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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.

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.

Here's what's already on its way through parliament:

1. Renters Rights Bill ends no fault evictions and grants right for two month notice periods for tenants
   
2. Rail Nationalisation Bill will start to bring the railways back into public ownership - that just passed the Lords
   
3. Football Regulation Bill creates the Football Regulator and forces clubs to consult with fans over ticket prices
   
4. Pension funds rejig will mean more investment in infrastructure - boring but important
   
5. Planning reforms means more new homes, renewables, power grid upgrades - this is enormous
   
6. 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.
   

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.

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.

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.

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!

Assisted dying bill passes. Only bit of legislation I've gotten emotional about this year

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/nov/29/assisted-dying-vote-louise-haigh-keir-starmer-latest-politics-updates-news-live

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

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

The research isn't published yet but the story does confirm it is specific to the UK:

"According to its research, to be presented to MPs on Tuesday, one in four people receiving palliative care in England have “unmet pain needs”. The OHE said it used “the most conservative of estimates [suggesting] the true number is likely to be much larger”.

It calculated that, even with the “highest possible standards of hospice-level palliative care”, more than 7,300 people across the UK died with unrelieved pain in the last three months of their lives in 2023. In 2019, the comparable figure was nearly 6,400 people a year – a 15% increase over four years.

It also said that fewer than 5% of terminally ill people in England who needed hospice care in 2023 received it."

It's saying that even within the highest standards of palliative care, people aren't getting the care they need.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/25/about-20-terminally-ill-people-in-uk-die-in-unrelieved-pain-each-day-research-finds

Terminally ill adults expected to die within six months will be entitled seek help to end their life, but only where two doctors verify they are eligible, and a high court judge has confirmed they're of sound mind, not being coerced, etc. No doctors will be forced to take part if they don't want to.

The proposed safeguards are more stringent than any others that I've seen for equivalent countries.

A majority of people in the UK have been in favour of assisted dying since the 1980s. There have been seven attempts to get assisted dying legislation passed since 2010 alone. I don't think the 'rushed' argument holds up.

Lovely stuff, thank you - that’s our Saturday night viewing sorted.

It's slightly different with a free vote but in general, yes. I vote for an MP based on the legislative agenda proposed by the party they're a member of. Their religion should not come into it.

I think Tim Fallon should be the model here. He was part of a school of faith which believed that gay sex was a sin; personally I think that's a contemptible belief. However he consistently voted in favour of gay rights because he recognised that what put him in power was his constituents, and they expected him to have their back, and enact the policy platform he was elected on. I think that's the right approach.

With a free vote, it's slightly different as MPs represent their constituents by using their own judgement, which will necessarily include their religious background. But I think it's uncontentious to think that judgements arrived at through evidence and experience are more likely to reflect reality than those arrived at through religious doctrine.

My real beef with this debate is the dishonesty. We have religious MPs who object to the bill due to their faith failing to be honest about that, and instead dressing up their concerns as purely technical or practical. If an MP cannot separate their faith from their judgement on this issue - and I understand why they couldn't - they should at the very least be honest about that. I don't think a single religious MP has been honest about that so far (in fact some have been quite aggressive about it when people suggest their religion may play a part in their objection) but by an enormous co-incidence they've all been against the bill on 'technical' grounds. What a shocker.

Feels like we're talking at cross purposes a little.

We watched Starve Acres last week - a great 70s spooky folk horror with elements of terrifying public safety film to it. Doesn't quite stick the landing but if you're a sucker for atmosphere, as I am, it's a doozy.

Also watched From Out Of The Past with Robert Mitchum. I'm a sucker for a noir and this shot right up into my top three, along with Double Indemnity and The Big Heat. That rarest of things, a perfect film.

Watched Dune II also. I really liked the first one, and this is just as beautiful and atmospheric, but the pacing felt oddly rushed. No spoilers, but it felt like the training montage could've been a whole film to itself, and everything that happens afterward being moved to a third film, or even a third and fourth film. Lord knows the rest of Dune sucks so we may as well make a whole bunch of great films based on the first book!

There are good reasons to vote against assisted dying but I don't think there's any good reason why the religious or ideological beliefs of person X should determine the legislative freedoms available to person Y, who does not share them.

To put a crude example, if you're anti-abortion because of your religion, I respect that, and you should be free to choose not to have an abortion - no-one should force you to have one. But that is a two way street. Your religious beliefs should not prevent others, who do not share your religion, from having an abortion, should they choose to do so.

This is a basic principle of a secular society.

I think it's no coincidence that many of those against assisted dying are deeply ideological / religious / paternalistic. But none of them have yet come up with a good reason why I should be prevented from ending my life at a time and place of my choosing, because of their beliefs.

Also worth bearing in mind that Canada has not in fact rolled back on its MAiD policy and that Jacobin link doesn't suggest anywhere that it has. Canada simply decided not to expand it further (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68120380).

Bass into a Rat pedal (or similar distortion with a low pass filter) and the highs rolled off, distortion up so it catches the peaks. If you've got an amp, great, use it, but a decent amp sim is fine too - the free UAD SVT is great. Chuck it into a slow squashy LA2A type compressor for consistency, then out to a pultec style EQ with the bass boosted (and if it's sounding boomy, the alternative bass attenuated on the other EQ). You might also need to boost the mids to get the clunk good and prominent. For that sound I'd agree with others, new strings are a big part of it.

In the market for a Tudor Ranger. Am I right to assume this is likely fake/scam? https://www.depop.com/products/michelle_agnew-in-perfect-condition-hardly-worn/

monel strings

I just got mine fitted on my acoustic and I double the thanks for the recommendation - they're much closer to what I want an acoustic guitar to sound like from restringing. I can't stand that shimmery phosphorous three dimensionality that comes with the shinier strings. They're great.

That was the thing I was surprised by. Starmer is undoubtedly terrible at PMQs but Kemi makes him look quick on his feet and statesmanlike - never thought it possible.