Most recent activity
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The thing is that Reform's pitch to voters is 'immigration is too high'.
But I feel like I know these voters, and I don't think any of them really think legal immigration is too high anymore. They got their Brexit, they've been 'listened' to, and they've moved onto other things. They think that illegal immigrants are going to rape their kids, that vaccines cause autism, that 15 minute cities are a prison, that GB News is a legitimate source of information, and that Tommy Robinson/Nigel Farage are reasonable blokes, but they don't seem to give much of a shit about immigration anymore.
And Blair said it a few years ago - if you're going to enter a culture war, you need to make sure your culture war is a big topic, otherwise you'll lose. I'm not sure any of this remaining grouping of weird shit is likely to attract anyone beyond Reform's core vote. It's likely- imo - to lose them votes.
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Here's what's already on its way through parliament:
- Renters Rights Bill ends no fault evictions and grants right for two month notice periods for tenants
- Rail Nationalisation Bill will start to bring the railways back into public ownership - that just passed the Lords
- Football Regulation Bill creates the Football Regulator and forces clubs to consult with fans over ticket prices
- Pension funds rejig will mean more investment in infrastructure - boring but important
- Planning reforms means more new homes, renewables, power grid upgrades - this is enormous
- That budget, let's not forget, redressed the balance of tax burden from working people - where it's sat for the last fourteen years - to redress back to unearned wealth. Non Dom. Private Equity Carry. Farm exceptions. CGT increase. Enough? No. But a fuck of a lot more than we've got for the last decade and a half.
- Renters Rights Bill ends no fault evictions and grants right for two month notice periods for tenants
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I wouldn't have gone that far at that time but I thought it was clear from the piece that he didn't see the women or children in his life entirely as people.
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I loved Rebel Ridge. I think Jeremy Saulnier can portray the chaotic nature of violence like no-one else - it's interesting to see him do the same with very controlled violence. Don Johnson is great as the despicable cop too.
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This is the thing that blows my mind. My wife and I recognised this guy was a fucking monster from that 'day in the life' piece he did - a piece he wrote edited and chose to put out in the world.
The idea that those around him didn't notice from his everyday behaviour is absurd.
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Same this side - ours is 1930s and while I always wanted a Victorian terraced, houses were definitely built differently after that period. You can tell our house was designed with an indoor toilet in mind!
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Assisted dying bill passes. Only bit of legislation I've gotten emotional about this year
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People forget how rough Spitalfields was in the 90s. I remember being dropped off there at 3am just next to the Hawksmoor Church, with hours to kill before the tubes started running again. It was absolutely brutal - I'd had no sleep, and it was freezing. It felt like Kings Cross but without the exhilarating sense of danger. Eventually one of the sex workers took pity on us and pointed us to an all night cafe, where we hung out with a pensioner until the sun rose, but it was utterly bleak. We were only 25 years away from the Spitalfields of David Granick and you really felt it. A world away from now https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/976/cpsprodpb/26CC/production/_100123990_hmp_eastendincolour_7_low.jpg.webp
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As this seems to be a bit of an assisted dying thread now, great piece from Raphael Behr in the Guardian today. I'm very pro and he's ambivalent learning pro, but I can't disagree with anything he says here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/27/mps-assisted-dying-bill-vote-right-to-die
If you can convince upstairs to fix it without going through your insurer there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not guaranteed. You'd have to rely on your powers of persuasion, intimidation, or your upstairs neighbours ignorance of the law and willingness to pay AND to do it to a proper standard. If those things are a possibility it's worth a bash.
However I've been in this situation multiple times and the only thing I've found that works consistently is going via your insurer so they can contact your neighbour and take care of the problem. Either your neighbour has insurance in which case the companies will know what to do, or your neighbour doesn't in which case your insurance company can chase them through the courts for remedy. Either way the problem isn't yours anymore, and that's ultimately what you pay for with insurance.
Fwiw when I did this, I didn't have to pay an increased premium. Suspect this might happen to people with no claims discounts, who then make a claim, but I think that's about it.