wanwizard.bsky.social
IT Entrepreneur. DC architect. PHP developer. Fuel PHP Framework project lead. Open Source lover. Asperger brain.
Old Dutch. New Scot. Always European.
Also on @[email protected].
436 posts
37 followers
60 following
Discussion Master
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I always have to think about the movie "Idiocracy", where the world is run by big corporations and people are out-right stupid, and try to grow crops by giving them energy drinks...
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I see another VIP Lane in the making...
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I have mixed feelings about this one.
On the one hand, I think it should be scrapped as it has a religeous / conservative / old-fashioned bias towards married people and couples, on the other hand there should be no difference based on the way couples run their lives.
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I wouldn't trust them with my stool sample!
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In 2023, £14.3bn was handed over to private individuals in the form of housing benefits. With a return to social housing run by local councils, that money would remain available for government spending, instead of providing profits for the private sector.
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I aspire to become a millionaire, have done for many years. Not much chance of that either 😉.
The problem remains the many ways houses are removed from the open market, the massive amount of government funds funneled to private landlords, and the large amount of vacant second (or more) properties.
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And there are plenty of things the government can do. Stop right to buy. Stop the LISA. Stop incentives and cheap mortgages for private landlords. Tax second home ownership. Limit short-term rental like airBnB to for example 90 days a year. All these things reduce the stock and push op the price.
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Aspiration is between the ears. We've all grown up with the fact we MUST buy and own a house. But it is seen as an easy investment with good return. Problem is that that is one of the factors that is pushing up the prices.
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That is the bronze statue of little Mozart in Brno, Czech Republic.
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True. I'm saying building more alone will not fix the problem.
Especially not at these prices, I live in quite a deprived part of Scotland, I see new houses going up here for 350-400k +, and these are not very big. Who can afford those? If I could, I wouldn't live here...
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It's a neo-liberal thing. People see homeownership as THE mechanism to lower housing costs and building wealth, but that is only because renting somewhere is even more unaffordable.
Other countries also have housing associations that built to rent, instead of relying on private landlords.
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Exactly. Building more won't fix the problem, especially not if no social housing is built, undoing Thatchers right-to-buy disaster.
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Wannneer ik tijd heb, zal ik medelijden met je krijgen... 😂
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One persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter.
It all depends on which side of the fence you're on.
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I have never understood the UK's resistance to ID cards. The government knows who you are anyway, and not having it only leads to additional costs (like the police taking time to find out who you are) or to all kinds of fraud.
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What would a digital ID prove what a physical ID (like a passport or ID card) doesn't?
Talk to EU citizens with a digital UKVI account, and see what they think about the UK and its ability to handle digital ID's (spoiler: that are useless at it).
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It that happens, after the evidence of a few years of Trump administration in the US, the people deserve to be ruled by facist grifters.
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When I see things like this, I always think about that old TV ad, where some guys in lab coats tell us "We from Toilet Duck advise you to use Toilet Duck".
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Commissioned by Dr (in History) Lawrence Newport, contributor to the Telegraph and Spectator. Says it all really...
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Given the fact it's less than 0.5% of the votes, I'd be careful jumping to conclusions.
Also, as I posted earlier, the fact that someone can afford it NOW, doesn't mean the money is surplus, it might be being saved for a future event (in my case, my savings are my pension).
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Hitler needed 100 days after his election to cancel democracy, Trump is speeding towards it, and everyone is keeping stumm about it. History is repeating itself.
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Appearently so do a lot of his followers, otherwise he wouldn't have been elected in the first place.
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Is he? I think you're giving him an awful lot of credit, given the fact he has the intellect of an 11-year old. I think the question is, who is pulling the strings here?
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Semantics. For me, personal allowance is still taxed. It is just that the first tax band is 0%, and the UK has given that band a name.
Imho, everything you need to fill in on your self assesment is taxed (some at 0%), everything you don't is free of tax.
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Careful interpreting this. The fact someone has savings over that amount and thus can answer 1 or 2 doesn't mean these savings are surplus and can easily be missed.
Being on forced early retirement due to poor health, I rely on savings to get me to state pension age. £1,000 is 20 weeks of food shop
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This has nothing to do with support for a person and/or the opinions of this person.
This is about a state, who has kidnapped a member of the european parliament, from a ship, in international waters.
Who the person is, and what state done it, is not relevant.
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That may be the case, but that is not an excuse for Israels actions, nor for condoning the action.
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Easily fixed: tax the rich more.
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The problem is inequality (which could be people's own fault btw, you know a UK state pension is tiny), which is an individual issue, which in turn can not be addressed by a blanket rule.
This is a deeply rooted problem, I got a compulsary workplace pension when I started working, over 40 year ago.
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I am on a pension much below that threshold, but am not going to claim, as I don't need it.
This is the general problem with arbitrary thresholds, a part goes to people who don't need it. Which was the reason for the cut in the first place.
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That is the case with facists and populists anywhere. Trump, Farage, Weidel, etc, none of them is not even in the slightest interested in the country or the people. For them, it is a means to an end, the end here being power and wealth.
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I saw their candidate on TV promising to bring "the high street back". As usual, without any explaining how, just a populist sound bite.
Also, "the highstreet" is gone because none of them shopped there anymore, they are to blame for its demise.
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That is totally and utterly depressing...
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Doesn't it do that automatically when a known wifi network is not in range?
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The problem is this does nothing to deal with the cause (abject poverty), it just sticks a plaster over one of its effects.
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Also, GPS and navigation systems are useless if you don't want the shortest / quickest route from A to B, but prefer a scenic route. Or you are rambling. I've assembled quite a stack of OS maps over the years. "old fashioned" maps for the win!
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Na de Ierse opstand zijn tijdens de politieke onderhandelingen de Noord-ierse ieren onder de bus gegooid, en aan de "engelse" kans van de grens terecht gekomen, op in hun ogen Ierse grond. En voor de Unionisten (de Engeland supporters) zijn ze nog steeds tweederangs volk.
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De protestanten zijn afstamelingen van de Engelsen die de woningen en bedrijven van de verdreven Ieren hebben overgenomen.
Het is een koloniaal conflict, tussen onderdrukkers en onderdrukten.
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Dat geeft precies het probleem aan. Het wordt continue beschreven als een "katholiek" vs "protestants" verhaal, maar dat is het niet.
Katholieken zijn de van oorspong Ierse bevolking, verdreven, vernederd en vermoord door de Engelsen.
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For me, that falls in the category "tax more".
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So as usual they produce a sound-bite with a lie, and hope people accept it art face-value, and don't look any further. And they have achieved their goal of wide media coverage of the "alleged" statement, and that will enforce the lie in people's minds.
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There were plenty of speeches. Politiians speech all the time.
The problem here is Farage doesn't provide any proof as to what exactly he is referring to, making his statement difficult to verify.
Local Reform has confimed the statement was made up by them: news.stv.tv/politics/sar...
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No, because the speech does not exist.
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You can't be a member of a Ltd Company?
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Facists fear the educated.
Uneducated people are easily manipulated. The educational level of the average American is that of an 11-year old. And that includes Trump himself.
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To add to this:
the fact that the vast majority who arrive this way are granted asylum shows that providing legal routes would address the problem.
For comparison: every day about 2500 migrants arrive on visa's thanks to the post-Brexit system, much, much more than before Brexit.
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I don't understand this. Not every manufacured car is produced to order, and if you go to some ports, there are gigantic parking lots with imported cars waiting. Most cars spend their entire life being outside. And it is even cheaper to insure if I park it in front of my garage, instead of in it.
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Just a normal day of Scottish weather. Basking in the sun here (a bit north of you), albeit a bit blowy.
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The bottle is slightly coloured, so that might contribute to the darker colour.
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The box says "Double matured on Pedro Ximénez Cask Wood".