it, then that is bad in its own right.
The victim had told the court she was “more than 100 per cent certain” that he was her attacker after she picked him out of an identity parade. No other suspects were put forward in the parade although he did not match her description of her assailant.
The victim said the man who raped her was 5ft 8in at most but Malkinson is 5ft 11in. She said she left a “deep scratch” on her attacker’s cheek but Malkinson was not seen with one. She also said he had a local Bolton accent “with a tinge of something else” but Malkinson grew up in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and had just arrived in the area.
So he was identified by her and witnesses?
It's a funny sort of logic, isn't it, that would put you on an identification parade because you resemble the description given by a witness. And then because they are able to pick you out of a random group of people, take that fact as conclusive of guilt.
The point being he didn’t resemble that description.
So why was he picked out?
Peoples' memories get confused, particularly if those in authority say they have the person.
Yes, but I’m wondering if somebody coughed and pointed.
That was implicit as a possibility in the authority saying they have the person. The proverbial heavy thumb on the photo list and so on.
Identification evidence is rubbish. Most people are not very good at it, including, as here, the victim. The BBC is currently running a fly-on-the-wall documentary about police corruption called Line of Duty. Its viewers spent some time debating whether a bearded man was the well-known thespian Neil Morrissey. The programme could be freeze-framed and compared with hundreds of online photographs and people still got it wrong. Likewise whether the woman in a photograph is one of the recently-introduced characters.
And some police really are corrupt, especially if we include noble cause corruption. And for all that we venerate trial by jury, miscarriages of justice invariably include a jury which returned the wrong verdict, yet psychologists are forbidden from researching jury behaviour.
I don’t necessarily agree it’s’rubbish’ (although here given the way it was mishandled it clearly was) but I would say it shouldn’t on its own lead to a ‘past reasonable doubt’ verdict. Particularly not when seen briefly in dark nights.
But it can be useful as confirmation - cf. again the Hanratty case.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
The issue is that this has infected corporate thinking, and large and medium companies are completely obsessed with progressivism. So if you work for one of these companies, and/or have to spend time on LinkedIn, it is absolutely everywhere. And if you visibly dissent in any way, shape or form, it can be career ruining - so you are stuck going along with it.
There is an agenda that is being set out of fear of being the victim of a Twitter pile-on, driven by mostly well-meaning individuals and supported by those who either simplistically assume that the motives seem to be positive, or who are too scared of the consequences to speak out. If the objective was actually - as stated - to create a more inclusive environment for everyone to feel more comfortable in, then I don't think anyone would object. But, it is becoming clear that current policies are much more about advancing a political agenda than actually making life better for individuals.
Okay, but if you're right then surely all the vitriol should be directed at the corporations who are perpetuating this culture, rather than rather lazily at 'the Labour Party' or 'the left' as many do. It would be a weird old world if the Labour movement was having that much influence on corporate culture.
Given you use the word "infected", maybe you need a vaccine to immunise corporate culture to the plague of wokeness.
Well, I can only speak from personal experience, which is that my colleagues who seem most agitated about pushing diversity initiatives are the same ones who were so enthusiastically vocal about their support for Jeremy Corbyn a few years ago.
I accept that it's nothing to do with the "Labour movement" in general, and that the bafflement of old-school Labour activists at Tory obsession with this point is probably real - they simply don't see it, because it's just not there in their experience. But they can't simply abjure themselves of responsibility from the monster they've unleashed, however accidentally.
But it's not 15 years. Which is why it is strange to let it run so long.
Credit rating is normally 6 years to rebuild. Not sure precisely how that works after an IVA.
Agree on the suggestion that many were 80% LTV.
(Yes I have done it. I also at one time had to come to an arrangement with a mortgage company when my interest rate went up to 15%.)
No, you take a default/bankruptcy that stays on your record for six years from when it is discharged not when it was recorded, however more savvy lenders ask if you have ever defaulted on a mortgage (for example you get a quote for car insurance, they ask the same thing.)
My friend was bankrupted in 2009, still cannot get a mortgage despite having a near perfect credit record since then.
Remember with a bankruptcy they can take pretty much everything you own, so it causes other issues than losing just your house.
Defaulted properties very rarely go for market price, so the loss gets amplified, add on legal costs, change of locks costs, and removal of possessions from the property.
Remember in plenty of industries, including my own, employees now get credit checked as well as DBS'd, defaults, CCJs, and bankruptcies are potentially career enders.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
Not being funny but WTF is a "positive white identity" meant to be? What's that even mean?
I don't identify as white, I am white but I identify as myself. I share more in common with my politics for instance with Rishi Sunak than I do John McDonnell, so what has race or white identity got to do with it?
I agree that simply not being racist should be enough. But I'm curious why anyone would want a "white identity".
I agree. Opinium regularly asks which ethnic group I identify with any I always pick the "I don't think of myself as any of them", which I suppose they interpret as having some impossibly complex family tree. I like the story of the journalist in the 50s who was denied a visa application to the States for replying to the "Race?" question "Human".
It is sadly true that some people in Britain get poorer treatment because of their non-white skin colour, soIi understand why they might want to stress their positive identity. White people don't really need to.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
I agree with Robin DiAngelo: there is no such thing as "white identity"
And by 'identity', I mean shared history, culture and experiences. As an atheist Brit living in California, working in a tech world, I have almost nothing in common with Alabaman Baptist farm worker or a unemployed Appalachian living a town where the only factory moved out, and meth moved in.
What experiences do I share? Or history? Or religion?
The only thing I share with these people is the colour of my skin. And - of course - the same is true between many people of colour in the US. Some will be privileged, most will not be. But the idea that any two people share history or culture solely based on the colour of their skin is for the birds.
Plus, of course, the colour of my skin is the least interesting thing about me.
Now, I am painfully aware that there is definitely structural racism in the US. At traffic stops where a white policeman pulls over an African American, they are far, far, far more likely to have drawn their gun before they speak to the driver - an escalation which results in many deaths. I am fairly sure that many police departments, particularly in the South, will actively discourage African American recruits, and those that get hired are unlikely to see promotion.
These things make the lives of African Americans far harder than they need to be. There should be common ground in seeking out and eliminating racism, particularly in organisations like the police that have so much much power over peoples' lives.
These are genuine issues of racism that have terrible effects on many African Americans lives. "White identity" - and whether or not it exists - does not.
I seem to be noticing the spring chill here in east London this afternoon. Those enjoying dining with their Italian cousin, Al Fresco, would need, unless sheltered, the winter coat or some good outdoor heating.
Talk about the north - south divide. I was sitting in the garden in a T-shirt this afternoon.
So far, the County Championship this year has been brilliant, and the online streams of it an absolute godsend. Thousands of people watching every match, some really good cricket played, lots of really exciting finishes.
Credit to the ECB - for once - for the conference idea. I wasn’t sold on it to start, but I hope they keep it, because it really works and it might just be the salvation of many smaller counties.
Credit also to all the counties for the investment in streaming technology, which has really come on.
I seem to be noticing the spring chill here in east London this afternoon. Those enjoying dining with their Italian cousin, Al Fresco, would need, unless sheltered, the winter coat or some good outdoor heating.
Talk about the north - south divide. I was sitting in the garden in a T-shirt this afternoon.
I trust you were also wearing something on the nether regions? I mean, I know you northerners are famed for being hard, ummm, determination but unfortunate chafing may have been involved if not.
So far, the County Championship this year has been brilliant, and the online streams of it an absolute godsend. Thousands of people watching every match, some really good cricket played, lots of really exciting finishes.
Credit to the ECB - for once - for the conference idea. I wasn’t sold on it to start, but I hope they keep it, because it really works and it might just be the salvation of many smaller counties.
Credit also to all the counties for the investment in streaming technology, which has really come on.
Perhaps you should trust the ECB over The Hundred.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
You lost me with "positive white identity", but as you have a hatful of likes, perhaps that just demonstrates my ignorance on the matter.
From a practical point of view, I suspect that being a white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant male, more doors have been opened for me over the last (almost) sixty years than if I hadn't been a white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant male.
I was offered the opportunities, I took them. That looks and smells like "positive white identity" to me.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
Firstly, thanks for your kind words.
Maybe I should use the word Left less casually. I use it because I notice a strong correlation with those who share classically left-wing politics, and think much of this derives from cultural marxism, which is a left-wing philosophy.
My concern is that it has crept into the mainstream, I believe it is fundamentally illiberal and that is what I what to challenge without being painted as a reactionary or bigot for doing so.
So far, the County Championship this year has been brilliant, and the online streams of it an absolute godsend. Thousands of people watching every match, some really good cricket played, lots of really exciting finishes.
Credit to the ECB - for once - for the conference idea. I wasn’t sold on it to start, but I hope they keep it, because it really works and it might just be the salvation of many smaller counties.
Credit also to all the counties for the investment in streaming technology, which has really come on.
Perhaps you should trust the ECB over The Hundred.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
You do get the impression that if Casino’s straw person were taken away, the rather artificial world view that he has constructed to support his obsession would collapse.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
You lost me with "positive white identity", but as you have a hatful of likes, perhaps that just demonstrates my ignorance on the matter.
From a practical point of view, I suspect that being a white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant male, more doors have been opened for me over the last (almost) sixty years than if I hadn't been a white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant male.
I was offered the opportunities, I took them. That looks and smells like "positive white identity" to me.
I was quoting Robin DiAngelo, not myself.
I don't deny that black people still face disadvantages and discrimination. I've heard enough and seen enough evidence with my own eyes to belief this, as well as personal experiences.
However, I do not think the answer is "anti-racism", as the critical race theorists would have us do, by advancing one group over another and reintroducing racialised language and policy into all elements of our society.
I think it's talking to and listening to one another better, and changing attitudes and behaviour.
So far, the County Championship this year has been brilliant, and the online streams of it an absolute godsend. Thousands of people watching every match, some really good cricket played, lots of really exciting finishes.
Credit to the ECB - for once - for the conference idea. I wasn’t sold on it to start, but I hope they keep it, because it really works and it might just be the salvation of many smaller counties.
Credit also to all the counties for the investment in streaming technology, which has really come on.
Perhaps you should trust the ECB over The Hundred.
No, that’s still a stupid idea.
Whoever came up with the idea of The Hundred also puts pineapple on their pizzas.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
"Reactionary reductives"
He's at it again, folks.
It is a good phrase, isn't it? Conjures up exactly what it's meant to, which is not always easy to do. But "at it again" is a tad unfair. I use it sparingly. First appearance for several weeks. Don't want it going "off".
And you'll be over the moon (I'd imagine) to discover that you aren't one! The reactionary bit, yes, oh yes indeedy, but not reductive. You are not as a rule overly reductive.
Nonsense. You've rolled it out three times on me this week, twice in the 24 hours.
I've come to the conclusion you're a dogmatist. You often initiate a discussion and then, after three or four exchanges (which sometimes even go somewhere with a constructive debate) you get to a place you're uncomfortable with and then just fall back on insults like "reactionary".
This makes it far easier for you to dismiss views you'd rather not engage with, and is the sign of a weak and insecure mind that harbours a secret doubt.
So, yes, you are a dogmatist.
That's not great for me if a tolerant, open-minded poster like you has concluded that I'm a dogmatist. But on the actual point - "rolled it out 3 times this week" - no siree. "Reactionary" yes. That's common or garden. But not the more bespoke "Reactionary Reductive". First outing for ages. And as I say, you're not one. Even if you want to be, I won't allow it. So you can take the accusation back or I'll see you in court.
I don't get this. Am I supposed to pleased that you just see me as a "reactionary" rather than a "reactionary reductive" ? Can't you see why I might find that insulting?
"Reactionary" isn't a neutral term. It suggests I just reflexively and instinctively react with a "no" to any progress or reform that seeks to take our society forward and would instead prefer to take things backwards, like some mindless bigoted old fool obsessed with the past.
That's not me. I'm always thinking of the future and how we can make it better.
I just have a different take on it to you. Please don't use it again.
The irony of the Hundred of course is that it may no longer be so important to advertise cricket, which was meant to be its selling point. All first class cricket in this country is now effectively free to air., with standards actually close to the ones achieved by the Beeb in the 1990s. And a lot of it is very good.
So counties may have undercut it before it starts, either by accident or design.
Of course, it may increase engagement with county cricket and be a good thing, but given its structure that seems unlikely.
Pub-in-a-shed next door has experienced its first drunken brawl.
For some reason I did not anticipate this.
One of the other neighbours, most likely, called the police, who were round this afternoon to talk to ShedPub proprietor. Lots of note-taking. I hope he doesn't get in trouble.
Who would provide the sick pay and holiday pay for the self employed? One of the scandals of the present system is that sick pay including SSP comes out of the employer's pocket so SMEs not only have to pay out up to 6 months SSP which is not refundable but also pay to get someone else to do the work for someone off on long term sickness. Personally I would make public sector employees get only SSP like those working for small businesses. Levels of sickness in the public sector would fall dramatically. One of the biggest problems in this country today is that those making laws and governing us have never actually had to earn anything. They have either worked for big companies or in the public sector so as long as they didn't rock the boat, the salary was in the bank at the end of the month, regardless of how much or more often, how little, they did to earn it!
Today I learned that Enoch Powell was even more of a loon than I previously thought.
Speculation has developed both about whether it was not just the IRA who benefited from Mountbatten’s death and who the perpetrators might be.
In a controversial speech in Strasbourg in May 1979, Mountbatten had suggested that nuclear arms had no military purpose and questioned the growing opposition to the Salt (strategic arms limitation talks) agreement signed by the United States and the Soviet Union that year.
It has led to theories that his death might be connected to that. We can probably discount the theory of the Ulster Unionist MP Enoch Powell, who argued, citing a source in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, that the CIA were behind it as part of a plot to bring the Republic into Nato.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
You do get the impression that if Casino’s straw person were taken away, the rather artificial world view that he has constructed to support his obsession would collapse.
Another self-proclaimed liberal who fails to see the innate anti-liberalism and anti-enlightenment values at the centre of intersectionality and critical race theory.
In 20-30 years we are going to look back on ourselves and wonder what on earth we were thinking in the 2010s and 2020s and why people were so mad to go along with it, and not challenge it.
The answer is due to fools like you, who have no courage - and prefer to simply go with the orthodoxy of the day.
My only disappointment is I can’t like that post 100,000 times.
It may be wrong, but it’s still a beautiful thought.
It says Brits, where it should say English. According to the Scottish government website they haven't yet started to invite people in their 40s for first doses. [Ed: the author is 40]
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
You do get the impression that if Casino’s straw person were taken away, the rather artificial world view that he has constructed to support his obsession would collapse.
Another self-proclaimed liberal who fails to see the innate anti-liberalism and anti-enlightenment values at the centre of intersectionality and critical race theory.
In 20-30 years we are going to look back on ourselves and wonder what on earth we were thinking in the 2010s and 2020s and why people were so mad to go along with it, and not challenge it.
The answer is due to fools like you, who have no courage - and prefer to simply go with the orthodoxy of the day.
The irony of the Hundred of course is that it may no longer be so important to advertise cricket, which was meant to be its selling point. All first class cricket in this country is now effectively free to air., with standards actually close to the ones achieved by the Beeb in the 1990s. And a lot of it is very good.
So counties may have undercut it before it starts, either by accident or design.
Of course, it may increase engagement with county cricket and be a good thing, but given its structure that seems unlikely.
If players like Mark Wood and Ben Stokes were able to play some games for Durham then they might be good, but they're going to struggle to win a game this season.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
Not being funny but WTF is a "positive white identity" meant to be? What's that even mean?
I don't identify as white, I am white but I identify as myself. I share more in common with my politics for instance with Rishi Sunak than I do John McDonnell, so what has race or white identity got to do with it?
I agree that simply not being racist should be enough. But I'm curious why anyone would want a "white identity".
I agree with you but she is at pains to point out that a positive black identity does exist.
You can't have it both ways. Either you argue that you can have a racial identity, and it can be positive, or you don't.
What you can't do is argue that *some* groups can have a positive racial identity and others absolutely can't. And none of us should be taking seriously anyone who says that no white person can exist outside a system of "white supremacy".
That way all sorts of injustice and destructive policy lies that will accentuate division, not heal it.
My only disappointment is I can’t like that post 100,000 times.
It may be wrong, but it’s still a beautiful thought.
It says Brits, where it should say English. According to the Scottish government website they haven't yet started to invite people in their 40s for first doses. [Ed: the author is 40]
To be strictly accurate, they do mean Brits, but specifically those Brits living in England. I’m Welsh, not English. But as I live in England I would still be eligible.
As for Sturgeon fucking it all up again, well, where have we heard that before?
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
It is a very farfetched argument.
My mortgage went back to standard rate after the discount period and I demand the government bail me out
Hold on though - isn’t the government the reason they can’t move off the STV?
Which makes it a little different.
I had not looked into the unsecured loan element. However, that Vox Pop was complaining about gong back to SVR.
However, I don't see why the Govt are really stopping them moving off - somewhat tighter regulations aside.
And somewhat tighter regulations was what were being campaigned for to tighten the market for a number of years.
12-15 years is plenty of time to rebuild a credit rating. As pointed out it is time to walk away from debt and start from scratch, and this county is very lenient about walking away from debt.
Not everyone at Northern Rock had a 125% mortgage, plenty of them had LTVs at below below 80%.
Think about it, you took out a mortgage in 2006 at the age of 26, you're now 41, default/bankrupt now and by your timeline they should be ok to apply for a new mortgage when they are 56, they are most unlikely to get a mortgage at that age.
Ultimately they took out a mortgage from a FSA/Government approved lender at the time people were encouraged to move providers once their initial deals had expired.
Right now they will be loosing tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds if they walk away from their mortgage.
They don't need bailing out, they need the government to correct the error of selling their mortgages to someone who only does SVR.
LTV at 80% in 2006 should be LTV of 55% in 2021, even with interest-only loans.
If LTV was over 100% and they've not repaid any capital in fifteen years, then its difficult to see why this is not their responsibility.
Not necessarily. The 45% rise in house prices since 2008 is not even around the country. Higher than that in the SE, and pretty flat around much of the North and Midlands.
While that is tough on mortgage holders it does make for more affordable houses for purchasers.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
Not being funny but WTF is a "positive white identity" meant to be? What's that even mean?
I don't identify as white, I am white but I identify as myself. I share more in common with my politics for instance with Rishi Sunak than I do John McDonnell, so what has race or white identity got to do with it?
I agree that simply not being racist should be enough. But I'm curious why anyone would want a "white identity".
Well you identify as yourself except for when you identify as Mother. 😨
More seriously, you touch on a crux point. You don’t id as white because there's no need to. Nor do I. It's the default. The master key.
This is White Privilege. And White Fragility is a term for how some seem to crumble at the thought. Simply cannot handle it being discussed in this way for some reason.
For me it's an interesting way of looking at things. That's what this "superwokery" is all about imo. That's what I get from it. Some insights that are worth thinking about and can aid understanding.
And no more than that. It doesn't explain the whole of race relations or lead to the promised land. But I do think people short change themselves if they just reject it out of hand cos it sounds all wonky and difficult and not what Proper Blokes should be concerning themselves with.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
You do get the impression that if Casino’s straw person were taken away, the rather artificial world view that he has constructed to support his obsession would collapse.
Another self-proclaimed liberal who fails to see the innate anti-liberalism and anti-enlightenment values at the centre of intersectionality and critical race theory.
In 20-30 years we are going to look back on ourselves and wonder what on earth we were thinking in the 2010s and 2020s and why people were so mad to go along with it, and not challenge it.
The answer is due to fools like you, who have no courage - and prefer to simply go with the orthodoxy of the day.
You inspire in me nothing but a shallow contempt.
The recent curates egg of the Sewell report, blames much Black disadvantage on social class rather than race per se. While there are respectable critiques of this, essentially the Government commissioned a report concluding that intersectionality is a major cause of social injustice. Interestingly, while refusing to accept the term "Institutional Racism" the recommendations nearly all try to tackle it.
I think you are obsessed by the jargon. The underlying issues are nearly universally agreed. For example earlier you said:
"I think it's talking to and listening to one another better, and changing attitudes and behaviour."
Which is a pretty reasonable summary of what the term "anti-racism" means.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
It is a very farfetched argument.
My mortgage went back to standard rate after the discount period and I demand the government bail me out
Don't we need to know what the standard rate is before we can decide if they're being exploited or not ?
Currently/recently 9% for some, 5% for plenty of them.
Unless there are special circumstances the 9% is clearly exploitative and given the current base rate the 5% likely is as well.
Just for you, Osborne sold the mortgage book to an unregulated lender, who can do what they like.
n 2014, the Treasury cast aside those concerns and sold a book of 270,000 Northern Rock mortgages in NRAM, amounting to £13.5bn of outstanding home loans, to US private equity firm Cerberus, a sprawling guns-to-finance conglomerate owned by Trump-supporting billionaire Steve Feinberg.
It was the biggest privatisation in UK history. The taxpayer received just £5.5bn in cash.
Because Cerberus did not offer new loans, borrowers such as Vanessa, who could not switch lenders, also could not access cheaper deals with their existing lender.
As a consequence, they had no choice but to pay standard variable interest rates costing substantially more than the market rate.
Because many mortgage prisoners have now been paying those elevated rates for more than a decade, the additional cost runs into tens of thousand of pounds.
A mortgage prisoner with an average mortgage of £165,000 has overpaid in interest between £25,000 and £45,000 over the past decade, according to a report by the UK Mortgage Prisoners action group.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
"Reactionary reductives"
He's at it again, folks.
It is a good phrase, isn't it? Conjures up exactly what it's meant to, which is not always easy to do. But "at it again" is a tad unfair. I use it sparingly. First appearance for several weeks. Don't want it going "off".
And you'll be over the moon (I'd imagine) to discover that you aren't one! The reactionary bit, yes, oh yes indeedy, but not reductive. You are not as a rule overly reductive.
Nonsense. You've rolled it out three times on me this week, twice in the 24 hours.
I've come to the conclusion you're a dogmatist. You often initiate a discussion and then, after three or four exchanges (which sometimes even go somewhere with a constructive debate) you get to a place you're uncomfortable with and then just fall back on insults like "reactionary".
This makes it far easier for you to dismiss views you'd rather not engage with, and is the sign of a weak and insecure mind that harbours a secret doubt.
So, yes, you are a dogmatist.
That's not great for me if a tolerant, open-minded poster like you has concluded that I'm a dogmatist. But on the actual point - "rolled it out 3 times this week" - no siree. "Reactionary" yes. That's common or garden. But not the more bespoke "Reactionary Reductive". First outing for ages. And as I say, you're not one. Even if you want to be, I won't allow it. So you can take the accusation back or I'll see you in court.
I don't get this. Am I supposed to pleased that you just see me as a "reactionary" rather than a "reactionary reductive" ? Can't you see why I might find that insulting?
"Reactionary" isn't a neutral term. It suggests I just reflexively and instinctively react with a "no" to any progress or reform that seeks to take our society forward and would instead prefer to take things backwards, like some mindless bigoted old fool obsessed with the past.
That's not me. I'm always thinking of the future and how we can make it better.
I just have a different take on it to you. Please don't use it again.
It's much better to be a vanilla reactionary than a reactionary reductive. Reactionary is not an insult but reductive rather is.
Can't promise to never again use it re you and your output but will bear your comments in mind. Not here to cause bad vibes. Here to win hearts & minds.
Incidentally, I came across this Implicit Bias study by Harvard. It is American, so some of the issues are a bit odd to a British eye "guns vs harmless objects" for example.
"Brits in their 30s 'will be invited for Covid jabs within days' with officials ‘close to agreeing deal for 40million Pfizer jabs
People in their 30s will start to be invited for vaccines by the end of this week Britain is finalising a deal to buy 40million more Pfizer jabs for autumn booster Officials are debating whether to use AstraZeneca jabs on people aged 30 to 39"
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
Not being funny but WTF is a "positive white identity" meant to be? What's that even mean?
I don't identify as white, I am white but I identify as myself. I share more in common with my politics for instance with Rishi Sunak than I do John McDonnell, so what has race or white identity got to do with it?
I agree that simply not being racist should be enough. But I'm curious why anyone would want a "white identity".
Well you identify as yourself except for when you identify as Mother. 😨
More seriously, you touch on a crux point. You don’t id as white because there's no need to. Nor do I. It's the default. The master key.
This is White Privilege. And White Fragility is a term for how some seem to crumble at the thought. Simply cannot handle it being discussed in this way for some reason.
For me it's an interesting way of looking at things. That's what this "superwokery" is all about imo. That's what I get from it. Some insights that are worth thinking about and can aid understanding.
And no more than that. It doesn't explain the whole of race relations or lead to the promised land. But I do think people short change themselves if they just reject it out of hand cos it sounds all wonky and difficult and not what Proper Blokes should be concerning themselves with.
"some insights" won't be enough to stop you being cancelled or branded a racist I'm afraid.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
It is a very farfetched argument.
My mortgage went back to standard rate after the discount period and I demand the government bail me out
Don't we need to know what the standard rate is before we can decide if they're being exploited or not ?
Currently/recently 9% for some, 5% for plenty of them.
Unless there are special circumstances the 9% is clearly exploitative and given the current base rate the 5% likely is as well.
Just for you, Osborne sold the mortgage book to an unregulated lender, who can do what they like.
n 2014, the Treasury cast aside those concerns and sold a book of 270,000 Northern Rock mortgages in NRAM, amounting to £13.5bn of outstanding home loans, to US private equity firm Cerberus, a sprawling guns-to-finance conglomerate owned by Trump-supporting billionaire Steve Feinberg.
It was the biggest privatisation in UK history. The taxpayer received just £5.5bn in cash.
Because Cerberus did not offer new loans, borrowers such as Vanessa, who could not switch lenders, also could not access cheaper deals with their existing lender.
As a consequence, they had no choice but to pay standard variable interest rates costing substantially more than the market rate.
Because many mortgage prisoners have now been paying those elevated rates for more than a decade, the additional cost runs into tens of thousand of pounds.
A mortgage prisoner with an average mortgage of £165,000 has overpaid in interest between £25,000 and £45,000 over the past decade, according to a report by the UK Mortgage Prisoners action group.
I don’t understand why these people don’t just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their houses. Or be forced to.
I don’t own a house and don’t expect my taxes to underwrite other peoples bad investments.
They have my sympathy, but that’s all. The housing market is supposed to be a free market. We shouldn’t bail out those who made bad bets.
It is a very farfetched argument.
My mortgage went back to standard rate after the discount period and I demand the government bail me out
Don't we need to know what the standard rate is before we can decide if they're being exploited or not ?
Currently/recently 9% for some, 5% for plenty of them.
Unless there are special circumstances the 9% is clearly exploitative and given the current base rate the 5% likely is as well.
Just for you, Osborne sold the mortgage book to an unregulated lender, who can do what they like.
n 2014, the Treasury cast aside those concerns and sold a book of 270,000 Northern Rock mortgages in NRAM, amounting to £13.5bn of outstanding home loans, to US private equity firm Cerberus, a sprawling guns-to-finance conglomerate owned by Trump-supporting billionaire Steve Feinberg.
It was the biggest privatisation in UK history. The taxpayer received just £5.5bn in cash.
Because Cerberus did not offer new loans, borrowers such as Vanessa, who could not switch lenders, also could not access cheaper deals with their existing lender.
As a consequence, they had no choice but to pay standard variable interest rates costing substantially more than the market rate.
Because many mortgage prisoners have now been paying those elevated rates for more than a decade, the additional cost runs into tens of thousand of pounds.
A mortgage prisoner with an average mortgage of £165,000 has overpaid in interest between £25,000 and £45,000 over the past decade, according to a report by the UK Mortgage Prisoners action group.
All of this wokery generally just passes me by. I suspect that this is the case for the vast majority of people. Only a small number get worked up on either side of the debate.
However, what does get me miffed is when leading figures in the Labour Party devote time, energy and air time to this stuff. There is a big opportunity cost from forsaking the chance to focus on something that matters to the majority of voters.
So when I see Lisa Nandy tying herself in knots over trans athletes or something similar I just despair.
On topic, workers' rights. Hell, yes. There's something for Labour to get their teeth into.
As the usual bunch of PB tory partisans and reactionary reductives - who I love but, gosh, it can be trying - witter on in their distinctive way about Labour these days being all about 'wokery' and giving zero fucks about bread & butter issues such as exploited gig economy workers, it should be noted that the party under Corbyn had this exact thing front and centre, and put forward ideas which overlap and complement this header of David's quite nicely.
Indeed, one could argue the fact we have these issues after more than a decade of Conservative-led Government suggest that Party is entirely devoid of any ideas in that area.
If there was really a culture war and the left wing was taking over our institutions, you wonder why the Government of 10 years - the Tory one? - has done nothing about it.
As I have said many, many times. The culture war is fiction, these are non-issues.
The Government has started doing something about it, but only in the last 2-3 years.
Up until 2014-15 Conservatives largely ignored left-wing infiltration of educational and cultural institutions because its energies were focused elsewhere, largely in economic and foreign policy.
Reds under the bed! You are the ghost of Joe McCarthy and I claim my £5.
God help us!
Your failure to recognise the problem (and you are not alone with many of your left-wing fellow travellers here) is just a sign of how all pervasive and dominant the current orthodoxy has become that makes absolutely everything about race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality thereof. It is setting group against group in a victim and oppresser hierarchy, coupled with as assumption that we all carry and must pay for historical guilt, and is fundamentally illiberal in the way it deals with real people.
It is only a matter of time before this comes crashing down through the weight of its own contradictions but it has advanced so far through our society it now needs national political opposition to be rolled back. In the meantime, the wailing will be off the scale, together with cries of "culture war", because this toxic ideology dares to be challenged.
You're quite interesting, though a bit repetitive, on all of this.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
You do get the impression that if Casino’s straw person were taken away, the rather artificial world view that he has constructed to support his obsession would collapse.
Another self-proclaimed liberal who fails to see the innate anti-liberalism and anti-enlightenment values at the centre of intersectionality and critical race theory.
In 20-30 years we are going to look back on ourselves and wonder what on earth we were thinking in the 2010s and 2020s and why people were so mad to go along with it, and not challenge it.
The answer is due to fools like you, who have no courage - and prefer to simply go with the orthodoxy of the day.
You inspire in me nothing but a shallow contempt.
The recent curates egg of the Sewell report, blames much Black disadvantage on social class rather than race per se. While there are respectable critiques of this, essentially the Government commissioned a report concluding that intersectionality is a major cause of social injustice. Interestingly, while refusing to accept the term "Institutional Racism" the recommendations nearly all try to tackle it.
I think you are obsessed by the jargon. The underlying issues are nearly universally agreed. For example earlier you said:
"I think it's talking to and listening to one another better, and changing attitudes and behaviour."
Which is a pretty reasonable summary of what the term "anti-racism" means.
I agree there is often a bridling against terms that are considered wonky left. Eg from yesterday, the Patriarchy. Also neoliberalism. Islamophobia. White privilege. Lived experience. Your truth. Transphobia. Homophobia. Fact "phobia" is a trigger generally. One could go on.
Sometimes this is because of anti intellectualism. And sometimes - yes - it is about calling out pretentious tosh.
I've realized that if I want to genuinely try and reach somebody on the right of politics I'm best off dropping all that stuff and talking brass tacks. OTOH if the goal is provocation and intimidation, that language hits the spot.
@Mexicanpete Annoyingly, I wrote a long post in response to yours and then accidentally deleted it when editing it!
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
Not being funny but WTF is a "positive white identity" meant to be? What's that even mean?
I don't identify as white, I am white but I identify as myself. I share more in common with my politics for instance with Rishi Sunak than I do John McDonnell, so what has race or white identity got to do with it?
I agree that simply not being racist should be enough. But I'm curious why anyone would want a "white identity".
Well you identify as yourself except for when you identify as Mother. 😨
More seriously, you touch on a crux point. You don’t id as white because there's no need to. Nor do I. It's the default. The master key.
This is White Privilege. And White Fragility is a term for how some seem to crumble at the thought. Simply cannot handle it being discussed in this way for some reason.
For me it's an interesting way of looking at things. That's what this "superwokery" is all about imo. That's what I get from it. Some insights that are worth thinking about and can aid understanding.
And no more than that. It doesn't explain the whole of race relations or lead to the promised land. But I do think people short change themselves if they just reject it out of hand cos it sounds all wonky and difficult and not what Proper Blokes should be concerning themselves with.
Nah, I don't identify as white not because its the default, but rather because not being a racist I don't find my skin colour remotely interesting.
I have black hair, does that mean I should have black identity? For my hair colour? Or would you think that is silly?
The key to ending racism is to not think about race at all, to be colourblind, not to make race the be all and end all identity.
This may mark me out as an idiot but any Independent Financial Adviser who advised anyone to take a Interest Only Mortgage for a non-commerical purchase (i.e. where the ability to 'walk away' doesn't exist for the purchaser as it is their home) where the Fixed Term of the interest rate wasn't fixed for the life of the mortgage is an absolute wanker.
That is just asking for trouble. I have limited sympathy for people taking on interest only mortgages who didn't also have a solid plan for capital repayment given the huge publicity of the disaster of endowment mortgages but if they were advised by an IFA then that's just not on.
Comments
(Nuclear plants or other polluting industry would not fall under the preset building restrictions that can avoid the planning requirement)
Which makes it a little different.
Hailo launched in the UK in 2011, and I thought "wow! somebody should do this for minicabs too. they already have radios in, if you gave cheap android phones, you could do Hailo for mini cabs." And then I trailed around half a dozen firms in North London - places with 50 to 150 drivers.
And I pitched that we could create them a software plaftorm (an app) that would mean that drivers would be able to be automatically routed, that could automatically select the nearest driver to go to a job, and which (in the future!) would allow passengers to book directly through their special Swiss Cottage Cars app or the web.
My model was simple - we'd supply the app and the technology, they'd pay 50k per year per firm, plus 1% of the total value of rides throuh the system. They'd be up 100-250k in the first year.
I got no takers. Not even a smidgen of interest.
And then 18 months later Uber launched and killed all the mini cab busineses.
Hants will chase if they can get this last wicket.
Also Warwickshire about to beat Essex after a fine run chase.
A report for the leftwing group Another Europe is Possible and separate research by the non-aligned, internationalist Best for Britain organisation both strongly support the case for more active engagement with the EU to improve the deal and rebuild relations with member states.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/25/labour-group-urges-keir-starmer-to-back-better-brexit-deal
Well, apart from today, obviously.
But you're definitely much more interested in all of this than anybody I've ever met on the left, most of whom don't even know intersectionality when it hits them. Nor is the left particularly obsessed with the transgender issue, other than to the extent that transphobia is bad. Just as with the centre/right, the rest of the transgender stuff is complex and compromise is needed.
Are you sure you're not making the error of mistaking fringe groups/individuals for 'the left'? In the circles I move in, being left means seeking a fairer society without injustice, ensuring people can make a decent living and have pride/dignity at work, better health/education/housing etc., and a more progressive tax system (income and wealth) to pay for it.
Although this forum is obviously not typical, on here the only commentators obsessed with 'wokeness' etc. seem to be on the right.
Unsecured Personal loan was something like 11%.
If the house is sold and the sale does not cover the secured element, what is left jumps to an unsecured rate.
More or less.
A lot got caught by the look of it by having gone high risk, and then houses stopped spiralling in value.
But, this has influenced a lot of people in the soft centre/centre left.
Take how Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, has put it: ‘a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.'
When racism is viewed in this way, it cannot be challenged through individual white people not being racist; instead, white people must be actively anti-racist. Anti-racism starts with white people acknowledging their own racism and battling the fragility prompted by
threats to their privilege. From here, white people must probe deep into their psyches to root out unconscious
bias before finally, in seeking to build the world anew, thinking carefully about the new reality constructed with
each word uttered.
Critical race theorists have reinvented
racism. Only this time around, it is not black people that are considered a problem, but white people.
How is that liberal? Or in accordance with the values of the enlightenment?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56859091
I got this to my iPhone and thankfully Virgin wouldn't let me click through to it (I'm expecting a delivery).
1. They treat their drivers a hell of a lot better than Addison Lee used to. AL used to require drivers to lease and insure their vehicles through AL. And so, although they were self employed, they needed to work 60-70 hours a week just to get through their obligations to the company. Almost no-one who worked for AL got to minimum wage without tips.
2. Most Uber drivers jumped ship from minicab companies, and their life was pretty much identical, it was them in their car, being told where to do pickups. The exception was that (a) Uber took a much smaller cut, and (b) they got surge pricing from time-to-time. I really struggle with why an Uber driver is an employee, but a Swiss Cottage Cars one is not, given the nature and structure of the work is identical.
However, I don't see why the Govt are really stopping them moving off - somewhat tighter regulations aside.
And somewhat tighter regulations was what were being campaigned for to tighten the market for a number of years.
12-15 years is plenty of time to rebuild a credit rating. As pointed out it is time to walk away from debt and start from scratch, and this county is very lenient about walking away from debt.
People keep acting as if Quantitative Easing or low interest rates have caused high house prices when it isn't true, the fact is that house prices peaked in 2007 and its only essentially been inflation since then not spiralling house prices.
A home bought in 2006 will have increased in value by about 45% in the following fifteen years. Which is basically inflation.
In comparison a house bought in 1991 would have more tripled in price by 2006.
(Source: Nationwide House Price Index)
There is an agenda that is being set out of fear of being the victim of a Twitter pile-on, driven by mostly well-meaning individuals and supported by those who either simplistically assume that the motives seem to be positive, or who are too scared of the consequences to speak out. If the objective was actually - as stated - to create a more inclusive environment for everyone to feel more comfortable in, then I don't think anyone would object. But, it is becoming clear that current policies are much more about advancing a political agenda than actually making life better for individuals.
I don't identify as white, I am white but I identify as myself. I share more in common with my politics for instance with Rishi Sunak than I do John McDonnell, so what has race or white identity got to do with it?
I agree that simply not being racist should be enough. But I'm curious why anyone would want a "white identity".
Think about it, you took out a mortgage in 2006 at the age of 26, you're now 41, default/bankrupt now and by your timeline they should be ok to apply for a new mortgage when they are 56, they are most unlikely to get a mortgage at that age.
Ultimately they took out a mortgage from a FSA/Government approved lender at the time people were encouraged to move providers once their initial deals had expired.
Right now they will be losing tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds if they walk away from their mortgage.
They don't need bailing out, they need the government to correct the error of selling their mortgages to someone who only does SVR.
And some police really are corrupt, especially if we include noble cause corruption. And for all that we venerate trial by jury, miscarriages of justice invariably include a jury which returned the wrong verdict, yet psychologists are forbidden from researching jury behaviour.
Instead, they’ve been financial zombies ever since 2008.
Osborne didn’t want to be the cnut who bankrupted them, so he took the balance sheet hit and sold their loans on to the sharks.
In a more sane world, NR wouldn’t have been bailed out - and these people would have been forced into bankruptcy in 2009/10. Their lives would probably be back to normal by now, without the outrageous mortgage/loan around their necks.
If LTV was over 100% and they've not repaid any capital in fifteen years, then its difficult to see why this is not their responsibility.
If it had been the other way around, things would have been much more manageable.
Given you use the word "infected", maybe you need a vaccine to immunise corporate culture to the plague of wokeness.
But it's not 15 years.
Credit rating is normally 6 years to rebuild. Not sure precisely how that works after an IVA. It is strange to let it run so long.
Agree on the suggestion that many were 80% LTV.
(Yes I have done it. I also at one time had to come to an arrangement with a mortgage company when my interest rate went up to 15%. )
But it can be useful as confirmation - cf. again the Hanratty case.
I accept that it's nothing to do with the "Labour movement" in general, and that the bafflement of old-school Labour activists at Tory obsession with this point is probably real - they simply don't see it, because it's just not there in their experience. But they can't simply abjure themselves of responsibility from the monster they've unleashed, however accidentally.
My friend was bankrupted in 2009, still cannot get a mortgage despite having a near perfect credit record since then.
Remember with a bankruptcy they can take pretty much everything you own, so it causes other issues than losing just your house.
Defaulted properties very rarely go for market price, so the loss gets amplified, add on legal costs, change of locks costs, and removal of possessions from the property.
Remember in plenty of industries, including my own, employees now get credit checked as well as DBS'd, defaults, CCJs, and bankruptcies are potentially career enders.
Ditto CIFAS markers.
It is sadly true that some people in Britain get poorer treatment because of their non-white skin colour, soIi understand why they might want to stress their positive identity. White people don't really need to.
And by 'identity', I mean shared history, culture and experiences. As an atheist Brit living in California, working in a tech world, I have almost nothing in common with Alabaman Baptist farm worker or a unemployed Appalachian living a town where the only factory moved out, and meth moved in.
What experiences do I share? Or history? Or religion?
The only thing I share with these people is the colour of my skin. And - of course - the same is true between many people of colour in the US. Some will be privileged, most will not be. But the idea that any two people share history or culture solely based on the colour of their skin is for the birds.
Plus, of course, the colour of my skin is the least interesting thing about me.
Now, I am painfully aware that there is definitely structural racism in the US. At traffic stops where a white policeman pulls over an African American, they are far, far, far more likely to have drawn their gun before they speak to the driver - an escalation which results in many deaths. I am fairly sure that many police departments, particularly in the South, will actively discourage African American recruits, and those that get hired are unlikely to see promotion.
These things make the lives of African Americans far harder than they need to be. There should be common ground in seeking out and eliminating racism, particularly in organisations like the police that have so much much power over peoples' lives.
These are genuine issues of racism that have terrible effects on many African Americans lives. "White identity" - and whether or not it exists - does not.
Credit to the ECB - for once - for the conference idea. I wasn’t sold on it to start, but I hope they keep it, because it really works and it might just be the salvation of many smaller counties.
Credit also to all the counties for the investment in streaming technology, which has really come on.
From a practical point of view, I suspect that being a white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant male, more doors have been opened for me over the last (almost) sixty years than if I hadn't been a white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant male.
I was offered the opportunities, I took them. That looks and smells like "positive white identity" to me.
Maybe I should use the word Left less casually. I use it because I notice a strong correlation with those who share classically left-wing politics, and think much of this derives from cultural marxism, which is a left-wing philosophy.
My concern is that it has crept into the mainstream, I believe it is fundamentally illiberal and that is what I what to challenge without being painted as a reactionary or bigot for doing so.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9509569/Brits-30s-invited-Covid-vaccinations-days.html
I don't deny that black people still face disadvantages and discrimination. I've heard enough and seen enough evidence with my own eyes to belief this, as well as personal experiences.
However, I do not think the answer is "anti-racism", as the critical race theorists would have us do, by advancing one group over another and reintroducing racialised language and policy into all elements of our society.
I think it's talking to and listening to one another better, and changing attitudes and behaviour.
It may be wrong, but it’s still a beautiful thought.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-9452947/Mortgage-prisoners-homeowners-paying-9-interest.html#article-9452947
With respect to the people in the examples, they really can’t afford the homes they’re living in.
A bailout would be deeply unfair to the rest of us.
The program you outline would also be good policy, strategy AND morality for Democratic Party in the US as for the Labour Party in the UK.
"Reactionary" isn't a neutral term. It suggests I just reflexively and instinctively react with a "no" to any progress or reform that seeks to take our society forward and would instead prefer to take things backwards, like some mindless bigoted old fool obsessed with the past.
That's not me. I'm always thinking of the future and how we can make it better.
I just have a different take on it to you. Please don't use it again.
So counties may have undercut it before it starts, either by accident or design.
Of course, it may increase engagement with county cricket and be a good thing, but given its structure that seems unlikely.
Speculation has developed both about whether it was not just the IRA who benefited from Mountbatten’s death and who the perpetrators might be.
In a controversial speech in Strasbourg in May 1979, Mountbatten had suggested that nuclear arms had no military purpose and questioned the growing opposition to the Salt (strategic arms limitation talks) agreement signed by the United States and the Soviet Union that year.
It has led to theories that his death might be connected to that. We can probably discount the theory of the Ulster Unionist MP Enoch Powell, who argued, citing a source in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, that the CIA were behind it as part of a plot to bring the Republic into Nato.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/who-killed-mountbatten-8p9fkxrlx
In 20-30 years we are going to look back on ourselves and wonder what on earth we were thinking in the 2010s and 2020s and why people were so mad to go along with it, and not challenge it.
The answer is due to fools like you, who have no courage - and prefer to simply go with the orthodoxy of the day.
You inspire in me nothing but a shallow contempt.
That house is worth, what, 2m now? 2.5m?
Perhaps Sam should indeed sell up.
You can't have it both ways. Either you argue that you can have a racial identity, and it can be positive, or you don't.
What you can't do is argue that *some* groups can have a positive racial identity and others absolutely can't. And none of us should be taking seriously anyone who says that no white person can exist outside a system of "white supremacy".
That way all sorts of injustice and destructive policy lies that will accentuate division, not heal it.
As for Sturgeon fucking it all up again, well, where have we heard that before?
Martin Lewis is quite wrong about this.
These people bought houses they couldn’t/can’t afford. There has to be a consequence to that.
If these people get bailed out, where’s the bail out for the rest of us who don’t own houses?
Apologies for spamming the site with this issue. It just gets me quite angry. Especially the lack of serious journalism.
The treasury is absolutely right to put their foot down. These people should not be bailed out.
It doesn't.
Are you a Daily Mail journalist?
While that is tough on mortgage holders it does make for more affordable houses for purchasers.
More seriously, you touch on a crux point. You don’t id as white because there's no need to. Nor do I. It's the default. The master key.
This is White Privilege. And White Fragility is a term for how some seem to crumble at the thought. Simply cannot handle it being discussed in this way for some reason.
For me it's an interesting way of looking at things. That's what this "superwokery" is all about imo. That's what I get from it. Some insights that are worth thinking about and can aid understanding.
And no more than that. It doesn't explain the whole of race relations or lead to the promised land. But I do think people short change themselves if they just reject it out of hand cos it sounds all wonky and difficult and not what Proper Blokes should be concerning themselves with.
I think you are obsessed by the jargon. The underlying issues are nearly universally agreed. For example earlier you said:
"I think it's talking to and listening to one another better, and changing attitudes and behaviour."
Which is a pretty reasonable summary of what the term "anti-racism" means.
n 2014, the Treasury cast aside those concerns and sold a book of 270,000 Northern Rock mortgages in NRAM, amounting to £13.5bn of outstanding home loans, to US private equity firm Cerberus, a sprawling guns-to-finance conglomerate owned by Trump-supporting billionaire Steve Feinberg.
It was the biggest privatisation in UK history. The taxpayer received just £5.5bn in cash.
Because Cerberus did not offer new loans, borrowers such as Vanessa, who could not switch lenders, also could not access cheaper deals with their existing lender.
As a consequence, they had no choice but to pay standard variable interest rates costing substantially more than the market rate.
Because many mortgage prisoners have now been paying those elevated rates for more than a decade, the additional cost runs into tens of thousand of pounds.
A mortgage prisoner with an average mortgage of £165,000 has overpaid in interest between £25,000 and £45,000 over the past decade, according to a report by the UK Mortgage Prisoners action group.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56878795
Can't promise to never again use it re you and your output but will bear your comments in mind. Not here to cause bad vibes. Here to win hearts & minds.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatouchtest.html
I came out as mildly Transphobic and with a mild preference for Christianity over Judaism. I think both are probably correct.
It is worth having a go.
People in their 30s will start to be invited for vaccines by the end of this week
Britain is finalising a deal to buy 40million more Pfizer jabs for autumn booster
Officials are debating whether to use AstraZeneca jabs on people aged 30 to 39"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9509569/Brits-30s-invited-Covid-vaccinations-days.html
Particularly as the government had all these mortgages as a result of the wild behaviour of Northern Rock to begin with.
https://blogsmedia.lse.ac.uk/blogs.dir/119/files/2020/11/Releasing-the-Mortgage-Prisoners.pdf
(Funded by Martin Lewis)
Former aide will draw on dossier of emails"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dominic-cummings-to-blame-boris-johnson-for-covid-death-toll-kwr6zn3xv
However, what does get me miffed is when leading figures in the Labour Party devote time, energy and air time to this stuff. There is a big opportunity cost from forsaking the chance to focus on something that matters to the majority of voters.
So when I see Lisa Nandy tying herself in knots over trans athletes or something similar I just despair.
On topic, workers' rights. Hell, yes. There's something for Labour to get their teeth into.
Sometimes this is because of anti intellectualism. And sometimes - yes - it is about calling out pretentious tosh.
I've realized that if I want to genuinely try and reach somebody on the right of politics I'm best off dropping all that stuff and talking brass tacks. OTOH if the goal is provocation and
intimidation, that language hits the spot.
I have black hair, does that mean I should have black identity? For my hair colour? Or would you think that is silly?
The key to ending racism is to not think about race at all, to be colourblind, not to make race the be all and end all identity.
That is just asking for trouble. I have limited sympathy for people taking on interest only mortgages who didn't also have a solid plan for capital repayment given the huge publicity of the disaster of endowment mortgages but if they were advised by an IFA then that's just not on.
The Daily Heil will be wall to wall "Boris killed my granny" and that will be him done.
Rachel Johnson invited me on her @LBC show this evening to answer questions about sleaze.
So I turned the tables and asked her... just how lavish is the lavish redecoration of No11 https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1386397709603590148/video/1
VoldemortMandelson had to resign over an undeclared loan to do with his house. Will be funny if Johnson gets done for the same thing.