I do not see how Putin can possibly succeed with a full-scale invasion of the Ukraine. It will be a limited incursion based on some kind of spurious invitation from ethnic Russian areas that have declared independence. The question then is how far the West's response will go. Anything that is less than hugely punitive and immediately consequential for those whose support Putin requires to remain in charge means he will end up getting what he wants.
I think that is right, but he will take a bit more than the Russian areas -- probably most of the Eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine will lose less territory if it accepted that its present boundaries are unsupportable.
It will lose more if it comes to a war.
If Wales ever achieves independence, will you be similarly insouciant about the 'English' areas of the country ?
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
Didn't you advocate car drivers running over peaceful Insulate Britain protesters?
Yes, but there is an important distinction. Left wing environmentalists should have new laws to criminalise their behaviour and be banged up in the nick, right wing QAnon anti-vaxxers should be indulged and listened to.
What is happening in Canada is deeply sinister and concerning. Many of the protesters are neither Qanon nor anti vax.
As for the U.K. I never got what the govt was doing. There are already laws in place they could use against illegal protest. Why they needed further, more extreme, measures should concern us all.
If they were Qanon or anti vax why should that make a difference?
Nah. He just doesn't want to take the vaccine. Doesn't make him an Anti-Vaxxer. He wants sovereignty, to coin a well used PB term, over his body.
So how does he stop breathing in viruses ? Daft sod.
He has decided that he prefers to breathe in the virus than inject himself with a vaccine that is less than 24 months old.
Presumably, the three year old virus is sufficiently mature.
Will he therefore be ok with the vaccine in another year?
Well you'd have to ask him. Most of the vaccines that everyone takes are mature. How many years does it take to become mature? Personally I might say 20 years or so. I had this thought when it came to laser eye surgery. My eyesight is not quite bad enough to justify it but I am old enough to remember when it was a new thing and thinking that I wanted to wait until the procedure was more mature before I considered it. I believe it probably is now (although my eyesight has remained unchanged).
Of course for vulnerable groups the risk profile changes dramatically. But Djoko I don't think in any sense qualifies as a vulnerable person so I can perfectly well understand his reticence.
And as for the novelty of the virus, he had time to see what effects it appeared (in the short term!) to have and decided that on balance he would prefer to take his chances.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
Most people inheriting from their parents are splitting it with siblings. Even those "lucky" enough to have something to inherit are not inheriting a whole property.
Lots of people don't inherit property from their parents at all...
Indeed. And those that do are inheriting these days in their mid to late 60s. Not exactly what people have in mind when you say "younger generations".
Yes we have had this argument before with @HYUFD. I'm 67 and still waiting to inherit. I might get nothing if my father needs it to pay for a home. If he doesn't need to do that it will be split with my sister which halves it. Having got to 67 I have paid off my mortgage and what I will inherit from his home is 1/10 of the value of my own home.
So none of this can be considered a transfer of property by parents to their children. At best I will inherit some money that I don't need. 40 years ago it would have been useful, but now not so much. Don't know where HYUFD gets his ideas about youngster inheriting property from their parents from. In most cases an inherited house is sold and the money split by 60+ year old children.
In the Home Counties certainly many if not most now get parental assistance with deposits in their 30s
Most will see their parents die by their mid 50s not mid 60s on average life expectancy and thus inherit too
Well that is utter nonsense because we have been here before and I went to the ONS data at the time and did the calculations. Firstly you have to live long enough to have children. Assume that is about 30. Your life expectancy at 30 is significantly higher than at birth. Then of course both parents have to die before you inherit. So l remember looking up and doing the calc for the age at death of the oldest of two individuals still alive at 30. On average that age is 95. That gives the average age of inheritance at 65.
You have used life expectancy of one individual and from birth. 5 year olds don't have children.
Re parental help with property - can you verify that stat? I know nobody that has.
@maxseddon·15mIf this really is the end of the war scare – and that's still a very big if at this point – both sides can declare victory. The US can say its warnings stopped the worst fighting in Europe since World War II, and Russia can say this was all down to American hysteria
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
I grant you it seems very unlikely, but if Putin reads only half of the obscure stuff you do it's possible. For all we know he may take an interest in UFOs and Woke and be a huge fan of yours.
Putin has released quite a bit of the USSR’s Ufo files. Some interesting stuff in there but everyone ignores it because Russia innit. He is also of course on the extreme end of anti woke, getting his heavies to smash skulls at lgbt rallies.
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
Insufficient forces to risk a full-scale invasion. Putin is not that stupid. Russian military might is exaggerated.
I suspect him of gaming this for other gains, one of which is an assurance that Ukraine never joins NATO, which frankly I can understand from Russia's point of view.
NATO could do with sorting out its global priorities but then so could world leaders.
What he has achieved is that Ukraine will de-facto be a part of NATO planning. Just as Finland isn't in NATO. No sir. Totally neutral. But in fact, everything bar the signature on the treaty.
Everyone in the area will be tooling up, for years to come.
So Putin has achieved -
- Made all the stuff about NATO being irrelevant vanish, like tears in the rain. - Everyone facing Russia is now re-arming at a rate of knots. - EU defence policy as an alternative has been given a kicking. The Eastern European countries know who did something vs trying to work out how to sell them for gas. - American engagement in Europe. For all the high sounding papers about America's Turn To The Pacific... well, when Putin starts something, who do you call? Who answers? Who turns up?
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova just now: “February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired.”
Just look at the way one of the people convicted in the post office trials was described at the time. Certainly makes for sobering reading now. From 2012:
The Horizon scandal is absolutely appalling - worse in many ways than Enron. People went to jail. They lost homes. Families broke up. People committed suicide.
Over crimes that didn't happen.
And then the management of Fujitsu-ICL lied and tried to cover it up.
More than 700 people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. 700. Staggering.
Final comment on this: Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office in 2012. By this point, there was a massive amount of evidence that the Horizon system was deeply fucked up, and that earlier convictions were unsound. (Indeed, the first articles were written on this in 2004.)
Yet under her watch the number of people prosecuted for crimes that never happened went into overdrive.
And what is insane is that she is far from the most guilty.
The difficult question is why people inflicted this on so many innocents. For must of them there couldn't have been significant personal gain involved - rather it was likely just pressure to, or even just the tendency to confirm with organisation policy.
It's not quite "just following orders", but it's not wildly dissimilar.
It is exactly just following orders. That is how just following orders begins. Authoritarians and their gophers, like HYUFD, are not benign, they are malignant. The cancer needs to be countered, or else we are well on the road to Treblinka.
Something has gone profoundly wrong with English society. All the warning signs are there.
Is English society really that much different to Scottish society?
Well quite - the man is so full of hate for the English - and in a much nastier pernicious way than any other of the nationalist posters on here.
It is my love for England and her people that gives me the moral strength to lift my head above the parapet. There is a nasty cancer now firmly embedded deep within English society. All who care about the country have a moral duty to point it out and to help the English remove the malignancy. A malignancy frequently on public display on these threads.
I get accused of “hatred” simply for mentioning the name of a nation. Nations have distinct societies and culture. We should be allowed to discuss them. If we are not, it is just one more step down into the abyss.
No, you get accused of hatred because you've demonstrated over 7000+ posts that you have a visceral phobia - an irrational hatred - of England and the English. You've forfeited the benefit of the doubt.
For under 1k posts and having joined in January you certainly seem to have strong opinions on others’ historical posting. One of them long term lurkers no doubt.
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
I grant you it seems very unlikely, but if Putin reads only half of the obscure stuff you do it's possible. For all we know he may take an interest in UFOs and Woke and be a huge fan of yours.
Putin hates Woke. Just thinking about it makes him want to strip to the waist and ride a horse, have a completely heterosexual wrestling match or invade a former Soviet Republic.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
@maxseddon·15mIf this really is the end of the war scare – and that's still a very big if at this point – both sides can declare victory. The US can say its warnings stopped the worst fighting in Europe since World War II, and Russia can say this was all down to American hysteria
Interesting. Two Turkish Airlines A320s, one just landed and the other just departed Kharkiv, in Eastern Ukraine, to and from Istanbul, with irregular flight numbers. Can’t imagine they’re holiday charters.
I'm still not convinced Johnson will go before the General Election.
He's such a slippery snake. He's obviously trying to play Churchill, which includes ramping up rhetoric and getting the tabloids on board. It's not just about saving Ukraine. It's about saving Boris Johnson.
This is different but it saved Margaret Thatcher in 1981/2.
Mind you, with the Mauritius raising their flag on the Chagos Islands perhaps he could launch a Task Force to the Indian Ocean?!
Given the only reason the UK still has the Chagos Islands as an overseas territory is to house a US military base on Diego Garcia, the US are also behind Boris on that
Have these signs of pullbacks actually been confirmed by U.S. and European agencies, or are they just what Russian media, and Putin's people, are saying ?
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
The idea that Johnson - incompetent in nearly everything he does - has somehow engineered this situation is laughable. The government has just reacted to events.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
BJ lives in @Heathener's mind rent free. He also controls NATO, Russia and the Ukraine.
You do know that I was mocking the Mail, Express and Telegraph whilst not actually agreeing with them, right? Was that lost on you?
Obviously I think the man is a complete clown who controls nothing, from Putin to his own penis.
But that won't stop the right wing press jerking off over him and praising him for beating down the bear. And very ignorant people will lap it up.*
* And yes my mixed metaphors in the same paragraph are deliberate
As I said, rent free.
This crisis isn't part of UK politics - all the major parties agreed that...
1) No direct military involvement 2) Military aid to Ukraine 3) Diplomatic pushback 4) Threats of sanctions 5) Reinforce the Eastern European members of NATO.
I would say that if the result is a Russian pull back without war, it is a success for all the parties that backed that policy basket. And yes, that includes the Party Boy at No.10.
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
Insufficient forces to risk a full-scale invasion. Putin is not that stupid. Russian military might is exaggerated.
I suspect him of gaming this for other gains, one of which is an assurance that Ukraine never joins NATO, which frankly I can understand from Russia's point of view.
NATO could do with sorting out its global priorities but then so could world leaders.
What he has achieved is that Ukraine will de-facto be a part of NATO planning. Just as Finland isn't in NATO. No sir. Totally neutral. But in fact, everything bar the signature on the treaty.
Everyone in the area will be tooling up, for years to come.
So Putin has achieved -
- Made all the stuff about NATO being irrelevant vanish, like tears in the rain. - Everyone facing Russia is now re-arming at a rate of knots. - EU defence policy as an alternative has been given a kicking. The Eastern European countries know who did something vs trying to work out how to sell them for gas. - American engagement in Europe. For all the high sounding papers about America's Turn To The Pacific... well, when Putin starts something, who do you call? Who answers? Who turns up?
The idea of the EU as a rival/alternative to NATO, or that Brexit meant British absence from European defence were always two of the most laughable claims ever made.
If Ukraine isn't invaded (and it remains a big if) then kudos will rightly be deserved by Britain and America and Eastern European nations - and interestingly I think that Britain and Eastern European nations helped convince America to get involved.
Germany in particular comes out very badly from this whole scenario and whatever the [primarily but not exclusively leftwing] Russian apologists on this site will say, I think the Eastern European nations in particular will have seen who is dependable in this and who is not.
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
Insufficient forces to risk a full-scale invasion. Putin is not that stupid. Russian military might is exaggerated.
I suspect him of gaming this for other gains, one of which is an assurance that Ukraine never joins NATO, which frankly I can understand from Russia's point of view.
NATO could do with sorting out its global priorities but then so could world leaders.
Ukraine doesn't need to be in NATO. As soon as Putin threatens invasion, Globemaster after Antonov of high-tech Ruskie-killing kit floods into the country...
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
Insufficient forces to risk a full-scale invasion. Putin is not that stupid. Russian military might is exaggerated.
I suspect him of gaming this for other gains, one of which is an assurance that Ukraine never joins NATO, which frankly I can understand from Russia's point of view.
NATO could do with sorting out its global priorities but then so could world leaders.
What he has achieved is that Ukraine will de-facto be a part of NATO planning. Just as Finland isn't in NATO. No sir. Totally neutral. But in fact, everything bar the signature on the treaty.
Everyone in the area will be tooling up, for years to come.
So Putin has achieved -
- Made all the stuff about NATO being irrelevant vanish, like tears in the rain. - Everyone facing Russia is now re-arming at a rate of knots. - EU defence policy as an alternative has been given a kicking. The Eastern European countries know who did something vs trying to work out how to sell them for gas. - American engagement in Europe. For all the high sounding papers about America's Turn To The Pacific... well, when Putin starts something, who do you call? Who answers? Who turns up?
The UK response has been particularly agile as well (and welcome for some of the Eastern European countries). Has emphasised (I think) strong mutual cooperation even without EU membership
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
I grant you it seems very unlikely, but if Putin reads only half of the obscure stuff you do it's possible. For all we know he may take an interest in UFOs and Woke and be a huge fan of yours.
Putin has released quite a bit of the USSR’s Ufo files. Some interesting stuff in there but everyone ignores it because Russia innit. He is also of course on the extreme end of anti woke, getting his heavies to smash skulls at lgbt rallies.
I liked your post (the other one, very good) but now you are getting me really worried that maybe Putin does follow Leon. So much in common. Maybe Leon is Putin and it was a self deprecating post.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
"one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored."
And for fun - look what happened to him.
I was once told off, when very young, for telling senior managers things they didn't want to know.
It's is one of the worst offences in a hierarchy these days.
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
Insufficient forces to risk a full-scale invasion. Putin is not that stupid. Russian military might is exaggerated.
I suspect him of gaming this for other gains, one of which is an assurance that Ukraine never joins NATO, which frankly I can understand from Russia's point of view.
NATO could do with sorting out its global priorities but then so could world leaders.
What he has achieved is that Ukraine will de-facto be a part of NATO planning. Just as Finland isn't in NATO. No sir. Totally neutral. But in fact, everything bar the signature on the treaty.
Everyone in the area will be tooling up, for years to come.
So Putin has achieved -
- Made all the stuff about NATO being irrelevant vanish, like tears in the rain. - Everyone facing Russia is now re-arming at a rate of knots. - EU defence policy as an alternative has been given a kicking. The Eastern European countries know who did something vs trying to work out how to sell them for gas. - American engagement in Europe. For all the high sounding papers about America's Turn To The Pacific... well, when Putin starts something, who do you call? Who answers? Who turns up?
The idea of the EU as a rival/alternative to NATO, or that Brexit meant British absence from European defence were always two of the most laughable claims ever made.
If Ukraine isn't invaded (and it remains a big if) then kudos will rightly be deserved by Britain and America and Eastern European nations - and interestingly I think that Britain and Eastern European nations helped convince America to get involved.
Germany in particular comes out very badly from this whole scenario and whatever the [primarily but not exclusively leftwing] Russian apologists on this site will say, I think the Eastern European nations in particular will have seen who is dependable in this and who is not.
It’s certainly not helped foster European relations, that’s for sure. Imagine being Poland or Romania, and seeing the way France and Germany have reacted over the past month…
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
Most people inheriting from their parents are splitting it with siblings. Even those "lucky" enough to have something to inherit are not inheriting a whole property.
Lots of people don't inherit property from their parents at all...
Indeed. And those that do are inheriting these days in their mid to late 60s. Not exactly what people have in mind when you say "younger generations".
Yes we have had this argument before with @HYUFD. I'm 67 and still waiting to inherit. I might get nothing if my father needs it to pay for a home. If he doesn't need to do that it will be split with my sister which halves it. Having got to 67 I have paid off my mortgage and what I will inherit from his home is 1/10 of the value of my own home.
So none of this can be considered a transfer of property by parents to their children. At best I will inherit some money that I don't need. 40 years ago it would have been useful, but now not so much. Don't know where HYUFD gets his ideas about youngster inheriting property from their parents from. In most cases an inherited house is sold and the money split by 60+ year old children.
In the Home Counties certainly many if not most now get parental assistance with deposits in their 30s
Most will see their parents die by their mid 50s not mid 60s on average life expectancy and thus inherit too
Well that is utter nonsense because we have been here before and I went to the ONS data at the time and did the calculations. Firstly you have to live long enough to have children. Assume that is about 30. Your life expectancy at 30 is significantly higher than at birth. Then of course both parents have to die before you inherit. So l remember looking up and doing the calc for the age at death of the oldest of two individuals still alive at 30. On average that age is 95. That gives the average age of inheritance at 65.
You have used life expectancy of one individual and from birth. 5 year olds don't have children.
Re parental help with property - can you verify that stat? I know nobody that has.
Indeed so, and it’s becoming a massive problem, a brake on social mobility in large parts of the country.
It is less of a problem in the North and Midlands, Wales, Scotland and NI where property is much cheaper or more affordable.
In London, where average property prices are three times those in the North East, or the SouthEast where average property prices are over double those in the North East however it is much more of an issue.
Hence most first time buyers in London and the South East on average incomes do so with parental support for a deposit
And that's the problem.
If you are talented and from a low-cost part of the country, it's much harder than it should be to go to London and make your fame and fortune. Levelling up will only be a partial solution to that- some things will always only happen in the capital city.
If you've made it in the sticks, you will likely still have less wealth than someone whose maiden aunt in Islington has just popped her clogs and left their flat to their sole descendant.
And it's all very well saying that family and inheritance is a core Conservative principle; it is. But elevating that above rewarding rewarding individual achievement is a route to national disaster and electoral oblivion.
I do not see how Putin can possibly succeed with a full-scale invasion of the Ukraine. It will be a limited incursion based on some kind of spurious invitation from ethnic Russian areas that have declared independence. The question then is how far the West's response will go. Anything that is less than hugely punitive and immediately consequential for those whose support Putin requires to remain in charge means he will end up getting what he wants.
I think that is right, but he will take a bit more than the Russian areas -- probably most of the Eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine will lose less territory if it accepted that its present boundaries are unsupportable.
It will lose more if it comes to a war.
If Wales ever achieves independence, will you be similarly insouciant about the 'English' areas of the country ?
But, it is reasonable to point out the boundaries of England, Wales & Scotland have been fixed (largely) for many centuries.
(I would certainly feel very uneasy about detaching portions of Scotland that might vote No in any future Sindy referendum).
The boundaries of the present-day Ukraine (or more strictly the Ukraine SSR) were created at the whim of Stalin in 1954.
I don't understand why pb.com is so heartily behind Stalin 😀
Have these signs of pullbacks actually been confirmed by U.S. and European agencies, or are they just what Russian media, and Putin's people, are saying ?
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
Insufficient forces to risk a full-scale invasion. Putin is not that stupid. Russian military might is exaggerated.
I suspect him of gaming this for other gains, one of which is an assurance that Ukraine never joins NATO, which frankly I can understand from Russia's point of view.
NATO could do with sorting out its global priorities but then so could world leaders.
What he has achieved is that Ukraine will de-facto be a part of NATO planning. Just as Finland isn't in NATO. No sir. Totally neutral. But in fact, everything bar the signature on the treaty.
Everyone in the area will be tooling up, for years to come.
So Putin has achieved -
- Made all the stuff about NATO being irrelevant vanish, like tears in the rain. - Everyone facing Russia is now re-arming at a rate of knots. - EU defence policy as an alternative has been given a kicking. The Eastern European countries know who did something vs trying to work out how to sell them for gas. - American engagement in Europe. For all the high sounding papers about America's Turn To The Pacific... well, when Putin starts something, who do you call? Who answers? Who turns up?
Indeed. The ego stroking of having Macron sitting like a lapdog at the dinner table doesn’t come close to making up for the damage Putin has caused to Russian interests (sovereign and elites). This won’t have gone unnoticed by the challengers to the crown. Personally I think the old man is losing his touch and has never been more vulnerable.
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
"Annoying" protesters will be treated much more harshly here under the new police bill.
Where in the new Police Bill does it give the state powers to do anything like that?
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
Nice to see your attitude to anti vaxxers has softened, you’re usually in the hang and flog the selfish bastards brigade as I recall.
I'm happy to see the selfish bastards die from Covid if that's how nature takes its course, but even if I disagree with stupid idiots they still have the right to their own opinions. That's how liberalism works - I may not agree with your opinion, but I will defend your right to have it.
Who’s stopping the selfish bastards having their own opinions? I thought it was running their engines in built up areas, blocking traffic, sounding their horns at all hours of the day and night and costing the economy tens of millions of dollars that were the problems.
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
I grant you it seems very unlikely, but if Putin reads only half of the obscure stuff you do it's possible. For all we know he may take an interest in UFOs and Woke and be a huge fan of yours.
Putin has released quite a bit of the USSR’s Ufo files. Some interesting stuff in there but everyone ignores it because Russia innit. He is also of course on the extreme end of anti woke, getting his heavies to smash skulls at lgbt rallies.
I liked your post (the other one, very good) but now you are getting me really worried that maybe Putin does follow Leon. So much in common. Maybe Leon is Putin and it was a self deprecating post.
Wouldn’t that he something. There has been a relatively illustrious list of politicians hiding behind handles on here hasn’t there.
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
Insufficient forces to risk a full-scale invasion. Putin is not that stupid. Russian military might is exaggerated.
I suspect him of gaming this for other gains, one of which is an assurance that Ukraine never joins NATO, which frankly I can understand from Russia's point of view.
NATO could do with sorting out its global priorities but then so could world leaders.
What he has achieved is that Ukraine will de-facto be a part of NATO planning. Just as Finland isn't in NATO. No sir. Totally neutral. But in fact, everything bar the signature on the treaty.
Everyone in the area will be tooling up, for years to come.
So Putin has achieved -
- Made all the stuff about NATO being irrelevant vanish, like tears in the rain. - Everyone facing Russia is now re-arming at a rate of knots. - EU defence policy as an alternative has been given a kicking. The Eastern European countries know who did something vs trying to work out how to sell them for gas. - American engagement in Europe. For all the high sounding papers about America's Turn To The Pacific... well, when Putin starts something, who do you call? Who answers? Who turns up?
The idea of the EU as a rival/alternative to NATO, or that Brexit meant British absence from European defence were always two of the most laughable claims ever made.
If Ukraine isn't invaded (and it remains a big if) then kudos will rightly be deserved by Britain and America and Eastern European nations - and interestingly I think that Britain and Eastern European nations helped convince America to get involved.
Germany in particular comes out very badly from this whole scenario and whatever the [primarily but not exclusively leftwing] Russian apologists on this site will say, I think the Eastern European nations in particular will have seen who is dependable in this and who is not.
It’s certainly not helped foster European relations, that’s for sure. Imagine being Poland or Romania, and seeing the way France and Germany have reacted over the past month…
Though Poland and Romania are in NATO and at least have seen reinforcements of British and US forces sent there
Nah. He just doesn't want to take the vaccine. Doesn't make him an Anti-Vaxxer. He wants sovereignty, to coin a well used PB term, over his body.
So how does he stop breathing in viruses ? Daft sod.
He has decided that he prefers to breathe in the virus than inject himself with a vaccine that is less than 24 months old.
Presumably, the three year old virus is sufficiently mature.
Will he therefore be ok with the vaccine in another year?
Well you'd have to ask him. Most of the vaccines that everyone takes are mature. How many years does it take to become mature? Personally I might say 20 years or so. I had this thought when it came to laser eye surgery. My eyesight is not quite bad enough to justify it but I am old enough to remember when it was a new thing and thinking that I wanted to wait until the procedure was more mature before I considered it. I believe it probably is now (although my eyesight has remained unchanged).
Of course for vulnerable groups the risk profile changes dramatically. But Djoko I don't think in any sense qualifies as a vulnerable person so I can perfectly well understand his reticence.
And as for the novelty of the virus, he had time to see what effects it appeared (in the short term!) to have and decided that on balance he would prefer to take his chances.
It's not about risk though, is it? At least not in the usual sense of "he might die" - he's been pretty clear that, for him, it's the risk of having something go into his body that might interfere with his incredibly finely tuned physical preparation for doing his job. And I have some sympathy for him on that - minute changes in (say) sleep patterns that most of us wouldn't even notice might easily be the difference between him winning a tournament, and not.
But, it's still a bit dumb to claim bodily autonomy is the reason for his decisions, when it's abundantly clear he can't do anything about the huge quantity of virus he will probably be inhaling for the next however many years.
I'm still not convinced Johnson will go before the General Election.
He's such a slippery snake. He's obviously trying to play Churchill, which includes ramping up rhetoric and getting the tabloids on board. It's not just about saving Ukraine. It's about saving Boris Johnson.
This is different but it saved Margaret Thatcher in 1981/2.
Mind you, with the Mauritius raising their flag on the Chagos Islands perhaps he could launch a Task Force to the Indian Ocean?!
Given the only reason the UK still has the Chagos Islands as an overseas territory is to house a US military base on Diego Garcia, the US are also behind Boris on that
That really isn't something to crow about. The Chagos Islands evacuation is a vile stain on Britain's recent history.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
The PO prosecutors ought to have looked for signs of unexplained wealth in the hands of the alleged fraudsters, who were mostly individuals of modest means and would not have been able to account for it easily. There was of course no such evidence which suggests incompetence, malice, or both in the prosecutions.
Perhaps someone will bring a private prosecution against some of these prosecutors.
Not entirely sure I would trust them saying this but, as you know, I've never believed they intended to invade in the first place.
Johnson and Truss achieve their aim: hold the front pages.
On what basis did you disbelieve they were going to invade? I mean, given Putin's track record?
Insufficient forces to risk a full-scale invasion. Putin is not that stupid. Russian military might is exaggerated.
I suspect him of gaming this for other gains, one of which is an assurance that Ukraine never joins NATO, which frankly I can understand from Russia's point of view.
NATO could do with sorting out its global priorities but then so could world leaders.
What he has achieved is that Ukraine will de-facto be a part of NATO planning. Just as Finland isn't in NATO. No sir. Totally neutral. But in fact, everything bar the signature on the treaty.
Everyone in the area will be tooling up, for years to come.
So Putin has achieved -
- Made all the stuff about NATO being irrelevant vanish, like tears in the rain. - Everyone facing Russia is now re-arming at a rate of knots. - EU defence policy as an alternative has been given a kicking. The Eastern European countries know who did something vs trying to work out how to sell them for gas. - American engagement in Europe. For all the high sounding papers about America's Turn To The Pacific... well, when Putin starts something, who do you call? Who answers? Who turns up?
Indeed. The ego stroking of having Macron sitting like a lapdog at the dinner table doesn’t come close to making up for the damage Putin has caused to Russian interests (sovereign and elites). This won’t have gone unnoticed by the challengers to the crown. Personally I think the old man is losing his touch and has never been more vulnerable.
To most people in diplomacy, treating visiting diplomatic guests well is seen a sign of strength and culture.
Setting up ridiculous situations or humiliations for the guests is a sign that the host country is run by immature fools who lack culture.
Making The Macaroon look silly makes Putin look weak.
For the complete opposite approach, think how the Queen has treated people who are expressly hostile to the UK.
Apart from the band playing the wrong Imperial March occasionally, the extreme politeness is an expression of power.
@mjluxmoore· We’ve had other Russian troop pullouts before of course, notably in December. Defense Ministry statements can be taken with a pinch of salt, but hopefully the start of a de-escalation of sorts.
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
"Annoying" protesters will be treated much more harshly here under the new police bill.
Where in the new Police Bill does it give the state powers to do anything like that?
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
Nice to see your attitude to anti vaxxers has softened, you’re usually in the hang and flog the selfish bastards brigade as I recall.
I'm happy to see the selfish bastards die from Covid if that's how nature takes its course, but even if I disagree with stupid idiots they still have the right to their own opinions. That's how liberalism works - I may not agree with your opinion, but I will defend your right to have it.
Who’s stopping the selfish bastards having their own opinions? I thought it was running their engines in built up areas, blocking traffic, sounding their horns at all hours of the day and night and costing the economy tens of millions of dollars that were the problems.
And? Peaceful protest is an important principle in a free society.
If people are blockading traffic then they should be moved on, I've consistently said that, but that doesn't mean that those who are engaged in peaceful protests should be subject to draconian powers - especially if as reported in Canada that can be done without court orders.
I can't think of anything equivalent ever being proposed in this country or any other free society.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
Most people inheriting from their parents are splitting it with siblings. Even those "lucky" enough to have something to inherit are not inheriting a whole property.
Lots of people don't inherit property from their parents at all...
Indeed. And those that do are inheriting these days in their mid to late 60s. Not exactly what people have in mind when you say "younger generations".
Yes we have had this argument before with @HYUFD. I'm 67 and still waiting to inherit. I might get nothing if my father needs it to pay for a home. If he doesn't need to do that it will be split with my sister which halves it. Having got to 67 I have paid off my mortgage and what I will inherit from his home is 1/10 of the value of my own home.
So none of this can be considered a transfer of property by parents to their children. At best I will inherit some money that I don't need. 40 years ago it would have been useful, but now not so much. Don't know where HYUFD gets his ideas about youngster inheriting property from their parents from. In most cases an inherited house is sold and the money split by 60+ year old children.
In the Home Counties certainly many if not most now get parental assistance with deposits in their 30s
Most will see their parents die by their mid 50s not mid 60s on average life expectancy and thus inherit too
Well that is utter nonsense because we have been here before and I went to the ONS data at the time and did the calculations. Firstly you have to live long enough to have children. Assume that is about 30. Your life expectancy at 30 is significantly higher than at birth. Then of course both parents have to die before you inherit. So l remember looking up and doing the calc for the age at death of the oldest of two individuals still alive at 30. On average that age is 95. That gives the average age of inheritance at 65.
You have used life expectancy of one individual and from birth. 5 year olds don't have children.
Re parental help with property - can you verify that stat? I know nobody that has.
Ok I accept that. How about the main response to your post re age of inheritance and I mean from parents.
Oh and just in case we have a pedant moment when I originally looked up the info and did the calc I made a mistake re differentiating between sex of parents. I didn't correct at the time because it didn't impact the point being made. I'm now struggling to remember but the average date of death of a 2nd parent both alive at 30 may have been 93 and not 95.
Yeah, but best shrugged off - the temptation to indulge the Tories in their woke culture war should be resisted.
The left accusing the right of a culture war just shows how well they've studied Putin's propaganda.
Eh?
Really, is it that difficult to see?
Left starts culture war, then characterises everything the right does in response as staring a culture war.
Putin menaces Ukraine, then characterises everything Ukraine does to defend itself as "aggression".
You're likening the anti-racism movement to Putin threatening Ukraine? The lunacy on the Right knows no limits.
OK, apparently it is too difficult for you to see. Either that or you're trolling. Either way, discussion is pointless as you'll either not understand or pretend not to understand, and life's too short.
Just remember, people on the left dismissing floating voters who are currently more likely than not to vote for Labour at the next election as being "on the right" and showing "lunacy" is pretty counterproductive.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
Most people inheriting from their parents are splitting it with siblings. Even those "lucky" enough to have something to inherit are not inheriting a whole property.
Lots of people don't inherit property from their parents at all...
Indeed. And those that do are inheriting these days in their mid to late 60s. Not exactly what people have in mind when you say "younger generations".
Yes we have had this argument before with @HYUFD. I'm 67 and still waiting to inherit. I might get nothing if my father needs it to pay for a home. If he doesn't need to do that it will be split with my sister which halves it. Having got to 67 I have paid off my mortgage and what I will inherit from his home is 1/10 of the value of my own home.
So none of this can be considered a transfer of property by parents to their children. At best I will inherit some money that I don't need. 40 years ago it would have been useful, but now not so much. Don't know where HYUFD gets his ideas about youngster inheriting property from their parents from. In most cases an inherited house is sold and the money split by 60+ year old children.
In the Home Counties certainly many if not most now get parental assistance with deposits in their 30s
Most will see their parents die by their mid 50s not mid 60s on average life expectancy and thus inherit too
Well that is utter nonsense because we have been here before and I went to the ONS data at the time and did the calculations. Firstly you have to live long enough to have children. Assume that is about 30. Your life expectancy at 30 is significantly higher than at birth. Then of course both parents have to die before you inherit. So l remember looking up and doing the calc for the age at death of the oldest of two individuals still alive at 30. On average that age is 95. That gives the average age of inheritance at 65.
You have used life expectancy of one individual and from birth. 5 year olds don't have children.
Re parental help with property - can you verify that stat? I know nobody that has.
Indeed so, and it’s becoming a massive problem, a brake on social mobility in large parts of the country.
It is less of a problem in the North and Midlands, Wales, Scotland and NI where property is much cheaper or more affordable.
In London, where average property prices are three times those in the North East, or the SouthEast where average property prices are over double those in the North East however it is much more of an issue.
Hence most first time buyers in London and the South East on average incomes do so with parental support for a deposit
And that's the problem.
If you are talented and from a low-cost part of the country, it's much harder than it should be to go to London and make your fame and fortune. Levelling up will only be a partial solution to that- some things will always only happen in the capital city.
If you've made it in the sticks, you will likely still have less wealth than someone whose maiden aunt in Islington has just popped her clogs and left their flat to their sole descendant.
And it's all very well saying that family and inheritance is a core Conservative principle; it is. But elevating that above rewarding rewarding individual achievement is a route to national disaster and electoral oblivion.
If you are talented and able to get a job in the City for example as a lawyer or banker or in the top ranks of tech you will soon be on £50,000+ or even six figures and able in time to buy your own property, especially if your partner is also earning similiar.
However if your job only pays an average income and you do not come from London and the Home Counties you are better off staying put as you will be able to afford to buy a property much easier without moving to the capital.
That is not a problem necessarily for the Tories. London now mainly votes Labour as 2019 proved and most people rent there but the Tories are able to make inroads in the North and Midlands too where first time buyers are able to buy property more easily, as they did when they gained seats in 2019 from Labour in the redwall. It is the number who own property in an area that makes it more likely to vote Tory, not the fact it has a high average price if most people rent there. Hence Islington is solid Labour but the Midlands is arguably now the Tories' safest region.
In the SouthEast the Tories also held on helped by a combination of high earners from London moving to buy their first properties there and with those who bought their properties with parental assistance having always lived in the South.
Tighter immigration controls and building more affordable housing, especially in brownfield areas, in London and the South might make a bit of difference but the fundamentals will not change
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
"Annoying" protesters will be treated much more harshly here under the new police bill.
Where in the new Police Bill does it give the state powers to do anything like that?
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
Nice to see your attitude to anti vaxxers has softened, you’re usually in the hang and flog the selfish bastards brigade as I recall.
I'm happy to see the selfish bastards die from Covid if that's how nature takes its course, but even if I disagree with stupid idiots they still have the right to their own opinions. That's how liberalism works - I may not agree with your opinion, but I will defend your right to have it.
Who’s stopping the selfish bastards having their own opinions? I thought it was running their engines in built up areas, blocking traffic, sounding their horns at all hours of the day and night and costing the economy tens of millions of dollars that were the problems.
And? Peaceful protest is an important principle in a free society.
If people are blockading traffic then they should be moved on, I've consistently said that, but that doesn't mean that those who are engaged in peaceful protests should be subject to draconian powers - especially if as reported in Canada that can be done without court orders.
I can't think of anything equivalent ever being proposed in this country or any other free society.
Weren't you in the lock em up and throw away the key camp when it came to the XR crowd here? Apologies if I have misremembered.
Yeah, but best shrugged off - the temptation to indulge the Tories in their woke culture war should be resisted.
The left accusing the right of a culture war just shows how well they've studied Putin's propaganda.
Eh?
Really, is it that difficult to see?
Left starts culture war, then characterises everything the right does in response as staring a culture war.
Putin menaces Ukraine, then characterises everything Ukraine does to defend itself as "aggression".
You're likening the anti-racism movement to Putin threatening Ukraine? The lunacy on the Right knows no limits.
OK, apparently it is too difficult for you to see. Either that or you're trolling. Either way, discussion is pointless as you'll either not understand or pretend not to understand, and life's too short.
Just remember, people on the left dismissing floating voters who are currently more likely than not to vote for Labour at the next election as being "on the right" and showing "lunacy" is pretty counterproductive.
If there are a whole load of floating voters who think the anti racism movement is the equivalent of Puin threatening Ukraine then I would be very surprised. It does seem an insanely hyperbolic comparison to me, sorry.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
Most people inheriting from their parents are splitting it with siblings. Even those "lucky" enough to have something to inherit are not inheriting a whole property.
Lots of people don't inherit property from their parents at all...
Indeed. And those that do are inheriting these days in their mid to late 60s. Not exactly what people have in mind when you say "younger generations".
Yes we have had this argument before with @HYUFD. I'm 67 and still waiting to inherit. I might get nothing if my father needs it to pay for a home. If he doesn't need to do that it will be split with my sister which halves it. Having got to 67 I have paid off my mortgage and what I will inherit from his home is 1/10 of the value of my own home.
So none of this can be considered a transfer of property by parents to their children. At best I will inherit some money that I don't need. 40 years ago it would have been useful, but now not so much. Don't know where HYUFD gets his ideas about youngster inheriting property from their parents from. In most cases an inherited house is sold and the money split by 60+ year old children.
In the Home Counties certainly many if not most now get parental assistance with deposits in their 30s
Most will see their parents die by their mid 50s not mid 60s on average life expectancy and thus inherit too
Well that is utter nonsense because we have been here before and I went to the ONS data at the time and did the calculations. Firstly you have to live long enough to have children. Assume that is about 30. Your life expectancy at 30 is significantly higher than at birth. Then of course both parents have to die before you inherit. So l remember looking up and doing the calc for the age at death of the oldest of two individuals still alive at 30. On average that age is 95. That gives the average age of inheritance at 65.
You have used life expectancy of one individual and from birth. 5 year olds don't have children.
Re parental help with property - can you verify that stat? I know nobody that has.
Indeed so, and it’s becoming a massive problem, a brake on social mobility in large parts of the country.
It is less of a problem in the North and Midlands, Wales, Scotland and NI where property is much cheaper or more affordable.
In London, where average property prices are three times those in the North East, or the SouthEast where average property prices are over double those in the North East however it is much more of an issue.
Hence most first time buyers in London and the South East on average incomes do so with parental support for a deposit
And that's the problem.
If you are talented and from a low-cost part of the country, it's much harder than it should be to go to London and make your fame and fortune. Levelling up will only be a partial solution to that- some things will always only happen in the capital city.
If you've made it in the sticks, you will likely still have less wealth than someone whose maiden aunt in Islington has just popped her clogs and left their flat to their sole descendant.
And it's all very well saying that family and inheritance is a core Conservative principle; it is. But elevating that above rewarding rewarding individual achievement is a route to national disaster and electoral oblivion.
If you are talented and able to get a job in the City for example as a lawyer or banker or in the top ranks of tech you will soon be on £50,000+ or even six figures and able in time to buy your own property, especially if your partner is also earning similiar.
However if your job only pays an average income and you do not come from London and the Home Counties you are better off staying put as you will be able to afford to buy a property much easier without moving to the capital.
That is not a problem necessarily for the Tories. London now mainly votes Labour as 2019 proved and most people rent there but the Tories are able to make inroads in the North and Midlands too where first time buyers are able to buy property more easily, as they did when they gained seats in 2019 from Labour in the redwall.
In the SouthEast the Tories also held on helped by a combination of high earners from London moving to buy their first properties there and with those who bought their properties with parental assistance having always lived in the South.
Tighter immigration controls and building more affordable housing, especially in brownfield areas, in London and the South might make a bit of difference but the fundamentals will not change
It’s a massive problem for the Tories, that’s for sure.
See all that red ink, in some of the most prosperous parts of the country? That’s what happens when people can’t afford to buy property where they have grown up.
Nah. He just doesn't want to take the vaccine. Doesn't make him an Anti-Vaxxer. He wants sovereignty, to coin a well used PB term, over his body.
So how does he stop breathing in viruses ? Daft sod.
He has decided that he prefers to breathe in the virus than inject himself with a vaccine that is less than 24 months old.
Presumably, the three year old virus is sufficiently mature.
Will he therefore be ok with the vaccine in another year?
Well you'd have to ask him. Most of the vaccines that everyone takes are mature. How many years does it take to become mature? Personally I might say 20 years or so. I had this thought when it came to laser eye surgery. My eyesight is not quite bad enough to justify it but I am old enough to remember when it was a new thing and thinking that I wanted to wait until the procedure was more mature before I considered it. I believe it probably is now (although my eyesight has remained unchanged).
Of course for vulnerable groups the risk profile changes dramatically. But Djoko I don't think in any sense qualifies as a vulnerable person so I can perfectly well understand his reticence.
And as for the novelty of the virus, he had time to see what effects it appeared (in the short term!) to have and decided that on balance he would prefer to take his chances.
It's not about risk though, is it? At least not in the usual sense of "he might die" - he's been pretty clear that, for him, it's the risk of having something go into his body that might interfere with his incredibly finely tuned physical preparation for doing his job. And I have some sympathy for him on that - minute changes in (say) sleep patterns that most of us wouldn't even notice might easily be the difference between him winning a tournament, and not.
But, it's still a bit dumb to claim bodily autonomy is the reason for his decisions, when it's abundantly clear he can't do anything about the huge quantity of virus he will probably be inhaling for the next however many years.
That bit is also a balance. He can certainly stop someone jabbing a needle into his arm and hence does so; he is less able to control (AFAIAA) the molecules around him. Hence he has decided that he is happier to get the virus (which he has done and I bet that messed with his sleep patterns) than the jab. Everyone should be happy.
If 97/100 of the top tennis players (R4) have had the jab then why should anyone worry about Dkoko. There is a bit of a free rider thing going on but so what. I wonder what the stats are in the PL for example.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
I grant you it seems very unlikely, but if Putin reads only half of the obscure stuff you do it's possible. For all we know he may take an interest in UFOs and Woke and be a huge fan of yours.
Putin hates Woke. Just thinking about it makes him want to strip to the waist and ride a horse, have a completely heterosexual wrestling match or invade a former Soviet Republic.
I watched The Power of the Dog last night. I reckon Phil (Cumberbatch) is based on Putin. A real man's man. I was going to reveal what happens, but then thought it would be a spoiler. Those who have seen it will understand.
I do not see how Putin can possibly succeed with a full-scale invasion of the Ukraine. It will be a limited incursion based on some kind of spurious invitation from ethnic Russian areas that have declared independence. The question then is how far the West's response will go. Anything that is less than hugely punitive and immediately consequential for those whose support Putin requires to remain in charge means he will end up getting what he wants.
I think that is right, but he will take a bit more than the Russian areas -- probably most of the Eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine will lose less territory if it accepted that its present boundaries are unsupportable.
It will lose more if it comes to a war.
If Wales ever achieves independence, will you be similarly insouciant about the 'English' areas of the country ?
But, it is reasonable to point out the boundaries of England, Wales & Scotland have been fixed (largely) for many centuries.
(I would certainly feel very uneasy about detaching portions of Scotland that might vote No in any future Sindy referendum).
The boundaries of the present-day Ukraine (or more strictly the Ukraine SSR) were created at the whim of Stalin in 1954.
I don't understand why pb.com is so heartily behind Stalin 😀
The history of Ukraine is a little more complicated than that.
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
I grant you it seems very unlikely, but if Putin reads only half of the obscure stuff you do it's possible. For all we know he may take an interest in UFOs and Woke and be a huge fan of yours.
Putin hates Woke. Just thinking about it makes him want to strip to the waist and ride a horse, have a completely heterosexual wrestling match or invade a former Soviet Republic.
I watched The Power of the Dog last night. I reckon Phil (Cumberbatch) is based on Putin. A real man's man. I was going to reveal what happens, but then thought it would be a spoiler. Those who have seen it will understand.
I didn't even want a spoiler when watching Chernobyl, something that happened decades ago and was on the front pages of newspapers for months and months.
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
"Annoying" protesters will be treated much more harshly here under the new police bill.
Where in the new Police Bill does it give the state powers to do anything like that?
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
Nice to see your attitude to anti vaxxers has softened, you’re usually in the hang and flog the selfish bastards brigade as I recall.
I'm happy to see the selfish bastards die from Covid if that's how nature takes its course, but even if I disagree with stupid idiots they still have the right to their own opinions. That's how liberalism works - I may not agree with your opinion, but I will defend your right to have it.
Who’s stopping the selfish bastards having their own opinions? I thought it was running their engines in built up areas, blocking traffic, sounding their horns at all hours of the day and night and costing the economy tens of millions of dollars that were the problems.
And? Peaceful protest is an important principle in a free society.
If people are blockading traffic then they should be moved on, I've consistently said that, but that doesn't mean that those who are engaged in peaceful protests should be subject to draconian powers - especially if as reported in Canada that can be done without court orders.
I can't think of anything equivalent ever being proposed in this country or any other free society.
I see you’ve moved swiftly on from the right to having their own opinions, probably wise. At least we now have an approximate template for what is acceptable to the right in terms of protest from eg Extinction Rebellion. At least it won’t involve 15 litre diesels pumping out exhaust fumes.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
"one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored."
And for fun - look what happened to him.
I was once told off, when very young, for telling senior managers things they didn't want to know.
It's is one of the worst offences in a hierarchy these days.
My very first job was as a government lawyer. I was responsible for advising the team which deal with offences under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, specifically in relation to the then very widespread and profitable trade in stealing the eggs of birds of prey. The unit was in Bristol and worked closely with the RSPCA who, in a small way, were quite as bad as the Post Office in the way they abused their powers .
I pointed this out - that neither the people in the unit nor the RSPCA could do what they were doing, that if any of the people arrested brought a challenge the department would lose etc, and the relevant Minister would be mightily pissed off to find that not only were civil servants breaking the law but doing so even after they had been advised otherwise. (Those were the days, eh!)
The fury this engendered among the older male career civil servants in the unit was quite something to behold. My crimes involved being "a girl" (adorned by a number of crude epithets), young, a lawyer, not understanding how things were done around here etc etc. The RSPCA was especially outraged because they were on the side of the poor birds so how dare anyone challenge them.
Anyway I didn't give a toss, escalated and eventually got some changes. After a couple of years I left. It made me realise the importance of challenge, the value of and power you can have as a lawyer, and made me very sceptical indeed of charities and others which claim the moral high ground and use it as a reason to fob off scrutiny. See other charities, the police, the NHS, churches etc.
"The louder he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
It's a good maxim to bear in mind. Asking why and challenging and scrutinising what youare told is an essential life skill. When things go wrong, you will invariably find that at the heart and start of it, it is because this does not happen or people don't listen when it does.
OTOH if Putin hasn’t invaded by Friday he’s clearly not going to and has proved himself a pussy and the world can point and laugh, and, more importantly, I still get to go to Odessa in March
Language that doesn't help anything.
As you know, I've never believed he wants to invade.
If Ukraine backed off its attempt to join NATO it would help. Understandably a very aggressive act in Russian eyes.
You think Vladimir Putin reads PB, and me calling him a “pussy” on this blog might be the final, intolerable western aggression that pushes him into total tank war in Eastern Europe?
I grant you it seems very unlikely, but if Putin reads only half of the obscure stuff you do it's possible. For all we know he may take an interest in UFOs and Woke and be a huge fan of yours.
Putin hates Woke. Just thinking about it makes him want to strip to the waist and ride a horse, have a completely heterosexual wrestling match or invade a former Soviet Republic.
I watched The Power of the Dog last night. I reckon Phil (Cumberbatch) is based on Putin. A real man's man. I was going to reveal what happens, but then thought it would be a spoiler. Those who have seen it will understand.
I didn't even want a spoiler when watching Chernobyl, something that happened decades ago and was on the front pages of newspapers for months and months.
Mini-series are like that.
My grandfather warned people that the Titanic would sink.
No one listened, but he kept on warning them nonetheless until they got sick of him and kicked him out the cinema.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
Most people inheriting from their parents are splitting it with siblings. Even those "lucky" enough to have something to inherit are not inheriting a whole property.
Lots of people don't inherit property from their parents at all...
Indeed. And those that do are inheriting these days in their mid to late 60s. Not exactly what people have in mind when you say "younger generations".
Yes we have had this argument before with @HYUFD. I'm 67 and still waiting to inherit. I might get nothing if my father needs it to pay for a home. If he doesn't need to do that it will be split with my sister which halves it. Having got to 67 I have paid off my mortgage and what I will inherit from his home is 1/10 of the value of my own home.
So none of this can be considered a transfer of property by parents to their children. At best I will inherit some money that I don't need. 40 years ago it would have been useful, but now not so much. Don't know where HYUFD gets his ideas about youngster inheriting property from their parents from. In most cases an inherited house is sold and the money split by 60+ year old children.
In the Home Counties certainly many if not most now get parental assistance with deposits in their 30s
Most will see their parents die by their mid 50s not mid 60s on average life expectancy and thus inherit too
Well that is utter nonsense because we have been here before and I went to the ONS data at the time and did the calculations. Firstly you have to live long enough to have children. Assume that is about 30. Your life expectancy at 30 is significantly higher than at birth. Then of course both parents have to die before you inherit. So l remember looking up and doing the calc for the age at death of the oldest of two individuals still alive at 30. On average that age is 95. That gives the average age of inheritance at 65.
You have used life expectancy of one individual and from birth. 5 year olds don't have children.
Re parental help with property - can you verify that stat? I know nobody that has.
Indeed so, and it’s becoming a massive problem, a brake on social mobility in large parts of the country.
It is less of a problem in the North and Midlands, Wales, Scotland and NI where property is much cheaper or more affordable.
In London, where average property prices are three times those in the North East, or the SouthEast where average property prices are over double those in the North East however it is much more of an issue.
Hence most first time buyers in London and the South East on average incomes do so with parental support for a deposit
And that's the problem.
If you are talented and from a low-cost part of the country, it's much harder than it should be to go to London and make your fame and fortune. Levelling up will only be a partial solution to that- some things will always only happen in the capital city.
If you've made it in the sticks, you will likely still have less wealth than someone whose maiden aunt in Islington has just popped her clogs and left their flat to their sole descendant.
And it's all very well saying that family and inheritance is a core Conservative principle; it is. But elevating that above rewarding rewarding individual achievement is a route to national disaster and electoral oblivion.
If you are talented and able to get a job in the City for example as a lawyer or banker or in the top ranks of tech you will soon be on £50,000+ or even six figures and able in time to buy your own property, especially if your partner is also earning similiar.
However if your job only pays an average income and you do not come from London and the Home Counties you are better off staying put as you will be able to afford to buy a property much easier without moving to the capital.
That is not a problem necessarily for the Tories. London now mainly votes Labour as 2019 proved and most people rent there but the Tories are able to make inroads in the North and Midlands too where first time buyers are able to buy property more easily, as they did when they gained seats in 2019 from Labour in the redwall. It is the number who own property in an area that makes it more likely to vote Tory, not the fact it has a high average price if most people rent there. Hence Islington is solid Labour but the Midlands is arguably now the Tories' safest region.
In the SouthEast the Tories also held on helped by a combination of high earners from London moving to buy their first properties there and with those who bought their properties with parental assistance having always lived in the South.
Tighter immigration controls and building more affordable housing, especially in brownfield areas, in London and the South might make a bit of difference but the fundamentals will not change
What is it like to consider every political issue first and foremost through the prism of its electoral impact? It’s an honest question. Traditionally we are told most people go into politics through a desire to improve peoples lives. But almost every time you post you make it sound like the only thing of any importance to you is retaining power.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
"one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored."
And for fun - look what happened to him.
I was once told off, when very young, for telling senior managers things they didn't want to know.
It's is one of the worst offences in a hierarchy these days.
"not a team player"
One of the justifications for "woke" recruitment is that diversity means any situation will be examined from different angles. Less groupthink. Maybe.
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
"Annoying" protesters will be treated much more harshly here under the new police bill.
Where in the new Police Bill does it give the state powers to do anything like that?
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
Nice to see your attitude to anti vaxxers has softened, you’re usually in the hang and flog the selfish bastards brigade as I recall.
I'm happy to see the selfish bastards die from Covid if that's how nature takes its course, but even if I disagree with stupid idiots they still have the right to their own opinions. That's how liberalism works - I may not agree with your opinion, but I will defend your right to have it.
Who’s stopping the selfish bastards having their own opinions? I thought it was running their engines in built up areas, blocking traffic, sounding their horns at all hours of the day and night and costing the economy tens of millions of dollars that were the problems.
And? Peaceful protest is an important principle in a free society.
If people are blockading traffic then they should be moved on, I've consistently said that, but that doesn't mean that those who are engaged in peaceful protests should be subject to draconian powers - especially if as reported in Canada that can be done without court orders.
I can't think of anything equivalent ever being proposed in this country or any other free society.
Weren't you in the lock em up and throw away the key camp when it came to the XR crowd here? Apologies if I have misremembered.
I never advocated for XR protestors to be able to be punished without a court order. I never would.
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
"Annoying" protesters will be treated much more harshly here under the new police bill.
Where in the new Police Bill does it give the state powers to do anything like that?
The reports from Canada on how peaceful protests are being dealt with, freezing people's bank accounts etc, are really concerning. That sort of thing shouldn't happen in a free society.
Nice to see your attitude to anti vaxxers has softened, you’re usually in the hang and flog the selfish bastards brigade as I recall.
I'm happy to see the selfish bastards die from Covid if that's how nature takes its course, but even if I disagree with stupid idiots they still have the right to their own opinions. That's how liberalism works - I may not agree with your opinion, but I will defend your right to have it.
Who’s stopping the selfish bastards having their own opinions? I thought it was running their engines in built up areas, blocking traffic, sounding their horns at all hours of the day and night and costing the economy tens of millions of dollars that were the problems.
And? Peaceful protest is an important principle in a free society.
If people are blockading traffic then they should be moved on, I've consistently said that, but that doesn't mean that those who are engaged in peaceful protests should be subject to draconian powers - especially if as reported in Canada that can be done without court orders.
I can't think of anything equivalent ever being proposed in this country or any other free society.
Weren't you in the lock em up and throw away the key camp when it came to the XR crowd here? Apologies if I have misremembered.
Not daring to answer for BR but I'm guessing it goes as follows:
Protest at side of street with banners, party hats, flugelhorns: OK Stopping people getting from A to B by obstructing the roads: Not OK
I'm still not convinced Johnson will go before the General Election.
He's such a slippery snake. He's obviously trying to play Churchill, which includes ramping up rhetoric and getting the tabloids on board. It's not just about saving Ukraine. It's about saving Boris Johnson.
This is different but it saved Margaret Thatcher in 1981/2.
Mind you, with the Mauritius raising their flag on the Chagos Islands perhaps he could launch a Task Force to the Indian Ocean?!
Given the only reason the UK still has the Chagos Islands as an overseas territory is to house a US military base on Diego Garcia, the US are also behind Boris on that
That really isn't something to crow about. The Chagos Islands evacuation is a vile stain on Britain's recent history.
Nevertheless, if Boris wants a military victory to shore up his credentials he should go for the Chagos Islands. An easier nut to crack than Russia, I think.
I'm still not convinced Johnson will go before the General Election.
He's such a slippery snake. He's obviously trying to play Churchill, which includes ramping up rhetoric and getting the tabloids on board. It's not just about saving Ukraine. It's about saving Boris Johnson.
This is different but it saved Margaret Thatcher in 1981/2.
Mind you, with the Mauritius raising their flag on the Chagos Islands perhaps he could launch a Task Force to the Indian Ocean?!
Given the only reason the UK still has the Chagos Islands as an overseas territory is to house a US military base on Diego Garcia, the US are also behind Boris on that
That really isn't something to crow about. The Chagos Islands evacuation is a vile stain on Britain's recent history.
Nevertheless, if Boris wants a military victory to shore up his credentials he should go for the Chagos Islands. An easier nut to crack than Russia, I think.
There are Indian Navy MCFs embedded with the Mauritian Defence Force. The UK doesn't want to waste one of them by accident.
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
"one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored."
And for fun - look what happened to him.
I was once told off, when very young, for telling senior managers things they didn't want to know.
It's is one of the worst offences in a hierarchy these days.
"not a team player"
One of the justifications for "woke" recruitment is that diversity means any situation will be examined from different angles. Less groupthink. Maybe.
My impression is that Woke is groupthink. It avoids grappling with difficult complicated issues. Instead you just follow the fashion.
Some data from the ONS, concerning changes in housing tenure over time in England:
People aged 65 and over
1993
own outright: 55.7% own with mortgage: 5.8% private rental sector: 6.3% social rental sector: 32.2%
2017
own outright: 74.2% own with mortgage: 4.4% private rental sector: 5.6% social rental sector: 15.8%
People aged 16 to 64
1993
own outright: 14.0% own with mortgage: 56.2% private rental sector: 10.8% social rental sector: 19.0%
2017
own outright: 17.4% own with mortgage: 40.0% private rental sector: 25.2% social rental sector: 17.5%
In crude terms, since the Nineties owner-occupancy amongst pensioners has risen by about 20% and social rented occupancy has correspondingly declined; owner-occupancy amongst everyone else has fallen by about 15% and renting from private landlords has correspondingly risen.
+ Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.
+ Younger people are less likely to own their own home than in the past and more likely to be renting. Half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with two-thirds 20 years earlier.
+ People in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago. A third of this age group were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in 1997.
+ Increases in the private rental sector have been seen for all age groups apart from the very oldest, with the increase particularly pronounced in mid-life. People aged 35 to 44 years were almost three and a half times more likely to be renting in 2017 than in 1993.
+ Renting from a private landlord is most common at younger ages and decreases with age as people take out mortgages and/or receive inheritances. But for any given age, people are far more likely to be renting privately today than 10 or 20 years ago. Almost a third (28%) of people aged 35 to 44 years rented from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) in 1997.
+ The percentage owning with a mortgage peaks in middle age, and then declines at older ages as people finish paying off their mortgages and own their homes outright. But for almost any age, it is less common to own with a mortgage than 10 or 20 years ago. Half (50%) of people aged 35 to 44 had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) in 1997.
An ageing population + concentration of wealth in the hands of the elderly = gerontocracy. That's the political reality of modern Britain.
Depends where you go, in the North and Midlands and Wales for example property is still relatively cheap to buy and so more can get on the housing ladder earlier.
Note too the clear majority of over 35s still own property with a mortgage at least. As for the higher number of pensioners who own outright, that will of course generally filter down to younger generations too via inheritance
Most people inheriting from their parents are splitting it with siblings. Even those "lucky" enough to have something to inherit are not inheriting a whole property.
Lots of people don't inherit property from their parents at all...
Indeed. And those that do are inheriting these days in their mid to late 60s. Not exactly what people have in mind when you say "younger generations".
Yes we have had this argument before with @HYUFD. I'm 67 and still waiting to inherit. I might get nothing if my father needs it to pay for a home. If he doesn't need to do that it will be split with my sister which halves it. Having got to 67 I have paid off my mortgage and what I will inherit from his home is 1/10 of the value of my own home.
So none of this can be considered a transfer of property by parents to their children. At best I will inherit some money that I don't need. 40 years ago it would have been useful, but now not so much. Don't know where HYUFD gets his ideas about youngster inheriting property from their parents from. In most cases an inherited house is sold and the money split by 60+ year old children.
In the Home Counties certainly many if not most now get parental assistance with deposits in their 30s
Most will see their parents die by their mid 50s not mid 60s on average life expectancy and thus inherit too
Well that is utter nonsense because we have been here before and I went to the ONS data at the time and did the calculations. Firstly you have to live long enough to have children. Assume that is about 30. Your life expectancy at 30 is significantly higher than at birth. Then of course both parents have to die before you inherit. So l remember looking up and doing the calc for the age at death of the oldest of two individuals still alive at 30. On average that age is 95. That gives the average age of inheritance at 65.
You have used life expectancy of one individual and from birth. 5 year olds don't have children.
Re parental help with property - can you verify that stat? I know nobody that has.
Indeed so, and it’s becoming a massive problem, a brake on social mobility in large parts of the country.
It is less of a problem in the North and Midlands, Wales, Scotland and NI where property is much cheaper or more affordable.
In London, where average property prices are three times those in the North East, or the SouthEast where average property prices are over double those in the North East however it is much more of an issue.
Hence most first time buyers in London and the South East on average incomes do so with parental support for a deposit
And that's the problem.
If you are talented and from a low-cost part of the country, it's much harder than it should be to go to London and make your fame and fortune. Levelling up will only be a partial solution to that- some things will always only happen in the capital city.
If you've made it in the sticks, you will likely still have less wealth than someone whose maiden aunt in Islington has just popped her clogs and left their flat to their sole descendant.
And it's all very well saying that family and inheritance is a core Conservative principle; it is. But elevating that above rewarding rewarding individual achievement is a route to national disaster and electoral oblivion.
If you are talented and able to get a job in the City for example as a lawyer or banker or in the top ranks of tech you will soon be on £50,000+ or even six figures and able in time to buy your own property, especially if your partner is also earning similiar.
However if your job only pays an average income and you do not come from London and the Home Counties you are better off staying put as you will be able to afford to buy a property much easier without moving to the capital.
That is not a problem necessarily for the Tories. London now mainly votes Labour as 2019 proved and most people rent there but the Tories are able to make inroads in the North and Midlands too where first time buyers are able to buy property more easily, as they did when they gained seats in 2019 from Labour in the redwall.
In the SouthEast the Tories also held on helped by a combination of high earners from London moving to buy their first properties there and with those who bought their properties with parental assistance having always lived in the South.
Tighter immigration controls and building more affordable housing, especially in brownfield areas, in London and the South might make a bit of difference but the fundamentals will not change
It’s a massive problem for the Tories, that’s for sure.
See all that red ink, in some of the most prosperous parts of the country? That’s what happens when people can’t afford to buy property where they have grown up.
The Tories just won their biggest majority since 1987 in 2019.
All your map shows is how dependent Labour is on London, where the highest number rent and property is most expensive.
Outside London and Scotland that map shows most of the rest of the country is Tory blue and certainly outside the Northern and Midlands inner cities and South Wales which have always been Labour anyway
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
"one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored."
And for fun - look what happened to him.
I was once told off, when very young, for telling senior managers things they didn't want to know.
It's is one of the worst offences in a hierarchy these days.
"not a team player"
One of the justifications for "woke" recruitment is that diversity means any situation will be examined from different angles. Less groupthink. Maybe.
My impression is that Woke is groupthink. It avoids grappling with difficult complicated issues. Instead you just follow the fashion.
I have already seen "woke" used as a manipulative tool - not just the crude "you can't criticise X because he/she is not-white and you are".
The usage is that you are being "confrontational" and creating a "hostile environment" by "excessive emphasis on process", "white centric norms"*, "xenophobic attitudes"**, "excessive legalism, which is white Euro-centric", by bringing up concerns about quality, morality, legality etc.
You are not "treating others with respect" by pointing out that X is the kind of thing that won't sound good when you have to explain it in the newspapers.
As ever, any idea or system of thought can be highjacked by arseholes, to shore up their power.
*Only bought up by white people, protecting white people **Only bought up by white people, protecting white people
On the post office scandal, what I find interesting is that they actually managed to get as many convictions as they did. Juries are usually pretty risk averse, but I guess an expert witness testified to say that the only explanation was that the postmaster was stealing the money.
I’m guessing this can’t happen, but as a start, I’d like to see those expert witnesses charged with perjury.
The story is even worse than it appears.
You see, almost all the 900 prosecutions (resulting in more than 700 wrongful convictions) were done by private prosecution. The Post Office brought the cases themselves. They held all the records: see, the system says they should have 70,000 in their bank account, but they only have 20,000... They must have stolen the rest.
And while this was going on, the Post Office was unusually profitable, as it kept discovering it had more money than it thought it did.
Nobody noticed that the extra money they seemed to have matched the amount they thought was being stolen from them.
And the Post Office would bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against Post masters and would strip them of their homes to repay money than was never stolen.
And then there was a monumental cover up
It is even worse than you say. In addition to all those prosecuted, there are those who paid money from their own savings to make the sums add up. In many cases they paid thousands of pounds. They were not prosecuted but they have, effectively, been defrauded by the Post Office. It's estimated that there are about 300 or so of such people. So well over a thousand people have had their good names and lives besmirched by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
"one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored."
And for fun - look what happened to him.
I was once told off, when very young, for telling senior managers things they didn't want to know.
It's is one of the worst offences in a hierarchy these days.
"not a team player"
One of the justifications for "woke" recruitment is that diversity means any situation will be examined from different angles. Less groupthink. Maybe.
My impression is that Woke is groupthink. It avoids grappling with difficult complicated issues. Instead you just follow the fashion.
I have already seen "woke" used as a manipulative tool - not just the crude "you can't criticise X because he/she is not-white and you are".
The usage is that you are being "confrontational" and creating a "hostile environment" by "excessive emphasis on process", "white centric norms"*, "xenophobic attitudes"**, "excessive legalism, which is white Euro-centric", by bringing up concerns about quality, morality, legality etc.
You are not "treating others with respect" by pointing out that X is the kind of thing that won't sound good when you have to explain it in the newspapers.
As ever, any idea or system of thought can be highjacked by arseholes, to shore up their power.
*Only bought up by white people, protecting white people **Only bought up by white people, protecting white people
I am not sure that is all that accurate.
Let's take BLM. It is perfectly admirable to organise against US Police Officers indiscriminately killing predominantly black people. It is also fine for Starmer and Harri to take the knee in unity with them
The bit I disagree with is demanding the white British nation apologises for its slave trading past. My ancestors weren't Slave Owners, they were exploited whilst chipping away at Carmarthenshire coal seams in confined space darkness for a few shillings a week. Despite my colour and nationality I do not need the nation to apologise for my family's role in the slave trade, because we didn't have one.
On the other hand if you demand I personally apologise for exploiting Bangladeshi children working in sweatshops for a penny a day by my wearing a £10 FandF shirt from Tesco, you have a point.
Comments
Of course for vulnerable groups the risk profile changes dramatically. But Djoko I don't think in any sense qualifies as a vulnerable person so I can perfectly well understand his reticence.
And as for the novelty of the virus, he had time to see what effects it appeared (in the short term!) to have and decided that on balance he would prefer to take his chances.
@maxseddon·15mIf this really is the end of the war scare – and that's still a very big if at this point – both sides can declare victory. The US can say its warnings stopped the worst fighting in Europe since World War II, and Russia can say this was all down to American hysteria
https://twitter.com/maxseddon
Everyone in the area will be tooling up, for years to come.
So Putin has achieved -
- Made all the stuff about NATO being irrelevant vanish, like tears in the rain.
- Everyone facing Russia is now re-arming at a rate of knots.
- EU defence policy as an alternative has been given a kicking. The Eastern European countries know who did something vs trying to work out how to sell them for gas.
- American engagement in Europe. For all the high sounding papers about America's Turn To The Pacific... well, when Putin starts something, who do you call? Who answers? Who turns up?
It is an appalling scandal
One reason why no-one challenged what Horizon was allegedly showing them was because they had spent so much money on it. So they couldn't bear to admit that they had wasted a humongous amount of money on a crap system.
Some Fujitsu people are being investigated for perjury I understand. Perverting the course of justice is one charge that could be brought. Malicious prosecution probably.
What makes it even worse that at least one internal Post Office lawyer was warning senior management that the prosecutions were wrong and had no basis for going ahead. He was ignored.
But really Fujitsu should be shut down or put under new management and the Post Office's private prosecution powers removed.
Oh and Nick Wallis deserves every journalistic award going. Were it not for him this story would never have been uncovered.
He is a real journalist unlike so many of the tedious nitwits parading their dreary and predictable opinions on the opinion pages.
This crisis isn't part of UK politics - all the major parties agreed that...
1) No direct military involvement
2) Military aid to Ukraine
3) Diplomatic pushback
4) Threats of sanctions
5) Reinforce the Eastern European members of NATO.
I would say that if the result is a Russian pull back without war, it is a success for all the parties that backed that policy basket. And yes, that includes the Party Boy at No.10.
If Ukraine isn't invaded (and it remains a big if) then kudos will rightly be deserved by Britain and America and Eastern European nations - and interestingly I think that Britain and Eastern European nations helped convince America to get involved.
Germany in particular comes out very badly from this whole scenario and whatever the [primarily but not exclusively leftwing] Russian apologists on this site will say, I think the Eastern European nations in particular will have seen who is dependable in this and who is not.
And Putin blinked.
And for fun - look what happened to him.
I was once told off, when very young, for telling senior managers things they didn't want to know.
It's is one of the worst offences in a hierarchy these days.
If you are talented and from a low-cost part of the country, it's much harder than it should be to go to London and make your fame and fortune. Levelling up will only be a partial solution to that- some things will always only happen in the capital city.
If you've made it in the sticks, you will likely still have less wealth than someone whose maiden aunt in Islington has just popped her clogs and left their flat to their sole descendant.
And it's all very well saying that family and inheritance is a core Conservative principle; it is. But elevating that above rewarding rewarding individual achievement is a route to national disaster and electoral oblivion.
(I would certainly feel very uneasy about detaching portions of Scotland that might vote No in any future Sindy referendum).
The boundaries of the present-day Ukraine (or more strictly the Ukraine SSR) were created at the whim of Stalin in 1954.
I don't understand why pb.com is so heartily behind Stalin 😀
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240089230/Bankruptcy-prosecution-and-disrupted-livelihoods-Postmasters-tell-their-story
Left starts culture war, then characterises everything the right does in response as starting a culture war.
Putin menaces Ukraine, then characterises everything Ukraine does to defend itself as "aggression".
But, it's still a bit dumb to claim bodily autonomy is the reason for his decisions, when it's abundantly clear he can't do anything about the huge quantity of virus he will probably be inhaling for the next however many years.
Perhaps someone will bring a private prosecution against some of these prosecutors.
Setting up ridiculous situations or humiliations for the guests is a sign that the host country is run by immature fools who lack culture.
Making The Macaroon look silly makes Putin look weak.
For the complete opposite approach, think how the Queen has treated people who are expressly hostile to the UK.
Apart from the band playing the wrong Imperial March occasionally, the extreme politeness is an expression of power.
@mjluxmoore· We’ve had other Russian troop pullouts before of course, notably in December. Defense Ministry statements can be taken with a pinch of salt, but hopefully the start of a de-escalation of sorts.
https://twitter.com/mjluxmoore/status/1493506930509234177
If people are blockading traffic then they should be moved on, I've consistently said that, but that doesn't mean that those who are engaged in peaceful protests should be subject to draconian powers - especially if as reported in Canada that can be done without court orders.
I can't think of anything equivalent ever being proposed in this country or any other free society.
Just remember, people on the left dismissing floating voters who are currently more likely than not to vote for Labour at the next election as being "on the right" and showing "lunacy" is pretty counterproductive.
However if your job only pays an average income and you do not come from London and the Home Counties you are better off staying put as you will be able to afford to buy a property much easier without moving to the capital.
That is not a problem necessarily for the Tories. London now mainly votes Labour as 2019 proved and most people rent there but the Tories are able to make inroads in the North and Midlands too where first time buyers are able to buy property more easily, as they did when they gained seats in 2019 from Labour in the redwall. It is the number who own property in an area that makes it more likely to vote Tory, not the fact it has a high average price if most people rent there. Hence Islington is solid Labour but the Midlands is arguably now the Tories' safest region.
In the SouthEast the Tories also held on helped by a combination of high earners from London moving to buy their first properties there and with those who bought their properties with parental assistance having always lived in the South.
Tighter immigration controls and building more affordable housing, especially in brownfield areas, in London and the South might make a bit of difference but the fundamentals will not change
See all that red ink, in some of the most prosperous parts of the country? That’s what happens when people can’t afford to buy property where they have grown up.
If 97/100 of the top tennis players (R4) have had the jab then why should anyone worry about Dkoko. There is a bit of a free rider thing going on but so what. I wonder what the stats are in the PL for example.
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf
Young Labour should disaffiliate.
Mini-series are like that.
At least we now have an approximate template for what is acceptable to the right in terms of protest from eg Extinction Rebellion. At least it won’t involve 15 litre diesels pumping out exhaust fumes.
I pointed this out - that neither the people in the unit nor the RSPCA could do what they were doing, that if any of the people arrested brought a challenge the department would lose etc, and the relevant Minister would be mightily pissed off to find that not only were civil servants breaking the law but doing so even after they had been advised otherwise. (Those were the days, eh!)
The fury this engendered among the older male career civil servants in the unit was quite something to behold. My crimes involved being "a girl" (adorned by a number of crude epithets), young, a lawyer, not understanding how things were done around here etc etc. The RSPCA was especially outraged because they were on the side of the poor birds so how dare anyone challenge them.
Anyway I didn't give a toss, escalated and eventually got some changes. After a couple of years I left. It made me realise the importance of challenge, the value of and power you can have as a lawyer, and made me very sceptical indeed of charities and others which claim the moral high ground and use it as a reason to fob off scrutiny. See other charities, the police, the NHS, churches etc.
"The louder he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
It's a good maxim to bear in mind. Asking why and challenging and scrutinising what youare told is an essential life skill. When things go wrong, you will invariably find that at the heart and start of it, it is because this does not happen or people don't listen when it does.
No one listened, but he kept on warning them nonetheless until they got sick of him and kicked him out the cinema.
One of the justifications for "woke" recruitment is that diversity means any situation will be examined from different angles. Less groupthink. Maybe.
Protest at side of street with banners, party hats, flugelhorns: OK
Stopping people getting from A to B by obstructing the roads: Not OK
All your map shows is how dependent Labour is on London, where the highest number rent and property is most expensive.
Outside London and Scotland that map shows most of the rest of the country is Tory blue and certainly outside the Northern and Midlands inner cities and South Wales which have always been Labour anyway
The usage is that you are being "confrontational" and creating a "hostile environment" by "excessive emphasis on process", "white centric norms"*, "xenophobic attitudes"**, "excessive legalism, which is white Euro-centric", by bringing up concerns about quality, morality, legality etc.
You are not "treating others with respect" by pointing out that X is the kind of thing that won't sound good when you have to explain it in the newspapers.
As ever, any idea or system of thought can be highjacked by arseholes, to shore up their power.
*Only bought up by white people, protecting white people
**Only bought up by white people, protecting white people
Let's take BLM. It is perfectly admirable to organise against US Police Officers indiscriminately killing predominantly black people. It is also fine for Starmer and Harri to take the knee in unity with them
The bit I disagree with is demanding the white British nation apologises for its slave trading past. My ancestors weren't Slave Owners, they were exploited whilst chipping away at Carmarthenshire coal seams in confined space darkness for a few shillings a week. Despite my colour and nationality I do not need the nation to apologise for my family's role in the slave trade, because we didn't have one.
On the other hand if you demand I personally apologise for exploiting Bangladeshi children working in sweatshops for a penny a day by my wearing a £10 FandF shirt from Tesco, you have a point.