Yes, yet another attack on the countryside from Labour
Hunts are not universally liked in the countryside. In fact you'll come across farmers who absolutely detest them. And talking of pets, it's not uncommon for a family dog or cat to get ripped into pieces by them.
Yep, the vast majority of people who live in the countryside couldn't afford to hunt even if they wished to. Conversely, many of those who do hunt are multi-home owners who live in the city most of the time.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
Nice to see seasonal cheer being spread.
It's not time to be visted by three ghosts yet.
Hey you're closing in on 100k. No pressure but it needs to be an absolute stonker, combining expertise, insight, wisdom, originality and humour, all in one concise, deftly written package. I predict the 'likes' record will fall if you deliver.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
Ours absolutely love ripping apart bags of compost. A hazard cycling back from the pub too, had a few close misses.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
Nice to see seasonal cheer being spread.
It's not time to be visted by three ghosts yet.
Hey you're closing in on 100k. No pressure but it needs to be an absolute stonker, combining expertise, insight, wisdom, originality and humour, all in one concise, deftly written package. I predict the 'likes' record will fall if you deliver.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
I used to not mind them but now having a cat it's a slight worry.
The Americans have seized a shadow fleet tanker near Venezuela yesterday too.
Not a good weekend for the Russians.
The tanker off Venezuela was due for China,
There is a conspiracy theory (probably held by some here) that Trump is doing it to help Russia as if China stops buy8ng from Venezuela then they buy it from Russia.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
It's a subject on which I have no view, Lucky, but the older of my two border collies (pic as per avatar) definitely has.
She pursued a fox down its hole a couple of months back and got second prize in the ensuing fight.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
Nice to see seasonal cheer being spread.
It's not time to be visted by three ghosts yet.
Hey you're closing in on 100k. No pressure but it needs to be an absolute stonker, combining expertise, insight, wisdom, originality and humour, all in one concise, deftly written package. I predict the 'likes' record will fall if you deliver.
Several days and a few hundred pounds into the process of verifying my identity on Companies House in order to prove that as an owner of one small flat, I am not an international money launderer (and tbh I'm not really sure how it proves this but I'm sure the government knows what it is doing) I have now acquired a passport and verified my identity to gov.uk.
The final step, then, is to associate my Companies House ID with my now-verified gov.uk ID.
But so far as I can see, there is no secure way to do that. Instead of logging in and pressing a couple of buttons, I have to hand my top-secret code to a complete stranger and trust him or her or them and their accountants and lawyers and cleaners to guard this code jealously and securely (not like pornhub or M&S or the Co-op or Jaguar or, erm, the government which keep getting hacked) and not use it to register their own money laundering network.
Seriously, I am torn between FFS and WTF.
And yet banks manage to ID their customers - under threat of considerable legal penalty if they allow fraud on ID.
It’s almost impossible to open an account, yet somehow whenever there is a genuine fraud such as someone convincing a solicitor to send the proceeds from a house sale to a new account, the banks appear to be utterly incapable of tracing the money.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
It's a subject on which I have no view, Lucky, but the older of my two border collies (pic as per avatar) definitely has.
She pursued a fox down its hole a couple of months back and got second prize in the ensuing fight.
It led to a very quiet and thoughtful night in.
So yes, she opposes the ban.
You do realise that in letting her do that you were technically committing an offence under the relevant act?
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
Classically those who don’t live in the countryside see foxes and badgers as cute and cuddly, as per Countryfile, Springwatch etc. They also seem to imagine old and sick foxes go off to a nursing home at the end of their lives. Life in the wild is tough. Our countryside, so beloved by many, is totally artificial. It needs maintaining. Part of that is to manage foxes, badgers, deer etc. Now you can argue about the best way to do it, but at some point it needs doing.
The Americans have seized a shadow fleet tanker near Venezuela yesterday too.
Not a good weekend for the Russians.
The tanker off Venezuela was due for China,
There is a conspiracy theory (probably held by some here) that Trump is doing it to help Russia as if China stops buy8ng from Venezuela then they buy it from Russia.
A better conspiracy theory is that pushing up oil prices more generally is good for Russia. And Trump/Vance/ don't care about US inflation because there isn't going to be an election anyway.
Several days and a few hundred pounds into the process of verifying my identity on Companies House in order to prove that as an owner of one small flat, I am not an international money launderer (and tbh I'm not really sure how it proves this but I'm sure the government knows what it is doing) I have now acquired a passport and verified my identity to gov.uk.
The final step, then, is to associate my Companies House ID with my now-verified gov.uk ID.
But so far as I can see, there is no secure way to do that. Instead of logging in and pressing a couple of buttons, I have to hand my top-secret code to a complete stranger and trust him or her or them and their accountants and lawyers and cleaners to guard this code jealously and securely (not like pornhub or M&S or the Co-op or Jaguar or, erm, the government which keep getting hacked) and not use it to register their own money laundering network.
Seriously, I am torn between FFS and WTF.
And yet banks manage to ID their customers - under threat of considerable legal penalty if they allow fraud on ID.
It’s almost impossible to open an account, yet somehow whenever there is a genuine fraud such as someone convincing a solicitor to send the proceeds from a house sale to a new account, the banks appear to be utterly incapable of tracing the money.
Dunno about banks but my bank has now got a special 'conveyancer' button on the website for when one wants to move money for a house purchase. No idea how that works (Bank of Scotland btw, so should be Lloyds as well).
The Americans have seized a shadow fleet tanker near Venezuela yesterday too.
Not a good weekend for the Russians.
The tanker off Venezuela was due for China,
There is a conspiracy theory (probably held by some here) that Trump is doing it to help Russia as if China stops buy8ng from Venezuela then they buy it from Russia.
A better conspiracy theory is that pushing up oil prices more generally is good for Russia. And Trump/Vance/ don't care about US inflation because there isn't going to be an election anyway.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
Phlebotomy is a rather niche skill set. I’d imagine they are really good at doing one thing, a bit like plasterers. I cannot imagine the training is that lengthy.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
Classically those who don’t live in the countryside see foxes and badgers as cute and cuddly, as per Countryfile, Springwatch etc. They also seem to imagine old and sick foxes go off to a nursing home at the end of their lives. Life in the wild is tough. Our countryside, so beloved by many, is totally artificial. It needs maintaining. Part of that is to manage foxes, badgers, deer etc. Now you can argue about the best way to do it, but at some point it needs doing.
I have no reason to disbelieve farmers that foxes are pests, and whilst im skeptical perhaps dressing up like a wally is an efficient method of dealing with them. But when supporters of hunting use language like foxes are 'evil' it just comes across as trying a bit hard.
The Americans have seized a shadow fleet tanker near Venezuela yesterday too.
Not a good weekend for the Russians.
The tanker off Venezuela was due for China,
There is a conspiracy theory (probably held by some here) that Trump is doing it to help Russia as if China stops buy8ng from Venezuela then they buy it from Russia.
A better conspiracy theory is that pushing up oil prices more generally is good for Russia. And Trump/Vance/ don't care about US inflation because there isn't going to be an election anyway.
We'd need to check with @rcs1000 or one of the City boys but since America is now the world's largest exporter, it too gains from high oil prices. It is a balancing act as to whether the oil companies or petrol buyers have lobbied President Trump on any given day. Of particular note for producers is whether the sale price covers costs of fracking.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
Classically those who don’t live in the countryside see foxes and badgers as cute and cuddly, as per Countryfile, Springwatch etc. They also seem to imagine old and sick foxes go off to a nursing home at the end of their lives. Life in the wild is tough. Our countryside, so beloved by many, is totally artificial. It needs maintaining. Part of that is to manage foxes, badgers, deer etc. Now you can argue about the best way to do it, but at some point it needs doing.
I have no reason to disbelieve farmers that foxes are pests, and whilst im skeptical perhaps dressing up like a wally is an efficient method of dealing with them. But when supporters of hunting use language like foxes are 'evil' it just comes across as trying a bit hard.
Have you ever seen Clarkson ranting about badgers?
The Americans have seized a shadow fleet tanker near Venezuela yesterday too.
Not a good weekend for the Russians.
The tanker off Venezuela was due for China,
There is a conspiracy theory (probably held by some here) that Trump is doing it to help Russia as if China stops buy8ng from Venezuela then they buy it from Russia.
A better conspiracy theory is that pushing up oil prices more generally is good for Russia. And Trump/Vance/ don't care about US inflation because there isn't going to be an election anyway.
The current price less discounts which Russia is getting for its crude is below production costs. So every little helps, Comrade Trump.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
Classically those who don’t live in the countryside see foxes and badgers as cute and cuddly, as per Countryfile, Springwatch etc. They also seem to imagine old and sick foxes go off to a nursing home at the end of their lives. Life in the wild is tough. Our countryside, so beloved by many, is totally artificial. It needs maintaining. Part of that is to manage foxes, badgers, deer etc. Now you can argue about the best way to do it, but at some point it needs doing.
For sure, but many people in the countryside have also been on the receiving end of these hunts’ arrogance and seen them trespass, destroy property, trample gardens and kill pets in pursuit of their perverted so-called ‘sport’.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
Nice to see seasonal cheer being spread.
Merry Xmas malc.
Same to you Nigel, people now want everything for nothing, I cannot understand it , get out and earn it, move somewhere other than London etc, there are plenty of places with reasonable priced houses.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
It's a subject on which I have no view, Lucky, but the older of my two border collies (pic as per avatar) definitely has.
She pursued a fox down its hole a couple of months back and got second prize in the ensuing fight.
It led to a very quiet and thoughtful night in.
So yes, she opposes the ban.
I had to dig one of my Jack Russell’s out of a fox hole once. It took me six hours to get to him. My girlfriend at the time thought he would come out if she waved a slab of pate at the hole much to my disbelief.
The commonest form of animal cruelty in Britain is the practice of snaring fish on barbed hooks for entertainment, tossing them back injured into the water without even the redeeming excuse of cooking. But, of course, it isn't about the animals, it's about the sort of people who hunt them. Just as people without skin in the game actively choose to be outraged about Palestine, so they also choose to get upset about foxes, to the exclusion of all else.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
It's a subject on which I have no view, Lucky, but the older of my two border collies (pic as per avatar) definitely has.
She pursued a fox down its hole a couple of months back and got second prize in the ensuing fight.
It led to a very quiet and thoughtful night in.
So yes, she opposes the ban.
You do realise that in letting her do that you were technically committing an offence under the relevant act?
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Junior doctors have though received a 4% payrise this year compared to the average private sector payrise of 3-39.% at a time unemployment has risen to over 5% too.
Nurses only had a 3.6% payrise so I have more sympathy with them
As discussed before none of this also takes into account the additional holidays, better pensions and the incremental pay scales they get too.
Perhaps a trade off in terms of lower pension for a higher base wage as well as student debt forgiveness would be a way forward, forgiveness dependent on remaining our NHS.
They also get paid overtime , shift allowances , specialty allowances , etc. Bunch of whingers.
They should give it up and get benefits as apparently you get more.
Don't be a silly Billy, you well know and I wrote it down that it was those on low pay/minimum wage.
Ineffectual governments will often poke their opponents in the eye.
I think this is completely trivial, just a piece of nastiness.
Perhaps but an equally cynical motive might be to keep backbenchers onside since they can't deliver the new Jerusalem in this parliament. If there's no money left, do something that's free.
I've advocated in the past for the government to do things that are free, but surely there are a whole bunch of law changes that could be made with zero budgetary outlay that are more consequential than banning trail hunting?
More and more they look like a tired old government that has run out of ideas, less than two years in. Which I suppose isn't that surprising since they started with no idea at all.
Forget the junior doctors for a moment, the blue line on that graph from the earlier chat is an absolute indictment of the past 15 years government.
It's worth remembering that GDP per capita has increased by c. 15% overall in that time.
So where has that extra GDP gone? Don't say taxes/benefits because that average pay chart is before tax.
Real household incomes have risen in line with GDP per capita. At a guess I would say you can reconcile the numbers through (a) more people being in work (the employment rate was about 70% in 2008, compared to 75% now), and (b) increases in investment income, and pensions.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
Classically those who don’t live in the countryside see foxes and badgers as cute and cuddly, as per Countryfile, Springwatch etc. They also seem to imagine old and sick foxes go off to a nursing home at the end of their lives. Life in the wild is tough. Our countryside, so beloved by many, is totally artificial. It needs maintaining. Part of that is to manage foxes, badgers, deer etc. Now you can argue about the best way to do it, but at some point it needs doing.
I have no reason to disbelieve farmers that foxes are pests, and whilst im skeptical perhaps dressing up like a wally is an efficient method of dealing with them. But when supporters of hunting use language like foxes are 'evil' it just comes across as trying a bit hard.
Why do you think they are dressed like wallies?
All sports and most past times have a form of dress/kit. Everyone is wearing boots and jodhpurs because they are the best kit to wear on your lower half for riding, everyone is wearing a helmet for obvious reasons and most are wearing a jacket which is usually quite thick material which, despite following a tailored style serves a practical purpose. Those in the red coats or “pinks” (dark green here) are wearing them because they are entitled to as a mark of recognition for f their position in the hunt (longevity etc) and aren’t just a sartorial choice.
The outfit looks like a throwback but no less than cricketers in whites with a knitted jumper or whites at Wimbledon.
I used to hunt (until I got dogs and found the idea of the terror of the fox unacceptable once the dogs had softened me) and I used to shoot and they both play roles in country life and the economy.
I think drag hunts are a good alternative to keep hunts and their traditions going - traditions aren’t a bad thing in my opinion, but fox numbers need to be controlled and it’s not overly pretty however they end up being killed - not all shots are outright kills and foxes can escape and die very slowly and painfully.
Yes, yet another attack on the countryside from Labour
Hunts are not universally liked in the countryside. In fact you'll come across farmers who absolutely detest them. And talking of pets, it's not uncommon for a family dog or cat to get ripped into pieces by them.
Yep, the vast majority of people who live in the countryside couldn't afford to hunt even if they wished to. Conversely, many of those who do hunt are multi-home owners who live in the city most of the time.
Speaking from experience there , you fit most of that for sure
Yes, yet another attack on the countryside from Labour
Hunts are not universally liked in the countryside. In fact you'll come across farmers who absolutely detest them. And talking of pets, it's not uncommon for a family dog or cat to get ripped into pieces by them.
Which pets rip family dogs or cats into pieces?
#pedanticbetting.com
(Seriously, though, this is just more red meat for the nutters on Labour's left wing. 'We may be stripping people of disability benefits and kept a SEND denier* as chief of the DfE, but we're banning hunting! Yay!'
Hunting is basically an irrelevance, which is why Theresa May was a fool to talk about it the other way.)
*A reference to the latest inanities from Susan Acland-Hood.
Since when was Labour stripping people of disability benefits? The welfare bill is bigger than ever after Reeves caved in to her backbenchers and scrapped welfare cuts and whacked up taxes instead.
This is just one of an increasing number of sops to the Labour left
Yes, yet another attack on the countryside from Labour
Hunts are not universally liked in the countryside. In fact you'll come across farmers who absolutely detest them. And talking of pets, it's not uncommon for a family dog or cat to get ripped into pieces by them.
Yep, the vast majority of people who live in the countryside couldn't afford to hunt even if they wished to. Conversely, many of those who do hunt are multi-home owners who live in the city most of the time.
Speaking from experience there , you fit most of that for sure
Nope, not even a one home owner (until it's finished being built). Never lived in a city.
Forget the junior doctors for a moment, the blue line on that graph from the earlier chat is an absolute indictment of the past 15 years government.
It's worth remembering that GDP per capita has increased by c. 15% overall in that time.
So where has that extra GDP gone? Don't say taxes/benefits because that average pay chart is before tax.
Real household incomes have risen in line with GDP per capita. At a guess I would say you can reconcile the numbers through (a) more people being in work (the employment rate was about 70% in 2008, compared to 75% now), and (b) increases in investment income, and pensions.
Usual bent graphs and scales , they use every scam to make themselves look bad, add their 26% pension in , lots of overtime etc and they are well ahead of the pack , nurses not so much
The Americans have seized a shadow fleet tanker near Venezuela yesterday too.
Not a good weekend for the Russians.
The tanker off Venezuela was due for China,
There is a conspiracy theory (probably held by some here) that Trump is doing it to help Russia as if China stops buy8ng from Venezuela then they buy it from Russia.
A better conspiracy theory is that pushing up oil prices more generally is good for Russia. And Trump/Vance/ don't care about US inflation because there isn't going to be an election anyway.
Conpiracy Theory Top Trumps.
Trump is way more interested in touting $2 ‘gas’ (petrol), than anything else.
Those around him also know that nothing’s better for the economy than cheap energy.
Ryan Broderick’s newsletter, Garbage Day, showed me a chilling glimpse of this future that’s here already. A freelance journalist, Ellie Hall, has been mapping and exploring the web of influencers in the MAHA movement (Make America Healthy Again: the anti-vax quack movement that presently controls Trump’s Department of Health).
“Just to give you a sense of how interconnected the world of culture and politics is now, thanks to the platforms we use to navigate the web,” Broderick writes. “Ellie told me that recently the algorithms for her MAHA Instagram and TikTok accounts switched to hardcore white nationalism and she had to retrain them to focus on wellness content again. It only took one or two likes of MAHA posts complaining about people using food stamps to buy unhealthy food to trigger a flood of videos of people in red hats attacking welfare queens and AI-generated videos depicting Black women looting stores. It took over 100 engagements with wellness and ‘alternative health’ posts to deprogram it.”
(This is by Andrew Brown, an atheist, who has been on this beat since the 1980s.) (You should be able to read the column, as it gives 2 free articles per month.)
Several days and a few hundred pounds into the process of verifying my identity on Companies House in order to prove that as an owner of one small flat, I am not an international money launderer (and tbh I'm not really sure how it proves this but I'm sure the government knows what it is doing) I have now acquired a passport and verified my identity to gov.uk.
The final step, then, is to associate my Companies House ID with my now-verified gov.uk ID.
But so far as I can see, there is no secure way to do that. Instead of logging in and pressing a couple of buttons, I have to hand my top-secret code to a complete stranger and trust him or her or them and their accountants and lawyers and cleaners to guard this code jealously and securely (not like pornhub or M&S or the Co-op or Jaguar or, erm, the government which keep getting hacked) and not use it to register their own money laundering network.
Seriously, I am torn between FFS and WTF.
And yet banks manage to ID their customers - under threat of considerable legal penalty if they allow fraud on ID.
It’s almost impossible to open an account, yet somehow whenever there is a genuine fraud such as someone convincing a solicitor to send the proceeds from a house sale to a new account, the banks appear to be utterly incapable of tracing the money.
Dunno about banks but my bank has now got a special 'conveyancer' button on the website for when one wants to move money for a house purchase. No idea how that works (Bank of Scotland btw, so should be Lloyds as well).
Just going through selling a property and teh crap you have to go through at every step re money laundering is crazy , estate agent , then solicitor same thing again, who next I ask. Have to do videos, cover one eye , passport or driving licence , etc etc. Most annoying that once is not more than enough.
The Americans have seized a shadow fleet tanker near Venezuela yesterday too.
Not a good weekend for the Russians.
The tanker off Venezuela was due for China,
There is a conspiracy theory (probably held by some here) that Trump is doing it to help Russia as if China stops buy8ng from Venezuela then they buy it from Russia.
He will not be happy when China owns Venezuela and tell him to stop mucking about with their oil or else. They will not be blowing up Chinese speedboats for sure.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
Nice to see seasonal cheer being spread.
It's not time to be visted by three ghosts yet.
Hey you're closing in on 100k. No pressure but it needs to be an absolute stonker, combining expertise, insight, wisdom, originality and humour, all in one concise, deftly written package. I predict the 'likes' record will fall if you deliver.
No pressure then kle4!
Just post something unlike any of your previous posts ;-)
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
I used to not mind them but now having a cat it's a slight worry.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
Those wild animals which are going to be killed one way or another.
It is curious though that drone footage of a fox being hunted by the fancy dress outfit brings such bewailing from leftists when there's no shortage of YouTube videos of people shooting foxes.
He did at least use a gun rather a club as brave Jolyon Maugham did.
Interesting. Instant kill without warning, in contrast to the fancy dress lot (whether in pinks or dressing gown*).
*In fairness I don't know what happened in the Maugham case, whether the fox went for him etc.
You are suggesting that it was the fox that incited him to don his wife's silky negligee, arm himself with a baseball bat, and stalk downstairs, before it then bashed itself vigorously against said baseball bat until it died?
Several days and a few hundred pounds into the process of verifying my identity on Companies House in order to prove that as an owner of one small flat, I am not an international money launderer (and tbh I'm not really sure how it proves this but I'm sure the government knows what it is doing) I have now acquired a passport and verified my identity to gov.uk.
The final step, then, is to associate my Companies House ID with my now-verified gov.uk ID.
But so far as I can see, there is no secure way to do that. Instead of logging in and pressing a couple of buttons, I have to hand my top-secret code to a complete stranger and trust him or her or them and their accountants and lawyers and cleaners to guard this code jealously and securely (not like pornhub or M&S or the Co-op or Jaguar or, erm, the government which keep getting hacked) and not use it to register their own money laundering network.
Seriously, I am torn between FFS and WTF.
And yet banks manage to ID their customers - under threat of considerable legal penalty if they allow fraud on ID.
It’s almost impossible to open an account, yet somehow whenever there is a genuine fraud such as someone convincing a solicitor to send the proceeds from a house sale to a new account, the banks appear to be utterly incapable of tracing the money.
Dunno about banks but my bank has now got a special 'conveyancer' button on the website for when one wants to move money for a house purchase. No idea how that works (Bank of Scotland btw, so should be Lloyds as well).
Just going through selling a property and teh crap you have to go through at every step re money laundering is crazy , estate agent , then solicitor same thing again, who next I ask. Have to do videos, cover one eye , passport or driving licence , etc etc. Most annoying that once is not more than enough.
It's a job creation scheme.
I doubt a single money launderer or drug baron has ever been remotely inconvenienced by such crap.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
I used to not mind them but now having a cat it's a slight worry.
Our cats would chase the foxes out the garden.
All other things being equal, cats are more than a match for foxes.
Yes, yet another attack on the countryside from Labour
Hunts are not universally liked in the countryside. In fact you'll come across farmers who absolutely detest them. And talking of pets, it's not uncommon for a family dog or cat to get ripped into pieces by them.
Which pets rip family dogs or cats into pieces?
#pedanticbetting.com
(Seriously, though, this is just more red meat for the nutters on Labour's left wing. 'We may be stripping people of disability benefits and kept a SEND denier* as chief of the DfE, but we're banning hunting! Yay!'
Hunting is basically an irrelevance, which is why Theresa May was a fool to talk about it the other way.)
*A reference to the latest inanities from Susan Acland-Hood.
Shirley, SAH could be best deployed as a loan to Russia. To organise troop training and logistics?
Clinton may or may not be complicit in Epstein's crimes (and if he is deserves prosecuting with the rest of them). But this is just wrong.
“The administration inserted a photo of Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross into the Epstein files & falsely implied it showed them with victims.
Maybe they should sue the government for $10 billion each.
Yet the photo of Trump, Melania, Epstein and Ghislaine that everyone claims has been removed from the files by the administration is also publicly available - I had seen it posted here more than once.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
How does that stat compare to other housing of a similar standard ?
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
The elasticity of demand for housing scuppers any attempt to fix the problem with building. We need to make them hot potatoes - only hold onto them when strictly necessary for actually living in. After that, building more will suddenly become effective.
Except that every country which allows house building to match demand finds that you “elasticity of demand” problem isn’t actually a problem.
@Luckyguy1983 the recovery in the right wing vote really takes it back to normal. In 2015, it was 51%, in 2017, 45%, in 2018, 48%. It dipped to 38% in 2024, due both to some switchers to Labour and Lib Dem’s, but more to abstainers.
Now, the Labour switchers have switched back, and the abstainers are re-engaged.
Thanks, but that rather proves my point that these blocs are not in any way inviolable groups.
Clinton may or may not be complicit in Epstein's crimes (and if he is deserves prosecuting with the rest of them). But this is just wrong.
“The administration inserted a photo of Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross into the Epstein files & falsely implied it showed them with victims.
Maybe they should sue the government for $10 billion each.
Yet the photo of Trump, Melania, Epstein and Ghislaine that everyone claims has been removed from the files by the administration is also publicly available - I had seen it posted here more than once.
They released lots of files, and then removed a few with Trump in them and hoped nobody would notice. Because they’re stupid. Obviously people did notice and had already saved those files.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
How does that stat compare to other housing of a similar standard ?
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
The elasticity of demand for housing scuppers any attempt to fix the problem with building. We need to make them hot potatoes - only hold onto them when strictly necessary for actually living in. After that, building more will suddenly become effective.
Except that every country which allows house building to match demand finds that you “elasticity of demand” problem isn’t actually a problem.
You always like to bring up France - there's an example of a country with 8 million more houses and the same issue with affordability. Alternatively, do what Wales has done, increase taxes and see a 20% drop in house prices - holding onto property is no longer attractive and young people can get on the ladder.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
Those wild animals which are going to be killed one way or another.
It is curious though that drone footage of a fox being hunted by the fancy dress outfit brings such bewailing from leftists when there's no shortage of YouTube videos of people shooting foxes.
He did at least use a gun rather a club as brave Jolyon Maugham did.
Interesting. Instant kill without warning, in contrast to the fancy dress lot (whether in pinks or dressing gown*).
*In fairness I don't know what happened in the Maugham case, whether the fox went for him etc.
You are suggesting that it was the fox that incited him to don his wife's silky negligee, arm himself with a baseball bat, and stalk downstairs, before it then bashed itself vigorously against said baseball bat until it died?
In West London, a local Little Old Lady is convinced that someone lobbed a XXXXL Bully or similar over her wall, let it tear her cat to pieces. Then retrieved it.
Any suggestions that the small kitten in question was killed by the foxes, that the Little Old Lady fed, in her own garden… are met with savage invective.
Clinton may or may not be complicit in Epstein's crimes (and if he is deserves prosecuting with the rest of them). But this is just wrong.
“The administration inserted a photo of Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross into the Epstein files & falsely implied it showed them with victims.
Maybe they should sue the government for $10 billion each.
Yet the photo of Trump, Melania, Epstein and Ghislaine that everyone claims has been removed from the files by the administration is also publicly available - I had seen it posted here more than once.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
How does that stat compare to other housing of a similar standard ?
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
The elasticity of demand for housing scuppers any attempt to fix the problem with building. We need to make them hot potatoes - only hold onto them when strictly necessary for actually living in. After that, building more will suddenly become effective.
Except that every country which allows house building to match demand finds that you “elasticity of demand” problem isn’t actually a problem.
You always like to bring up France - there's an example of a country with 8 million more houses and the same issue with affordability. Alternatively, do what Wales has done, increase taxes and see a 20% drop in house prices - holding onto property is no longer attractive and young people can get on the ladder.
Despite your beliefs regarding France, property is far more affordable there. Especially outside Paris. Hence the comedy of a couple of the @SeanTs being astonished at the low prices of hotel rooms in the sticks. Or UK people buying ridiculous mansions there - and discovering the costs of running half a million of property in Chablis.
Everything can be true though. It can be true that Carlson was mauled by one of his dogs in their (and his) sleep, but also that in Carlson's dream, this manifested itself as a very real encounter with a demonic presence that clawed at him, that played into a spiritual battle in his life that was real to him. We all have our own truths. Perceptive people see this, and recognise that their own truth is not objective reality, but simply their own experience.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
Phlebotomy is a rather niche skill set. I’d imagine they are really good at doing one thing, a bit like plasterers. I cannot imagine the training is that lengthy.
I think it takes a while to get fast. The phlebotamists here were on strike recently, and nurses were providing cover. Things were going very, very, slowly...
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
Classically those who don’t live in the countryside see foxes and badgers as cute and cuddly, as per Countryfile, Springwatch etc. They also seem to imagine old and sick foxes go off to a nursing home at the end of their lives. Life in the wild is tough. Our countryside, so beloved by many, is totally artificial. It needs maintaining. Part of that is to manage foxes, badgers, deer etc. Now you can argue about the best way to do it, but at some point it needs doing.
I have no reason to disbelieve farmers that foxes are pests, and whilst im skeptical perhaps dressing up like a wally is an efficient method of dealing with them. But when supporters of hunting use language like foxes are 'evil' it just comes across as trying a bit hard.
Why do you think they are dressed like wallies?
All sports and most past times have a form of dress/kit. Everyone is wearing boots and jodhpurs because they are the best kit to wear on your lower half for riding, everyone is wearing a helmet for obvious reasons and most are wearing a jacket which is usually quite thick material which, despite following a tailored style serves a practical purpose. Those in the red coats or “pinks” (dark green here) are wearing them because they are entitled to as a mark of recognition for f their position in the hunt (longevity etc) and aren’t just a sartorial choice.
The outfit looks like a throwback but no less than cricketers in whites with a knitted jumper or whites at Wimbledon.
I used to hunt (until I got dogs and found the idea of the terror of the fox unacceptable once the dogs had softened me) and I used to shoot and they both play roles in country life and the economy.
I think drag hunts are a good alternative to keep hunts and their traditions going - traditions aren’t a bad thing in my opinion, but fox numbers need to be controlled and it’s not overly pretty however they end up being killed - not all shots are outright kills and foxes can escape and die very slowly and painfully.
The ban is completely unjustifiable given the level of crime that surrounds the drag hunts - virtually none. Contrast that with the level of crime and disorder surrounding football, and there is a far greater justification to ban that sport.
Gaby Hinscliff looking at the phenomenon of women voting Green left, in contrast to men voting right. 28 minutes. R4.
At the 2024 general election, something remarkable happened: young voters broke away from the political mainstream, but in opposite directions. Young men moved to the right, while young women swung just as strongly (if not, more) to the left.
While the shift among young men dominated headlines and airwaves, sparking endless commentary and think pieces, the shift among young women was largely ignored, reduced to vague notions of idealism or climate anxiety. No analysis. No research funding. No curiosity.
Presented by Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff, Left Out asks what we’ve missed by overlooking this political awakening and what it reveals about gender, power and a media landscape that still treats young men as serious voters, and young women as a footnote. It explores whether this quiet revolution signals a deeper cultural realignment.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
How does that stat compare to other housing of a similar standard ?
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
The elasticity of demand for housing scuppers any attempt to fix the problem with building. We need to make them hot potatoes - only hold onto them when strictly necessary for actually living in. After that, building more will suddenly become effective.
Except that every country which allows house building to match demand finds that you “elasticity of demand” problem isn’t actually a problem.
You always like to bring up France - there's an example of a country with 8 million more houses and the same issue with affordability. Alternatively, do what Wales has done, increase taxes and see a 20% drop in house prices - holding onto property is no longer attractive and young people can get on the ladder.
Or China where they've ghost cities yet incredibly high asset to income ratios. Simply building is not enough if high wealth inequality means the new houses will be bought as a vehicle for storing wealth and avoiding inflation.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
Ours absolutely love ripping apart bags of compost. A hazard cycling back from the pub too, had a few close misses.
For the earthworms perhaps? Edit: I once woke up one morning in summer at sparrow-**** and looked out of the window and there as a fox on the grassy verge working its way systematically through the worms.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
Phlebotomy is a rather niche skill set. I’d imagine they are really good at doing one thing, a bit like plasterers. I cannot imagine the training is that lengthy.
Friend if mine used to run phlebotomy in the west of England. He’d regularly find staff leaving at short notice to work in fast food joints
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
It's a subject on which I have no view, Lucky, but the older of my two border collies (pic as per avatar) definitely has.
She pursued a fox down its hole a couple of months back and got second prize in the ensuing fight.
It led to a very quiet and thoughtful night in.
So yes, she opposes the ban.
I had to dig one of my Jack Russell’s out of a fox hole once. It took me six hours to get to him. My girlfriend at the time thought he would come out if she waved a slab of pate at the hole much to my disbelief.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
How does that stat compare to other housing of a similar standard ?
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
The elasticity of demand for housing scuppers any attempt to fix the problem with building. We need to make them hot potatoes - only hold onto them when strictly necessary for actually living in. After that, building more will suddenly become effective.
Except that every country which allows house building to match demand finds that you “elasticity of demand” problem isn’t actually a problem.
You always like to bring up France - there's an example of a country with 8 million more houses and the same issue with affordability. Alternatively, do what Wales has done, increase taxes and see a 20% drop in house prices - holding onto property is no longer attractive and young people can get on the ladder.
Where do you get the idea prices in Wales have dropped 20%
My daughter has been active in the market following her divorce and prices are not falling
Indeed she received an excellent price for her former home but also paid out for the one she bought
Gaby Hinscliff looking at the phenomenon of women voting Green left, in contrast to men voting right. 28 minutes. R4.
At the 2024 general election, something remarkable happened: young voters broke away from the political mainstream, but in opposite directions. Young men moved to the right, while young women swung just as strongly (if not, more) to the left.
While the shift among young men dominated headlines and airwaves, sparking endless commentary and think pieces, the shift among young women was largely ignored, reduced to vague notions of idealism or climate anxiety. No analysis. No research funding. No curiosity.
Presented by Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff, Left Out asks what we’ve missed by overlooking this political awakening and what it reveals about gender, power and a media landscape that still treats young men as serious voters, and young women as a footnote. It explores whether this quiet revolution signals a deeper cultural realignment.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
It's a subject on which I have no view, Lucky, but the older of my two border collies (pic as per avatar) definitely has.
She pursued a fox down its hole a couple of months back and got second prize in the ensuing fight.
It led to a very quiet and thoughtful night in.
So yes, she opposes the ban.
I had to dig one of my Jack Russell’s out of a fox hole once. It took me six hours to get to him. My girlfriend at the time thought he would come out if she waved a slab of pate at the hole much to my disbelief.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
Phlebotomy is a rather niche skill set. I’d imagine they are really good at doing one thing, a bit like plasterers. I cannot imagine the training is that lengthy.
I think it takes a while to get fast. The phlebotamists here were on strike recently, and nurses were providing cover. Things were going very, very, slowly...
Believe me I know the value of a good one. I was once stuck in five separate places by a resident doctor trying to take peripheral bloods. Most phlebotomists never miss.
I used to have bloods every three months as leukemia monitoring, and had the lovely experience of getting to know one of the vampires over three years, catching up every three months. There is a decent play or TV short in their somewhere. Basically I got to experience her life ‘sped up’. Three months of updates makes anyone’s life seem fast moving…
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
How does that stat compare to other housing of a similar standard ?
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
The elasticity of demand for housing scuppers any attempt to fix the problem with building. We need to make them hot potatoes - only hold onto them when strictly necessary for actually living in. After that, building more will suddenly become effective.
Except that every country which allows house building to match demand finds that you “elasticity of demand” problem isn’t actually a problem.
You always like to bring up France - there's an example of a country with 8 million more houses and the same issue with affordability. Alternatively, do what Wales has done, increase taxes and see a 20% drop in house prices - holding onto property is no longer attractive and young people can get on the ladder.
Where do you get the idea prices in Wales have dropped 20%
My daughter has been active in the market following her divorce and prices are not falling
Indeed she received an excellent price for her former home but also paid out for the one she bought
Because the local Tories said they would, and kept claiming they would, because LlafurCwwwwwch ...?
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
How does that stat compare to other housing of a similar standard ?
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
The elasticity of demand for housing scuppers any attempt to fix the problem with building. We need to make them hot potatoes - only hold onto them when strictly necessary for actually living in. After that, building more will suddenly become effective.
Except that every country which allows house building to match demand finds that you “elasticity of demand” problem isn’t actually a problem.
You always like to bring up France - there's an example of a country with 8 million more houses and the same issue with affordability. Alternatively, do what Wales has done, increase taxes and see a 20% drop in house prices - holding onto property is no longer attractive and young people can get on the ladder.
Where do you get the idea prices in Wales have dropped 20%
My daughter has been active in the market following her divorce and prices are not falling
Indeed she received an excellent price for her former home but also paid out for the one she bought
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
Ours absolutely love ripping apart bags of compost. A hazard cycling back from the pub too, had a few close misses.
For the earthworms perhaps? Edit: I once woke up one morning in summer at sparrow-**** and looked out of the window and there as a fox on the grassy verge working its way systematically through the worms.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
Phlebotomy is a rather niche skill set. I’d imagine they are really good at doing one thing, a bit like plasterers. I cannot imagine the training is that lengthy.
Friend if mine used to run phlebotomy in the west of England. He’d regularly find staff leaving at short notice to work in fast food joints
That's a Band 3 position, which now starts at 25k up to 26.5k after a couple of years. It's not entry level, which is Band 2, and has a good package - eg 27 days holiday, and a career path.
Salary rises more slowly than some NHS positions, especially entry level.
They definitely dream. Ours will often wag his tail in his sleep, so he obviously has some happy dreams.
Ours dreams a lot. He will often be asleep lying on his side and his legs will be running. He also talks in his sleep. Lots of little whimpers. It is really quite sweet.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
Ours absolutely love ripping apart bags of compost. A hazard cycling back from the pub too, had a few close misses.
For the earthworms perhaps? Edit: I once woke up one morning in summer at sparrow-**** and looked out of the window and there as a fox on the grassy verge working its way systematically through the worms.
My much missed dog used to eat a particular brand of compost (mainly found at my mates house).
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
Ours absolutely love ripping apart bags of compost. A hazard cycling back from the pub too, had a few close misses.
For the earthworms perhaps? Edit: I once woke up one morning in summer at sparrow-**** and looked out of the window and there as a fox on the grassy verge working its way systematically through the worms.
'sparrow-****' ??
Sparrowfart, on weekdays. Never heard the expression? The twilit time of dawn when Mr Passer Domesticus wakes up, stretches his legs and wings, and performs the matutidinal eructation in preparation for his first morning tweet.
I’d love to have a dog now I’m retired but I can’t get over the thought of pickings it’s shit up. I remember once a dog walk with my mother and her dogs. One took a runny dump and she was trying to clean it up and it was like a dirty protest in The Maize.
They have REM sleep. Surmising, I'd say that is to "process" (whatever that means for Fido) and to recover from the previous period (also, whatever that means).
I've known cats, and they do things in their sleep.
Here imo it's about Carlson going to 0.01% explanations over 99.9% explanations, and what has created that state of mind for him. It reminds me of the one or two people I have met over the years who firmly profess that God always intervenes to save a parking space in Central London for them; I have not been able to tell whether they were joking.
Everything can be true though. It can be true that Carlson was mauled by one of his dogs in their (and his) sleep, but also that in Carlson's dream, this manifested itself as a very real encounter with a demonic presence that clawed at him, that played into a spiritual battle in his life that was real to him. We all have our own truths. Perceptive people see this, and recognise that their own truth is not objective reality, but simply their own experience.
Sounds like you're looking for another excuse for Trump's behaviour tbh.... when he says he's 'stopped eight wars', or 'prices are coming down' those are his own 'truths'.
In Carlson's example there is only one truth and I doubt it involved demons.
Thanks. Some pretty bad news there for housebuyers. Though have the premia on second homes actually been implemented? "The only local authority that saw an annual price fall was Ceredigion, a second home hotspot, which introduced a 150% council tax premium on second homes from April 2025." (Not North Wales obvs.)
The commonest form of animal cruelty in Britain is the practice of snaring fish on barbed hooks for entertainment, tossing them back injured into the water without even the redeeming excuse of cooking. But, of course, it isn't about the animals, it's about the sort of people who hunt them. Just as people without skin in the game actively choose to be outraged about Palestine, so they also choose to get upset about foxes, to the exclusion of all else.
While there may be people like that, you're generalising too widely - I'm just as opposed to the snaring that you refer to. Basically animal suffering shouldn't be part of a sport. I think you'd find a majority of people of all persuasions would agree.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
Classically those who don’t live in the countryside see foxes and badgers as cute and cuddly, as per Countryfile, Springwatch etc. They also seem to imagine old and sick foxes go off to a nursing home at the end of their lives. Life in the wild is tough. Our countryside, so beloved by many, is totally artificial. It needs maintaining. Part of that is to manage foxes, badgers, deer etc. Now you can argue about the best way to do it, but at some point it needs doing.
I have no reason to disbelieve farmers that foxes are pests, and whilst im skeptical perhaps dressing up like a wally is an efficient method of dealing with them. But when supporters of hunting use language like foxes are 'evil' it just comes across as trying a bit hard.
Why do you think they are dressed like wallies? .
Because they look like wallies, obviously. Historical context and people in sports also looking like wallies doesnt alter that.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
Ours absolutely love ripping apart bags of compost. A hazard cycling back from the pub too, had a few close misses.
For the earthworms perhaps? Edit: I once woke up one morning in summer at sparrow-**** and looked out of the window and there as a fox on the grassy verge working its way systematically through the worms.
'sparrow-****' ??
Sparrowfart, on weekdays. Never heard the expression? The twilit time of dawn when Mr Passer Domesticus wakes up, stretches his legs and wings, and performs the matutidinal eructation in preparation for his first morning tweet.
I’d love to have a dog now I’m retired but I can’t get over the thought of pickings it’s shit up. I remember once a dog walk with my mother and her dogs. One took a runny dump and she was trying to clean it up and it was like a dirty protest in The Maize.
I was wary of it before we got ours but soon got used to it. My mother in laws dog once did a shit so runny it resembled chicken korma. No way to clear it up, so I scarpered (and felt bad, but what was I to do?)
I’d love to have a dog now I’m retired but I can’t get over the thought of pickings it’s shit up. I remember once a dog walk with my mother and her dogs. One took a runny dump and she was trying to clean it up and it was like a dirty protest in The Maize.
That's not really practical, so very brave of her to even try.
But you might also want to consider the vet bills for Fido. One reason for the increase is the moving in of big business, taking over practices on the private medical/dental industry model. I know a vet very unhappy with this - very glad to be retired now.
Lots of people have dumped Rover and Pussy on the RSPCA/SSPCA/etc in recent years because they can't afford aforesaid animals. Or just chuck them out of the car window etc.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
While I don't hold strong views on the subject the defence of fox hunting here seems ridiculous. @another_richard saying they will be killed one way or another anyway defies logic. You can justify killing anything with that logic and the idea that it keeps foxes down is just bizarre. Even fox hunters in the past have claimed they rarely killed foxes. If true they never kept numbers down anyway and frankly this does seem rational. So it seems unlikely the ban has made it any more difficult to control numbers.
This is not a area I have strong views and I was only pointing out what the Labour manifesto said its reasoning was. however the pro hunters seem to be coming up with very weak arguments. Just saying Labour hates country people is pretty weak.
Farage is a fox hunting fan so he'll probably bring it back if he makes it to No. 10 so the sadists and their vicariously sadistic supporters can relax.
Thanks. Some pretty bad news there for housebuyers. Though have the premia on second homes actually been implemented? "The only local authority that saw an annual price fall was Ceredigion, a second home hotspot, which introduced a 150% council tax premium on second homes from April 2025." (Not North Wales obvs.)
The premium has been introduced and Estate Agents throughout North Wales have seen a rise in the number of holiday homes coming into the market and indeed our daughter bought one close to us
I am amazed at the asking prices of some of the new developments which are out of reach of our first time buyers and getting on the ladder is very difficult without the help of the bank of Mum and Dad
It speaks to the shortage of homes and the high demand that even this influx of new listing is not seeing a negative effect on pricing
Looking at Rightmove 'sold prices' in our area some are astonishing
It has to be hoped the huge second home council tax premiums will have some effect, but frankly it is unlikely to be noticed apart from possibly remote parts of Wales which generally are Welsh speaking
They have REM sleep. Surmising, I'd say that is to "process" (whatever that means for Fido) and to recover from the previous period (also, whatever that means).
I've known cats, and they do things in their sleep.
Here imo it's about Carlson going to 0.01% explanations over 99.9% explanations, and what has created that state of mind for him. It reminds me of the one or two people I have met over the years who firmly profess that God always intervenes to save a parking space in Central London for them; I have not been able to tell whether they were joking.
You mean you’ve never heard of the catholic parking prayer?
Holy Mary, full of grace Help me find a parking space
I’d love to have a dog now I’m retired but I can’t get over the thought of pickings it’s shit up. I remember once a dog walk with my mother and her dogs. One took a runny dump and she was trying to clean it up and it was like a dirty protest in The Maize.
I thought the same. And our dog is really my wife's. But I wouldn't be without him now. Brings such joy and you meet so many nice people.
The commonest form of animal cruelty in Britain is the practice of snaring fish on barbed hooks for entertainment, tossing them back injured into the water without even the redeeming excuse of cooking. But, of course, it isn't about the animals, it's about the sort of people who hunt them. Just as people without skin in the game actively choose to be outraged about Palestine, so they also choose to get upset about foxes, to the exclusion of all else.
While there may be people like that, you're generalising too widely - I'm just as opposed to the snaring that you refer to. Basically animal suffering shouldn't be part of a sport. I think you'd find a majority of people of all persuasions would agree.
Although the burns report found that correctly performed hunting was the best available option.
Although I still laugh at the concept that being hunted and killed “seriously compromises the welfare of the quarry”
I’d love to have a dog now I’m retired but I can’t get over the thought of pickings it’s shit up. I remember once a dog walk with my mother and her dogs. One took a runny dump and she was trying to clean it up and it was like a dirty protest in The Maize.
I thought the same. And our dog is really my wife's. But I wouldn't be without him now. Brings such joy and you meet so many nice people.
Surely you just get the dog to dump the other side of a bush, so no-one notices. Foxes and all sorts of things shit outside, I know you don't want turds on the path where people walk but I think we have got too prissy about this.
(I think you actually brought this to PBs attention, funnily enough). I'm pretty sure there are one post codes that have seen bigger drops but I'll revise to 12% until I find that data.
At 3.00am in the morning the night before last, our son and his colleagues received a 'shout' there was a young woman in the water off the jetty
They took just 25 minutes from being called out of their beds to reach her and pull her aboard
Suffering from hypothermia she apologised for causing them to rescue her but was so grateful
She was taken by ambulance to hospital and another life saved by crews putting their own lives on the line 24/7 in all seas and without any payment required
Please donate to the RNLI this Christmas if you have a spare penny
The commonest form of animal cruelty in Britain is the practice of snaring fish on barbed hooks for entertainment, tossing them back injured into the water without even the redeeming excuse of cooking. But, of course, it isn't about the animals, it's about the sort of people who hunt them. Just as people without skin in the game actively choose to be outraged about Palestine, so they also choose to get upset about foxes, to the exclusion of all else.
While there may be people like that, you're generalising too widely - I'm just as opposed to the snaring that you refer to. Basically animal suffering shouldn't be part of a sport. I think you'd find a majority of people of all persuasions would agree.
Although the burns report found that correctly performed hunting was the best available option.
Although I still laugh at the concept that being hunted and killed “seriously compromises the welfare of the quarry”
Many years ago I knew someone who shot foxes for farmers.
She used a reproduction Sharps rifle and a night vision scope.
Someone from the local animal sanctuary thing got upset at what that did to the foxes. But it ensured they went to fox heaven instantly or not at all.
(I think you actually brought this to PBs attention, funnily enough). I'm pretty sure there are one post codes that have seen bigger drops but I'll revise to 12% until I find that data.
(I think you actually brought this to PBs attention, funnily enough). I'm pretty sure there are one post codes that have seen bigger drops but I'll revise to 12% until I find that data.
My response to @Carnyx at 3.54 explains the actual position in Wales
Comments
Just post something unlike any of your previous posts ;-)
There is a conspiracy theory (probably held by some here) that Trump is doing it to help Russia as if China stops buy8ng from Venezuela then they buy it from Russia.
She pursued a fox down its hole a couple of months back and got second prize in the ensuing fight.
It led to a very quiet and thoughtful night in.
So yes, she opposes the ban.
Maybe not something to discuss on the internet?
Life in the wild is tough. Our countryside, so beloved by many, is totally artificial. It needs maintaining. Part of that is to manage foxes, badgers, deer etc. Now you can argue about the best way to do it, but at some point it needs doing.
It's worth remembering that GDP per capita has increased by c. 15% overall in that time.
So where has that extra GDP gone? Don't say taxes/benefits because that average pay chart is before tax.
https://youtube.com/shorts/TbxfLOfUSFs?si=KwOUos3B2gckn96F
More and more they look like a tired old government that has run out of ideas, less than two years in. Which I suppose isn't that surprising since they started with no idea at all.
All sports and most past times have a form of dress/kit. Everyone is wearing boots and jodhpurs because they are the best kit to wear on your lower half for riding, everyone is wearing a helmet for obvious reasons and most are wearing a jacket which is usually quite thick material which, despite following a tailored style serves a practical purpose. Those in the red coats or “pinks” (dark green here) are wearing them because they are entitled to as a mark of recognition for f their position in the hunt (longevity etc) and aren’t just a sartorial choice.
The outfit looks like a throwback but no less than cricketers in whites with a knitted jumper or whites at Wimbledon.
I used to hunt (until I got dogs and found the idea of the terror of the fox unacceptable once the dogs had softened me) and I used to shoot and they both play roles in country life and the economy.
I think drag hunts are a good alternative to keep hunts and their traditions going - traditions aren’t a bad thing in my opinion, but fox numbers need to be controlled and it’s not overly pretty however they end up being killed - not all shots are outright kills and foxes can escape and die very slowly and painfully.
This is just one of an increasing number of sops to the Labour left
Those around him also know that nothing’s better for the economy than cheap energy.
Meanwhile, the UK has Ed Miliband.
Ryan Broderick’s newsletter, Garbage Day, showed me a chilling glimpse of this future that’s here already. A freelance journalist, Ellie Hall, has been mapping and exploring the web of influencers in the MAHA movement (Make America Healthy Again: the anti-vax quack movement that presently controls Trump’s Department of Health).
“Just to give you a sense of how interconnected the world of culture and politics is now, thanks to the platforms we use to navigate the web,” Broderick writes. “Ellie told me that recently the algorithms for her MAHA Instagram and TikTok accounts switched to hardcore white nationalism and she had to retrain them to focus on wellness content again. It only took one or two likes of MAHA posts complaining about people using food stamps to buy unhealthy food to trigger a flood of videos of people in red hats attacking welfare queens and AI-generated videos depicting Black women looting stores. It took over 100 engagements with wellness and ‘alternative health’ posts to deprogram it.”
The derailment from hypochondria to racism is so smooth that you never hear the rattle of the points.
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/14-november/comment/columnists/viewpoint-with-andrew-brown-bbc-protects-mass-media-from-abyss-of-tiktok
(This is by Andrew Brown, an atheist, who has been on this beat since the 1980s.)
(You should be able to read the column, as it gives 2 free articles per month.)
Quantity over quality i say.
How I was mauled by a demon whilst asleep in bed, which left me with claw marks. It was nothing to do with the 4 dogs in bed with me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDIqoPKNhgo
I doubt a single money launderer or drug baron has ever been remotely inconvenienced by such crap.
https://www.reddit.com/r/goldenretrievers/comments/1frdfln/running_while_sleeping/
Any suggestions that the small kitten in question was killed by the foxes, that the Little Old Lady fed, in her own garden… are met with savage invective.
At the 2024 general election, something remarkable happened: young voters broke away from the political mainstream, but in opposite directions. Young men moved to the right, while young women swung just as strongly (if not, more) to the left.
While the shift among young men dominated headlines and airwaves, sparking endless commentary and think pieces, the shift among young women was largely ignored, reduced to vague notions of idealism or climate anxiety. No analysis. No research funding. No curiosity.
Presented by Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff, Left Out asks what we’ve missed by overlooking this political awakening and what it reveals about gender, power and a media landscape that still treats young men as serious voters, and young women as a footnote. It explores whether this quiet revolution signals a deeper cultural realignment.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002ntqc
My daughter has been active in the market following her divorce and prices are not falling
Indeed she received an excellent price for her former home but also paid out for the one she bought
#spoiltmutt
I used to have bloods every three months as leukemia monitoring, and had the lovely experience of getting to know one of the vampires over three years, catching up every three months. There is a decent play or TV short in their somewhere. Basically I got to experience her life ‘sped up’. Three months of updates makes anyone’s life seem fast moving…
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-house-price-index-for-october-2025/uk-house-price-index-wales-october-2025
Salary rises more slowly than some NHS positions, especially entry level.
I've known cats, and they do things in their sleep.
Here imo it's about Carlson going to 0.01% explanations over 99.9% explanations, and what has created that state of mind for him. It reminds me of the one or two people I have met over the years who firmly profess that God always intervenes to save a parking space in Central London for them; I have not been able to tell whether they were joking.
In Carlson's example there is only one truth and I doubt it involved demons.
But you might also want to consider the vet bills for Fido. One reason for the increase is the moving in of big business, taking over practices on the private medical/dental industry model. I know a vet very unhappy with this - very glad to be retired now.
Lots of people have dumped Rover and Pussy on the RSPCA/SSPCA/etc in recent years because they can't afford aforesaid animals. Or just chuck them out of the car window etc.
This is not a area I have strong views and I was only pointing out what the Labour manifesto said its reasoning was. however the pro hunters seem to be coming up with very weak arguments. Just saying Labour hates country people is pretty weak.
I am amazed at the asking prices of some of the new developments which are out of reach of our first time buyers and getting on the ladder is very difficult without the help of the bank of Mum and Dad
It speaks to the shortage of homes and the high demand that even this influx of new listing is not seeing a negative effect on pricing
Looking at Rightmove 'sold prices' in our area some are astonishing
It has to be hoped the huge second home council tax premiums will have some effect, but frankly it is unlikely to be noticed apart from possibly remote parts of Wales which generally are Welsh speaking
Holy Mary, full of grace
Help me find a parking space
Although I still laugh at the concept that being hunted and killed “seriously compromises the welfare of the quarry”
(I think you actually brought this to PBs attention, funnily enough). I'm pretty sure there are one post codes that have seen bigger drops but I'll revise to 12% until I find that data.
They took just 25 minutes from being called out of their beds to reach her and pull her aboard
Suffering from hypothermia she apologised for causing them to rescue her but was so grateful
She was taken by ambulance to hospital and another life saved by crews putting their own lives on the line 24/7 in all seas and without any payment required
Please donate to the RNLI this Christmas if you have a spare penny
She used a reproduction Sharps rifle and a night vision scope.
Someone from the local animal sanctuary thing got upset at what that did to the foxes. But it ensured they went to fox heaven instantly or not at all.
https://www.savills.co.uk/research_articles/229130/382451-0