Stop voting for fucking Tories

[Slick]

Genuinely, Slick, well done you. Sometimes what issues need are regular folk prepared to roll up their sleeves and put some work in on their own time. It's one thing to complain about what needs to be done and another to get on and do it.

Good to hear you're enjoying OG,WN too.

Thank you, really appreciate that.

[Biffer]

Jonathan Gullis is that rare creature who could manage to be an entire shower of cunts locked in a room on his own.

[Biffer]

[SaintK]

Gullis is just about everything that is wrong with the "modern" Tory party.

[Lobby]

Don't think this has been mentioned yet, but this is hilarious

"The former actor Laurence Fox will not be a candidate at the London mayoral elections after failing to fill in the nomination forms correctly."

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... nomination

[sockwithaticket]

'Mistakes' seems generous characterisation of:

election officials said nomination papers from two boroughs did not have the 10 supporters required, while three supporters from other boroughs “could not be reconciled to voter register records”.

This will be the second time he's tried and failed in the mayoral race and third failure overall.

Get the message, Lawrence.

[Tichtheid]

[tabascoboy]

Investors were due to pump in almost £4bn into the business over the next two years, but have withheld the first payment - due at the end of March - saying its turnaround plan is "uninvestible".

It is not unusual for investors to try to put pressure on the regulator, which is in the process of deciding how much water companies will be able to charge customers from 2025 to 2030.

However, at some point Thames will need to raise new money to finance the huge programme of investment that is needed and if the current shareholders - which include domestic and foreign pension funds as well as wealth funds from China and Abu Dhabi - won't inject cash, then Thames will need to find new ones.

I don't know at this point whether the problems are entirely due to Thames Water management, but once again it does look very much like relying on equity and wealth fund ownership of a vital utility isn't exactly working out as planned. Who could have foreseen that their interests wouldn't always align with those of the customers who rely on the service

[sockwithaticket]

Here's an idea, how about the shareholders who've siphoned off billions in dividends while Thames neglected infrastructure investment put some of that money back in? If not renationalise while wiping the debt. The water infrastructure was sold to these companies debt free and all they've managed to do is put them in the hole while providing a degraded service, there should be no expectation that the state bailing out an entity and reclaiming an essential utility should also cover the debts run up by the incompetents and malign actors at Thames.

I've seen it mentioned that we are the only country in the world, certainly the developed world, to have this level of privatisation in our water industry.

[tabascoboy]

The shareholders are considered untouchables...

The Tories are changing the law on water companies so that even if they fail the shareholders do not take a hit
Posted on January 25 2024

In December, I wrote here about the need for a change to the law on the insolvency of water companies.

I suggested a change that would wipe out shareholders, give loan creditors a haircut and leave essential suppliers with their payments due intact because they were essential to the ongoing supply of water in the UK.

Renationalisation was the inevitable outcome of such a scheme, but so what? Privatisation has failed.

Now, the government has slipped out new legislation to tackle this issue. I had no idea it was coming, but they obviously read the runes of forthcoming water industry failure as I did.

However, as the FT reports:

The new law provides more options for special administrators to restructure companies that are unable to repay their debts and may make it less likely that the government is forced into renationalising water utilities.

They add:

The legislation contains provisions that will allow a water monopoly to enter administration, restructure its borrowings and then exit as a “going concern”. Under the current rules, water company assets have to be sold off, and the corporate entity liquidated, if they go into administration. The new rules would allow existing shareholders to potentially retain a stake.

Unbelievably, after the failure of the water industry, the government's priority is to protect those who have created the mess that we are in.

Who will pay for that? As the FT notes again:

[A] lawyer also warned that creditors might suffer bigger losses than they might have under the current regime.

Read that as essential suppliers on whom we depend to deliver water will take the hit.

In other words, everyone who deals with water companies but those who mismanaged them will suffer. And that is all to ensure, as another lawyer told the FT, that the government does not have to take management of these companies but can leave them with the existing shareholders who have totally failed this country.

It takes staggering arrogance to present legislation so bad, but that is the only thing the Tories now have left.

I despair.

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/202 ... ake-a-hit/

[sockwithaticket]

Fuck's sake. Looks like I've got another thing to write to my MP abouut. Not that venting my spleen about government decisions to a member of the government does much of anything bar making me feel better.

[Tichtheid]

Hospital admissions for waterborne diseases in England up 60%, report shows


https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... port-shows

[C69]

So roads, education, the NHS, local services, policing and water are a basket case.
And we are now in recession.
That's some fucking plan.

[tabascoboy]

So roads, education, the NHS, local services, policing and water are a basket case.
And we are now in recession.
That's some fucking plan.

TBF they never said it was a good plan, and a shit plan is still a plan I guess

[fishfoodie]

So roads, education, the NHS, local services, policing and water are a basket case.
And we are now in recession.
That's some fucking plan.

not forgetting the Courts, Education, the migrant "crisis" created to distract from the other crises, the Covid Inquiry is just getting into it's stride, the housing shortage, the fallout from Grenfell....

It's getting to the point where it's a shorter list to name whats not a complete dumpster fire after 14 years of unchecked Tory rule

[C69]

So roads, education, the NHS, local services, policing and water are a basket case.
And we are now in recession.
That's some fucking plan.

not forgetting the Courts, Education, the migrant "crisis" created to distract from the other crises, the Covid Inquiry is just getting into it's stride, the housing shortage, the fallout from Grenfell....

It's getting to the point where it's a shorter list to name whats not a complete dumpster fire after 14 years of unchecked Tory rule

I missed out inflation, mortgage rates and of course the Energy cash machine.

[fishfoodie]

So roads, education, the NHS, local services, policing and water are a basket case.
And we are now in recession.
That's some fucking plan.

not forgetting the Courts, Education, the migrant "crisis" created to distract from the other crises, the Covid Inquiry is just getting into it's stride, the housing shortage, the fallout from Grenfell....

It's getting to the point where it's a shorter list to name whats not a complete dumpster fire after 14 years of unchecked Tory rule

I missed out inflation, mortgage rates and of course the Energy cash machine.

and then there's that whole climate thing......

[Biffer]

Cambridge win the boat race after Oxford crew suffer from E Coli from rowing through sewage

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rowing/68699476

[fishfoodie]

Cambridge win the boat race after Oxford crew suffer from E Coli from rowing through sewage

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rowing/68699476

No need to go to India on a gap year to get Typhoid or Cholera anymore, now you can get it in London !

Will other countries now have to update their travel guidelines & start recommending vaccinations prior to travel to the UK ?

[petej]

So roads, education, the NHS, local services, policing and water are a basket case.
And we are now in recession.
That's some fucking plan.

not forgetting the Courts, Education, the migrant "crisis" created to distract from the other crises, the Covid Inquiry is just getting into it's stride, the housing shortage, the fallout from Grenfell....

It's getting to the point where it's a shorter list to name whats not a complete dumpster fire after 14 years of unchecked Tory rule

What are the list of successes for Tories when not restrained by being in the coalition?

Edit: I guess they would include brexit but that is like claiming credit for pouring raw sewage everywhere.

[Sandstorm]

Cambridge win the boat race after Oxford crew suffer from E Coli from rowing through sewage

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rowing/68699476

No need to go to India on a gap year to get Typhoid or Cholera anymore, now you can get it in London !

Will other countries now have to update their travel guidelines & start recommending vaccinations prior to travel to the UK ?

Force the water company boards to drink their own river water every day.

[C69]

So roads, education, the NHS, local services, policing and water are a basket case.
And we are now in recession.
That's some fucking plan.

not forgetting the Courts, Education, the migrant "crisis" created to distract from the other crises, the Covid Inquiry is just getting into it's stride, the housing shortage, the fallout from Grenfell....

It's getting to the point where it's a shorter list to name whats not a complete dumpster fire after 14 years of unchecked Tory rule

What are the list of successes for Tories when not restrained by being in the coalition?

Edit: I guess they would include brexit but that is like claiming credit for pouring raw sewage everywhere.

Well we have left the EU but the consequences have not been a success.
Teachers are voting to strike over pay and the Jnr Doctors are still in dispute.
The govt has delayed the pay offer for April to NHS staff and they probably will be in dispute near election time.
It's not going to get any better. I think the PO scandal will tie in a few Tory politicians.
Thoan a few more defections to Reform may make the 100 MPs projected by pollsters seem realistic.
If the spineless bastards do actually move to Reform then it may well be a sizemic shift in UK politics.

[tabascoboy]

What a brainiac, I mean clearly Brexit hasn't been a complete shitshow already...

[dpedin]

So roads, education, the NHS, local services, policing and water are a basket case.
And we are now in recession.
That's some fucking plan.

not forgetting the Courts, Education, the migrant "crisis" created to distract from the other crises, the Covid Inquiry is just getting into it's stride, the housing shortage, the fallout from Grenfell....

It's getting to the point where it's a shorter list to name whats not a complete dumpster fire after 14 years of unchecked Tory rule

What are the list of successes for Tories when not restrained by being in the coalition?

Edit: I guess they would include brexit but that is like claiming credit for pouring raw sewage everywhere.

For a few the last 15 years has been a great time for some ie shareholders in banks, water companies, railways and train leasing companies, oil and gas companies, etc. It has essentially been a giveaway of state assets and wealth to a small number of already well off/rich folk. We have seen a period of deregulation and free market economics which has essentially shown that both have failed the UK in spades. For the vast majority of the UK we are now poorer, sicker, working longer, living in shittier housing and likely to live shorter, less healthy, and more unhappy lives. The UK version of capitalism has failed miserably and the only saving grace is the Tories didnt deregulate guns or health (they are trying desperately to privatize the NHS) otherwise we would have ended up like a poorer version of the US.

I have no idea why many think the Tories have done a 'good job' and will still vote for them at the next election. I appreciate there is a hard core of racist xenophobes who are delighted they 'delivered' Brexit, the biggest example of self harm the UK has ever inflicted on itself, and will vote for whoever shags the Union Jack the hardest, but even they in their quieter moments must know the least 15 years has been a disaster?

[SaintK]

This is going as well as expected

A UK military base due to accommodate up to 2,000 asylum seekers under controversial plans has been found to be contaminated with ground gases and unexploded ordnance, according to government documents.

RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire is one of three mass accommodation sites earmarked by the Home Office to house asylum seekers as a supposedly cheaper alternative to hotels.

Ministers had initially planned to have 3,000 asylum seekers accommodated on three sites – the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset, the Wethersfield former military base in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire – by the end of 2023. But there are fewer than 1,000 people on the Bibby Stockholm and at Wethersfield and none at Scampton, though the first 60 asylum seekers are due to arrive there in the coming weeks.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ ... olnshire

[Biffer]

not forgetting the Courts, Education, the migrant "crisis" created to distract from the other crises, the Covid Inquiry is just getting into it's stride, the housing shortage, the fallout from Grenfell....

It's getting to the point where it's a shorter list to name whats not a complete dumpster fire after 14 years of unchecked Tory rule

What are the list of successes for Tories when not restrained by being in the coalition?

Edit: I guess they would include brexit but that is like claiming credit for pouring raw sewage everywhere.

For a few the last 15 years has been a great time for some ie shareholders in banks, water companies, railways and train leasing companies, oil and gas companies, etc. It has essentially been a giveaway of state assets and wealth to a small number of already well off/rich folk. We have seen a period of deregulation and free market economics which has essentially shown that both have failed the UK in spades. For the vast majority of the UK we are now poorer, sicker, working longer, living in shittier housing and likely to live shorter, less healthy, and more unhappy lives. The UK version of capitalism has failed miserably and the only saving grace is the Tories didnt deregulate guns or health (they are trying desperately to privatize the NHS) otherwise we would have ended up like a poorer version of the US.

I have no idea why many think the Tories have done a 'good job' and will still vote for them at the next election. I appreciate there is a hard core of racist xenophobes who are delighted they 'delivered' Brexit, the biggest example of self harm the UK has ever inflicted on itself, and will vote for whoever shags the Union Jack the hardest, but even they in their quieter moments must know the least 15 years has been a disaster?

Some of them have it in their heads that it would have been even worse under Labour
Some of them only care about how much they are taxed
Some of them genuinely don't see the link between the tax they pay and the roads, hospitals nd schools in their community
Some of them have picked up the US thing of describing everything as socialism
Some of them are racist
Some of them are genuinely selfish and don't care about what happens to others
Some of them are just fucking stuoid
Some of them are ideologues.

Think that's most of them.

Edit, forgot one. Some of them are of an age where they're r first experience of adulthood was the seventies industrial decline followed by Thatcher making a lot of people in the middle and lower middle class wealthier. They swore never to vote Labour again and bought fully in to the Tories. And they still cling to it

[fishfoodie]

Worst.Aprils.Fools.Evvva !

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... h-sleeping

Who would ever believe Tory MPs revolting against an opportunity to punch down ????

[Uncle fester]

An interesting dive into the weird wacky world of GB News.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/idea ... ws-gb-news

[tabascoboy]

Worst.Aprils.Fools.Evvva !

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... h-sleeping

Who would ever believe Tory MPs revolting against an opportunity to punch down ????

Coming next: the return of Victorian Workhouses!

[Hal Jordan]

Worst.Aprils.Fools.Evvva !

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... h-sleeping

Who would ever believe Tory MPs revolting against an opportunity to punch down ????

A legacy from Cruella, I believe. All the hallmarks of her performative cruelty and utter lack of empathy.

[SaintK]

Nimbyism at its finest from a current cabinet minister
Hopefully it will cost him his seat.

[Paddington Bear]

If we’re not going to build in Croydon, a new town of zero architectural merit inside the m25, then we should either give up or discuss a population policy

[_Os_]

Crazy Tweet. I spent lunch going down that road on Google street view and looking it up on Zoopla.

The obvious point is developing on a residential street, is brownfield development. Brownfield just means building where there was already a building. That is the legal definition. Is knocking down a house and building a bigger building now greenfield development?!

It's definitely not a shithole, but it all looks like it's built between the 1920s and 1970s (the whole street definitely wasn't put up at the same time), most of them have been extended and aren't original. There's no basis for this being a conservation area. 81, 98, 96a (numbers may be out going off street view) have already been demolished and flats put up, with car parking at the front and multiple letter boxes. 69a looks a plot has been divided and a small house designed in the Netherlands has been put up. It's not like there's no building on the street, there's no "in keeping with the area" argument.

Room to dispute that street being for "family homes". If you went back over 20 years houses on that street would've been going for under £200k. 10 years ago they were about £300k-ish. Now they're £600k to £1m+. Over a decade ago two people earning £30k could've afforded that street, it would be the sort of place someone could've reasonably expected if they had done okay (nothing exceptional). Today it needs two people both earning £60k and a larger deposit, you would have to be doing really quite well to afford that street.

Quite a lot going on with this "do not develop in Purley which definitely isn't Croydon" also. One end of that road is in a very built up area that just looks like ... urban London/Croydon.

You can tell what has happened on that street, they all think they're millionaires through their own hard work all on their own (rather than there just being crazy house price inflation). They also now think there should be no development on their street, presumably because they're scared of development damaging the value of their house. In their minds they're not living on what's basically an average street in Croydon. House price inflation has fried a lot of brains. They still "own" (probably hold the mortgage) one house. If they get rid of it, it's exchanged for another house/form of accommodation, which has also increased in price.

A crazy situation, it now makes economic sense to demolish a £600k-£1m+ asset, then spend more money putting up a larger building. All because only large house builders with massive resources and friends in high places get to develop the holy greenfields, which really means a patch of mud no one cares about and of no economic or environmental value. The same house builders with a vested interest in keeping prices high. It's not even a remotely well functioning market.

[_Os_]

Maybe we should start a "NIMBY watch" on this thread? My submission, NIMBYs against building on Tesco car parks.

Tesco car park in London. Flats by an Elizabeth line tube station and main road. Over 3300 signatures from local residents objecting, NIMBYs took it to the high court, local Labour MP against it, 4 political parties and the TUC against it. The development ended up being scaled back:
https://capx.co/nimby-watch-tescos-toxic-towers/
Tesco car park in Manchester. Plans to build flats rejected after over 250 objections from local residents forcing it to be scaled back:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... s-22253717
https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north ... caled-back

Got to protect those asphalt fields wedged between main roads and railway lines, scale back all development on Tesco car parks!

[SaintK]

Happy Families

If you are a Conservative Party member, you have more power than they want you to know about.
DID YOU KNOW? If 10% of an Association’s membership send in a letter of no confidence about their MP, we can start deselecting those Conservative MPs who aren’t actually being conservative.
So for example, an Association with 150 members would only need 15 letters of no confidence to go in to call for a Special General Meeting.

https://conservativepost.co.uk/calli ... -enough/

[Hal Jordan]

Having lived on Purley as a lad, the idea of it being a place of architectural merit is risible, Library aside. Nice enough suburbia, but not exactly Regency Row. I remember when they ripped up the old waterworks to completely remodel the Purley Cross junction to put in a lovely new Tescos. No one griped about that.

The main groaning my parents did was about small hours revellers returning to their cars to drink drive home after a night at the club round the corner, the fabulous Cinderella's Rockafellas.

Also, Purley definitely isn't in Croydon.

[I like neeps]

Maybe we should start a "NIMBY watch" on this thread? My submission, NIMBYs against building on Tesco car parks.

Tesco car park in London. Flats by an Elizabeth line tube station and main road. Over 3300 signatures from local residents objecting, NIMBYs took it to the high court, local Labour MP against it, 4 political parties and the TUC against it. The development ended up being scaled back:
https://capx.co/nimby-watch-tescos-toxic-towers/
Tesco car park in Manchester. Plans to build flats rejected after over 250 objections from local residents forcing it to be scaled back:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... s-22253717
https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north ... caled-back

Got to protect those asphalt fields wedged between main roads and railway lines, scale back all development on Tesco car parks!

It's interesting that Labour nationally are calling themselves YIMBYs but locally side with the NIMBYs.

[robmatic]

Maybe we should start a "NIMBY watch" on this thread? My submission, NIMBYs against building on Tesco car parks.

Tesco car park in London. Flats by an Elizabeth line tube station and main road. Over 3300 signatures from local residents objecting, NIMBYs took it to the high court, local Labour MP against it, 4 political parties and the TUC against it. The development ended up being scaled back:
https://capx.co/nimby-watch-tescos-toxic-towers/
Tesco car park in Manchester. Plans to build flats rejected after over 250 objections from local residents forcing it to be scaled back:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... s-22253717
https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north ... caled-back

Got to protect those asphalt fields wedged between main roads and railway lines, scale back all development on Tesco car parks!

It's interesting that Labour nationally are calling themselves YIMBYs but locally side with the NIMBYs.

Just like the median voter.

[Paddington Bear]

Maybe we should start a "NIMBY watch" on this thread? My submission, NIMBYs against building on Tesco car parks.

Tesco car park in London. Flats by an Elizabeth line tube station and main road. Over 3300 signatures from local residents objecting, NIMBYs took it to the high court, local Labour MP against it, 4 political parties and the TUC against it. The development ended up being scaled back:
https://capx.co/nimby-watch-tescos-toxic-towers/
Tesco car park in Manchester. Plans to build flats rejected after over 250 objections from local residents forcing it to be scaled back:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... s-22253717
https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north ... caled-back

Got to protect those asphalt fields wedged between main roads and railway lines, scale back all development on Tesco car parks!

It's interesting that Labour nationally are calling themselves YIMBYs but locally side with the NIMBYs.

Lib Dems are the absolute worst for this.

To defend Labour slightly, if they mean what they say on planning reform it actually doesn’t matter so much what local councils think.

It’s an issue I’ve been thinking a fair amount about recently for various reasons. I’m from the Chilterns which is remarkably beautiful for where it is and has some genuinely rare ecosystems in its chalk streams. Were it not for the green belt it’s likely much more of it would resemble the large towns along the hills - Wycombe/Aylesbury/Hemel/Luton. Enough to make anyone shudder. I don’t want it all built on. We’re a small country with a dense population and need to be careful.

With this being said, people need to live somewhere, and London/SE England can justifiably be described as having a housing emergency now. This makes us all poorer and has quite significant implications for the future of the country. No tiny violin, but I have a decent job as does my wife, we both save fairly diligently and I inherited deposit sized money when my grandmother died. We still couldn’t afford to buy a house in London (which we wanted to do and still ideally would), so moved a little further out. What is now Greater London has been home to at least part of my family for at least 500 years. We’ve got to rectify it and there’s no path to doing so that doesn’t involve development.

My solution that I think has some chance of being viable, politically and otherwise: separate planning criteria for the “Special Economic Area” - i.e. within the M25. Stricter environmental restrictions in the AONBs to compensate.
What this could mean would be:
1) greater permitted development rights within the m25. Outside of the very few pre-Victorian buildings, why is anyone denied an extension inside the largest city in Europe?
2) zoning. So much of London is a sea of semi-detached houses (large amounts are now flats or HMOs anyway). If developers had greater regulatory certainty that they could build up, they would do. You don’t have to love the development at Colindale/Brent Cross to accept it is housing far more people where we have infrastructure to support them. None of the new stuff is particularly ugly nor beautiful, same as what came before it.
3) new towns. There is loads of space to do this within the M25, but we don’t need to sprawl. Notting Hill is a postage stamp but has a population of 180,000, if we accept that London is around 1,000,000 housing units short we’d need around five parcels of land Notting Hill-sized that we can connect at low-ish cost (covered by land uplift) to existing transport infrastructure. A few examples:
- near me is Harefield, essentially the last village left of Middlesex. It could easily be connected to the Central Line (as was the initial intention) and there’s enough space there to build an exceptionally dense but attractive new development without disturbing many people at all.
- High Beech on the far side of Epping Forest. Same principle and you’d just need to run the Chingford Overground line through a couple of golf courses.
- Stapleford Abbotts. The most space of the three but a little bit more of a challenge on transport. Wouldn’t be too hard to get it a branch shuttle and connect to the Elizabeth Line.
- the area round Biggin Hill has *tonnes* of space to develop.
4) my patented ‘build on shitholes’ policy. Who cares if some of the new tower blocks in Wembley are ugly? It was always grim. Same goes for Watford/Croydon and half a hundred other places.

We know the market exists, it would materially affect probably 5-10 constituencies in outer London and not matter massively to the rest. The transport pays for itself as it always tends to in London.
You could even add in a set amount of the new homes are reserved at lower prices for first time buyers.

‘Bloke on internet solves the housing crisis’ no doubt will lead the 10 o’clock news.

[Biffer]

We need higher density housing in our cities. We have far too many low rise and not enough medium rise buildings. So Londons population density is far lower than other big cities it would compare itself to - Paris, New York and Tokyo for example.

This report goes in to detail on those four cities and compares them.

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/aird ... cities.pdf