NPR

weegie01 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 1:44 pm

Blackmac wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 10:02 am Blimey, come home from 3 days without the news to #humzasbinshaggin and Michael Matheson's unlicensed and apparently unprofitable over 11 years, holiday home. WTAF

It did not need to be licensed. It was only this year that the licensing legislation came in, and many, many people struggled to meet the deadlines. It cost us nearly £3,000 to get licensed yet about the only actual change we made was putting up a few more 'fire exit' signs. A huge problem was that the people who had to provide the various certificates were overwhelmed by the demand which made it impossible for owners to make the dates.

Like him, we only have a temporary license as it was such an admin mess by the SNP and local govt that even people like us that started the process months ahead of the deadline only just managed to meet it, only to find it would take several more months to process. There will not be many holiday let owners compliant with the legislation.

We are more than 15 years into owning one holiday let and are only now about to exhaust the carried forward losses and start paying tax. We have made a significant capital profit, but we are still in a genuine overall revenue loss.

This is genuine bollocks ignoring the reality to score political points.

Blackmac wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 2:35 pmI'm genuinely interested to know the ins and outs of not being able to run a profit on a reasonably successful holiday let. My mate bought a place up there three years ago and has been letting out an annex for the past two, He claims to be killing it financially.

weegie01 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 3:10 pm It helps to be married to a tax accountant.

One thing that everyone we know with holiday lets agrees on is that the running costs dwarf your own home. We buy expensive kitchen appliance purely because they can usually be repaired. How people do it is beyond me, but when we used Indesits etc we were going through a dishwasher etc every three or so years as they just got wrecked. Everything gets abused. The dining room table is solid oak. That is so it be sanded down to remove the burn marks where hot pots etc have been put on the wood. There are enough table mats to cover the whole surface, but they get ignored. The overall rate of wear and tear is phenomenal.

Blackmac wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 2:35 pm

weegie01 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 1:44 pm

Blackmac wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 10:02 am Blimey, come home from 3 days without the news to #humzasbinshaggin and Michael Matheson's unlicensed and apparently unprofitable over 11 years, holiday home. WTAF

It did not need to be licensed. It was only this year that the licensing legislation came in, and many, many people struggled to meet the deadlines. It cost us nearly £3,000 to get licensed yet about the only actual change we made was putting up a few more 'fire exit' signs. A huge problem was that the people who had to provide the various certificates were overwhelmed by the demand which made it impossible for owners to make the dates.

Like him, we only have a temporary license as it was such an admin mess by the SNP and local govt that even people like us that started the process months ahead of the deadline only just managed to meet it, only to find it would take several more months to process. There will not be many holiday let owners compliant with the legislation.

We are more than 15 years into owning one holiday let and are only now about to exhaust the carried forward losses and start paying tax. We have made a significant capital profit, but we are still in a genuine overall revenue loss.

This is genuine bollocks ignoring the reality to score political points.

I'm genuinely interested to know the ins and outs of not being able to run a profit on a reasonably successful holiday let. My mate bought a place up there three years ago and has been letting out an annex for the past two, He claims to be killing it financially

Blackmac wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 12:42 pm

Big D wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 12:39 pm

Blackmac wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 10:02 am Blimey, come home from 3 days without the news to #humzasbinshaggin and Michael Matheson's unlicensed and apparently unprofitable over 11 years, holiday home. WTAF

I thought it was well known he had a bit on the side in Motherwell?

Twitter seems to think she is in Westminster.

weegie01 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 3:10 pm

Blackmac wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 2:35 pmI'm genuinely interested to know the ins and outs of not being able to run a profit on a reasonably successful holiday let. My mate bought a place up there three years ago and has been letting out an annex for the past two, He claims to be killing it financially.

Actually more like 20 years ago, we bought an old property. The first thing we did was pay off the mortgage on our own house and put it on the rental property so the interest was tax deductible. If we ever needed to borrow anything afterwards, we increased the mortgage and used that. We paid the mortgage off years ago, but the interest on the loans piled onto it contributed to early year losses that have kept rolling forward.

The cottage was old, so we replaced the kitchen, bathroom, roof, floors, windows etc all of which was tax deductible. All of which increased the capital value while contributing to the revenue loss we carried forward year after year. We have done other exterior work with the same effect.

Apart frpm the first couple of years, we made a notional revenue profit. But the carried forward losses from capital works, interest etc meant that we had a pile of losses to carry forward to offset against those revenue profits. We are only just about to exhaust those and overall break even in revenue terms. Meanwhile the capital value of the property has at least quadrupled.

We have made quite a lot of money out of the property, but we have never made a taxable trading profit, it has all been capital. It helps to be married to a tax accountant.

One thing that everyone we know with holiday lets agrees on is that the running costs dwarf your own home. We buy expensive kitchen appliance purely because they can usually be repaired. How people do it is beyond me, but when we used Indesits etc we were going through a dishwasher etc every three or so years as they just got wrecked. Everything gets abused. The dining room table is solid oak. That is so it be sanded down to remove the burn marks where hot pots etc have been put on the wood. There are enough table mats to cover the whole surface, but they get ignored. The overall rate of wear and tear is phenomenal.

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 4:16 pm

Blackmac wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 2:35 pm

weegie01 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 1:44 pm

It did not need to be licensed. It was only this year that the licensing legislation came in, and many, many people struggled to meet the deadlines. It cost us nearly £3,000 to get licensed yet about the only actual change we made was putting up a few more 'fire exit' signs. A huge problem was that the people who had to provide the various certificates were overwhelmed by the demand which made it impossible for owners to make the dates.

Like him, we only have a temporary license as it was such an admin mess by the SNP and local govt that even people like us that started the process months ahead of the deadline only just managed to meet it, only to find it would take several more months to process. There will not be many holiday let owners compliant with the legislation.

We are more than 15 years into owning one holiday let and are only now about to exhaust the carried forward losses and start paying tax. We have made a significant capital profit, but we are still in a genuine overall revenue loss.

This is genuine bollocks ignoring the reality to score political points.

I'm genuinely interested to know the ins and outs of not being able to run a profit on a reasonably successful holiday let. My mate bought a place up there three years ago and has been letting out an annex for the past two, He claims to be killing it financially

It always strikes me whenever I visit the highlands just how many places are up for sale, suggesting that a lot of people get themselves in serious financial difficulty from it. No inside knowledge but my guess amounts to it being an exceptionally short season.

Biffer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 9:16 am Of course all of this ignores that people owning holiday lets deprives the community of housing, making it impossible for young people to stay there, or for teachers, nurses etc that the community needs to find anywhere to leave as part of that community.

I know people this includes will react angrily to it, but you’re part of the problem that’s destroying rural communities.

The route has driven additional sales and visitors to accommodation, attraction, activity and retail businesses on the route. The NC 500 generated some £22.89m in Gross Value Added (GVA) for the year 2018 and created circa 179 full time equivalent jobs in the North of Scotland.20 Sept 2019

Tichtheid wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 9:59 am

Biffer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 9:16 am Of course all of this ignores that people owning holiday lets deprives the community of housing, making it impossible for young people to stay there, or for teachers, nurses etc that the community needs to find anywhere to leave as part of that community.

I know people this includes will react angrily to it, but you’re part of the problem that’s destroying rural communities.

I spent years fencing on farms around rural East and West Sussex, Surrey etc. My work partner was a local guy born and brought up near a village called West Chiltington. When it came time for him to buy a place to live he couldn't afford anything in the area because of second homes and holiday lets, so he had to buy a flat in Worthing, which wouldn't be most people's first choice. When I went to work on a farm in the Cotswolds it seemed as bad or worse there in terms of house prices. Norfolk and Sufflok coasts likewise, though not quite as expensive, still there was a shortage of affordable housing for locals, but a lot of short term lets available. I don't know if Air B&B has made this situation worse, but I doubt it's improved it.

So I'm with you to a degree. However, it's certainly the case that tourism is a very important part of the local economy in these places, and, as mentioned, the NC500 has made a difference to the length of the season in the Highlands. The money isn't just being spent on rents, it's being spent in hotels, shops and bars.

first google

The route has driven additional sales and visitors to accommodation, attraction, activity and retail businesses on the route. The NC 500 generated some £22.89m in Gross Value Added (GVA) for the year 2018 and created circa 179 full time equivalent jobs in the North of Scotland.20 Sept 2019

Some kind of medium has to be reached, where the important tourist industry can be supported alongside making housing affordable for locals in order to sustain that long term community, I'm not sure what the solution is, but I'm pretty sure that a market economy fails in this instance

Biffer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 9:16 am Of course all of this ignores that people owning holiday lets deprives the community of housing, making it impossible for young people to stay there, or for teachers, nurses etc that the community needs to find anywhere to leave as part of that community.

I know people this includes will react angrily to it, but you’re part of the problem that’s destroying rural communities.

Big D wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 1:47 pm

The graphs in that thread are concerning. The drop over the last 15 years in Scotland, even allowing for the issues with covid it is a very concerning decline.

weegie01 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 2:52 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 9:16 am Of course all of this ignores that people owning holiday lets deprives the community of housing, making it impossible for young people to stay there, or for teachers, nurses etc that the community needs to find anywhere to leave as part of that community.

I know people this includes will react angrily to it, but you’re part of the problem that’s destroying rural communities.

What I react angrily to are people making sweeping generalisations as if they were universal truths.

We have friends who live in the Cotswolds and other desirable areas in England, as well as Skye and other tourist areas in Scotland. There is no question that is an issue there. But in many others the issue is that there has been a huge reduction in jobs, and without holiday lets and similar the local situation would be even worse. This is true of huge swathes of the Highlands.

My wife was born where we now live. She and her brother reckon there are fewer than half the number of people employed on local farms and estates compared to when they were young. Half the number of people resulting in half the demand for housing. Since you mention teachers, when my wife was young there were two local schools, employing 10 teachers and 4 auxiliary staff. Most of whom lived locally. Now there is one school, two teachers and one auxiliary staff, and many pupils are bussed to a larger school.

My late father in law employed two shepherds. It is a single handed farm now, and the two houses are holiday lets. Without the income from those the farm would not be viable. Far from being a problem, in cases such as this holiday lets have enabled businesses and famillies to survive and stay in the community.

Meanwhile, people like us have invested a huge amount. The quality of the rural housing stock has been poor historically. Holiday lets always need upgrading to meet market expectations, and then need maintained to a high standard. There are more tradesmen in the Aberfeldy area than in the past, and you still struggle to get one. They all say it is the holiday lets and similar that is driving the demand. This is in turn improving the housing stock as well as providing employment.

As an example, the holiday let I mentioned above was for sale for ages. We bought it simply because it was cheap and no one wanted it. As alluded to above, we gutted the place and re-roofed it to bring it up to acceptable standard.

Housing is generally less expensive than elsewhere, and we know a couple of teachers who came to the local school precisely because they could afford a far better house than they would in most other areas.

The reality in swathes of the Highlands is that a lot of traditional employment has gone, and not been replaced by anything. Whilst tourism may have overwhelmed some areas, in others all it has done is soften the impact of other job losses.

BTW. We and others locally have tried letting to people who want to live here rather than holiday lets. Like most others we gave up as it simply was not worth the hassle, especially when we were making less money. There are 4 housing association houses nearby; they have had similar issues. Gradually they have been taken over by retired couples who are happy puttering about in their gardens, walking the dogs etc.

Biffer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:01 pm

weegie01 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 2:52 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 9:16 am Of course all of this ignores that people owning holiday lets deprives the community of housing, making it impossible for young people to stay there, or for teachers, nurses etc that the community needs to find anywhere to leave as part of that community.

I know people this includes will react angrily to it, but you’re part of the problem that’s destroying rural communities.

What I react angrily to are people making sweeping generalisations as if they were universal truths.

We have friends who live in the Cotswolds and other desirable areas in England, as well as Skye and other tourist areas in Scotland. There is no question that is an issue there. But in many others the issue is that there has been a huge reduction in jobs, and without holiday lets and similar the local situation would be even worse. This is true of huge swathes of the Highlands.

My wife was born where we now live. She and her brother reckon there are fewer than half the number of people employed on local farms and estates compared to when they were young. Half the number of people resulting in half the demand for housing. Since you mention teachers, when my wife was young there were two local schools, employing 10 teachers and 4 auxiliary staff. Most of whom lived locally. Now there is one school, two teachers and one auxiliary staff, and many pupils are bussed to a larger school.

My late father in law employed two shepherds. It is a single handed farm now, and the two houses are holiday lets. Without the income from those the farm would not be viable. Far from being a problem, in cases such as this holiday lets have enabled businesses and famillies to survive and stay in the community.

Meanwhile, people like us have invested a huge amount. The quality of the rural housing stock has been poor historically. Holiday lets always need upgrading to meet market expectations, and then need maintained to a high standard. There are more tradesmen in the Aberfeldy area than in the past, and you still struggle to get one. They all say it is the holiday lets and similar that is driving the demand. This is in turn improving the housing stock as well as providing employment.

As an example, the holiday let I mentioned above was for sale for ages. We bought it simply because it was cheap and no one wanted it. As alluded to above, we gutted the place and re-roofed it to bring it up to acceptable standard.

Housing is generally less expensive than elsewhere, and we know a couple of teachers who came to the local school precisely because they could afford a far better house than they would in most other areas.

The reality in swathes of the Highlands is that a lot of traditional employment has gone, and not been replaced by anything. Whilst tourism may have overwhelmed some areas, in others all it has done is soften the impact of other job losses.

BTW. We and others locally have tried letting to people who want to live here rather than holiday lets. Like most others we gave up as it simply was not worth the hassle, especially when we were making less money. There are 4 housing association houses nearby; they have had similar issues. Gradually they have been taken over by retired couples who are happy puttering about in their gardens, walking the dogs etc.

But you’ve taken that property out of the housing stock. It’s eaves a different function now, so you haven’t invested in housing stock.

Slick wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 2:53 pm

Big D wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 1:47 pm

The graphs in that thread are concerning. The drop over the last 15 years in Scotland, even allowing for the issues with covid it is a very concerning decline.

And that is the really worrying point. Jenny Gilruth's statement was pathetic, every country has had Covid to contend with, but it's the trajectory that has been sustained over 15 years that is the massive issue here

weegie01 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:33 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:01 pm

weegie01 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 2:52 pm

What I react angrily to are people making sweeping generalisations as if they were universal truths.

We have friends who live in the Cotswolds and other desirable areas in England, as well as Skye and other tourist areas in Scotland. There is no question that is an issue there. But in many others the issue is that there has been a huge reduction in jobs, and without holiday lets and similar the local situation would be even worse. This is true of huge swathes of the Highlands.

My wife was born where we now live. She and her brother reckon there are fewer than half the number of people employed on local farms and estates compared to when they were young. Half the number of people resulting in half the demand for housing. Since you mention teachers, when my wife was young there were two local schools, employing 10 teachers and 4 auxiliary staff. Most of whom lived locally. Now there is one school, two teachers and one auxiliary staff, and many pupils are bussed to a larger school.

My late father in law employed two shepherds. It is a single handed farm now, and the two houses are holiday lets. Without the income from those the farm would not be viable. Far from being a problem, in cases such as this holiday lets have enabled businesses and famillies to survive and stay in the community.

Meanwhile, people like us have invested a huge amount. The quality of the rural housing stock has been poor historically. Holiday lets always need upgrading to meet market expectations, and then need maintained to a high standard. There are more tradesmen in the Aberfeldy area than in the past, and you still struggle to get one. They all say it is the holiday lets and similar that is driving the demand. This is in turn improving the housing stock as well as providing employment.

As an example, the holiday let I mentioned above was for sale for ages. We bought it simply because it was cheap and no one wanted it. As alluded to above, we gutted the place and re-roofed it to bring it up to acceptable standard.

Housing is generally less expensive than elsewhere, and we know a couple of teachers who came to the local school precisely because they could afford a far better house than they would in most other areas.

The reality in swathes of the Highlands is that a lot of traditional employment has gone, and not been replaced by anything. Whilst tourism may have overwhelmed some areas, in others all it has done is soften the impact of other job losses.

BTW. We and others locally have tried letting to people who want to live here rather than holiday lets. Like most others we gave up as it simply was not worth the hassle, especially when we were making less money. There are 4 housing association houses nearby; they have had similar issues. Gradually they have been taken over by retired couples who are happy puttering about in their gardens, walking the dogs etc.

But you’ve taken that property out of the housing stock. It’s eaves a different function now, so you haven’t invested in housing stock.

Demand for housing where we live has fallen due to falling employment. Lack of jobs has hollowed out many rural communities causing people to move away. There is no point having houses available if there are no local jobs to attract people to live in them, so they are used for other purposes. Properties were converted to holiday homes as they were redundant as the traditional jobs the previous occupants had held no longer existed and there were no locals to occupy them.

The property we bought was a case in point. The job that was linked to the property ceased to exist years previously. The owner had been trying for a long time to sell it and was unable to do so due to its poor state. Despite it being cheap, no one wanted it. In the real world property in such poor condition no one wants to buy it isn't part of the housing stock. And in the real world, when we did try to let it to people to live there after we had restored it, it was a waste of time as there were no local jobs to support them. People would take it thinking they could commute to wherever, very quickly find that was impractical, and move away.

Edit.
It also had not been occupied for the previous 20 years. It had been owned by a chap from Leeds who owned the salmon rights and came up for two or three weeks a year.

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 8:24 amBut it's not as simple as you portray it either tbh. It's circular, the lack of housing stock also contributes to fewer people in the area working locally. When I was a kid pretty much every teacher in Aberfeldy lived in the town, as did the local doctors, nurses, police, etc. That's not the case now and those are all decent wages taken out of the local community because they can't afford a house there. Fishers closing down was a real kick in the teeth for local employment and I don't think the barites mine employs people like it did either. But it's not right to portray a rise in holiday let's being just because there's no other jobs in the area.

weegie01 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 10:43 am

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 8:24 amBut it's not as simple as you portray it either tbh. It's circular, the lack of housing stock also contributes to fewer people in the area working locally. When I was a kid pretty much every teacher in Aberfeldy lived in the town, as did the local doctors, nurses, police, etc. That's not the case now and those are all decent wages taken out of the local community because they can't afford a house there. Fishers closing down was a real kick in the teeth for local employment and I don't think the barites mine employs people like it did either. But it's not right to portray a rise in holiday let's being just because there's no other jobs in the area.

So you know Aberfeldy.

So you will know there is no issues with nurses living locally as the hospital closed down. As has the police station, the PKC offices, the banks etc. Decent wages were taken out of the area as the jobs disappeared, not because people could not find homes. There is not a single doctor in the medical practice that works full time as they don't need to and still have a very pleasant standard of living.

Quite clearly there are areas where there are jobs, but a lack of housing caused by holiday lets makes it difficult for people to take those jobs. Clearly nothing is 100% one way or the other, but this is not the case in many other areas where the underlying issue is that the jobs have disappeared, as have a lot of essential services. But it's far easier to blame those nasty 'rich' people than it is to address the hard issues that without underlying jobs and supporting services everything else is pretty much a waste of time.

The number of holiday lets has gone down recently. While I think the level of subsidy given for hydro schemes is excessive, it has brought a lot of money into a number of local farms and estates. Many of whom have re-employed people they would not otherwise have afforded, and then reverted holiday lets to housing for them. Amazingly, if the jobs are there, people take them and since there is a demand for housing it is taken out of holiday lets.

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 2:42 pmI think you're sticking your head in the sand a bit tbh. You say yourself there are more tradesmen than previously in the area, and having checked there's now a new mine being opened to replace the Foss mine so additional jobs there. Even part time doctors need somewhere to live - how many of them live locally? There are district nurses - how many of them live locally? Again, most teachers at the school, don't live locally. Whilst there's plenty of jobs lost, there are also people with jobs in the local community who can't afford property there. To deny that is to deny the reality. As I said, it's circular and both sides are feeding the other. Personally I'd be taxing second homes to the hilt.

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 4:55 pm I said both sides are feeding each other and that it's circular , clearly, twice.

You seem stuck to emphasising one side way more than the other, that being the one that you're invested in.

With my parents passing in the last few years, we were left with two rural properties. We've sold one and are currently selling the other, and a significant part of that decision was because we didn't want to keep housing stock out of the local population. Could've set either of them up as holiday rentals but didn't.

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 8:07 am Freezing council tax again this year was really fucking dumb.

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 8:07 am Freezing council tax again this year was really fucking dumb.

Slick wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 9:54 am

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 8:07 am Freezing council tax again this year was really fucking dumb.

It was really. I think most would have grudgingly accepted that was inevitable.

weegie01 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 10:19 am

Slick wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 9:54 am

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 8:07 am Freezing council tax again this year was really fucking dumb.

It was really. I think most would have grudgingly accepted that was inevitable.

So council tax has been frozen, but councils are being given an extra £144m to compensate for the freeze, which has to be raised elsewhere so the net extra raised is the same as if council tax had been increased.

Councils have to deliver services and need funds to do that. I have no issues with poorer areas being subsidised, but putting that aside, it would seem to me better that the councils also raise as much as possible of the funds they need themselves so there is as much local accountability as possible.

Slick wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 10:24 amNot sure if I completely understand your post.

If councils were able to increase their own tax then couldn't that £144m have been spent elsewhere? I think i read as well that the £144 is about a 4.5% raise but councils were saying they needed at least 6.5% raise just to keep functioning. We may well be agreeing!

Blackmac wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:54 pm

Slick wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 2:53 pm

Big D wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 1:47 pm

The graphs in that thread are concerning. The drop over the last 15 years in Scotland, even allowing for the issues with covid it is a very concerning decline.

And that is the really worrying point. Jenny Gilruth's statement was pathetic, every country has had Covid to contend with, but it's the trajectory that has been sustained over 15 years that is the massive issue here

It's even getting impossible for them to roll out the "it's not as shit as England" line.
Didn't Sturgeon say she would be judged on education. Just another nail in the coffin of her reputation.

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2024 11:24 am Not really politics, more cultural and heritage, but Perth Museum opens at Easter, after years of campaigning, planning and work. Brilliant to see the old City Halls redeveloped into something positive, and should help to boost that part of Perth into a bit of a hub of activity. Already loads of bars and restaurants around the square, hopefully it'll end up giving a bit of bustle to that part of two, and some boost to the cultural economy in Perth as a whole. And great to see the Stone of Scone back to (more or less) it's old home town.

https://perthmuseum.co.uk/the-stone-of-destiny/

Can't underestimate this kind of cultural investment btw. I'm really impressed with how Manchester has developed and grown in the last ten years or so, it's GDP per person is now nearly as high as Edinburgh's, which is where the major cities in the UK should be. Cultural and artistic investment and development was an important part of the redevelopment of Manchester (the Lowry, the Whitworth, HOME, Islington Mill, Imperial War Museum North, ICT, C4, BBC, etc). The benefit of cultural investment on the broader economy is very often overlooked.

inactionman wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2024 1:23 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2024 11:24 am Not really politics, more cultural and heritage, but Perth Museum opens at Easter, after years of campaigning, planning and work. Brilliant to see the old City Halls redeveloped into something positive, and should help to boost that part of Perth into a bit of a hub of activity. Already loads of bars and restaurants around the square, hopefully it'll end up giving a bit of bustle to that part of two, and some boost to the cultural economy in Perth as a whole. And great to see the Stone of Scone back to (more or less) it's old home town.

https://perthmuseum.co.uk/the-stone-of-destiny/

Can't underestimate this kind of cultural investment btw. I'm really impressed with how Manchester has developed and grown in the last ten years or so, it's GDP per person is now nearly as high as Edinburgh's, which is where the major cities in the UK should be. Cultural and artistic investment and development was an important part of the redevelopment of Manchester (the Lowry, the Whitworth, HOME, Islington Mill, Imperial War Museum North, ICT, C4, BBC, etc). The benefit of cultural investment on the broader economy is very often overlooked.

Ta for heads-up. I quite like Perth, reminds me of Monmouth for some reason, maybe being mostly alongside the river. Another similarity is that they both feel quite sleepy, Perth definitely needed some attractions so very good news about the museum - the Black Watch museum isn't quite right for kids and Scone Palace is a bit outside the town itself.

We take the kids to the pool in Perth wherever we're up that way (for all of Edinburgh's attractions it doesn't have much in the way of waterpark-style swimming pool), so good to have another reason to visit.

As an aside, I still think the V&A at Dundee could do with a slight rejig in terms of content. Although the visiting exhibitions have been excellent the standing exhibits aren't actually that extensive and there are a few odd sections - for example, I'm not sure I want to travel to a museum to browse a taschen textiles book.