O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book, as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that, too, with an ‘if’. I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an ‘if’, as ‘If you said so, then I said so’, and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your ‘if’ is the only peacemaker; much virtue in ‘if’.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
I watched Hunt, and was struck by his attitude to poverty. He really didn’t seem to think that there’s a problem, or at least one that wouldn’t easily be solved by economic growth.
Whatever happens, that lambada-dancing piece of rhyming slang will soon be without a political job.
Dare call it gerrymandering? Tbh I'd not spotted this angle.
We discussed this yesterday. The reason you hadn't spotted this angle is because it's not very accurate.
TLDR - most of them will be registered at home anyway and if they especially want to register the process isn't that long, plus the university party associations are generally helpful with it.
Frankly, I doubt if many uni seats are won and lost on the basis of undergrads. Postgrads and junior lecturers are likely to be at least as important and they're more stable in terms of address.
And students lose out by being concentrated into a handful of key seats, few of which are now marginal. They'd have more impact voting at home and helping topple the Tories away from the larger towns and cities.
I think the point is not where students might vote but that they will be less likely to vote at all. They might be registered at their home address, but won’t be there physically. Sure, they can get a postal vote, but that’s a barrier in their way and some won’t have organised it. They might be registered at their uni address, but some won’t have organised a new registration. Thus, overall, fewer of them vote at all.
Nah, it's a load of whataboutism, with zero firm evidence behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lavatory or Medvedev start blaming Britain - it seems to be the latter's go-to excuse for anything.
You'd be better off asking if it was a false flag, or a let-it-happen from some parts of the Russian government...
There was a jihadism expert on the radio this morning, Mina al-Lami from BBC Monitoring, who made a good case to this being an ISIS attack (which branch to be determined) and linked to a change of strategy by ISIS that has been seen in several recent attacks, with the clear implication that more such attacks should be expected.
The most likely explanation therefore seems to be that it was one of several planned attacks. The US picked up intelligence about said attacks, some of which were thwarted by Russian security services. This attack wasn't prevented, and to defect blame Russia is trying to link it to Ukraine as a cover for escalation and mobilisation.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
Nah, not Ukraine.
There are lots of peoples who hate Russia and willing to do these acts. When ISIS says its them believe them.
The hypothesis wasn't that it was Ukraine, i.e. the Ukrainian government, but that the unit had support from Islamists on the Ukrainian side of the front.
Re. "peoples who hate Russia", there have always been compradores in every part of the Russian empire (and every other empire). One of them for example is Ramzan Kadyrov.
I would like to have more information about the anti-Kadyrov Chechen military forces fighting on the side of the Ukrainian government. Could they possibly be a tad Isissy? This is the question.
The anti-Russia/anti-Putin/anti-Kadyrov Chechens are a mixed group. Some Chechens joined ISIS during the Syrian civil war, but others joined other anti-Assad forces and opposed IS. Some of these were more Islamist, some less so. It’s a complicated mess: e.g., this group, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajnad_al-Kavkaz , are Islamist, but not ISIS, and are now fighting with the Ukrainians.
I very much doubt what Simon Clarke says to be true.
He just wants more letters in and thinks there will be if lots of people can think they're the final two.
It might be true to the extent that x other MPs might have told Simon Clarke that they had, or were going to, send letters in. But whether they all had, perhaps not.
There's a phrase in vernacular Irish that is relevant to this: "I will, yeah." Translated into the Queen's English this reads as "no".
Example usage. Simon Clarke: "Things are desperately bad. Will you send that letter into Brady so that we can get rid of Sunak?" A Tory MP: "I will, yeah." Simon Clarke: "Good man! I'm glad I could count on you." No letter is sent.
On topic - Notable that Clarke thinks ousting Mr Sunak is merely a matter of getting the letters in. I see very little evidence that the Con MPs would vote him out of office at the moment. So does he know more than we think or is he deluded and out of touch?
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Brilliant news for detached sprawl developers too. Their model of land banking and profit maximisation would've been undercut by this reform.
I have not understood the ramifications of this reform as I've not paid much attention. However, I will say that the Treasury is an absolute blight on good governance and economic success for the country. They need to be broken, their department chopped up and merged with others. The PM should be responsible for the economic strategy for the country.
Time and again the Treasury has undermined the authority of the PM, almost always with disastrous consequences. As an example, they tracked the DM, leading to the economic downturn of the late-80s, against Thatcher's express instructions. That was with a PM of the character of Thatcher. What chance have Sunak or Starmer got to bring meaningful positive change, even if they wanted to?
I think the Conservative Government haven't thought it through, as per everything.
(And I suggest that leasehold in England is perhaps more complex than leasehold in Scotland, down to the sheer quantity and variety.)
I'd say that:
1 - The core of the scandalous abuse is escalating leaseholds on newbuild, or recent, single-family properties.
These can be addressed by preventing use of leasehold in for these properties.
2 - It is more complex for blocks of flats etc.
These need to be managed and maintained jointly, and I'm not convinced that there management by flat-dwellers / owners committee is always effective or efficient.
This one needs more thought.
3 - Significant areas of housing in leasehold ownership need care.
For example Grosvenor Estate areas in London are kept in common appearance by the Estate.
How will this be managed / maintained - or will Mayfair become like Balamory, or a collection of Liquorice Allsorts.
The Park Estate in Nottingham may be a good precedent here, which has transitioned from Oxford University Chest to the Park Residents' Association.
4 - I'd suggest that the increase rates and charges for leasehold could be capped at say CPI and perhaps 1% of property value, with an exception for large expenses (eg new windows in a block of flats) by application to the First Tier or Second Tier Tribunal.
Of these, point 1 can be done quickly, and I'd suggest applied retrospectively to properties built since date X, which could be 2000, 1990 or 1980.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
Nah, not Ukraine.
There are lots of peoples who hate Russia and willing to do these acts. When ISIS says its them believe them.
The hypothesis wasn't that it was Ukraine, i.e. the Ukrainian government, but that the unit had support from Islamists on the Ukrainian side of the front.
Re. "peoples who hate Russia", there have always been compradores in every part of the Russian empire. One of them for example is Ramzan Kadyrov.
I would like to have more information about the anti-Kadyrov Chechen military forces fighting on the side of the Ukrainian government. Could they possibly be a tad Isissy? This is the question.
Nah, it's a load of whataboutism, with zero firm evidence behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lavatory or Medvedev start blaming Britain - it seems to be the latter's go-to excuse for anything.
You'd be better off asking if it was a false flag, or a let-it-happen from some parts of the Russian government...
As I noted last night, Russia released 'evidence' implicating Ukraine which was clearly faked. Long before any possible investigation.
I've no idea who perpetrated the attack, but I'm reasonably sure it wasn't Ukraine.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
Nah, not Ukraine.
There are lots of peoples who hate Russia and willing to do these acts. When ISIS says its them believe them.
The hypothesis wasn't that it was Ukraine, i.e. the Ukrainian government, but that the unit had support from Islamists on the Ukrainian side of the front.
Re. "peoples who hate Russia", there have always been compradores in every part of the Russian empire (and every other empire). One of them for example is Ramzan Kadyrov.
I would like to have more information about the anti-Kadyrov Chechen military forces fighting on the side of the Ukrainian government. Could they possibly be a tad Isissy? This is the question.
The anti-Russia/anti-Putin/anti-Kadyrov Chechens are a mixed group. Some Chechens joined ISIS during the Syrian civil war, but others joined other anti-Assad forces and opposed IS. Some of these were more Islamist, some less so. It’s a complicated mess: e.g., this group, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajnad_al-Kavkaz , are Islamist, but not ISIS, and are now fighting with the Ukrainians.
Basically, there were two Chechen Wars of independence and the Chechens lost, which led to a pool of experienced soldiers who had had to flee Chechnya and were knocking around the Middle East. Their main motivation was wanting independence and hating Russia/Putin. They are Sunni Muslims, although Chechen Islam is not traditionally Salafi… but then there’s lots of Saudi money pushing Salafism. So you get these competing visions of Chechen independence: some more nationalist, some more Islamist, differing views of Islam.
The Syrian civil war comes along. There are these historical links between the Caucasus and the Levant. Lots of Chechen fighters are up for a fight, particularly against a Putin ally. Some are attracted by IS’s vision, but they’re mostly dead now. Some were not. There are still some Chechen fighters in the Idlib pocket that still holds out against Assad. Ukraine offers an opportunity to fight Putin, so some have gone to Ukraine, maybe 2000 of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_volunteers_on_the_side_of_Ukraine
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
Nah, not Ukraine.
There are lots of peoples who hate Russia and willing to do these acts. When ISIS says its them believe them.
The hypothesis wasn't that it was Ukraine, i.e. the Ukrainian government, but that the unit had support from Islamists on the Ukrainian side of the front.
Re. "peoples who hate Russia", there have always been compradores in every part of the Russian empire. One of them for example is Ramzan Kadyrov.
I would like to have more information about the anti-Kadyrov Chechen military forces fighting on the side of the Ukrainian government. Could they possibly be a tad Isissy? This is the question.
Nah, it's a load of whataboutism, with zero firm evidence behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lavatory or Medvedev start blaming Britain - it seems to be the latter's go-to excuse for anything.
You'd be better off asking if it was a false flag, or a let-it-happen from some parts of the Russian government...
As I noted last night, Russia released 'evidence' implicating Ukraine which was clearly faked. Long before any possible investigation.
I've no idea who perpetrated the attack, but I'm reasonably sure it wasn't Ukraine.
Yet every time someone posits "it might be Ukraine!", they are doing Putin's work for them by spreading that narrative. Especially if they don't mention the other options that are less favourable to Russia's agenda.
Russia/Putin may not even want one narrative, but several ones that further their aims, and that can be sold to their population and western idiots. The truth depends on the audience.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Actually if (a big if) what the Treasury are saying is true it is not the current Pensioners who would be losing out but those still in work who will be future pensioners - the younger ones like me. This would not affect current pensions where the annuities are already set, but future pensions which wuld be radically reduced in value.
Again, this depends on the Pension funds and Treasury having a point which I am in no position to say.
@Richard_Tyndall a neighbour of mine was in this business - have posted some thoughts
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
Nah, not Ukraine.
There are lots of peoples who hate Russia and willing to do these acts. When ISIS says its them believe them.
The hypothesis wasn't that it was Ukraine, i.e. the Ukrainian government, but that the unit had support from Islamists on the Ukrainian side of the front.
Re. "peoples who hate Russia", there have always been compradores in every part of the Russian empire. One of them for example is Ramzan Kadyrov.
I would like to have more information about the anti-Kadyrov Chechen military forces fighting on the side of the Ukrainian government. Could they possibly be a tad Isissy? This is the question.
Nah, it's a load of whataboutism, with zero firm evidence behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lavatory or Medvedev start blaming Britain - it seems to be the latter's go-to excuse for anything.
You'd be better off asking if it was a false flag, or a let-it-happen from some parts of the Russian government...
I suspect it was very much let-it-happen because if the time comes that the youth of Moscow need to be conscripted they need local reasons to do so..
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Dare call it gerrymandering? Tbh I'd not spotted this angle.
They would presumably be registered to vote in their own constituencies. At the most it might reduce the "student effect" on a University town.
It's a fair point, though OTOH this could be viewed as another form of voter suppression. Just as the ID reforms don't theoretically block anyone from voting, but in practice are more likely to put off poorer voters who have to go out of their way to obtain documents that they may not already have, so this might result in a lot of students being obliged to apply for postal ballots. These are going to be first time voters: even if they aren't put off by the faff, they might easily fail to twig that this is necessary, or they might not get it done in time.
In this case (unlike voter ID) the exclusion of voters who aren't friendly to the Tories would be a by-product of circumstances rather than a deliberate act, but it might still be a concern.
I don't know how things work in England but in Scotland all of my children have been on the electoral register well before their 18th birthday. It seemed to be organised through the schools. 2 of them have gone away to University but they remained registered here. In fact one of them still is although she is now working in Edinburgh and really ought to switch constituencies.
So unless it is very different in England I don't see this as any form of voter suppression. I also think, as JRM was pointing out the other day that voter ID is actually more of a problem for the elderly than the young who usually have documents that can get themselves into pubs or nightclubs.
As Scots can vote for Holyrood at 16 they can register earlier than in England, where 17 year old can register.
Dual registration is fine and legal as long as only using one vote, and part of the reason for low turnout among youngsters. Foxjr2 is both registered at my address and his London address, but will be recorded as 50% turnout. Likely to be LD from our last conversation. Not Labour because of Starmers Gaza policy.
Serious question about Foxjr2's opinion. What does s/he actually want?
I have 2 concerns, remembering single views on single issue politics from my own university days.
My view remains that the anti-Israel merging into anti-Jewish policy as espoused by so many on the Labour (and Left of Labour) Left associated with eg Corbyn and friends is 1 - often racist, and 2 - often iIl-considered.
1 - For obvious reasons; despite self-serving "but we don't mean Jews" semantics.
2 - Because the actions demanded of Israel may achieve little, and perpetuate war in the Middle East, because the Govt of Iran is maintaining / fomenting-as-it-judges-necessary war across multiple countries, far more actively than Israel has.
Israel been making peace with neighbours in multiple directions for quite a long time now.
How does FoxyJr react when the numbers of deaths in Syria, Yemen etc are counted up for a comparison?
The monomaniacal attitude from many in Labour on this issue is one reason why I will have to think *very* carefully before voting Labour. The continuing subservience to Trade Unions is the other major one that comes up for me every time I consider casting my vote that way at any level.
I received a leaflet yesterday from Zoe Garbett, the Green candidate for London Mayor. The front had a box saying she supported an immediate ceasefire. (I’m sure Bibi will be reconsidering his approach to Gaza now!)
The leaflet also celebrated her recent “success” in the Hackney mayoral election where she got 25%. I’d call getting 25% in an election “losing” rather than a “success”…
It's a success compared to Greens in Ashfield !
Is it a .. er .. Green Flag for the future? 25% is quite a significant platform to build on.
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
Does anyone have any other good ideas?
If you are able to halve your premium today to a pretty low level in an environment where lots of people are experiencing 50% type increases why wait in the hope it comes down further?
Dare call it gerrymandering? Tbh I'd not spotted this angle.
They would presumably be registered to vote in their own constituencies. At the most it might reduce the "student effect" on a University town.
I posted that quote last night, and got fairly comprehensively slapped down on the same grounds. could have an effect in Canterbury I suppose.
And good morning everybody! Bright and sunny here again, although yesterday‘s sunshine turned to showers; you’d think it was April already!
With the current state of the polls, students voting in their "home" seats would probably do the Tories more harm than if they voted in their university seat. Bright and sunny up here in west central Scotland, too, though not warm.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
Nah, not Ukraine.
There are lots of peoples who hate Russia and willing to do these acts. When ISIS says its them believe them.
The hypothesis wasn't that it was Ukraine, i.e. the Ukrainian government, but that the unit had support from Islamists on the Ukrainian side of the front.
Re. "peoples who hate Russia", there have always been compradores in every part of the Russian empire. One of them for example is Ramzan Kadyrov.
I would like to have more information about the anti-Kadyrov Chechen military forces fighting on the side of the Ukrainian government. Could they possibly be a tad Isissy? This is the question.
Nah, it's a load of whataboutism, with zero firm evidence behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lavatory or Medvedev start blaming Britain - it seems to be the latter's go-to excuse for anything.
You'd be better off asking if it was a false flag, or a let-it-happen from some parts of the Russian government...
I suspect it was very much let-it-happen because if the time comes that the youth of Moscow need to be conscripted they need local reasons to do so..
That;s what I find so odd about the attack's timing. If the attackers wanted maximum effect, then it should be done during the election. Doing it immediately after the foregone conclusion of Putin's re-election just gives Putin more 'evidence' that he needs a wider mobilisation.
The timing is one thing that makes me think there was some Russian involvement in this, even if not a full false flag. And to be fair, Putin has a history of this...
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
Does anyone have any other good ideas?
If you are able to halve your premium today to a pretty low level in an environment where lots of people are experiencing 50% type increases why wait in the hope it comes down further?
I think I have probably been somewhat bilked for a couple of years, but that is a sunk cost at this point.
The nicest thing to me is that my Skoda Superb Estate Car bought for £27k in Oct 2018 is still valued at £18k, which is amazing even given the massively low (<20k) mileage. The excellent dealer who I am still using for maintenance matched Car Wow, which was 25% off.
It's an old landlording sore that you lay the ground for making your money on the way in to the deal.
Also, the dash cam is not in yet - though technically I could whack in a cheap one in the windscreen in 48 hours.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
Despite all this talk of a broader mobilisation and Ukraine’s depleted weapons supplies, we should remember just how disastrous this war continues to be for Russia.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
AIUI these landing ships are actually important assets for the Russians, as they are using them to deliver stuff straight to the Ukrainian mainland, saving many lorry loads of traffic. The Russian military is not very good at road logistics.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
Russian arms sales of the high end stuff have collapsed. Which caused a problem for Russia - for years, their own high end procurement of aircraft, missiles and tanks was based on foreign sales to run the production lines.
Without that, the kleptocracy has to not steal enough money to fund development and production internally.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
Does anyone have any other good ideas?
If you are able to halve your premium today to a pretty low level in an environment where lots of people are experiencing 50% type increases why wait in the hope it comes down further?
I think I have probably been somewhat bilked for a couple of years, but that is a sunk cost at this point.
The nicest thing is that my Skoda Superb Estate Car bought for £27k in Oct 2018 is still valued at £18k, which is amazing even given the massively low (20k) mileage.
The gap between 28 days and 20-24 days is negligible. Are your second and third best quotes close to the best one? If so a bit more reason to wait, if not snap it up.
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
Does anyone have any other good ideas?
Go TP Only. This is the way. Fuck the risk. 🤘
TP has been more expensive for me than fully comp for the last decade or so. Market efficiency penalising the "fuck the risk" brigade!
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
Russian arms sales of the high end stuff have collapsed. Which caused a problem for Russia - for years, their own high end procurement of aircraft, missiles and tanks was based on foreign sales to run the production lines.
Without that, the kleptocracy has to not steal enough money to fund development and production internally.
Perun did that last week, if anyone wants to catch up.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
Nah, not Ukraine.
There are lots of peoples who hate Russia and willing to do these acts. When ISIS says its them believe them.
Islamic State has claimed at least one terrorist act that demonstratively wasn't theirs. I forget which one I read about.
Gruesome bodycam video of the attack including shooting people and throat slitting is reported by OSINTdefender on twitter as being hosted on a media centre aligned to ISIS.
I don’t doubt this was ISIS. They aren’t chums with Russia and Putin and have done similar before.
Not always ISIS either. Remember the Beslan school massacre? Islamist, but not ISIS.
The Crocus terrorism is being blamed on Ukraine by Putin to deflect from his own security failures. The US warned that its security services had heard of a plan to attack Russian targets including concert halls, the Russians dismissed it as scaremongering.
It's very reminiscent of the Bataclan massacre in Paris.
One wonders if the Moscow attack was not planned with Ukraine in mind, whether by the Kremlin to justify flattening Ukraine as Israel has done to Gaza, or by ISIS in order to reduce international backing for Israel against Gaza.
Yeah, because Russia has been so wonderfully behaved and restrained to date, hasn't it?
I expect a Tory polling recovery but I also expect a level of anti-Tory tactical voting we have not seen previously at a UK GE. There was plenty in 1997 and 2001 but now we have many more resources to help people make informed decisions. The anti-Tory vote is going to be hugely motivated when we do finally get a GE.
Let's hope so. Even many tories accept there needs to be a change of government now. The country needs new leadership rather than this clown show.
This piece (and in particular the comment that activists should campaign in the neighbouring constituency which is one of Labour's "battleground" seats - in their case Johnny Mercer's constituency) got me to thinking.
Mercer was on over 60% of the vote in 2019. Which looks like an unlikely win for Labour even in the current climate, and even if Mercer doesn't stand.
However, when you look at 2010 it all looks much more plausible.
Should we be going back to the 2010 results to figure out which seats are in play for which parties (I don't mean the Tories)?
The coalition, Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn all created distortions that are (maybe?) played out now. Drawing our bar graphs from 2019 or even 2015 doesn't feel like a good baseline.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
Despite all this talk of a broader mobilisation and Ukraine’s depleted weapons supplies, we should remember just how disastrous this war continues to be for Russia.
There was $300m of munitions in the US budget finally signed off on Friday night for Ukraine. Nothing like the package that is still being held up but hopefully enough shells and bullets to keep them going until then.
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
Does anyone have any other good ideas?
My mileage is v low so I use "By Miles" which charges by the mile driven. But it means I have a cludge plugged into the car somewhere near the brake pedal.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
I think it has, in a way. Back then, you had a minority (say, 5%) who were SeanT-like shitposters in 'normal' groups. But they were laughed with, and at.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
Nah, not Ukraine.
There are lots of peoples who hate Russia and willing to do these acts. When ISIS says its them believe them.
Islamic State has claimed at least one terrorist act that demonstratively wasn't theirs. I forget which one I read about.
Gruesome bodycam video of the attack including shooting people and throat slitting is reported by OSINTdefender on twitter as being hosted on a media centre aligned to ISIS.
I don’t doubt this was ISIS. They aren’t chums with Russia and Putin and have done similar before.
Not always ISIS either. Remember the Beslan school massacre? Islamist, but not ISIS.
The Crocus terrorism is being blamed on Ukraine by Putin to deflect from his own security failures. The US warned that its security services had heard of a plan to attack Russian targets including concert halls, the Russians dismissed it as scaremongering.
It's very reminiscent of the Bataclan massacre in Paris.
One wonders if the Moscow attack was not planned with Ukraine in mind, whether by the Kremlin to justify flattening Ukraine as Israel has done to Gaza, or by ISIS in order to reduce international backing for Israel against Gaza.
Yeah, because Russia has been so wonderfully behaved and restrained to date, hasn't it?
Indeed. There still seems to be an assumption in the West that Russia is going easy on Ukraine. “Justwait until it really starts trying”.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
Ah, the old days of usenet. Those groups were wacky.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
I think it has, in a way. Back then, you had a minority (say, 5%) who were SeanT-like shitposters in 'normal' groups. But they were laughed with, and at.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
The other thing that’s changed is the law. People are far more likely to have their collars felt for a tweet that hurts someone’s feelings than back then for a usenet post that upset someone.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
The challenger tanks less so from what I’ve read (keep breaking down). Still, they played the role of allowing other countries to supply tanks without fear of escalation.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
The challenger tanks less so from what I’ve read (keep breaking down). Still, they played the role of allowing other countries to supply tanks without fear of escalation.
From what I've heard, the C2's are being used as 'sniper' tanks from a greater range. The Abrams have *allegedly* faced trouble with the mud. I can imagine this will be taken on board by western powers, now we realise that we might not just be fighting in deserts in the future.
But it's the old question: you cannot have everything, so what do you optimise for?
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
An acquaintance had exactly that job a couple of decades ago, for a large manufacturer. He was in a team of people whose role was to work out how to cost-reduce and mass-produce weapons systems if required. He could not say much obviously, but things like not binning chips was a way of vastly reducing costs and times; or by going to standard ICs rather than specialist FPGAs, even if they are less efficient.
That last 0.1% of reliability costs a heck of a lot. Even 1%: if you are making 100 rockets, you need high reliability for each one, increasing cost. If you are making a million, you can probably afford a few thousand failing.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
I think it has, in a way. Back then, you had a minority (say, 5%) who were SeanT-like shitposters in 'normal' groups. But they were laughed with, and at.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
Maaaaaaaybe.
But it was always the case, after 1990 or so, that the moderated groups were the islands of civilisation.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Brilliant news for detached sprawl developers too. Their model of land banking and profit maximisation would've been undercut by this reform.
I have not understood the ramifications of this reform as I've not paid much attention. However, I will say that the Treasury is an absolute blight on good governance and economic success for the country. They need to be broken, their department chopped up and merged with others. The PM should be responsible for the economic strategy for the country.
Time and again the Treasury has undermined the authority of the PM, almost always with disastrous consequences. As an example, they tracked the DM, leading to the economic downturn of the late-80s, against Thatcher's express instructions. That was with a PM of the character of Thatcher. What chance have Sunak or Starmer got to bring meaningful positive change, even if they wanted to?
I think the Conservative Government haven't thought it through, as per everything.
(And I suggest that leasehold in England is perhaps more complex than leasehold in Scotland, down to the sheer quantity and variety.)
I'd say that:
1 - The core of the scandalous abuse is escalating leaseholds on newbuild, or recent, single-family properties.
These can be addressed by preventing use of leasehold in for these properties.
2 - It is more complex for blocks of flats etc.
These need to be managed and maintained jointly, and I'm not convinced that there management by flat-dwellers / owners committee is always effective or efficient.
This one needs more thought.
3 - Significant areas of housing in leasehold ownership need care.
For example Grosvenor Estate areas in London are kept in common appearance by the Estate.
How will this be managed / maintained - or will Mayfair become like Balamory, or a collection of Liquorice Allsorts.
The Park Estate in Nottingham may be a good precedent here, which has transitioned from Oxford University Chest to the Park Residents' Association.
4 - I'd suggest that the increase rates and charges for leasehold could be capped at say CPI and perhaps 1% of property value, with an exception for large expenses (eg new windows in a block of flats) by application to the First Tier or Second Tier Tribunal.
Of these, point 1 can be done quickly, and I'd suggest applied retrospectively to properties built since date X, which could be 2000, 1990 or 1980.
It’s ten years out my leasehold flat but in the eight years I lived in one, I learnt more about leasehold than any normal person has a right too.
Leasehold houses are scams, plain and simple, an attempt by the builder to extract full price for the sale and then come back five years later for another 10% when the poor mugs buying realise they got an 82 year lease.
Leasehold flats aren’t much better but I’ve no obvious answer to that. You either end up with a managing agent fleecing the leaseholders or else self managed (which I did) where the leaseholders don’t have all the skills to cover off the insurance, building maintenance and accounts/company law required to run the place properly.
And then you end up with absent freeholders, which is another problem in itself.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
The challenger tanks less so from what I’ve read (keep breaking down). Still, they played the role of allowing other countries to supply tanks without fear of escalation.
From what I've heard, the C2's are being used as 'sniper' tanks from a greater range. The Abrams have *allegedly* faced trouble with the mud. I can imagine this will be taken on board by western powers, now we realise that we might not just be fighting in deserts in the future.
But it's the old question: you cannot have everything, so what do you optimise for?
Reliability. I know the iron triangle - armour, firepower, mobility, pick two - but none of it matters if it breaks down. The Americans have soldiers who spend years training to maintain a specific vehicle (so there'll be an Abrams guy), but I think ours are more generalists. God knows how the Ukrainians cope (and the answer to that is "they're not").
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
The challenger tanks less so from what I’ve read (keep breaking down). Still, they played the role of allowing other countries to supply tanks without fear of escalation.
I saw some interesting stuff about how, not constrained by “must have a big expensive project” culture, the Ukrainians were upgrading the problem bits on the various vehicles they’ve been sent.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
We are superbly equipped to fight a small war for about 2-4 weeks. Then we be [rudeword]ed.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
The challenger tanks less so from what I’ve read (keep breaking down). Still, they played the role of allowing other countries to supply tanks without fear of escalation.
From what I've heard, the C2's are being used as 'sniper' tanks from a greater range. The Abrams have *allegedly* faced trouble with the mud. I can imagine this will be taken on board by western powers, now we realise that we might not just be fighting in deserts in the future.
But it's the old question: you cannot have everything, so what do you optimise for?
Reliability. I know the iron triangle - armour, firepower, mobility, pick two - but none of it matters if it breaks down. The Americans have soldiers who spend years training to maintain a specific vehicle (so there'll be an Abrams guy), but I think ours are more generalists. God knows how the Ukrainians cope (and the answer to that is "they're not").
Definitely, if you only have a few. If you have many, then the cost of getting an extra tiny bit of reliability can really hurt. And increasing costs by going for that tiny extra bit of reliability can mean you buy many, many fewer of the item, meaning they're operationally useless. See C3 as an example...
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Brilliant news for detached sprawl developers too. Their model of land banking and profit maximisation would've been undercut by this reform.
I have not understood the ramifications of this reform as I've not paid much attention. However, I will say that the Treasury is an absolute blight on good governance and economic success for the country. They need to be broken, their department chopped up and merged with others. The PM should be responsible for the economic strategy for the country.
Time and again the Treasury has undermined the authority of the PM, almost always with disastrous consequences. As an example, they tracked the DM, leading to the economic downturn of the late-80s, against Thatcher's express instructions. That was with a PM of the character of Thatcher. What chance have Sunak or Starmer got to bring meaningful positive change, even if they wanted to?
I think the Conservative Government haven't thought it through, as per everything.
(And I suggest that leasehold in England is perhaps more complex than leasehold in Scotland, down to the sheer quantity and variety.)
I'd say that:
1 - The core of the scandalous abuse is escalating leaseholds on newbuild, or recent, single-family properties.
These can be addressed by preventing use of leasehold in for these properties.
2 - It is more complex for blocks of flats etc.
These need to be managed and maintained jointly, and I'm not convinced that there management by flat-dwellers / owners committee is always effective or efficient.
This one needs more thought.
3 - Significant areas of housing in leasehold ownership need care.
For example Grosvenor Estate areas in London are kept in common appearance by the Estate.
How will this be managed / maintained - or will Mayfair become like Balamory, or a collection of Liquorice Allsorts.
The Park Estate in Nottingham may be a good precedent here, which has transitioned from Oxford University Chest to the Park Residents' Association.
4 - I'd suggest that the increase rates and charges for leasehold could be capped at say CPI and perhaps 1% of property value, with an exception for large expenses (eg new windows in a block of flats) by application to the First Tier or Second Tier Tribunal.
Of these, point 1 can be done quickly, and I'd suggest applied retrospectively to properties built since date X, which could be 2000, 1990 or 1980.
It’s ten years out my leasehold flat but in the eight years I lived in one, I learnt more about leasehold than any normal person has a right too.
Leasehold houses are scams, plain and simple, an attempt by the builder to extract full price for the sale and then come back five years later for another 10% when the poor mugs buying realise they got an 82 year lease.
Leasehold flats aren’t much better but I’ve no obvious answer to that. You either end up with a managing agent fleecing the leaseholders or else self managed (which I did) where the leaseholders don’t have all the skills to cover off the insurance, building maintenance and accounts/company law required to run the place properly.
And then you end up with absent freeholders, which is another problem in itself.
In my old flat, everyone in the block had a share of freehold. The meetings later about 30 min, a couple of times a year. Mostly about whether the current managing agent was ok or we needed to change.
Lots of people didn’t bother - they just paid their service charge.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
We are superbly equipped to fight a small war for about 2-4 weeks. Then we be [rudeword]ed.
And, that's all Britain has had to do for decades. A couple of short Gulf Wars, the Falklands, some limited air campaigns, and some unsuccessful counter-insurgency policing.
But if anything was akin to insurance and where you'd expect contingency plans to be in place for every eventuality - it should be defence. It doesn't seem to be there.
Here are three things I've tried to use Google to find in the past week and could not
* A physical shop that sells self-adhesive credit-card sleeves for a mobile phone case * A physical shop that sells and displays sliding wardrobe doors * The title sequence to the 2009 Prisoner remake with Jesus and Gandalf.
The combination of Google deterioration and increased online shopping means that after tens of minutes searching I had to give up in frustration. I'm beginning to think "dead internet theory" is a real thing...
Yes, as the Opinium poll shows there is no point replacing Sunak now, all the major contenders would poll even worse than him as Tory leader against Starmer Labour with the sole exception of Mordaunt. However Mordaunt would see such a tiny increase in support it would likely fail to make up for the further poll dip from yet another divisive leadership contest and yet another PM. Given Truss was removed as she polled even worse than Sunak too, Boris is no longer an MP and therefore ineligible to be PM and Cameron is also not an MP now but in the Lords it is also understandable why they were excluded from the poll.
Sunak at least does a reasonable technocratic job as PM and the Tories may as well stick to someone who with Hunt is at least relatively competent. If, as is likely, they then lose the next GE they can then look at a new ideological direction and new leader in opposition.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Do we know what the Opposition think about leasehold? This is the kind of reform that Labour could enact without spending any money, so they don't even have the excuse of their utter desperation to ape made-up Tory fiscal rules to excuse them from failing to act.
Lisa Nandy when Shadow Housing Secretary said a Labour government would abolish Leasehold and replace it with Commonhold
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
We are superbly equipped to fight a small war for about 2-4 weeks. Then we be [rudeword]ed.
And, that's all Britain has had to do for decades. A couple of short Gulf Wars, the Falklands, some limited air campaigns, and some unsuccessful counter-insurgency policing.
But if anything was akin to insurance and where you'd expect contingency plans to be in place for every eventuality - it should be defence. It doesn't seem to be there.
Because this would cost a lot of money and, like almost everything else that costs a fortune if done properly, it's therefore subject to penny pinching and corner cutting. Which, in turn, is ultimately counter productive and it creates more problems that will cost even more money to solve.
The crucial point being, of course, that said worse problems happen in the future when they're somebody else's to deal with, so why get unpopular extracting cash from your client voter groups today in order to fix them? Constant short-termism, it's the greatest flaw in democracy.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
The challenger tanks less so from what I’ve read (keep breaking down). Still, they played the role of allowing other countries to supply tanks without fear of escalation.
I saw some interesting stuff about how, not constrained by “must have a big expensive project” culture, the Ukrainians were upgrading the problem bits on the various vehicles they’ve been sent.
When we hand these things over do we include a briefing on all the "X is always flaky and Y is a bit fragile and has a nasty tendency to fall off when you go over a bump" or do we let the Ukrainians rediscover those for themselves?
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Brilliant news for detached sprawl developers too. Their model of land banking and profit maximisation would've been undercut by this reform.
I have not understood the ramifications of this reform as I've not paid much attention. However, I will say that the Treasury is an absolute blight on good governance and economic success for the country. They need to be broken, their department chopped up and merged with others. The PM should be responsible for the economic strategy for the country.
Time and again the Treasury has undermined the authority of the PM, almost always with disastrous consequences. As an example, they tracked the DM, leading to the economic downturn of the late-80s, against Thatcher's express instructions. That was with a PM of the character of Thatcher. What chance have Sunak or Starmer got to bring meaningful positive change, even if they wanted to?
I think the Conservative Government haven't thought it through, as per everything.
(And I suggest that leasehold in England is perhaps more complex than leasehold in Scotland, down to the sheer quantity and variety.)
I'd say that:
1 - The core of the scandalous abuse is escalating leaseholds on newbuild, or recent, single-family properties.
These can be addressed by preventing use of leasehold in for these properties.
2 - It is more complex for blocks of flats etc.
These need to be managed and maintained jointly, and I'm not convinced that there management by flat-dwellers / owners committee is always effective or efficient.
This one needs more thought.
3 - Significant areas of housing in leasehold ownership need care.
For example Grosvenor Estate areas in London are kept in common appearance by the Estate.
How will this be managed / maintained - or will Mayfair become like Balamory, or a collection of Liquorice Allsorts.
The Park Estate in Nottingham may be a good precedent here, which has transitioned from Oxford University Chest to the Park Residents' Association.
4 - I'd suggest that the increase rates and charges for leasehold could be capped at say CPI and perhaps 1% of property value, with an exception for large expenses (eg new windows in a block of flats) by application to the First Tier or Second Tier Tribunal.
Of these, point 1 can be done quickly, and I'd suggest applied retrospectively to properties built since date X, which could be 2000, 1990 or 1980.
It’s ten years out my leasehold flat but in the eight years I lived in one, I learnt more about leasehold than any normal person has a right too.
Leasehold houses are scams, plain and simple, an attempt by the builder to extract full price for the sale and then come back five years later for another 10% when the poor mugs buying realise they got an 82 year lease.
Leasehold flats aren’t much better but I’ve no obvious answer to that. You either end up with a managing agent fleecing the leaseholders or else self managed (which I did) where the leaseholders don’t have all the skills to cover off the insurance, building maintenance and accounts/company law required to run the place properly.
And then you end up with absent freeholders, which is another problem in itself.
In my old flat, everyone in the block had a share of freehold. The meetings later about 30 min, a couple of times a year. Mostly about whether the current managing agent was ok or we needed to change.
Lots of people didn’t bother - they just paid their service charge.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'll vote for any party that abolishes leasehold. My leasehold flat has been a nightmare of unexpected expenses, and I'm one of the lucky ones who hasn't been caught up in either the EWS-1 form trap, waking watch scam, service charges that have risen 300-600% in a few years, doubling ground rents, or freeholders or managing agents colluding with insurance companies or contractors for kickbacks. All of which are the norm for leasehold, not in any way exceptional.
Leasehold is a mug's game, one I was forced to play if I wanted to live in London. But it left me with an asset that has barely risen in value over the last few years (and is probably worth less than I paid for it, adjusted for inflation) despite skyrocketing property prices for all other types of home.
It's a scam, plain and simple. You don't own a single brick, yet you're on the hook for whatever charge the freeholder or management company want to throw at you, with little to no recourse. Sure, you can try to take them to tribunal, but most people lack the time, money, or legal knowledge to do so. And to make matters worse, the freeholder can hire the best lawyer in the world and add the cost of doing to to your service charge, so you're paying twice. I don't usually like the hyperbole of saying it's a rigged system but in the case of leasehold, that's exactly what it is.
End it. The rest of the world (including Scotland) manages to have a system where flat "owners" actually have share in the bricks and mortar they've bought, and a say in how their money in maintenance and upkeep actually gets spent.
Nah, it's a load of whataboutism, with zero firm evidence behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lavatory or Medvedev start blaming Britain - it seems to be the latter's go-to excuse for anything.
You'd be better off asking if it was a false flag, or a let-it-happen from some parts of the Russian government...
There was a jihadism expert on the radio this morning, Mina al-Lami from BBC Monitoring, who made a good case to this being an ISIS attack (which branch to be determined) and linked to a change of strategy by ISIS that has been seen in several recent attacks, with the clear implication that more such attacks should be expected.
The most likely explanation therefore seems to be that it was one of several planned attacks. The US picked up intelligence about said attacks, some of which were thwarted by Russian security services. This attack wasn't prevented, and to defect blame Russia is trying to link it to Ukraine as a cover for escalation and mobilisation.
From TwiX
“I'm sorry but the idea of an increasingly frustrated ISIS having to repeatedly insist that they did a terrorist attack because everyone has dumbass conspiracy brainworms now is objectively very funny”
Here are three things I've tried to use Google to find in the past week and could not
* A physical shop that sells self-adhesive credit-card sleeves for a mobile phone case * A physical shop that sells and displays sliding wardrobe doors * The title sequence to the 2009 Prisoner remake with Jesus and Gandalf.
The combination of Google deterioration and increased online shopping means that after tens of minutes searching I had to give up in frustration. I'm beginning to think "dead internet theory" is a real thing...
What is dead internet theory? I've struggled to find *the actual link for* document x many times recently, and had a lot more success asking Bing's copilot 'can you give me the link for'...
Off topic, as I know we had a debate on a previous thread with those who like Mr Jones - but this is a brilliant article explaining both the problems with him and why many of us should perhaps take heed of them ourselves.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
We are superbly equipped to fight a small war for about 2-4 weeks. Then we be [rudeword]ed.
And, that's all Britain has had to do for decades. A couple of short Gulf Wars, the Falklands, some limited air campaigns, and some unsuccessful counter-insurgency policing.
But if anything was akin to insurance and where you'd expect contingency plans to be in place for every eventuality - it should be defence. It doesn't seem to be there.
It goes all the way back to the 90s under Major and Blair and the false ideas about a 'peace dividend' resulting from the fall of the Iron Curtain. People in power were stupid enough to think that this would mean there was less need for defence when in fact it was exactly the opposite.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
Do we know what the Opposition think about leasehold? This is the kind of reform that Labour could enact without spending any money, so they don't even have the excuse of their utter desperation to ape made-up Tory fiscal rules to excuse them from failing to act.
Lisa Nandy when Shadow Housing Secretary said a Labour government would abolish Leasehold and replace it with Commonhold
Well, we shall see if that idea survives contact with lobbyists, but it's one small positive. I doubt we're going to get radical change out of the next government so I guess we just have to cling to whatever improvements there actually are.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
AIUI these landing ships are actually important assets for the Russians, as they are using them to deliver stuff straight to the Ukrainian mainland, saving many lorry loads of traffic. The Russian military is not very good at road logistics.
Their logistics would even worse, were the Kerch Birdge to unexpectedly become unserviceable again.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
Spoiler alert. I am currently watching the sci-fi series (excellent, by the way) "3 Body Problem". In one scene the commander of a "state-of-the-art" Navy warship, after describing its many shortcomings, is asked "How would you better spend £1bn to defend the country? "Thousands and thousands of drones".
Here are three things I've tried to use Google to find in the past week and could not
* A physical shop that sells self-adhesive credit-card sleeves for a mobile phone case * A physical shop that sells and displays sliding wardrobe doors * The title sequence to the 2009 Prisoner remake with Jesus and Gandalf.
The combination of Google deterioration and increased online shopping means that after tens of minutes searching I had to give up in frustration. I'm beginning to think "dead internet theory" is a real thing...
What is dead internet theory? I've struggled to find *the actual link for* document x many times recently, and had a lot more success asking Bing's copilot 'can you give me the link for'...
It’s the idea the internet will eventually be filled entirely with rubbish AI content - and computer bots commenting and responding to content created by computers etc etc
There is evidence it is happening. See all the weird crap AI stuff on Facebook fooling old people
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
If we'd spent £5bn on them, rather than Ajax, we'd still like now have had no Ajax, but we'd have had 10k Storm Shadows.
Imagine what you could do with that.
Defence procurement should think about such comparisons from time to time.
I saw some interesting stuff about how, not constrained by “must have a big expensive project” culture, the Ukrainians were upgrading the problem bits on the various vehicles they’ve been sent.
The most interesting thing is the evolution of the drones. What started as basically regular quadcopters or FPV racing drones carrying an anti-take grenade to be dropped or rammed into a target has evoled into ever more capable weapons. Some now have infrared cameras. There a relay drones to boost signals. There are upgraded antennas to make jamming much harder. Drones with anti-personnel munitions. Some drones even have limited autonomy to fly to a target when jammed or signal is lost. Ukraine is doing in 2 years what the MOD would take 10-20 to do, and they are doing it with truly COTS hardware at very low cost and high volume.
Nah, it's a load of whataboutism, with zero firm evidence behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lavatory or Medvedev start blaming Britain - it seems to be the latter's go-to excuse for anything.
You'd be better off asking if it was a false flag, or a let-it-happen from some parts of the Russian government...
There was a jihadism expert on the radio this morning, Mina al-Lami from BBC Monitoring, who made a good case to this being an ISIS attack (which branch to be determined) and linked to a change of strategy by ISIS that has been seen in several recent attacks, with the clear implication that more such attacks should be expected.
The most likely explanation therefore seems to be that it was one of several planned attacks. The US picked up intelligence about said attacks, some of which were thwarted by Russian security services. This attack wasn't prevented, and to defect blame Russia is trying to link it to Ukraine as a cover for escalation and mobilisation.
From TwiX
“I'm sorry but the idea of an increasingly frustrated ISIS having to repeatedly insist that they did a terrorist attack because everyone has dumbass conspiracy brainworms now is objectively very funny”
A rather good sketch would be an ISIS board meeting where they are all furious and wondering if they can get a better PR team as people keep crediting their atrocities to the Jews.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
That's mental.
You want to keep an entire class of ownership structure for the sole purpose of creating an investment return for pensions. Thereby taxing leaseholders to pay out pensions. Why?
You could create all sorts of weird ownership structures to tax all sorts of different people to pay for pensions if you wanted. But seems a bit odd.
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
Pension funds seem to work fine in countries without leasehold systems.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
I think it has, in a way. Back then, you had a minority (say, 5%) who were SeanT-like shitposters in 'normal' groups. But they were laughed with, and at.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
The other thing that’s changed is the law. People are far more likely to have their collars felt for a tweet that hurts someone’s feelings than back then for a usenet post that upset someone.
I was a little alarmed that Hester (? - the racist Tory donor) was being investigated by the police to see if he’d committed a crime
He made some deeply unpleasant racist remarks and has rightly been condemned.
But criminalising speech is a dangerous road to go down.
Nah, it's a load of whataboutism, with zero firm evidence behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if Lavatory or Medvedev start blaming Britain - it seems to be the latter's go-to excuse for anything.
You'd be better off asking if it was a false flag, or a let-it-happen from some parts of the Russian government...
There was a jihadism expert on the radio this morning, Mina al-Lami from BBC Monitoring, who made a good case to this being an ISIS attack (which branch to be determined) and linked to a change of strategy by ISIS that has been seen in several recent attacks, with the clear implication that more such attacks should be expected.
The most likely explanation therefore seems to be that it was one of several planned attacks. The US picked up intelligence about said attacks, some of which were thwarted by Russian security services. This attack wasn't prevented, and to defect blame Russia is trying to link it to Ukraine as a cover for escalation and mobilisation.
From TwiX
“I'm sorry but the idea of an increasingly frustrated ISIS having to repeatedly insist that they did a terrorist attack because everyone has dumbass conspiracy brainworms now is objectively very funny”
A rather good sketch would be an ISIS board meeting where they are all furious and wondering if they can get a better PR team as people keep crediting their atrocities to the Jews.
Yes, it’s pure Chris Morris. Very dark - but, as the tweeter says - also very funny
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
As has already been pointed out the amounts claimed by the Treasury as the hit on pension funds are tiny. In 2021 the total value of UK pension funds was just under £3 Trillion. Even taking the upper treasury figure of £40 billion cost that is only equivalent to 0.01% of the pension fund values.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
I think it has, in a way. Back then, you had a minority (say, 5%) who were SeanT-like shitposters in 'normal' groups. But they were laughed with, and at.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
The other thing that’s changed is the law. People are far more likely to have their collars felt for a tweet that hurts someone’s feelings than back then for a usenet post that upset someone.
I was a little alarmed that Hester (? - the racist Tory donor) was being investigated by the police to see if he’d committed a crime
He made some deeply unpleasant racist remarks and has rightly been condemned.
But criminalising speech is a dangerous road to go down.
I agree and initially 'liked' your comment. But thinking about it, I think it could very reasonably be claimed that saying someone should be shot might be considered incitement to violence. I would at least expect the police to take a look at it even if they then dismiss it as a stupid comment rather than a real threat or incitement.
Here are three things I've tried to use Google to find in the past week and could not
* A physical shop that sells self-adhesive credit-card sleeves for a mobile phone case * A physical shop that sells and displays sliding wardrobe doors * The title sequence to the 2009 Prisoner remake with Jesus and Gandalf.
The combination of Google deterioration and increased online shopping means that after tens of minutes searching I had to give up in frustration. I'm beginning to think "dead internet theory" is a real thing...
What is dead internet theory? I've struggled to find *the actual link for* document x many times recently, and had a lot more success asking Bing's copilot 'can you give me the link for'...
One problem is that physical stores are very poor at flagging online that they sell item X and it’s in stock at location Y, in a way that is accessible to search engines.
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
The challenger tanks less so from what I’ve read (keep breaking down). Still, they played the role of allowing other countries to supply tanks without fear of escalation.
From what I've heard, the C2's are being used as 'sniper' tanks from a greater range. The Abrams have *allegedly* faced trouble with the mud. I can imagine this will be taken on board by western powers, now we realise that we might not just be fighting in deserts in the future.
But it's the old question: you cannot have everything, so what do you optimise for?
You optimise for sustained war fighting capacity. That means mass production of the sharp end stuff - munitions; missiles; drones.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
Indeed
I’ve gone for a mixed bag
Investing in the tech giants Investing in global tech Investing in US shares with a tech bias (hmmm) Investing in the Indian stock market (this is my “fun” bet - it’s a total punt, I just feel India has a lot of potential - the next China - and it has a LOT of coders and engineers)
If anyone has a better investment strategy right now please tell. I did notice the other day that you can buy quite nice houses in rural Japan for $30k
Westerners are doing it. Apparently it’s pretty easy
There’s a massive oversupply because of depopulation. I confess I am tempted - rural Japan may be quite a good place to sit out the coming apocalypse. Also I like the climate in the south
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
I see they are doing well with Black Sea Fleet as well
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
The Storm Shadow has proven to be a truly excellent piece of kit as were the NLAWs a couple of years ago where they played a decisive role in the battle for Kiev. Its nice to see our defence budget is not entirely wasted.
Kinda, but it also is a good example of the naiveté with which we've approached defence. The last Storm Shadow missile was manufactured several years ago, and I don't think production has been restarted - suggestions that it could take a year or two to sort out the supply lines for components. There's a replacement in development that's expected to be ready around 2028.
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
Spoiler alert. I am currently watching the sci-fi series (excellent, by the way) "3 Body Problem". In one scene the commander of a "state-of-the-art" Navy warship, after describing its many shortcomings, is asked "How would you better spend £1bn to defend the country? "Thousands and thousands of drones".
Millions, actually. That's what Ukraine and Russia will use in the next year.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
For a little while I think there's been a smell of dotcom bubble. Fascinating new technology but as no one can be quite sure of where it will go or what it's capable of, some tech stocks may be overinflated on the promise of much that can't be delivered. But others will be winners.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
The Elevator Pitch is a good filter. In the time it takes to go 3 floors, why should your company exist?
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
I think it has, in a way. Back then, you had a minority (say, 5%) who were SeanT-like shitposters in 'normal' groups. But they were laughed with, and at.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
The other thing that’s changed is the law. People are far more likely to have their collars felt for a tweet that hurts someone’s feelings than back then for a usenet post that upset someone.
I was a little alarmed that Hester (? - the racist Tory donor) was being investigated by the police to see if he’d committed a crime
He made some deeply unpleasant racist remarks and has rightly been condemned.
But criminalising speech is a dangerous road to go down.
He'd said that an MP should be shot. Bearing in mind that there have been two murdered MPs in eight years, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to take that sort of thing seriously.
Putin lied about the 1999 apartment building bombings, 2000 Kursk submarine disaster, 2004 Beslan school siege, murders of Politkovskaya in 2006, Magnitsky in 2009, Nemtsov in 2015, and many other critics, Russian soldiers occupying Crimea, the downing of MH17, and plans to invade Ukraine, to name a few lies on a very, very long list.
Putin is a pathological liar. Including now that he is desperately attempting to link Ukraine or other Western nations to the mass shooting near Moscow, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support such claims.
Do not let Putin and his henchmen dupe you. Their only goal is to motivate more Russians to die in their senseless and criminal war against Ukraine, as well as to instill even more hatred for other nations, not just Ukrainians, but the entire West. https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1771863927300792579
Michael Gove is fighting to salvage his flagship reforms of England’s leasehold system after a major proposal was quietly axed by the Treasury and Downing Street.
In January last year, Gove told The Sunday Times he wanted to abolish leasehold, which he described as an “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
The housing secretary was forced to lower his ambitions after resistance from No 10, and in November announced a less radical leasehold reform bill to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy the freehold of their properties.
There are about ten million leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by a freeholder landlord. Some leaseholders are trapped by onerous ground rents that are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index rate of inflation, costing them thousands a year.
A key part of Gove’s plan was to reduce all ground rents to a zero (“peppercorn”) rate, which he hoped would give landlords the incentive to sell the freehold to leaseholders, leading to a phasing-out of the system.
The plan was to add the provision to the bill after a consultation, which closed in January. This would have gone further than the cap on ground rents for new homes, introduced in 2022, and reforms in 1993 to enable leaseholders to reduce their ground rent to a peppercorn when extending their lease by 90 years.
However, the proposal was quietly abandoned after Gove and officials at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities met fierce resistance from the Treasury. It follows an intensive lobbying campaign by pension funds, some of which have invested billions in buying up freeholds for blocks of flats.
The Treasury has been warned that pressing ahead with Gove’s plans could wipe out between £15 billion and £40 billion of investment, which could significantly affect individual pensioners as pension funds are big investors in housing developments. Housing campaigners say the potential impact has been greatly exaggerated.
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
What Labour should do is abolish ground rent and introduce a property tax at roughly the same value.
Which spectacularly misses the point
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
As has already been pointed out the amounts claimed by the Treasury as the hit on pension funds are tiny. In 2021 the total value of UK pension funds was just under £3 Trillion. Even taking the upper treasury figure of £40 billion cost that is only equivalent to 0.01% of the pension fund values.
The pension funds will, of course, made it clear they are investing in the “risk free” asset (company owning freeholds) that returns the best.
1. Bearing in mind that that unit was unlikely have been headed to Belarus, what's the likelihood that both Zelensky and Putin are telling the truth and that while the Kiev government wasn't involved, the terror unit had support on the Ukrainian side of the lines? There are certainly Muslim units on that side, including Chechens. I don't know their orientation, but presumably the Chechens are anti Kadyrov and perhaps some of them are Islamists? I somewhat doubt they are social democrats or centrists. I wonder whether Kadyrov will say anything.
2. How to assess the Russian government line that they foiled a terror attack on a synagogue in Moscow? Are the members of the unit in custody, dead, or at large? What connection was there with the planning and support for Crocus? Or was there no such planned attack?
1) They may have done, but it seems improbable. Most of the Chechens in Ukraine are on the Russian side, for a start, and if you want to escape you don't go to the most heavily fortified border - you pick a lightly held one. Moreover, when there are multiple Muslim countries about the same distance off, you'd expect them to head for one of those. So it seems most unlikely. My guess is that whole escape west story, bells and whistles and all, was made up to justify attacks on Ukraine.
2) Following on from that, you always assume the Russian government is lying unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (see Salisbury, Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia...). In this case, we do not have such evidence. Therefore, we must assume they're lying in a bid to show Putin and the FSB are not a bunch of fifth-rate incompetent losers who can't keep the Russians safe as promised.
Disappointing, but not surprising, to see so many people in the west on social media taking the Russain line in this and spouting the line that this is a CIA/Ukrainian plot.
Morning Taz, west seems to be full of stupid people, social media for the dumb has not been a good thing.
Morning Malc, hope all,is well up there. Lovely sunny day here.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
It was a cesspit when it was USENET - outside the moderated groups.
Nothing has changed.
I think it has, in a way. Back then, you had a minority (say, 5%) who were SeanT-like shitposters in 'normal' groups. But they were laughed with, and at.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
The other thing that’s changed is the law. People are far more likely to have their collars felt for a tweet that hurts someone’s feelings than back then for a usenet post that upset someone.
I was a little alarmed that Hester (? - the racist Tory donor) was being investigated by the police to see if he’d committed a crime
He made some deeply unpleasant racist remarks and has rightly been condemned.
But criminalising speech is a dangerous road to go down.
I agree and initially 'liked' your comment. But thinking about it, I think it could very reasonably be claimed that saying someone should be shot might be considered incitement to violence. I would at least expect the police to take a look at it even if they then dismiss it as a stupid comment rather than a real threat or incitement.
Especially if it's a public figure. As you say, it will likely be dismissed - but if it's reported to them they have an obligation to look at the circumstances; recent murders of MPs make that inevitable.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
The ONLY piece of investment advice I feel confident in is: don't react to nasty jolts. Whenever I have it's lost me money; whenever I have resisted that temptation I have been glad later.
Canada shifts right, because of young men in particular
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
Comments
Touchstone, "As You Like It", act V, scene iv, 81-92, see
https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/asyoulikeit/quotes/page/4/
Andrea Jenkyns Says Sunak Must Go, “What Have We Got to Lose?”
The most likely explanation therefore seems to be that it was one of several planned attacks. The US picked up intelligence about said attacks, some of which were thwarted by Russian security services. This attack wasn't prevented, and to defect blame Russia is trying to link it to Ukraine as a cover for escalation and mobilisation.
The anti-Russia/anti-Putin/anti-Kadyrov Chechens are a mixed group. Some Chechens joined ISIS during the Syrian civil war, but others joined other anti-Assad forces and opposed IS. Some of these were more Islamist, some less so. It’s a complicated mess: e.g., this group, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajnad_al-Kavkaz , are Islamist, but not ISIS, and are now fighting with the Ukrainians.
Their ability to promise stability? Hmmm, same problem.
"You must stay at home" UK PM Boris Johnson announces tighter measures to tackle spread of coronavirus
He says to only leave home if:
- Shopping
- One form of exercise a day
- Any medical need
- Travelling to and from work - only when necessary
bbc.in/3bgCYOg
https://x.com/bbcnews/status/1242191068877262848?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
(And I suggest that leasehold in England is perhaps more complex than leasehold in Scotland, down to the sheer quantity and variety.)
I'd say that:
1 - The core of the scandalous abuse is escalating leaseholds on newbuild, or recent, single-family properties.
These can be addressed by preventing use of leasehold in for these properties.
2 - It is more complex for blocks of flats etc.
These need to be managed and maintained jointly, and I'm not convinced that there management by flat-dwellers / owners committee is always effective or efficient.
This one needs more thought.
3 - Significant areas of housing in leasehold ownership need care.
For example Grosvenor Estate areas in London are kept in common appearance by the Estate.
How will this be managed / maintained - or will Mayfair become like Balamory, or a collection of Liquorice Allsorts.
The Park Estate in Nottingham may be a good precedent here, which has transitioned from Oxford University Chest to the Park Residents' Association.
4 - I'd suggest that the increase rates and charges for leasehold could be capped at say CPI and perhaps 1% of property value, with an exception for large expenses (eg new windows in a block of flats) by application to the First Tier or Second Tier Tribunal.
Of these, point 1 can be done quickly, and I'd suggest applied retrospectively to properties built since date X, which could be 2000, 1990 or 1980.
Long before any possible investigation.
I've no idea who perpetrated the attack, but I'm reasonably sure it wasn't Ukraine.
The Syrian civil war comes along. There are these historical links between the Caucasus and the Levant. Lots of Chechen fighters are up for a fight, particularly against a Putin ally. Some are attracted by IS’s vision, but they’re mostly dead now. Some were not. There are still some Chechen fighters in the Idlib pocket that still holds out against Assad. Ukraine offers an opportunity to fight Putin, so some have gone to Ukraine, maybe 2000 of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_volunteers_on_the_side_of_Ukraine
"Russia is reportedly postponing the delivery of two S-400 air defense systems to India, citing the need to utilize them for protecting its own cities and strategic assets from potential strikes by Ukrainian drones. This delay means that out of the five S-400 systems India was expecting by the end of the year, only two will be delivered by August 2026."
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1771840284956950698
Russia is an unreliable partner. I hope India didn't pay for them in advance, as there's a good chance they'll never get them.
But seriously, how poorly does Russia have to treat India wrt arms sales before India says: "Enough!"
Thiel, Bezos and Zuckerberg join parade of insiders selling tech stocks
bosses sell hundreds of millions of dollars in company shares this quarter in sign that markets may be peaking”
https://twitter.com/nathanbenaich/status/1771852976786899240
There are some contracts which are unconscionable (the doubling provision for example) which is why they have been banned.
But the advantage of ground rents is they are super safe (they have a claim over the freehold if not paid) and have very long longevity (90 years). If linked to inflation they are a very attractive (albeit low yield - a small premium to UK government) investment as part of pension financing. They are also useful for property developers as they are a low cost source of funds.
Reducing it to zero becomes an issue of (a) compensation for the value wiped out; and (b) what do you replace them with as an investment class.
As standard something like £100 annually increasing in line with CPI is reasonable in my view. That’s worth about £4000 per property so gets pretty meaningful pretty quickly.
Russia/Putin may not even want one narrative, but several ones that further their aims, and that can be sold to their population and western idiots. The truth depends on the audience.
Car insurance renewal is due in 4 weeks, and I am looking around.
Cover is: Large Estate worth £18k, 9k miles incl. 1k miles business use, Comprehensive, Protected No Claims (7 years), £250 voluntary excess, with all the normal extras.
Last year was £650 or so. Proposed renewal from Sheila's Wheels is around £775. I missed the chance to look around as this time last year I was cooking breakfast then going back to bed for hours to get my energy back; what leukemia does for you.
Looking at quotes, the lowest I am getting is ~£330 including a change to 6k miles incl. 1k business use - which will be plenty, no legal cover (£30 more if I want it) and no Breakdown Recovery (which I get with my bank account and also with my dealer maintenance package). That requires me to fit a dash cam, which brings it down from £400.
The plot is to wait until 20-24 days before renewal, which MSE says is the optimal point, and push the button at the start of April.
Does anyone have any other good ideas?
The cost to the economy of our disfunctional housing market is much greater than the £15-40 billion estimated cost of fixing part of it.
Is it a .. er .. Green Flag for the future? 25% is quite a significant platform to build on.
Bright and sunny up here in west central Scotland, too, though not warm.
The timing is one thing that makes me think there was some Russian involvement in this, even if not a full false flag. And to be fair, Putin has a history of this...
Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit & destroyed two 112-m-long large Ropucha-class landing ships in Crimea last night!
Both “Azov” & “Yamal” were destroyed.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/car-insurance/when-to-renew/
I think I have probably been somewhat bilked for a couple of years, but that is a sunk cost at this point.
The nicest thing to me is that my Skoda Superb Estate Car bought for £27k in Oct 2018 is still valued at £18k, which is amazing even given the massively low (<20k) mileage. The excellent dealer who I am still using for maintenance matched Car Wow, which was 25% off.
It's an old landlording sore that you lay the ground for making your money on the way in to the deal.
Also, the dash cam is not in yet - though technically I could whack in a cheap one in the windscreen in 48 hours.
Without that, the kleptocracy has to not steal enough money to fund development and production internally.
No, you’re right. It’s becoming a cesspit.
The cheapest one is £556 !
Nothing has changed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdap15tWnfI
Mercer was on over 60% of the vote in 2019. Which looks like an unlikely win for Labour even in the current climate, and even if Mercer doesn't stand.
However, when you look at 2010 it all looks much more plausible.
Should we be going back to the 2010 results to figure out which seats are in play for which parties (I don't mean the Tories)?
The coalition, Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn all created distortions that are (maybe?) played out now. Drawing our bar graphs from 2019 or even 2015 doesn't feel like a good baseline.
But now everyone is on t'Internet so much more, that 5% in a group might be a dozen people, instead of one or two, who talk to each other about their wacky ideas and divert conversations so much more easily. And there are also may more 4-Chan like safe havens for shitposters to just talk to one another, expanding their madnesses, which they then spread onto the rest of us, like a muckspreader-armed farmer enraged with their local planning office...
There seems to have been no contingency plan for what would happen if we needed more of them.
But it's the old question: you cannot have everything, so what do you optimise for?
That last 0.1% of reliability costs a heck of a lot. Even 1%: if you are making 100 rockets, you need high reliability for each one, increasing cost. If you are making a million, you can probably afford a few thousand failing.
But it was always the case, after 1990 or so, that the moderated groups were the islands of civilisation.
The rest was bad.
Leasehold houses are scams, plain and simple, an attempt by the builder to extract full price for the sale and then come back five years later for another 10% when the poor mugs buying realise they got an 82 year lease.
Leasehold flats aren’t much better but I’ve no obvious answer to that. You either end up with a managing agent fleecing the leaseholders or else self managed (which I did) where the leaseholders don’t have all the skills to cover off the insurance, building maintenance and accounts/company law required to run the place properly.
And then you end up with absent freeholders, which is another problem in itself.
Lots of people didn’t bother - they just paid their service charge.
But if anything was akin to insurance and where you'd expect contingency plans to be in place for every eventuality - it should be defence. It doesn't seem to be there.
* A physical shop that sells self-adhesive credit-card sleeves for a mobile phone case
* A physical shop that sells and displays sliding wardrobe doors
* The title sequence to the 2009 Prisoner remake with Jesus and Gandalf.
The combination of Google deterioration and increased online shopping means that after tens of minutes searching I had to give up in frustration. I'm beginning to think "dead internet theory" is a real thing...
Sunak at least does a reasonable technocratic job as PM and the Tories may as well stick to someone who with Hunt is at least relatively competent. If, as is likely, they then lose the next GE they can then look at a new ideological direction and new leader in opposition.
https://ringley.co.uk/blogs/labour-party-to-abolish-leasehold
The crucial point being, of course, that said worse problems happen in the future when they're somebody else's to deal with, so why get unpopular extracting cash from your client voter groups today in order to fix them? Constant short-termism, it's the greatest flaw in democracy.
Leasehold is a mug's game, one I was forced to play if I wanted to live in London. But it left me with an asset that has barely risen in value over the last few years (and is probably worth less than I paid for it, adjusted for inflation) despite skyrocketing property prices for all other types of home.
The FT shows that leasehold flats haven't risen in value since 2017, when the Grenfell scandal brought many of the issues with leasehold to light - https://www.ft.com/content/df25ccc7-5dcf-446e-8a07-332ad5612f09
It's a scam, plain and simple. You don't own a single brick, yet you're on the hook for whatever charge the freeholder or management company want to throw at you, with little to no recourse. Sure, you can try to take them to tribunal, but most people lack the time, money, or legal knowledge to do so. And to make matters worse, the freeholder can hire the best lawyer in the world and add the cost of doing to to your service charge, so you're paying twice. I don't usually like the hyperbole of saying it's a rigged system but in the case of leasehold, that's exactly what it is.
End it. The rest of the world (including Scotland) manages to have a system where flat "owners" actually have share in the bricks and mortar they've bought, and a say in how their money in maintenance and upkeep actually gets spent.
As Cory Doctorow says, leasehold is a "feudal grift" - https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1286700538994683909
“I'm sorry but the idea of an increasingly frustrated ISIS having to repeatedly insist that they did a terrorist attack because everyone has dumbass conspiracy brainworms now is objectively very funny”
https://x.com/nezumi_ningen/status/1771627868201631909?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
I've struggled to find *the actual link for* document x many times recently, and had a lot more success asking Bing's copilot 'can you give me the link for'...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fb28b878-64c5-44c0-bfff-45da0c9fdda4?shareToken=ea89b873d358b821af919f8cbc1dd33b
Pension funds need inflation-linked long-term investments to help them plan cash flows.
There are very few options available (this is one of the reasons why inflation linked gilts were so expensive).
This is a very useful investment class for those purposes. It was abused by house builders but not by pension funds.
Abolishing the entire category is not a sensible approach.
However I STILL don’t see anywhere better to put money (and keep it reasonably liquid) and I STILL don’t know a safer way to punt on AI - or hedge against its disruptive potential - than investing in the Tech Giants. They are so big and rich they will simply devour any new rivals
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-agreed-to-pay-inflection-650-million-while-hiring-its-staff
I am currently watching the sci-fi series (excellent, by the way) "3 Body Problem".
In one scene the commander of a "state-of-the-art" Navy warship, after describing its many shortcomings,
is asked "How would you better spend £1bn to defend the country?
"Thousands and thousands of drones".
There is evidence it is happening. See all the weird crap AI stuff on Facebook fooling old people
Imagine what you could do with that.
Defence procurement should think about such comparisons from time to time.
You want to keep an entire class of ownership structure for the sole purpose of creating an investment return for pensions. Thereby taxing leaseholders to pay out pensions. Why?
You could create all sorts of weird ownership structures to tax all sorts of different people to pay for pensions if you wanted. But seems a bit odd.
He made some deeply unpleasant racist remarks and has rightly been condemned.
But criminalising speech is a dangerous road to go down.
Difficulty is picking who'll be Amazon or Pets.com.
That means mass production of the sharp end stuff - munitions; missiles; drones.
And work backwards from there.
I’ve gone for a mixed bag
Investing in the tech giants
Investing in global tech
Investing in US shares with a tech bias (hmmm)
Investing in the Indian stock market (this is my “fun” bet - it’s a total punt, I just feel India has a lot of potential - the next China - and it has a LOT of coders and engineers)
If anyone has a better investment strategy right now please tell. I did notice the other day that you can buy quite nice houses in rural Japan for $30k
Westerners are doing it. Apparently it’s pretty easy
There’s a massive oversupply because of depopulation. I confess I am tempted - rural Japan may be quite a good place to sit out the coming apocalypse. Also I like the climate in the south
That's what Ukraine and Russia will use in the next year.
Putin is a pathological liar. Including now that he is desperately attempting to link Ukraine or other Western nations to the mass shooting near Moscow, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support such claims.
Do not let Putin and his henchmen dupe you. Their only goal is to motivate more Russians to die in their senseless and criminal war against Ukraine, as well as to instill even more hatred for other nations, not just Ukrainians, but the entire West.
https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1771863927300792579
So no incentive to sweat the asset. No sir.
As you say, it will likely be dismissed - but if it's reported to them they have an obligation to look at the circumstances; recent murders of MPs make that inevitable.
Regrettable though it might be.
“Ginny Roth, a public relations consultant and devout Conservative, reckons that more than 75 of the 117 Tory MPs in the House of Commons are the same age as leader Pierre Poilievre – who is 44 – or younger.
Many young voters, especially young men, are moving to the right. They are now far more likely to support the Conservative Party than the Liberal Party. This confounds some older voters, who mistakenly assumed that each generation would be more progressive than the one that came before.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/opinion/article-ibbitson-young-conservatives/
This is happening across the western world. It is an inevitable backlash to decades of leftism and Wokery - and policies that favour the old
How long before Britain follows? At the moment we are the outlier, that won’t last forever