Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

Bloomin' 'eck, the traffic delays around Queensferry are sometimes bad enough as it is
Actually I'd quite like a stamp in my passport, my current one doesn't have any. They could have one with the Ddraig Goch.

 

@Michael Hewett Spanish Armada sailors washed up on Welsh shores? I knew a woman from NZ whose ancestors were from Cornwall and very proud of their bit of Spanish ancestry from the same source. Girl or boy they all get his name as a middle name.

Maybe similar for the Orkney connection - fisherman or sailor blown off course or maybe just looking for somewhere a bit less windswept and with trees.

 

I agree. But my point is the person to blame is not the customer, that has saved up all year for a week abroad. Of course we can all make decisions to try to minimise our impact, and we really ought to. For some, that's easier than for others. Surely if there's something that needs to change, and there is, it is at policy level. Local governments need to regulate the industry. Personally I'd like to see it where a wealthy Brit can't buy a holiday let in a residential neighborhood abroad for example, just to rent it out as an Airbnb. If he does, and it happens, who is the bad guy? His customers that just wanted holidays digs for a week? The local government who allowed a residential property to exit the market for local, driving up house prices? The wealthy Brit that's just trying to maximise their retirement income?

I think for the vast majority of people, that's exactly what they are.

 

A bit like it used to be.

 

Ah that explains it - I also have Devon and Cornwall DNA - Maternal Grandfather's family were from Barnstaple.
('Michael Hewett' was one of those ancestors, it isn't my real name)

 

No arguments from me on this. The bad guys are those who, particularly since the 80s, have ensured that we have become a rentier economy. It used to be an asset could be valuable if you sold it. Then the idea took hold that you could get value out of it while still keeping it, and so those with assets could siphon wealth off. Everywhere you look, more and more of the available resources are owned by fewer and fewer people. That is down to lobbying of politicians to ensure favourable policies are in place. Starmer and Reeves went to Davos this January. A very bad sign, IMV.

 

But we can't stop the elite telling us what to do ... and then doing whatever they like themselves. They can bring in peat bans and heat pump quotas and congestion charges and anything else they dream up, but no one is going to be able to stop them using private jets or air-conditioning their mansions or filling their pools with scarce resources. Look at council tax - a 3 bed townhouse in the southeast and a 20 bed mansion are in the same band. Look at standing charges for gas and electricity, weighted to hurt the low user or small home proportionately more. Look at anything at all and the pattern is the same.

There's never any change because no political party can get voted in without the media on their side ... and the media is controlled by the elite agenda. Have you heard a single news report calling out war as an abuse by the powerful perpetrated against civilians and paid for by taxpayers? No, and you won't. The media thrives on war, because it is big money for the wealthy.

 

Couldn't agree more @Fat Controller.
I was at that demo - we got out just as the riot started, despite the police trying to keep everyone in the square!!

 

There are approximately 95 of us for every five of them, but they have power and money and the military and the police on their side. During lockdown, a few squatters entered an oligarch's empty mansion in London. Thirty armed police descended on them in short order. There you are!

 

Thank you @Obelix-Vendée, I have been very grateful for your air miles!

I'm afraid I do travel quite a lot between England and France. Many of you probably know that OH and I were both widowed and then we met in France which is where I live and so do my children and grandchildren. OH lives in England and so do his family. He and his wife retired to France but when she died after only 3 years he wanted to go back to England, she was the Francophile. He had found a place in Lincoln then cancelled it because he met me, then he was in Eastbourne with his daughter as her house was 2 flats but she wanted to turn the house into a house not flats when she had her family. He found a cottage in Norfolk. We spend time in Norfolk and in Dordogne. That means we either fly over with Ryanair or we drive to a ferry port. Can't help falling in love with someone who lives in another country! Means I have 2 gardens.

 

True. And we keep voting for it. Politicians spin it as attracting investment. Great. But who is getting the return on the investment?

We're having a bit of a thing with that in my neighborhood. The council has basically sold off several public amenities to private companies. If course they haven't worded the press release like that. They've negotiated attractive investment that will see the facilities renovated. Further down the article where most readers won't get to, of course, is the bombshell that the facilities, which used to be free to use (paid for by us council tax payers) will now incur a charge. But that's ok, because investment is good for everyone right?