Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

The only answer I can see is to build housing association houses, lots of them and get the house building companies to build them.
Its what happened around here after WW2 only they were council owned.

 

Sadly, 'normal working people' not being able to afford to live in or around London is nothing new. Way back in the early 80's I was on a course in London and one of the other people lived in Richmond, Surrey with his parents. He hoped to buy his own home but had absolutely zero chance where he grew up. He claimed the nearest he could afford the house prices was Swindon. Then he would have the cost of commuting by train every day and wouldn't be able to afford the combined mortgage and travel cost. He felt trapped having to live at home.

 

Could they not get longer? Great article from the BBC!

 

Money!

 

I read yesterday that the train drivers go on strike every weekend for the next 3 months despite having the increase of 14% because managers got a £2k bonus?
Also Heathrow Border control goes on strike in the first week of September.
Both have their impact on family who will be arriving for a holiday stay in the UK during that time.

Looks like Labour is learning a hard lesson about why Margaret Thatcher stopped all this Union stuff. Once you give them a hand, they want the arm and body, too.

 

I'm finding this all quite reminiscent of Brexit in a way. For yrs and yrs the media stoked dissent about membership of the EU with misreporting and selective attention. People naturally became dissatisfied with the status quo and vote Leave prevailed. Then the media leapt on the people it had spent so long persuading, vilifying them as racist and stupid and all sorts.

Here we have the same again. For yrs the media has stoked fears about immigration, with endless reports and visuals of small boats arriving. Anger suddenly explodes in the form of rioting and the media leaps in gleefully about arrests and imprisonments. No attempt is being made to examine how we reached this point because the media knows damn well it lit the touch paper and then stood back.

These sentences are going to really backfire in the future, IMV. Far Right politicians will be the ultimate winners for alienation of whole sections of society. Of course, I am not suggesting rioting should be allowed, but the underlying message will be to be more subtle with your hate, to work underground, to go solo not in a pack. It will further divide society.

For most rioters, a community order, paying for damage, attendance on tolerance courses, etc, would be appropriate. But this needs to be combined with providing effective ways for people to express their dissatisfaction and, crucially, gov addressing these.

We will all lose because the gov and media have so blatantly demonstrated they are not only not on the side of ordinary people but are actively against them. That is no way to lessen anger.

 

Why rent a house but only live in it for a few days a week!! at £1800 a month

Why, if you have a close one on a blind bend and put your car into hedge you still drive around same corner at speed, the same thing that put you into hedge in the first place your only going to end up in there again!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

What has happened to good old Germalene?
It in a different colour, paler ink, is runnier, doesn't smell as strong and can only be bought in fiddly little plastic tubes instead of a nice robust tin. It doesn't seem as effective as it used to be and is not easy to find It was wonderful for putting on embedded thorns, dirty wounds etc., and would "draw" whatever within a day or two.
Progress I suppose.

 

When you look at the ages of some of these rioters/looters/criminals [let's not pretend they're anything else] is it any wonder that some kids grow up with the same attitude and behaviour?

I live a few hundred yards from a small NT garden. At the start of the summer holidays, a group of teenagers decided it would be fun to go in on several occasions [5 ] and trash the place.
They've been caught on CCTV and police were involved. I wonder what their punishment will be?

'Disheartening': National Trust for Scotland site vandalised 'for weeks'