"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
The effect is presumably in various hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
Of course it won't have an impact. Most second homes in Wales are not necessarily where large numbers of people want to live anyway. A few in Cardiff Bay, perhaps.
Footballs fans doing their best to see the return of some kind of barriers round the pitch. I’d vote for big trenchs, water filled if possible. Pitch invasions getting out of hand now. They are all breaking the law.
mines and machine guns behind the barbed wire sounds sensible. Hooligans are back, Boris id doing a great job.
Footballs fans doing their best to see the return of some kind of barriers round the pitch. I’d vote for big trenchs, water filled if possible. Pitch invasions getting out of hand now. They are all breaking the law.
Pitch invasions aren't in themselves bad. ISTR it used to be a feature at the end of test matches. If pitch invasions could be done in a cheerful and non-threatening way we could indulge them. It's the behaviour which as often as not goes on with them at football matches that's the problem.
There is NO need to invade the pitch. The fans have right to be there. The players do.
Footballs fans doing their best to see the return of some kind of barriers round the pitch. I’d vote for big trenchs, water filled if possible. Pitch invasions getting out of hand now. They are all breaking the law.
Sharks included as well? There is a lake on an Australian Golf course with Bull Sharks (it is assumed that when a river overflowed its banks some young ones got in) Challenging for reclaiming your ball.
The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us
That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
The photo ID requirements are ridiculous. I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that personation is such a massive issue nationally that it outweighs the consequences of people not being able to vote who should be able.
I don't care if it advantages one party or disadvantages a different one. It is wrong.
My preferred system is polling card to be shown and if not, and only then, photo ID of some sort.
Why not print the photo on the polling card?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
The difference is that most countries have convenient ID cards which people are used to carrying all the time. We have resisted that, so in practice only drivers regularly carry identification around. If you don't drive, you need to hunt out your passport if you have one, or apply for a form from the council, and at that point the "ah, sod it" factor kicks in and participation is reduced.
It's quite possible that it's Tory participation that will be reduced more - forgetful elderly people who haven't seen their passport for years are not uncommon, and disproportionately Tory voters. But whatever, it makes voting slightly more difficult, without addressing any known problem. I agree that postal voting is FAR more likely to be a cause of dodgy behaviour.
Is it really that many people that have no ID at all? I have at least four forms (passport, driving licence, two x university library cards). I’d love to know how many voters have zero ID.
Many more than you'd think. Concentrated in the 17-20 demographic and the 80+ demographic.
Well 17 can’t vote. And how many DO get ID at 18 in order to buy booze etc? And the over 80s? Their free bus pass should count...
The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us
That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
The photo ID requirements are ridiculous. I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that personation is such a massive issue nationally that it outweighs the consequences of people not being able to vote who should be able.
I don't care if it advantages one party or disadvantages a different one. It is wrong.
My preferred system is polling card to be shown and if not, and only then, photo ID of some sort.
Why not print the photo on the polling card?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
The difference is that most countries have convenient ID cards which people are used to carrying all the time. We have resisted that, so in practice only drivers regularly carry identification around. If you don't drive, you need to hunt out your passport if you have one, or apply for a form from the council, and at that point the "ah, sod it" factor kicks in and participation is reduced.
It's quite possible that it's Tory participation that will be reduced more - forgetful elderly people who haven't seen their passport for years are not uncommon, and disproportionately Tory voters. But whatever, it makes voting slightly more difficult, without addressing any known problem. I agree that postal voting is FAR more likely to be a cause of dodgy behaviour.
Is it really that many people that have no ID at all? I have at least four forms (passport, driving licence, two x university library cards). I’d love to know how many voters have zero ID.
I have no photo ID, so that's one of us.
Would you object to being asked to show your polling card?
"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
The effect is presumably in various hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
It seems unlikely that housing will be more affordable for locals in North Pembrokeshire, Gwynedd or Cardiganshire if this policy wrecks their most reliable source of income.
But the posturing will play well with the left-wing voters in the Valleys who do not have second homes, so that will be chalked up as a gain by Drakeford.
When, years ago, I read about the different voting systems used for the upper and lower houses in Australia, I immediately began to suspect that they had been designed an academic who wanted to compare the effects of two different voting systems. (Perhaps because I knew of a case where a voting system for faculty at a university had been designed, in part, to give the political scientists there data on preferences.) It was such an interesting notion that I never did bother to try to find out the history behind those Australian voting systems.
The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us
That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
The photo ID requirements are ridiculous. I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that personation is such a massive issue nationally that it outweighs the consequences of people not being able to vote who should be able.
I don't care if it advantages one party or disadvantages a different one. It is wrong.
My preferred system is polling card to be shown and if not, and only then, photo ID of some sort.
Why not print the photo on the polling card?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
The difference is that most countries have convenient ID cards which people are used to carrying all the time. We have resisted that, so in practice only drivers regularly carry identification around. If you don't drive, you need to hunt out your passport if you have one, or apply for a form from the council, and at that point the "ah, sod it" factor kicks in and participation is reduced.
It's quite possible that it's Tory participation that will be reduced more - forgetful elderly people who haven't seen their passport for years are not uncommon, and disproportionately Tory voters. But whatever, it makes voting slightly more difficult, without addressing any known problem. I agree that postal voting is FAR more likely to be a cause of dodgy behaviour.
Is it really that many people that have no ID at all? I have at least four forms (passport, driving licence, two x university library cards). I’d love to know how many voters have zero ID.
I have no photo ID, so that's one of us.
You literally have no passport? You NEVER travel abroad? Really?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
Do these other countries have ID cards? It is voter suppression when we do it because we do not have universal photo ID so it makes voting harder for the group that does not already have ID while adding no burden for those who do already have ID.
I think also the different reaction is because when presented with a proposal for a change, people rightly look not only at the proposed finishing state but also at whether the change is proportional and directed at solving a real problem. In this case as you note there doesn't seem to be a big problem being solved and so it is unsurprising that people suspect dubious ulterior motives.
(The elephant in the room here, I suspect, is US shenanigans, which poison the well for good-faith discussions of changes to voting requirements on this side of the pond too.)
Footballs fans doing their best to see the return of some kind of barriers round the pitch. I’d vote for big trenchs, water filled if possible. Pitch invasions getting out of hand now. They are all breaking the law.
Pitch invasions aren't in themselves bad. ISTR it used to be a feature at the end of test matches. If pitch invasions could be done in a cheerful and non-threatening way we could indulge them. It's the behaviour which as often as not goes on with them at football matches that's the problem.
There is NO need to invade the pitch. The fans have right to be there. The players do.
Test matches used to let spectators on the pitch (not the square) back in the day. Those days are gone.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
Well the situation at full time was at least better than half time. The idea of Liverpool not winning the league because they failed to beat Wolves would have been excruciating. Still when Villa went 2-0 up I thought a single goal in the last 20 minutes would be enough.
Never mind. I just hope there is enough gas left in the tank for the CL final.
Unbelievable season and incredible ending. But the reality is that for all the excitement of the EPL the reality is that Man City and Liverpool are as far ahead of the rest as the Old Firm is in Scotland. Man Utd, Newcastle, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs all need to lift their game significantly to get into competition with 2 of the best teams of all time with 2 of the very best managers.
Well the situation at full time was at least better than half time. The idea of Liverpool not winning the league because they failed to beat Wolves would have been excruciating. Still when Villa went 2-0 up I thought a single goal in the last 20 minutes would be enough.
Never mind. I just hope there is enough gas left in the tank for the CL final.
The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us
That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
The photo ID requirements are ridiculous. I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that personation is such a massive issue nationally that it outweighs the consequences of people not being able to vote who should be able.
I don't care if it advantages one party or disadvantages a different one. It is wrong.
My preferred system is polling card to be shown and if not, and only then, photo ID of some sort.
Why not print the photo on the polling card?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
The difference is that most countries have convenient ID cards which people are used to carrying all the time. We have resisted that, so in practice only drivers regularly carry identification around. If you don't drive, you need to hunt out your passport if you have one, or apply for a form from the council, and at that point the "ah, sod it" factor kicks in and participation is reduced.
It's quite possible that it's Tory participation that will be reduced more - forgetful elderly people who haven't seen their passport for years are not uncommon, and disproportionately Tory voters. But whatever, it makes voting slightly more difficult, without addressing any known problem. I agree that postal voting is FAR more likely to be a cause of dodgy behaviour.
Is it really that many people that have no ID at all? I have at least four forms (passport, driving licence, two x university library cards). I’d love to know how many voters have zero ID.
I have no photo ID, so that's one of us.
Would you object to being asked to show your polling card?
You literally have no passport? You NEVER travel abroad? Really?
17% of people don't. (In the US, it's 60%!) It's one of those things that people who have them can't imagine not having, like a TV or a bicycle, but which many people don't feel they need/ (I have a passport, but not a TV or a bike...)
The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us
That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
The photo ID requirements are ridiculous. I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that personation is such a massive issue nationally that it outweighs the consequences of people not being able to vote who should be able.
I don't care if it advantages one party or disadvantages a different one. It is wrong.
My preferred system is polling card to be shown and if not, and only then, photo ID of some sort.
Why not print the photo on the polling card?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
The difference is that most countries have convenient ID cards which people are used to carrying all the time. We have resisted that, so in practice only drivers regularly carry identification around. If you don't drive, you need to hunt out your passport if you have one, or apply for a form from the council, and at that point the "ah, sod it" factor kicks in and participation is reduced.
It's quite possible that it's Tory participation that will be reduced more - forgetful elderly people who haven't seen their passport for years are not uncommon, and disproportionately Tory voters. But whatever, it makes voting slightly more difficult, without addressing any known problem. I agree that postal voting is FAR more likely to be a cause of dodgy behaviour.
Is it really that many people that have no ID at all? I have at least four forms (passport, driving licence, two x university library cards). I’d love to know how many voters have zero ID.
I have no photo ID, so that's one of us.
Would you object to being asked to show your polling card?
No, although I do anyway.
Which is my preferred system. Polling card means no need for ID. If no polling card you need to prove who you are.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I’m curious: were you ever interested in English football? Why not Scottish?
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us
That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
The photo ID requirements are ridiculous. I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that personation is such a massive issue nationally that it outweighs the consequences of people not being able to vote who should be able.
I don't care if it advantages one party or disadvantages a different one. It is wrong.
My preferred system is polling card to be shown and if not, and only then, photo ID of some sort.
Why not print the photo on the polling card?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
The difference is that most countries have convenient ID cards which people are used to carrying all the time. We have resisted that, so in practice only drivers regularly carry identification around. If you don't drive, you need to hunt out your passport if you have one, or apply for a form from the council, and at that point the "ah, sod it" factor kicks in and participation is reduced.
It's quite possible that it's Tory participation that will be reduced more - forgetful elderly people who haven't seen their passport for years are not uncommon, and disproportionately Tory voters. But whatever, it makes voting slightly more difficult, without addressing any known problem. I agree that postal voting is FAR more likely to be a cause of dodgy behaviour.
Is it really that many people that have no ID at all? I have at least four forms (passport, driving licence, two x university library cards). I’d love to know how many voters have zero ID.
I have no photo ID, so that's one of us.
You literally have no passport? You NEVER travel abroad? Really?
I have an expired passport if that counts. These days I rely on fellow PBers posting pictures of abroad.
Unbelievable season and incredible ending. But the reality is that for all the excitement of the EPL the reality is that Man City and Liverpool are as far ahead of the rest as the Old Firm is in Scotland. Man Utd, Newcastle, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs all need to lift their game significantly to get into competition with 2 of the best teams of all time with 2 of the very best managers.
Yes, those two are at the moment, but other teams have won both FA Cup and PL in recent times, while the old firm dominated for decades.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Not like the Scottish Premiership then!
Read my post I said it was exactly like the SPL, just as crap with same couple of teams winning it all teh time due to having shedloads of cash, buying victory is nothing great for me.
The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us
That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
The photo ID requirements are ridiculous. I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that personation is such a massive issue nationally that it outweighs the consequences of people not being able to vote who should be able.
I don't care if it advantages one party or disadvantages a different one. It is wrong.
My preferred system is polling card to be shown and if not, and only then, photo ID of some sort.
Why not print the photo on the polling card?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
The difference is that most countries have convenient ID cards which people are used to carrying all the time. We have resisted that, so in practice only drivers regularly carry identification around. If you don't drive, you need to hunt out your passport if you have one, or apply for a form from the council, and at that point the "ah, sod it" factor kicks in and participation is reduced.
It's quite possible that it's Tory participation that will be reduced more - forgetful elderly people who haven't seen their passport for years are not uncommon, and disproportionately Tory voters. But whatever, it makes voting slightly more difficult, without addressing any known problem. I agree that postal voting is FAR more likely to be a cause of dodgy behaviour.
Is it really that many people that have no ID at all? I have at least four forms (passport, driving licence, two x university library cards). I’d love to know how many voters have zero ID.
I have no photo ID, so that's one of us.
Would you object to being asked to show your polling card?
No, although I do anyway.
Which is my preferred system. Polling card means no need for ID. If no polling card you need to prove who you are.
Footballs fans doing their best to see the return of some kind of barriers round the pitch. I’d vote for big trenchs, water filled if possible. Pitch invasions getting out of hand now. They are all breaking the law.
mines and machine guns behind the barbed wire sounds sensible. Hooligans are back, Boris id doing a great job.
Certainly seems to be getting worse. Especially the last few years.
We need to get back to the early nineties when everyone was so loved up the violence melted away.
On the topic before about why players in United just don't seem to give a damn, compare the send-off and post-match guard of honour that Liverpool just gave Origi with the way that Lingard was utterly snubbed in his final Old Trafford game.
Win or lose there's a great team atmosphere in Liverpool and the players are appreciated though none are put ahead of Klopp.
The labour party can bugger off. Voting systems do not belong to politicians and they should get no say in what we select as a people. You want to change the voting system you ask the people. Politicians are servants not masters and shouldn't be able to impose their terms of employment on us
That's how I feel about changing the rules for how you can vote (by requiring ID). Do you agree?
The photo ID requirements are ridiculous. I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that personation is such a massive issue nationally that it outweighs the consequences of people not being able to vote who should be able.
I don't care if it advantages one party or disadvantages a different one. It is wrong.
My preferred system is polling card to be shown and if not, and only then, photo ID of some sort.
Why not print the photo on the polling card?
That would require every voter to have a government held photo, i.e. a totally new system to fix something is only marginally broken. I do find it odd how many other countries require ID to vote, yet if we try it in the U.K. it’s voter suppression.
The difference is that most countries have convenient ID cards which people are used to carrying all the time. We have resisted that, so in practice only drivers regularly carry identification around. If you don't drive, you need to hunt out your passport if you have one, or apply for a form from the council, and at that point the "ah, sod it" factor kicks in and participation is reduced.
It's quite possible that it's Tory participation that will be reduced more - forgetful elderly people who haven't seen their passport for years are not uncommon, and disproportionately Tory voters. But whatever, it makes voting slightly more difficult, without addressing any known problem. I agree that postal voting is FAR more likely to be a cause of dodgy behaviour.
Is it really that many people that have no ID at all? I have at least four forms (passport, driving licence, two x university library cards). I’d love to know how many voters have zero ID.
I have no photo ID, so that's one of us.
Would you object to being asked to show your polling card?
No, although I do anyway.
Which is my preferred system. Polling card means no need for ID. If no polling card you need to prove who you are.
Ah, but you are not running the government.
Probably for the best. Even with the current shysters and muppets.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I tend to be as grumpy as you about football, Malc, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think there have been at least six different teams win it in the last decade. Not many leagues have that kind of variety; and there's certainly more variety than when I was growing up. Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City. Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I’m curious: were you ever interested in English football? Why not Scottish?
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
When I was younger I was very interested in Englih football, especially the FA cup, for me the English leagues were great , lots of competition compared to Scotland with eth smae two winning almost everything, apart from a very small spell when Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly shone. Now it is just like teh US sports , all down to money with the same suspects every year. Just because you can buy success does not mean it is exciting , for me English football sold it's soul. PS; the personal insult of being a Brit is well below the belt.
Unbelievable season and incredible ending. But the reality is that for all the excitement of the EPL the reality is that Man City and Liverpool are as far ahead of the rest as the Old Firm is in Scotland. Man Utd, Newcastle, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs all need to lift their game significantly to get into competition with 2 of the best teams of all time with 2 of the very best managers.
But that is now
Unlike every other major league in the world, the fact is there are another half dozen clubs who can realistically hope to challenge, and will do so, in time
Arsenal have a huge fan base and amazing history, they will be back. Man United, even more so, they won’t be down forever. Ditto Chelsea and arguably Spurs, and now Newcastle have proper financing (ie, er, £350bn)
And who knows about Everton, Villa, Hammers, even Leeds, they have all known glory
This is a golden age for the EPL, we should celebrate it (at least in England)
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Not like the Scottish Premiership then!
Read my post I said it was exactly like the SPL, just as crap with same couple of teams winning it all teh time due to having shedloads of cash, buying victory is nothing great for me.
It also makes the championship a bit of a joke too. The parachute payments make it almost inevitable the teams coming down, at least one if not two, go back up straight away.
You literally have no passport? You NEVER travel abroad? Really?
17% of people don't. (In the US, it's 60%!) It's one of those things that people who have them can't imagine not having, like a TV or a bicycle, but which many people don't feel they need/ (I have a passport, but not a TV or a bike...)
To be fair to Americans, they have a lot more geography. When your country is that big it fulfils many of the reasons Brits go abroad (i.e. for sun, or snow).
On the topic before about why players in United just don't seem to give a damn, compare the send-off and post-match guard of honour that Liverpool just gave Origi with the way that Lingard was utterly snubbed in his final Old Trafford game.
Win or lose there's a great team atmosphere in Liverpool and the players are appreciated though none are put ahead of Klopp.
Klopp is a class act. Him, Guardiola, Wenger and Ferguson probably the greatest 4 Prem managers
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I’m curious: were you ever interested in English football? Why not Scottish?
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
When I was younger I was very interested in Englih football, especially the FA cup, for me the English leagues were great , lots of competition compared to Scotland with eth smae two winning almost everything, apart from a very small spell when Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly shone. Now it is just like teh US sports , all down to money with the same suspects every year. Just because you can buy success does not mean it is exciting , for me English football sold it's soul. PS; the personal insult of being a Brit is well below the belt.
It always was down to money though - Man U and Liverpool may have got their money by having more fans, but they bought their success nonetheless.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I’m curious: were you ever interested in English football? Why not Scottish?
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
When I was younger I was very interested in Englih football, especially the FA cup, for me the English leagues were great , lots of competition compared to Scotland with eth smae two winning almost everything, apart from a very small spell when Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly shone. Now it is just like teh US sports , all down to money with the same suspects every year. Just because you can buy success does not mean it is exciting , for me English football sold it's soul. PS; the personal insult of being a Brit is well below the belt.
premier league football boring as anything..only 2 to 3 teams with a realistic chance of winning...newly promoted teams best hope is to avoid relegation...a massively overhyped product for people to waste money on...the same people incidentally who will then complain they cant afford their energy bill
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Not like the Scottish Premiership then!
Read my post I said it was exactly like the SPL, just as crap with same couple of teams winning it all teh time due to having shedloads of cash, buying victory is nothing great for me.
It also makes the championship a bit of a joke too. The parachute payments make it almost inevitable the teams coming down, at least one if not two, go back up straight away.
The EPL would be electrified if we could unify it with Scotland
Rangers and Celtic are big big clubs. If they got into the EPL (which they would, on merit, quite quickly) that would mean 8 or 9 teams challenging for the British Premier League
Good for football in England AND Scotland. It would be brilliant
"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
The effect is presumably in various hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
It seems unlikely that housing will be more affordable for locals in North Pembrokeshire, Gwynedd or Cardiganshire if this policy wrecks their most reliable source of income.
But the posturing will play well with the left-wing voters in the Valleys who do not have second homes, so that will be chalked up as a gain by Drakeford.
I think I'd see that effect.
Holiday lettings will be polarised into professionals achieving high occupancy and second homers letting them out to pay for the local surcharge, with increased occupancy in fewer properties in hotspots. And others dropping out, with fewer people able to have a home sitting empty with the greater overhead.
Which is presumably the aim.
Presumably therefore an opportunity for service businesses, and perhaps an increase in charges to rent holiday homes in Wales as the extra money will pass through to customers in the end.
Whether that will be an overall gain or loss depends no how right they have their judgement.
A few hundred million in extra revenue will be a few £10s per tourist.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Not like the Scottish Premiership then!
Read my post I said it was exactly like the SPL, just as crap with same couple of teams winning it all teh time due to having shedloads of cash, buying victory is nothing great for me.
It also makes the championship a bit of a joke too. The parachute payments make it almost inevitable the teams coming down, at least one if not two, go back up straight away.
The EPL would be electrified if we could unify it with Scotland
Rangers and Celtic are big big clubs. If they got into the EPL (which they would, on merit, quite quickly) that would mean 8 or 9 teams challenging for the British Premier League
Good for football in England AND Scotland. It would be brilliant
20 years ago I would have agreed but now, how could they compete financially with the biggest clubs. They’d be scrapping for mid table at best.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I tend to be as grumpy as you about football, Malc, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think there have been at least six different teams win it in the last decade. Not many leagues have that kind of variety; and there's certainly more variety than when I was growing up. Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City. Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
i can never understand why people get so invested in teams full of foreign players with no connection to the cities they play for, i suppose its a useful outlet for the establishment as a way to channel peoples tribal instincts
"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
The effect is presumably in various hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
There is a serious problem, especially with some of the pretty resorts on the coast (e.g., Aberdyfi, Abersoch, Solva, Tenby), with second home owners.
However, many of the areas of rural Wales are depopulating (much like Vermont or New Hampshire). There are plenty of semi-derelict, falling down, houses in the Welsh countryside. Plenty of decaying big houses as well, the local Plas.
People blame second-home owners for their sons and daughters moving away. But, in most of rural Wales, there are no jobs. So, people move away. So, there is depopulation and there are empty houses, falling to bits.
It is very clear that the Welsh Government has no idea how to bring jobs to Wales. Indeed they have admitted it-- here is Lee Waters:
"For 20 years we’ve pretended we know what we’re doing on the economy – and the truth is we don’t really know what we’re doing on the economy. Nobody knows what they’re doing on the economy.
“Everybody is making it up as we go along – and let’s just be honest about that. We’ve thrown all the orthodox tools we can think of at growing the economy in the conventional way, and we’ve achieved static GDP over 20 years." (Lee Waters, MS for Llanelli)
Without providing jobs in the areas, they will continue to depopulate and there will be empty houses.
If they can't be sold to outsiders, then they will fall down.
Drakeford's proposals look to me to be a very blunt tool to tackle the problem of second home ownership.
The depopulation is not mainly due to second home ownership -- but I certainly agree there are big problems in some of the prettiest places and in the National Parks in which locals are priced out.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
But, 182 days occupancy looks really brutal -- I think it will kill some businesses.
Sophy Ridge monstering the hapless Zahawi was fun , his stuttering , obfuscating and not answering the questions on Boris strongarming Gray was pitiful. Another bumbling useless Tory lickspittle no user.
On topic. I think the article is correct but Labour should beware. Moving from FPTP to a form of AV or PR would impact their ability to form majority governments in future, plus there are unintended consequences. Look at the SNP in Scotland - they had a highly effective strategy of blaming London for problems in Scotland and replaced Labour as the not-Tory party here. If the red wall results in 2019 showed a rejection of Corbyn, they could also show a rejection of Labour in future. Imagine an English not-Tory alternative party of the left helped by a new voting system.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I’m curious: were you ever interested in English football? Why not Scottish?
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
When I was younger I was very interested in Englih football, especially the FA cup, for me the English leagues were great , lots of competition compared to Scotland with eth smae two winning almost everything, apart from a very small spell when Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly shone. Now it is just like teh US sports , all down to money with the same suspects every year. Just because you can buy success does not mean it is exciting , for me English football sold it's soul. PS; the personal insult of being a Brit is well below the belt.
It always was down to money though - Man U and Liverpool may have got their money by having more fans, but they bought their success nonetheless.
No, their success helped bring the money, not the other way around.
The boot room glory days of Liverpool weren't really "bought" at all, especially in the early days and the success then helped make Liverpool a household name around the globe.
As much as I'm no fan of United, I respect and recognise that their class of 92 were developed at home too.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I tend to be as grumpy as you about football, Malc, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think there have been at least six different teams win it in the last decade. Not many leagues have that kind of variety; and there's certainly more variety than when I was growing up. Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City. Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
i can never understand why people get so invested in teams full of foreign players with no connection to the cities they play for, i suppose its a useful outlet for the establishment as a way to channel peoples tribal instincts
Unbelievable season and incredible ending. But the reality is that for all the excitement of the EPL the reality is that Man City and Liverpool are as far ahead of the rest as the Old Firm is in Scotland. Man Utd, Newcastle, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs all need to lift their game significantly to get into competition with 2 of the best teams of all time with 2 of the very best managers.
But that is now
Unlike every other major league in the world, the fact is there are another half dozen clubs who can realistically hope to challenge, and will do so, in time
Arsenal have a huge fan base and amazing history, they will be back. Man United, even more so, they won’t be down forever. Ditto Chelsea and arguably Spurs, and now Newcastle have proper financing (ie, er, £350bn)
And who knows about Everton, Villa, Hammers, even Leeds, they have all known glory
This is a golden age for the EPL, we should celebrate it (at least in England)
Which is my preferred system. Polling card means no need for ID. If no polling card you need to prove who you are.
Ah, but you are not running the government.
An interesting experiment for a hot evening: design a Cabinet consisting only of PBers which we believe would actually work.
It depends what you think the Cabinet is for. Nadine Dorries has big bills to get through parliament but they were surely all devised by some anonymous SpAd or think tank; in interviews, she does not seem to know very much about the bills she is championing. Mo Mowlam complained that much the same was true under New Labour.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Not like the Scottish Premiership then!
Read my post I said it was exactly like the SPL, just as crap with same couple of teams winning it all teh time due to having shedloads of cash, buying victory is nothing great for me.
It also makes the championship a bit of a joke too. The parachute payments make it almost inevitable the teams coming down, at least one if not two, go back up straight away.
The EPL would be electrified if we could unify it with Scotland
Rangers and Celtic are big big clubs. If they got into the EPL (which they would, on merit, quite quickly) that would mean 8 or 9 teams challenging for the British Premier League
Good for football in England AND Scotland. It would be brilliant
20 years ago I would have agreed but now, how could they compete financially with the biggest clubs. They’d be scrapping for mid table at best.
They have ENORMOUS fan bases. Huge crowds. Passionate and colourful support. The only thing holding them back is the tiny size of the SPL and the lack of competition. Within a year or two they’d get billionaire backers
We have Welsh teams in the EPL, And yet Wales still competes as an independent nation in the World Cup, why not Scotand?
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I tend to be as grumpy as you about football, Malc, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think there have been at least six different teams win it in the last decade. Not many leagues have that kind of variety; and there's certainly more variety than when I was growing up. Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City. Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
i can never understand why people get so invested in teams full of foreign players with no connection to the cities they play for, i suppose its a useful outlet for the establishment as a way to channel peoples tribal instincts
Something to do at a weekend
very true i think many people just like the camaraderie, like i say football is useful for the establishment, keeps people distracted by triviality in the same way the romans had gladiator contests
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Not like the Scottish Premiership then!
Read my post I said it was exactly like the SPL, just as crap with same couple of teams winning it all teh time due to having shedloads of cash, buying victory is nothing great for me.
It also makes the championship a bit of a joke too. The parachute payments make it almost inevitable the teams coming down, at least one if not two, go back up straight away.
The EPL would be electrified if we could unify it with Scotland
Rangers and Celtic are big big clubs. If they got into the EPL (which they would, on merit, quite quickly) that would mean 8 or 9 teams challenging for the British Premier League
Good for football in England AND Scotland. It would be brilliant
Nah, Rangers and Celtic would be in a relegation scrap, and sooner or later playing in the second teir.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I tend to be as grumpy as you about football, Malc, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think there have been at least six different teams win it in the last decade. Not many leagues have that kind of variety; and there's certainly more variety than when I was growing up. Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City. Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
Sums up UK today Cookie, no principles etc. As you say happy foreign money and players than actually having English players.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I’m curious: were you ever interested in English football? Why not Scottish?
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
When I was younger I was very interested in Englih football, especially the FA cup, for me the English leagues were great , lots of competition compared to Scotland with eth smae two winning almost everything, apart from a very small spell when Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly shone. Now it is just like teh US sports , all down to money with the same suspects every year. Just because you can buy success does not mean it is exciting , for me English football sold it's soul. PS; the personal insult of being a Brit is well below the belt.
It always was down to money though - Man U and Liverpool may have got their money by having more fans, but they bought their success nonetheless.
No, their success helped bring the money, not the other way around.
The boot room glory days of Liverpool weren't really "bought" at all, especially in the early days and the success then helped make Liverpool a household name around the globe.
As much as I'm no fan of United, I respect and recognise that their class of 92 were developed at home too.
Yes, fair point. But I always got rather sick of hearing Alex Ferguson praised for his brilliance when he seemed to basically win by spending more money than anyone else because he had more money to spend.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Not like the Scottish Premiership then!
Read my post I said it was exactly like the SPL, just as crap with same couple of teams winning it all teh time due to having shedloads of cash, buying victory is nothing great for me.
It also makes the championship a bit of a joke too. The parachute payments make it almost inevitable the teams coming down, at least one if not two, go back up straight away.
The EPL would be electrified if we could unify it with Scotland
Rangers and Celtic are big big clubs. If they got into the EPL (which they would, on merit, quite quickly) that would mean 8 or 9 teams challenging for the British Premier League
Good for football in England AND Scotland. It would be brilliant
20 years ago I would have agreed but now, how could they compete financially with the biggest clubs. They’d be scrapping for mid table at best.
Taz, they might take a bit of time but when you see the worldwide fan base they hav ethey would not be long in getting up there, for sure some mega rich bunch would be in to buy them in a heartbeat.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I tend to be as grumpy as you about football, Malc, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think there have been at least six different teams win it in the last decade. Not many leagues have that kind of variety; and there's certainly more variety than when I was growing up. Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City. Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
i can never understand why people get so invested in teams full of foreign players with no connection to the cities they play for, i suppose its a useful outlet for the establishment as a way to channel peoples tribal instincts
I really don't think it's some sort of conspiracy. People are invested primarily in other fans. The sense of belonging. Whi the team currently employs is really of less interest. As I don't go in person, I don't get the same sort of investment, but I can understand why people do.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I’m curious: were you ever interested in English football? Why not Scottish?
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
When I was younger I was very interested in Englih football, especially the FA cup, for me the English leagues were great , lots of competition compared to Scotland with eth smae two winning almost everything, apart from a very small spell when Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly shone. Now it is just like teh US sports , all down to money with the same suspects every year. Just because you can buy success does not mean it is exciting , for me English football sold it's soul. PS; the personal insult of being a Brit is well below the belt.
It always was down to money though - Man U and Liverpool may have got their money by having more fans, but they bought their success nonetheless.
No, their success helped bring the money, not the other way around.
The boot room glory days of Liverpool weren't really "bought" at all, especially in the early days and the success then helped make Liverpool a household name around the globe.
As much as I'm no fan of United, I respect and recognise that their class of 92 were developed at home too.
Yes, fair point. But I always got rather sick of hearing Alex Ferguson praised for his brilliance when he seemed to basically win by spending more money than anyone else because he had more money to spend.
id like to see how jose mourinho would go on managing barrow fc. Dont think he would be so special then
Sophy Ridge monstering the hapless Zahawi was fun , his stuttering , obfuscating and not answering the questions on Boris strongarming Gray was pitiful. Another bumbling useless Tory lickspittle no user.
friends say Sue Gray was deliberately ostracised while investigating Partygate https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/22/she-has-been-horribly-isolated-friends-say-sue-gray-was-deliberately-ostracised-while-investigating-partygate ...A Whitehall official who knows about the inquiry was “horrified” by the way Gray had been installed to investigate the organisation she works within, then given minimum help and maximum discouragement from revealing the truth.... ...The suspicion among many in the civil service is that Gray was asked to do the job because those at No 10 thought that it would be impossible even for someone as respected as Gray to reveal all the system’s wrongdoings from the inside, particularly if she wanted to remain in the civil service afterwards.
Despite this, Gray has ploughed gamely on, gathering information from emails, photographs, phone logs and police security logs in an attempt to establish what parties happened when, and who attended them.
This weekend, with days to go before the release of her final report – one that could well have a bearing on how long Boris Johnson can remain prime minister – the pressure on her from No 10 and civil servants is at its height...
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I tend to be as grumpy as you about football, Malc, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think there have been at least six different teams win it in the last decade. Not many leagues have that kind of variety; and there's certainly more variety than when I was growing up. Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City. Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
i can never understand why people get so invested in teams full of foreign players with no connection to the cities they play for, i suppose its a useful outlet for the establishment as a way to channel peoples tribal instincts
I really don't think it's some sort of conspiracy. People are invested primarily in other fans. The sense of belonging. Whi the team currently employs is really of less interest. As I don't go in person, I don't get the same sort of investment, but I can understand why people do.
exactly the sense of camaraderie that is missing otherwise from peoples lives in a highly technological economy....i see exactly why its a useful outlet especially for those with not much going for them otherwise
"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
The effect is presumably in various hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
There is a serious problem, especially with some of the pretty resorts on the coast (e.g., Aberdyfi, Abersoch, Solva, Tenby), with second home owners.
However, many of the areas of rural Wales are depopulating (much like Vermont or New Hampshire). There are plenty of semi-derelict, falling down, houses in the Welsh countryside. Plenty of decaying big houses as well, the local Plas.
People blame second-home owners for their sons and daughters moving away. But, in most of rural Wales, there are no jobs. So, people move away. So, there is depopulation and there are empty houses, falling to bits.
It is very clear that the Welsh Government has no idea how to bring jobs to Wales. Indeed they have admitted it-- here is Lee Waters:
"For 20 years we’ve pretended we know what we’re doing on the economy – and the truth is we don’t really know what we’re doing on the economy. Nobody knows what they’re doing on the economy.
“Everybody is making it up as we go along – and let’s just be honest about that. We’ve thrown all the orthodox tools we can think of at growing the economy in the conventional way, and we’ve achieved static GDP over 20 years." (Lee Waters, MS for Llanelli)
Without providing jobs in the areas, they will continue to depopulate and there will be empty houses.
If they can't be sold to outsiders, then they will fall down.
Drakeford's proposals look to me to be a very blunt tool to tackle the problem of second home ownership.
The depopulation is not mainly due to second home ownership -- but I certainly agree there are big problems in some of the prettiest places and in the National Parks in which locals are priced out.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
But, 182 days occupancy looks really brutal -- I think it will kill some businesses.
What's more likely to happen is with the WFH revolution they will flip their homes so second home owners spend more time in Wales and less in England.
In which case it will clobber tourism and do fuck all about second home owners.
I think the issue you identify with jobs is more pertinent and that's why I'm extremely doubtful about a policy that will damage one of the few sources of them.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I’m curious: were you ever interested in English football? Why not Scottish?
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
When I was younger I was very interested in Englih football, especially the FA cup, for me the English leagues were great , lots of competition compared to Scotland with eth smae two winning almost everything, apart from a very small spell when Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly shone. Now it is just like teh US sports , all down to money with the same suspects every year. Just because you can buy success does not mean it is exciting , for me English football sold it's soul. PS; the personal insult of being a Brit is well below the belt.
It always was down to money though - Man U and Liverpool may have got their money by having more fans, but they bought their success nonetheless.
No, their success helped bring the money, not the other way around.
The boot room glory days of Liverpool weren't really "bought" at all, especially in the early days and the success then helped make Liverpool a household name around the globe.
As much as I'm no fan of United, I respect and recognise that their class of 92 were developed at home too.
This is nonsense
There’s an excellent Netflix (??) drama about the emergence of English pro football, at the turn of the 19th/20th century
It was ALWAYS about rich owners and highly prized players. It always helped if you had a big city as a fan base
That’s it. Nothing has changed. Except it is now Qatari billionaires rather than mill owning tycoons
Which is my preferred system. Polling card means no need for ID. If no polling card you need to prove who you are.
Ah, but you are not running the government.
An interesting experiment for a hot evening: design a Cabinet consisting only of PBers which we believe would actually work.
It depends what you think the Cabinet is for. Nadine Dorries has big bills to get through parliament but they were surely all devised by some anonymous SpAd or think tank; in interviews, she does not seem to know very much about the bills she is championing. Mo Mowlam complained that much the same was true under New Labour.
Or Home Secretary?
Boris Johnson is trying to shoehorn in the Scotland Yard chief who presided over the disastrous VIP child sex abuse inquiry as head of the National Crime Agency, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Not like the Scottish Premiership then!
Read my post I said it was exactly like the SPL, just as crap with same couple of teams winning it all teh time due to having shedloads of cash, buying victory is nothing great for me.
It also makes the championship a bit of a joke too. The parachute payments make it almost inevitable the teams coming down, at least one if not two, go back up straight away.
The EPL would be electrified if we could unify it with Scotland
Rangers and Celtic are big big clubs. If they got into the EPL (which they would, on merit, quite quickly) that would mean 8 or 9 teams challenging for the British Premier League
Good for football in England AND Scotland. It would be brilliant
20 years ago I would have agreed but now, how could they compete financially with the biggest clubs. They’d be scrapping for mid table at best.
Taz, they might take a bit of time but when you see the worldwide fan base they hav ethey would not be long in getting up there, for sure some mega rich bunch would be in to buy them in a heartbeat.
Yes, I think you are right. Big name, big fan base but unlike other U.K. clubs that are sleeping giants with large fanbases, like Sunderland, they do have a global reach.
The premiership would not be weaker with them in it, for sure.
Although I should point out @Cyclefree didn't want the Home Office and insists on being PM.
The provision was 'actually work'. Though I have great confidence in some of the individual components of that cabinet, their forming a coherent whole seems slightly implausible.
"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
The effect is presumably in various hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
There is a serious problem, especially with some of the pretty resorts on the coast (e.g., Aberdyfi, Abersoch, Solva, Tenby), with second home owners.
However, many of the areas of rural Wales are depopulating (much like Vermont or New Hampshire). There are plenty of semi-derelict, falling down, houses in the Welsh countryside. Plenty of decaying big houses as well, the local Plas.
People blame second-home owners for their sons and daughters moving away. But, in most of rural Wales, there are no jobs. So, people move away. So, there is depopulation and there are empty houses, falling to bits.
It is very clear that the Welsh Government has no idea how to bring jobs to Wales. Indeed they have admitted it-- here is Lee Waters:
"For 20 years we’ve pretended we know what we’re doing on the economy – and the truth is we don’t really know what we’re doing on the economy. Nobody knows what they’re doing on the economy.
“Everybody is making it up as we go along – and let’s just be honest about that. We’ve thrown all the orthodox tools we can think of at growing the economy in the conventional way, and we’ve achieved static GDP over 20 years." (Lee Waters, MS for Llanelli)
Without providing jobs in the areas, they will continue to depopulate and there will be empty houses.
If they can't be sold to outsiders, then they will fall down.
Drakeford's proposals look to me to be a very blunt tool to tackle the problem of second home ownership.
The depopulation is not mainly due to second home ownership -- but I certainly agree there are big problems in some of the prettiest places and in the National Parks in which locals are priced out.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
But, 182 days occupancy looks really brutal -- I think it will kill some businesses.
It is actually quite hard to create good well paid jobs. You need to have productive innovative firms with ready access to customers. That's not easy to do, especially in geographically peripheral places like Wales (or indeed most of the UK outside of the South East). Governments can't just magic these jobs into existence. They can help by investing in infrastructure and skills, creating a business friendly environment and ensuring ready access to markets and customers. Unfortunately the government here is shit at most of that, especially with their Brexit shit fest.
"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
The effect is presumably in various hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
There is a serious problem, especially with some of the pretty resorts on the coast (e.g., Aberdyfi, Abersoch, Solva, Tenby), with second home owners.
However, many of the areas of rural Wales are depopulating (much like Vermont or New Hampshire). There are plenty of semi-derelict, falling down, houses in the Welsh countryside. Plenty of decaying big houses as well, the local Plas.
People blame second-home owners for their sons and daughters moving away. But, in most of rural Wales, there are no jobs. So, people move away. So, there is depopulation and there are empty houses, falling to bits.
It is very clear that the Welsh Government has no idea how to bring jobs to Wales. Indeed they have admitted it-- here is Lee Waters:
"For 20 years we’ve pretended we know what we’re doing on the economy – and the truth is we don’t really know what we’re doing on the economy. Nobody knows what they’re doing on the economy.
“Everybody is making it up as we go along – and let’s just be honest about that. We’ve thrown all the orthodox tools we can think of at growing the economy in the conventional way, and we’ve achieved static GDP over 20 years." (Lee Waters, MS for Llanelli)
Without providing jobs in the areas, they will continue to depopulate and there will be empty houses.
If they can't be sold to outsiders, then they will fall down.
Drakeford's proposals look to me to be a very blunt tool to tackle the problem of second home ownership.
The depopulation is not mainly due to second home ownership -- but I certainly agree there are big problems in some of the prettiest places and in the National Parks in which locals are priced out.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
But, 182 days occupancy looks really brutal -- I think it will kill some businesses.
It also suppresses property development. If you buy a house and don't live in it as your main residence, then you have a 5k per year tax. No one is going to buy places and do refurbs etc with this tax issue, particularly not in low value areas where properties are difficult to sell or rent out.
I bought a disused property 12 years ago - not in Wales but somewhere similar - for next to nothing. Did it up and then rented it out as a holiday let. I was the first person in the village to do it, they thought I was mad... but then 5 years later many people followed and the village had a tourism boom.
I made a big effort with the local people but some people would never be reconciled to this happening, they would rather that the buildings all just fall down, assuming that there was some kind of moral obligation for the government to step in to provide them with free money and jobs.
If the problem is localised to a few areas, then the policy should be confined to those areas.
Man United were right place right time when the Sky money started rolling in
Yeah but some thought that had locked them in first, but the past decade says otherwise.
Even without Sky/Premier League the Class of 92 would have earnt United a lot of Division 1 success.
Yeah, but not the massive financial gulf and huge international fanbase.
The international fan base has maybe been helped by the PL but it was already there. Liverpool has long had a tremendous international fan base and its not due to Premier League success afterall.
I moved down-under in 92 and everyone in my primary school would talk about English football, which wasn't televised live there.
By the way, if NZ is any guide, any move to PR will lead to various breakaway attempts by assorted gadflies and nutters, and a certain period of instability.
Over time though we could expect there to be five main parties represented (and assorted nationalists), to wit: Con, Lab, LD, Green and Reform.
Lab would alternate between Lab/Green and Lab/LD coalitions.
Con would alternate between Con/Ref and Con/LD coalitions.
One confounding factor is the SNP and their ability to hold Westminster to random for repeated Indy refs. This needs to be sorted one way or another before PR can really be “safe”.
You can make exactly the same argument about the LDs or indeed any other third//fourth party. I'm sure the LDs will seek to reverse Brexit and have another referendum, for instance, and as for Ref .... So that argument is moot - it's part and parcel of such a voting system.
The difference is, third parties in most polities don’t seek to dissolve the actual state.
It would be daft for Westminster to put itself in a position which strengthened those who literally wish its end.
You're confusing anarchists and autonomists.
No, I’m not.
I simply note that the SNP’s chief policy is to break up the UK.
If you are “the UK”, you’d want to avoid that.
That's to split the state - not dissolve it. Dissolve the union of 1707, yes. But that's a different thing.
Blue Moon! 4 in 5. This City side is one of the all time greats. Sean Dyche vindicated too. Strange decision.
Same one or two teams every year , all bought with foreign money, shit compared to old days when football was exciting.
Unusually and brutally honest about the SPL there, @malcolmg
EPL is exactly the same as SPL, both crap for me and it is just down to money. In days gone by you could hav elots of teams winning things. I used to love the FA cup , now it is crap , EPL is just liek teh US sports now , a few very rich clubs dominate and the rest try to hang on for the cash with no hope of winning anything. I have lost interest in football nowadays, at the top end anyway.
I tend to be as grumpy as you about football, Malc, but I don't think that's entirely true. I think there have been at least six different teams win it in the last decade. Not many leagues have that kind of variety; and there's certainly more variety than when I was growing up. Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City. Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
i can never understand why people get so invested in teams full of foreign players with no connection to the cities they play for, i suppose its a useful outlet for the establishment as a way to channel peoples tribal instincts
I really don't think it's some sort of conspiracy. People are invested primarily in other fans. The sense of belonging. Whi the team currently employs is really of less interest. As I don't go in person, I don't get the same sort of investment, but I can understand why people do.
Personally know more than one fan of a sports team, for whom at least one prime reason for fandom is bonding with family members with whom they would have little in common, and/or as means of introducing positive element into typically adversarial relationship. \ For example, socialist-progressive Buddhist son of reactionary-conservative Mormon father, duo that can talk about little without great risk of verbal warfare EXCEPT shared love of NFL football. Just about sole topic where they each respect AND wish to hear the other's opinion.
So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?
Smaller pool, less money, inherent Scotch inferiority.
What would you like the answer to be?
I would like the answer to be the right one. I don't have a view here, I'm just interested people's thoughts.
Scotch pop = 5m English midlands pop = 10m says the internet. There's your answer, no more needed.
I'm not sure that's enough of an explanation. Ireland has a similar population and Scottish football is head and shoulders above Irish. Turkey has a bigger population than the UK but it's down at about the same level as Scotland. I reckon Cypriot football is a touch above Scotland's, and its population is about half that of Glasgow.
So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?
Smaller pool, less money, inherent Scotch inferiority.
What would you like the answer to be?
I would like the answer to be the right one. I don't have a view here, I'm just interested people's thoughts.
Scotch pop = 5m English midlands pop = 10m says the internet. There's your answer, no more needed.
I'm not sure that's enough of an explanation. Ireland has a similar population and Scottish football is head and shoulders above Irish. Turkey has a bigger population than the UK but it's down at about the same level as Scotland. I reckon Cypriot football is a touch above Scotland's, and its population is about half that of Glasgow.
Competition drives improvements, there's not enough depth or competition in Scotland.
City are better because of Liverpool and vice-versa, Scottish football lacks that depth.
So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?
MONEY and debatable whether inferior, Scottish teams have done pretty good when they met English clubs in the past. Why do you say it is inferior , extremely stange, is it an inferiority complex vis a vis England.
As I prepare to take a nice looooong walk into the first really nice, sunny and reasonably-warm day so far in Seattle during this merry month of May, I'm thinking of my friend who left town one week ago, on his bicycle heading toward New York.
As of last night he was halfway across Oregon, heading toward the Snake River Valley and the Grand Tetons. Yesterday he "only" covered 57 miles . . . but did over 5k feet in elevation. Large part was because he went up AND down then back up, but he's definitely on generally upward trajectory until he reaches the Continental Divide.
Just pull out a map of the United States and see just what a trip from sea to shining sea truly entails.
So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?
Smaller pool, less money, inherent Scotch inferiority.
What would you like the answer to be?
I would like the answer to be the right one. I don't have a view here, I'm just interested people's thoughts.
Scotch pop = 5m English midlands pop = 10m says the internet. There's your answer, no more needed.
I'm not sure that's enough of an explanation. Ireland has a similar population and Scottish football is head and shoulders above Irish. Turkey has a bigger population than the UK but it's down at about the same level as Scotland. I reckon Cypriot football is a touch above Scotland's, and its population is about half that of Glasgow.
So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?
Smaller pool, less money, inherent Scotch inferiority.
What would you like the answer to be?
I would like the answer to be the right one. I don't have a view here, I'm just interested people's thoughts.
Scotch pop = 5m English midlands pop = 10m says the internet. There's your answer, no more needed.
I'm not sure that's enough of an explanation. Ireland has a similar population and Scottish football is head and shoulders above Irish. Turkey has a bigger population than the UK but it's down at about the same level as Scotland. I reckon Cypriot football is a touch above Scotland's, and its population is about half that of Glasgow.
Competition drives improvements, there's not enough depth or competition in Scotland.
City are better because of Liverpool and vice-versa, Scottish football lacks that depth.
I think this is a very important part of the answer, but there's a reductio here. Why the lack of competition? Is the playing base proportionally smaller? Is it the weather? Are R&C sucking all the oxygen out of the other teams? Is it geography?
By the way, if NZ is any guide, any move to PR will lead to various breakaway attempts by assorted gadflies and nutters, and a certain period of instability.
Over time though we could expect there to be five main parties represented (and assorted nationalists), to wit: Con, Lab, LD, Green and Reform.
Lab would alternate between Lab/Green and Lab/LD coalitions.
Con would alternate between Con/Ref and Con/LD coalitions.
One confounding factor is the SNP and their ability to hold Westminster to random for repeated Indy refs. This needs to be sorted one way or another before PR can really be “safe”.
You can make exactly the same argument about the LDs or indeed any other third//fourth party. I'm sure the LDs will seek to reverse Brexit and have another referendum, for instance, and as for Ref .... So that argument is moot - it's part and parcel of such a voting system.
The difference is, third parties in most polities don’t seek to dissolve the actual state.
It would be daft for Westminster to put itself in a position which strengthened those who literally wish its end.
You're confusing anarchists and autonomists.
No, I’m not.
I simply note that the SNP’s chief policy is to break up the UK.
If you are “the UK”, you’d want to avoid that.
That's to split the state - not dissolve it. Dissolve the union of 1707, yes. But that's a different thing.
So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?
It depends on what you want out of your football team. Trophies are clearly important to fans, but not the only reason to support. Teams up and down the Leagues get people paying to watch teams that never win anything, apart from ocassional division trophies, and often not many of those. It is intrinsic to the structure of both Leagues and Cups that most teams have virtually empty trophy cabinets.
It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?
Smaller pool, less money, inherent Scotch inferiority.
What would you like the answer to be?
I would like the answer to be the right one. I don't have a view here, I'm just interested people's thoughts.
Scotch pop = 5m English midlands pop = 10m says the internet. There's your answer, no more needed.
I'm not sure that's enough of an explanation. Ireland has a similar population and Scottish football is head and shoulders above Irish. Turkey has a bigger population than the UK but it's down at about the same level as Scotland. I reckon Cypriot football is a touch above Scotland's, and its population is about half that of Glasgow.
Gates/attrndance at Scottish matches are generally tiny and always were, there was no money to attract the sort of overseas stars from the late 70s onwards. Scottish national football was probably superior to English in the post 70 WC era through to about 1980. Lack of money, Lack of interest from big stars aside from the dominant 2 clubs. That's not enough to build a competitive league and European presence on.
"Interesting" proposals for second homes in Wales.
Council tax will up to 400% of the base level, and you can't register it as a business to avoid it unless it is available for guests 252 days a year, and actually occupied by paying guests for at least 182 days.
That CT surcharge is around £5k extra where Councils implement it for a Band D house.
We discussed wrt England that such proposals would be easy to dodge.
Will this work? Is 182 days occupancy common in Welsh holiday lets?
£5k extra looks big enough to me to deter at least ordinary 2nd home owners. Not such how much £7k of Council Tax is on a standard Welsh holiday let turnover.
They’re trying to distinguish between a genuine holiday let, and a second home that’s empty most of the time.
Yes I know.
The current threshold for occupancy to register it as a business is 70 days. Not sure what the availability criteria is.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought the normal occupancy rate for a genuine holiday let in Wales would be more like 140 days. In which case this bill will be a right bastard for anyone trying to run a letting agency. Plus the cleaning businesses, accountants, any tourism related stuff.
However, I wonder if they would make it applicable only to those people who don't live in Wales. That would solve the problem for quite a lot of genuine holiday lets.
So, general PB reaction across the piece seems to be "Hmmmm" rather than "Shock Horror!".
That's really quite interesting.
I can see there being a marginal effect on 'main dwelling' housing supply in Wales - perhaps 1% as a one-off - but no long term impact or noticeable impact on house prices, so there will be demands for more action within 2-3 years.
The effect is presumably in various hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
There is a serious problem, especially with some of the pretty resorts on the coast (e.g., Aberdyfi, Abersoch, Solva, Tenby), with second home owners.
However, many of the areas of rural Wales are depopulating (much like Vermont or New Hampshire). There are plenty of semi-derelict, falling down, houses in the Welsh countryside. Plenty of decaying big houses as well, the local Plas.
People blame second-home owners for their sons and daughters moving away. But, in most of rural Wales, there are no jobs. So, people move away. So, there is depopulation and there are empty houses, falling to bits.
It is very clear that the Welsh Government has no idea how to bring jobs to Wales. Indeed they have admitted it-- here is Lee Waters:
"For 20 years we’ve pretended we know what we’re doing on the economy – and the truth is we don’t really know what we’re doing on the economy. Nobody knows what they’re doing on the economy.
“Everybody is making it up as we go along – and let’s just be honest about that. We’ve thrown all the orthodox tools we can think of at growing the economy in the conventional way, and we’ve achieved static GDP over 20 years." (Lee Waters, MS for Llanelli)
Without providing jobs in the areas, they will continue to depopulate and there will be empty houses.
If they can't be sold to outsiders, then they will fall down.
Drakeford's proposals look to me to be a very blunt tool to tackle the problem of second home ownership.
The depopulation is not mainly due to second home ownership -- but I certainly agree there are big problems in some of the prettiest places and in the National Parks in which locals are priced out.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
But, 182 days occupancy looks really brutal -- I think it will kill some businesses.
It also suppresses property development. If you buy a house and don't live in it as your main residence, then you have a 5k per year tax. No one is going to buy places and do refurbs etc with this tax issue, particularly not in low value areas where properties are difficult to sell or rent out.
I bought a disused property 12 years ago - not in Wales but somewhere similar - for next to nothing. Did it up and then rented it out as a holiday let. I was the first person in the village to do it, they thought I was mad... but then 5 years later many people followed and the village had a tourism boom.
I made a big effort with the local people but some people would never be reconciled to this happening, they would rather that the buildings all just fall down, assuming that there was some kind of moral obligation for the government to step in to provide them with free money and jobs.
If the problem is localised to a few areas, then the policy should be confined to those areas.
Yes, on consideration, and also in response to @YBarddCwsc, this is not going to work. This is going to destroy value.
Such measures should be hyper targeted to specific coastal areas where a clear affordability problem is identified.
The broader issue around what an effective economic strategy might look like in Wales is an interesting one. Given the population distribution, it can be really be re-framed as “What does economic growth look like for Greater Cardiff”?
The rest of the country must focus on tourism and high value agriculture.
By the way, if NZ is any guide, any move to PR will lead to various breakaway attempts by assorted gadflies and nutters, and a certain period of instability.
Over time though we could expect there to be five main parties represented (and assorted nationalists), to wit: Con, Lab, LD, Green and Reform.
Lab would alternate between Lab/Green and Lab/LD coalitions.
Con would alternate between Con/Ref and Con/LD coalitions.
One confounding factor is the SNP and their ability to hold Westminster to random for repeated Indy refs. This needs to be sorted one way or another before PR can really be “safe”.
You can make exactly the same argument about the LDs or indeed any other third//fourth party. I'm sure the LDs will seek to reverse Brexit and have another referendum, for instance, and as for Ref .... So that argument is moot - it's part and parcel of such a voting system.
The difference is, third parties in most polities don’t seek to dissolve the actual state.
It would be daft for Westminster to put itself in a position which strengthened those who literally wish its end.
You're confusing anarchists and autonomists.
No, I’m not.
I simply note that the SNP’s chief policy is to break up the UK.
If you are “the UK”, you’d want to avoid that.
That's to split the state - not dissolve it. Dissolve the union of 1707, yes. But that's a different thing.
Ignorance is breathtaking.
I didn't know you and I were total anarchists, not to mention subversives.*
*NB. This is a sarcastic reply, not aimed at Malky, for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know the difference between an independista and an anarcista.
So it's obvious that Scottish football is far inferior to English. The question is, why?
Smaller pool, less money, inherent Scotch inferiority.
What would you like the answer to be?
I would like the answer to be the right one. I don't have a view here, I'm just interested people's thoughts.
Scotch pop = 5m English midlands pop = 10m says the internet. There's your answer, no more needed.
I'm not sure that's enough of an explanation. Ireland has a similar population and Scottish football is head and shoulders above Irish. Turkey has a bigger population than the UK but it's down at about the same level as Scotland. I reckon Cypriot football is a touch above Scotland's, and its population is about half that of Glasgow.
Cypriot football my butt.
Actually, you might be right, but only recently. Cypriot football was relatively strong til about three years ago. I just looked at the UEFA coefficients and yes, they've slipped down in recent seasons.
Comments
I think the 183 day rule is very onerous - presumably deliberately so - and will severely impair the “AirBnB” market.
So if you want to stay in Wales on holiday, you are going to have much less accommodation choice; and owning a second home is going to be much less appealing, too.
The impact SHOULD be suppressed housing prices in holiday hotspots, and therefore better affordability for locals. Perhaps fewer holiday “ghost towns”, too?
As I say upthread, I cautiously welcome this although I wonder whether something more targeted would be more useful.
It's posturing, pure and simple.
And the over 80s? Their free bus pass should count...
But the posturing will play well with the left-wing voters in the Valleys who do not have second homes, so that will be chalked up as a gain by Drakeford.
(The elephant in the room here, I suspect, is US shenanigans, which poison the well for good-faith discussions of changes to voting requirements on this side of the pond too.)
Never mind. I just hope there is enough gas left in the tank for the CL final.
Anyhow as a loyal Brit you should celebrate this superb British export. The best sport with the brightest drama and the biggest names: the EPL. Now with added retro hooliganism
We need to get back to the early nineties when everyone was so loved up the violence melted away.
This made me smile.
https://twitter.com/soapystick/status/1528420737056493569?s=21&t=0IKBEiuPn6Dvb-K7DTm_pA
Win or lose there's a great team atmosphere in Liverpool and the players are appreciated though none are put ahead of Klopp.
Now I'd say it's hard for me to get excited about any of them - difficult to get too invested in teams of arbitrarily assembled foreign mercenaries - football may be technically better, but it is less interesting than the days when the players were at least largely all from this country, and many from their club's City.
Anyway, my WhatsApp is full of happy City fans right now, who care more than I do and seem to prefer winning with players from Belgium and Africa to losing with players from Withington and Wythenshawe. So my cynicism is irrelevant.
PS; the personal insult of being a Brit is well below the belt.
Unlike every other major league in the world, the fact is there are another half dozen clubs who can realistically hope to challenge, and will do so, in time
Arsenal have a huge fan base and amazing history, they will be back. Man United, even more so, they won’t be down forever. Ditto Chelsea and arguably Spurs, and now Newcastle have proper financing (ie, er, £350bn)
And who knows about Everton, Villa, Hammers, even Leeds, they have all known glory
This is a golden age for the EPL, we should celebrate it (at least in England)
Rangers and Celtic are big big clubs. If they got into the EPL (which they would, on merit, quite quickly) that would mean 8 or 9 teams challenging for the British Premier League
Good for football in England AND Scotland. It would be brilliant
Holiday lettings will be polarised into professionals achieving high occupancy and second homers letting them out to pay for the local surcharge, with increased occupancy in fewer properties in hotspots. And others dropping out, with fewer people able to have a home sitting empty with the greater overhead.
Which is presumably the aim.
Presumably therefore an opportunity for service businesses, and perhaps an increase in charges to rent holiday homes in Wales as the extra money will pass through to customers in the end.
Whether that will be an overall gain or loss depends no how right they have their judgement.
A few hundred million in extra revenue will be a few £10s per tourist.
However, many of the areas of rural Wales are depopulating (much like Vermont or New Hampshire). There are plenty of semi-derelict, falling down, houses in the Welsh countryside. Plenty of decaying big houses as well, the local Plas.
People blame second-home owners for their sons and daughters moving away. But, in most of rural Wales, there are no jobs. So, people move away. So, there is depopulation and there are empty houses, falling to bits.
It is very clear that the Welsh Government has no idea how to bring jobs to Wales. Indeed they have admitted it-- here is Lee Waters:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/we-dont-know-what-were-16483471
"For 20 years we’ve pretended we know what we’re doing on the economy – and the truth is we don’t really know what we’re doing on the economy. Nobody knows what they’re doing on the economy.
“Everybody is making it up as we go along – and let’s just be honest about that. We’ve thrown all the orthodox tools we can think of at growing the economy in the conventional way, and we’ve achieved static GDP over 20 years." (Lee Waters, MS for Llanelli)
Without providing jobs in the areas, they will continue to depopulate and there will be empty houses.
If they can't be sold to outsiders, then they will fall down.
Drakeford's proposals look to me to be a very blunt tool to tackle the problem of second home ownership.
The depopulation is not mainly due to second home ownership -- but I certainly agree there are big problems in some of the prettiest places and in the National Parks in which locals are priced out.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
But, 182 days occupancy looks really brutal -- I think it will kill some businesses.
The boot room glory days of Liverpool weren't really "bought" at all, especially in the early days and the success then helped make Liverpool a household name around the globe.
As much as I'm no fan of United, I respect and recognise that their class of 92 were developed at home too.
We have Welsh teams in the EPL, And yet Wales still competes as an independent nation in the World Cup, why not Scotand?
It would be superb for football across the UK
People are invested primarily in other fans. The sense of belonging. Whi the team currently employs is really of less interest. As I don't go in person, I don't get the same sort of investment, but I can understand why people do.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/22/she-has-been-horribly-isolated-friends-say-sue-gray-was-deliberately-ostracised-while-investigating-partygate
...A Whitehall official who knows about the inquiry was “horrified” by the way Gray had been installed to investigate the organisation she works within, then given minimum help and maximum discouragement from revealing the truth....
...The suspicion among many in the civil service is that Gray was asked to do the job because those at No 10 thought that it would be impossible even for someone as respected as Gray to reveal all the system’s wrongdoings from the inside, particularly if she wanted to remain in the civil service afterwards.
Despite this, Gray has ploughed gamely on, gathering information from emails, photographs, phone logs and police security logs in an attempt to establish what parties happened when, and who attended them.
This weekend, with days to go before the release of her final report – one that could well have a bearing on how long Boris Johnson can remain prime minister – the pressure on her from No 10 and civil servants is at its height...
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3914480#Comment_3914480
Although I should point out @Cyclefree didn't want the Home Office and insists on being PM.
In which case it will clobber tourism and do fuck all about second home owners.
I think the issue you identify with jobs is more pertinent and that's why I'm extremely doubtful about a policy that will damage one of the few sources of them.
There’s an excellent Netflix (??) drama about the emergence of English pro football, at the turn of the 19th/20th century
It was ALWAYS about rich owners and highly prized players. It always helped if you had a big city as a fan base
That’s it. Nothing has changed. Except it is now Qatari billionaires rather than mill owning tycoons
Boris Johnson is trying to shoehorn in the Scotland Yard chief who presided over the disastrous VIP child sex abuse inquiry as head of the National Crime Agency, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI.
Lord Hogan-Howe is still being considered for director-general of the NCA even though he failed to make it into the final round of candidates. In a move likely to raise questions of cronyism, No 10 is understood to have knocked back two highly qualified police chiefs interviewed by Priti Patel, the home secretary.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-backs-lord-hogan-howe-to-run-national-crime-agency-pwqjvhjxw (£££)
The premiership would not be weaker with them in it, for sure.
Even without Sky/Premier League the Class of 92 would have earnt United a lot of Division 1 success.
Though I have great confidence in some of the individual components of that cabinet, their forming a coherent whole seems slightly implausible.
I bought a disused property 12 years ago - not in Wales but somewhere similar - for next to nothing. Did it up and then rented it out as a holiday let. I was the first person in the village to do it, they thought I was mad... but then 5 years later many people followed and the village had a tourism boom.
I made a big effort with the local people but some people would never be reconciled to this happening, they would rather that the buildings all just fall down, assuming that there was some kind of moral obligation for the government to step in to provide them with free money and jobs.
If the problem is localised to a few areas, then the policy should be confined to those areas.
LEEDS UNITED
That is all.
And Liverpool..... Abide with that, arse biscuits
What would you like the answer to be?
I moved down-under in 92 and everyone in my primary school would talk about English football, which wasn't televised live there.
\
For example, socialist-progressive Buddhist son of reactionary-conservative Mormon father, duo that can talk about little without great risk of verbal warfare EXCEPT shared love of NFL football. Just about sole topic where they each respect AND wish to hear the other's opinion.
City are better because of Liverpool and vice-versa, Scottish football lacks that depth.
As of last night he was halfway across Oregon, heading toward the Snake River Valley and the Grand Tetons. Yesterday he "only" covered 57 miles . . . but did over 5k feet in elevation. Large part was because he went up AND down then back up, but he's definitely on generally upward trajectory until he reaches the Continental Divide.
Just pull out a map of the United States and see just what a trip from sea to shining sea truly entails.
It is possible to devise a system for a League with perpetual turnover at the top. The American Football Leagues do this via a draft system, so the bottom teams get preference for the players coming up from the College system. The equivalent here would be Norwich not being relegated and having both the money and right to buy in Haarland. Interesting maybe, but is it what we want?
Lack of money, Lack of interest from big stars aside from the dominant 2 clubs. That's not enough to build a competitive league and European presence on.
Such measures should be hyper targeted to specific coastal areas where a clear affordability problem is identified.
The broader issue around what an effective economic strategy might look like in Wales is an interesting one. Given the population distribution, it can be really be re-framed as “What does economic growth look like for Greater Cardiff”?
The rest of the country must focus on tourism and high value agriculture.
*NB. This is a sarcastic reply, not aimed at Malky, for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know the difference between an independista and an anarcista.