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Constructive suggestion - instead of dumping them all in the most deprived areas and lighting a match, you could actually put them up in 5 star hotels. I suggest this would drive rapid housebuilding.

We have based on our economy on financial engineering and old peoples' house prices. The financial engineering skims a nice chunk off in the good times, but it's really rather more extractive than creative. And the house prices - It's lovely having a million pound house. But if you ever want to sell it, you need a buyer with a million pounds. Unfortunately there may not be enough people with a million pounds for all the million pound houses, I'm afraid.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being a landlord - though I do rather stand with Churchill on this. However - you need your tenants to have enough money to pay the rent. There's not enough money going to labour to pay all the rents, I'm afraid.

The whole thing has got distinctly top heavy and is wobbling rather unnervingly.
So - let us apply stabilisers and see if we can perhaps lower the centre of gravity. How about a house-building programme, we throw one of those out every year or two and everyone forgets about them before we inevitably fail to build any. Sorry, I get so cynical. How about a house-building programme mandated by law, with some nice specific goals. Trumpy the elephant says he's going to build 10 new megalopolises, in shining gold. Perhaps we could start with one, and see how it goes.

Thing is sparky, they always find the worst example and shout about it a lot until you believe them. Like - there are about 300,000 trans people in the uk, and about 30 of them are in prison. Which ones get all the press?

There will certainly be some criminals in pretty much any group.
But they don't represent that group. Just as, for example, most Tories don't evade their taxes.

Some of them are not refugees. We have a process for that, it's flawed, but it exists. In general the MOST vulnerable don't get anywhere near Britain. You need money to get here. You actually get quite a lot of highly qualified and productive people in the mix, but of course they're not allowed to work and must live on £5 per day.

It ain't how they say, my friend.

On comparisons with Nazis - this has been variously criticised as lazy, unhelpful etc etc. I am open to that criticism. It does get used too much and it is rarely accurate. I hold my hands up to this personally and apologise for any offence - particularly to those with personal experience and obviously Jewish people.

However, I will gently point out that there were also other minorities killed in the Holocaust, and we do not honour their memory by thinking of this as purely an anti-Semitism problem. Actually one of the first groups they went for was trans people. Then there's Roma people, disabled people, brown people, ****sexual people, intellectuals, artists, rational people, critics - yadda yadda yadda. The whole of humanity owns this.

Those familiar with the vagaries of internet culture will know 'Godwin's Law':
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
However, it is important to note that Mr Godwin added a corollary in 2017:
"By all means, compare these ****heads to the Nazis."

It did not start with gas chambers. It started with the dehumanisation and scapegoating of minorities.

My advice to the Tories is to focus a bit more on your good works - childcare, now there's a nice rational, humane, productive policy.
And a bit less on whipping up hatred and appealing to base prejudices.
Nobody believes your Mr Nasty persona, Rishi. Stick with Mr Nice.

In fairness to our puppet government, it's not all on them. Client 'journalists' in our oligarch media have been stirring it up for decades. It distracts us from their crimes. However, it is fundamentally destabilising and unsustainable.

It was disappointing to read Ms Petronella Wyatt claim that 'The Nazis were not fascists'. It does rather force one to question what is being taught in these schools. And to confront the fact that many of our most celebrated personages are, let's face it, not too bright.

We're not having another year of lowest common denominator culture wars. Enough damage already. If you get your heads down, you can be remembered for starting to fix the damage. Otherwise - I shudder.

I suggest that we have come to a fork in the road.

charles moore suggests 'we should stop letting young people dictate what we read...'
charles moore has literally spent his life dictating what others read. much of it unconscionably awful.
hypocrisy, thy name is charles moore.

it is the most pernicious attitude and so prevalent among today's old people.
a short, sharp shock will sort them out.

this is a joke. just a joke. you can take a joke, can't you?

if i say something offensive to you, that's abuse. i am mindless, rude, disrespectful, a thug.
if you say something offensive to me, that's free speech, and if i complain, i'm an over-sensitive, needy snowflake who should show more respect.

your taking of offence is of course justified, but mine is definitely not.
thus allowing you to maintain a worldview in which anyone questioning your ignorance is simply wrong.
you have always called me boy; i have always called you sir; any disturbance to this natural order must be stamped out!

this is the literal opposite of progress and it threatens to return us to the dark ages.

It's also very difficult to covince sailors to watch people drown, whatever the level of discipline etc.

What do you reckon we should do about it, Sparky?
Cos they sent the navy in, and the traffickers said 'here you go folks, the navy will pick you up, they're British'.
Time to start shooting, do you reckon? Problem is we'd then stop being British and turn into Nazis and that would be bad.
But you're right, we're not looking after our own very well these days.

I think if we had a whip round we could probably find another loaf or two. Maybe some fish :)

@Mani @Lockie it is very frustrating. I think they're doing their best. Whether their best will be enough remains to be seen, but this is not entirely on the company.

Well I agree with you about rape - the stats are a joke, most don't report and the conviction rate is under 1%
But isn't complaining about sex crimes a bit 'woke'?

Here's what I think 'woke' means: 'Willing to question power'.
Sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, sometimes misunderstanding, sometimes understanding better.
You'd think the arch libertarians would want to respect that freedom, since they do a lot of it themselves. But even the richest man in the world thinks he's fighting the establishment elite. Hmmm.

Re immigration - we have a massive workforce shortage, because a lot of immigrants left and a lot of our older folks are very ill. Or decided they were quite rich enough, thanks and just quit.

The money comes from where the money is. Not from the folks who haven't got any :)
There is no shortage of money. In fact there is too much money at the moment. It's just in the wrong place.

I disagree strongly but at least we're having a civilised conversation I suppose :)

Yes, there are more nurses and more doctors. Demand for NHS services has risen massively, and continues to rise massively. We have an ageing population in poor health.

Can I ask what the word 'woke' means to you? Cos it seems it has become a bit of a catch-all.

Rishi says we will do whatever it takes to keep the country safe. We didn't keep Brianna safe, did we?

Do better

"One way or another there needs to be government intervention. Protecting the poorest, that probably may then mean that governments need to tax people in this room to pay for it.
I think we just have to accept as a society – it can be done smartly and not so smartly. There is a discussion to be had about it but I think it’s inevitable."

Not my words, but the words of the previous Chief Executive of Shell. Notably he could only say it on stepping down, because it would have caused a shareholder revolt.

I'm really angry too Axe, though not at our wee company here.
I've calmed down a bit today but it never goes away.

Oil and gas prices have returned to pre-war levels.
The French, Germans etc are paying ~£500 energy bills.
We are still paying £2000 energy bills.

Perhaps there is an opportunity to bring energy pricing down, in line with civilised countries who don't take their orders from remote oligarchs?

I do not believe the national interest is best served by Shell shareholders making another £40 billion while the country goes bust and the people are left to freeze and starve.

Perhaps this is confused and naieve and I fail to understand the deeper structural issues blah blah blah. Strangely enough, the folks making these arguments are always very well-heeled and utterly oblivious.

How kind, thanks.
There is actually some meaning behind some of it, all relative though, eh.
I think if folks knew what I was on about I'd have been shot by now, so it's probably better this way.
I think I get away with it because I'm plausibly (and actually) mental. And also because I am sometimes right.
GLA

Do you know what they do?

They put them on trains to the 'motherland'.
Hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
They rape them and torture them and kill them.
Thousands, every day.

And that's why we do what we do

Put your hand up if you think we'll spunk a trillion on ballistics and fail to understand the most basic and obvious biological threats. Christ, as a fish, on a bike. You know how folks have a general sense that the good guys are on their side and things will turn out alright? Yeah that's *******s.

The only reason we retain molecular integrity is that there are some decent/smart russians fighting back.
And I would take one of them over a thousand cummings ****s.

PS - Elon has ****ed himself into a frenzy over political representation.
I posit this - Texas must conduct a referendum on staying in the union. Texas must accept the forced expatriation of thousands of citizens who don't want that. Texas must accept the forced migration of thousands of citizens directly opposed to Texan rule. Then Texas can talk turkey.

'****s'.

Day 14,459

Stupid old people still old; stupid

Note welling up of rebellious anxiety - security risk surprisingly low - knighthood to laurence fox for playing pied piper, though scarcely believable.

Should we divert the natural antipathy of the far-right to big pharma toward the rather silly chaps who failed at every juncture and yet bask in the adulation of JPM's B team?

No. We should not.

What kind of world do we want to live in, folks?
Cos I'm pretty sure the world that says Dubai has wonderful wines is on the way out.

And not to be a total ****, but I've definitely taken down more boards than you have. So if that's what you want, present your alternative.

Merry Christmas!
Lovely bit of engineering, that.
Can we please get on with approving the lovely molecule wot cures the disease for the old folks?#
Or is the plan just to wait out the old folks?
Frankly either is fine, they did for us all years ago.
Can we just get on with it, I am totally hyped for mad max world.

I give up. Merry Christmas everyone.

Though obviously I do respect and welcome his scientific expertise as a potato farmer.

Was Andrew Bridgen antivax before he got caught lying, cheating and stealing?
I suspect he might possibly want a distraction from his potato fraud woes.

I think it used to be that if you got caught lying under oath that would be a sacking, but standards have slipped a bit of late.