So… they folded?

As for the UK, either end the right to buy or make it a legal requirement that councils can only sell social housing if replaced like for like. That would be a start.

As for nimbys objecting to any housing development (when their house was built on fields too, the hypocrites) then something like a land tax might be appropriate. The idea being that you ought to profit from improvements you made to your house yourself, but you oughtn’t profit from the increase in value due to things your didn’t do, like the nearby town developing or just the general inflation of prices due to artificial scarcity.

Also, I agree with the overall sentiment, but pretending that net immigration doesn’t put pressure on housing is silly. Of course it does. Though that is only a minor effect on the overall causes of housing problems.

Cocaine and cocaine accessories!

https://www.etymonline.com/word/twelve

https://www.etymonline.com/word/eleven

Twelve’s root is in meaning “two left”. And similarly eleven’s origin is meaning “one left”. In both cases left over from ten, the base unit of counting.

Billionaires have too much power, let me just get that out the way. But it’s weird to state their tax contribution in relation to their “wealth” (0.3%). No-one pays tax in relation to their wealth, at least not while they’re holding it. A low income earner ($30k) living in a house they’ve inherited ($1M) is paying about 0.5% tax compared to their “wealth” (they pay about $5k income taxes compared to their $1M wealth ) That’s why it’s a weird way to put the stat that way. The ultra rich do pay tax on their income, it’s just their income (dividends, stock sale) is small compared to their wealth (assets, stocks etc)

Curiously in words related to ‘two’ the W is often pronounced!

Twin, Twixt, Between, Twelve etc

Obviously the same 32 million tourists won’t come if the same overnight accommodation isn’t available and the rest are looking at higher hotel costs due to saturation

It’s the right thing to do to serve the local residents housing needs. But the local residents also need the tourist as many work in hospitality / leisure etc

Will be interesting to see what happens

Constant low level exposure to ads and commerce in general is bad for the soul. These voices aren’t your friends, they don’t have your best interests at heart.

Buy ad free services. If they don’t provide ad free, go elsewhere.

Rediscover the joys of ad free, intelligent radio. Start with BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4. There are many others I’m sure.

Ha, I wasn’t aware of that.

Are people not overreacting here just a touch?

So was it the the Russians who blew up their own Nord pipeline, or was it that Ukrainian guy with a yacht? It’s hard to keep track

Data cables defo Russia sabotage (if deliberate), doesn’t serve anyone else’s goals

If the West wanted to minimise Ukrainian deaths then they could do something like draw clear lines in the sand so that Russia publicly knows at what points their continued action leads to Western escalation (defensive escalation). Surely that’s a clearer deterrent and would save Ukrainian lives. Instead we’ve got what looks like European bickering and prevarication and eventually somewhat reluctant support. So maybe that’s genuinely what’s going on. Or if it’s an act I’m sure it’s for well thought out psychological reasons. But as an act it seems to rather encourage Russia to keep pushing, because they hope Western support will falter. So if that’s all deliberate it seems more about draining Russia than helping Ukraine. (With hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives sacrificed in the process)

I dont even know what the implications are when the guy that was supposed to be the diversion ends up that close to the power that funds him.

“Do not cross the streams. That would be bad.”

Can we carve out a part of the internet please where we go back to super basic html pages that are a mix of self hosted hobby blogs and university research sites? It was good then. Everything’s gotten so noisy, and busy, and shit.

The strategy isn’t help Ukraine win, right? It’s to rachet up the difficulty every mile Russia advances in order to drain them as much as possible…

People should always have access to essentials, and I count an affordable reliable roof over their head as one of those things. But are we ever going to be able to change the fact that someone on the receiving end of three generations of doing moderately well in life is going to be massively more advantaged that someone whose parents were 4th and 5th in large poor families?

Someone’s parents having even a modest home with a spare room in London puts them at a massive advantage over their peers who have to privately rent. But aside from ensuring the fundamentals are in place of affordable accessible homes, is there really any realistic way of nullifying that advantage and is it even right to do so?

Ah Pence, yes

I get the first two. Who did he try to have killed?

Unstable for a variety of historical reasons…

Original primitive animist beliefs and Christian groups seem to have amalgamated in the first centuries CE.

The region was overcome by Islam coming from the Arab peninsula which then dominated its northern population centres and set up slave raid expeditions to the predominately animist / Christian south.

In the 1800s Egypt had taken control of the region and then Britain by virtue of their control over Egypt.

When Egypt rebelled and demanded independence from Britain in the 1950s the (soon to be) president demanded the same for the Sudan region as he was Sudanese. It’s unclear if Sudan was remotely ready for this kind of independence the way Egypt was.

Discovery of oil and a predominantly conservative Islamic Arab northern population has caused Sudan to function like a gulf petro-state with about half of its economy being due to gold / oil extraction but very little of this helping the general population which remains in crushing poverty.

More extreme Islam since 1983 has seen academic independence suppressed (authors, poets imprisoned, islamic studies mandatory if studying anything etc).

Sudan’s list of civil wars (Darfur etc) are generally characterised as animist / christian resistance movements against an oppressive islamic government. (Or, to take an opposite view, are wars of conquest by a disenfranchised rural population because in Sudan’s petro economy, the controller of Khartoum is winner takes all)

Animist / Christian South Sudan finally managed independence in 2011. The peace apparently being bolstered by the economic coercion of gulf and Chinese corporations who seek a peaceful extraction of South Sudan’s oil…

TL;DR blame Britain, or conservative Islam, depending on how long it’s been since you were a student