DaveR

I read the Guardian article. Whilst it is unbdoubtedly true that cash buys you better lawyers and better lawyers buy you a more thorough defence, the article also ackowledged that the case against Brooks was weak (she got off) and the case aginst Coulson was strong (he went down). I didn't find that too surprising. "We will never know for sure if a legal team with high connections within a government and the establishment had any influence in determining a not guilty verdict - but one would think, given the nature of the case, it was always going to lead to questions of corruption using a legal team like that" I don't understand this at all? What are the connections between the legal team within government? What questions of corruption?

"There is no such thing as "tax avoidance within the law". Thats a non sequitur. " This is just wrong. Tax avoidance within the law is actually defined in the uk because there are specific disclosure rules that apply.

"Doesn't make it right though." Obviously. And as it turns out some of it was actually criminal, but still hardly crime of the century. Re Millie Dowler, it was the hacking equivalent of doorstepping the family of a murder victim, which still goes on of course. The point being that it is not the illegality that matters, but the lack of respect/decency. And that's where the hypocrisy comes in - many consumers don't really care about decency or respect in journalism where the victims are unsymapthetic and they want to read the stories.

I can't get excited about the whole phone-hacking palaver anyway. Most people (the cops included) didn't think phone hacking was a crime at all, and there are lots of other perfectly legal ways of getting hold of people's private information and splashing it all over the front pages. Even the payoffs for coppers etc. in return for stories are hardly big news - it's been around for ever, and whilst it's definitely not legal I wouldn't class it alongside proper corruption in terms of seriousness. The Brooks trial was great entertainment (including for the lawyers involved, with the added satisfaction for them of being paid handsomely) but it was never actually important.

"I have approached council officers if conditions restricting car ownership for new car free properties can be placed and enforced. It would take little to check if any car are registered with DVLA for an address. But this would be new and officers have not been minded to add this." Is it that officers don't want to do it or is it because it's not legally possible? I suspect the latter.

Some ex player (I think it might have been Ballack) was recently quoted as saying "Italian, Dutch, German teams know how they want to play, but England don't". I don't think he was referring to particular teams, or teams under particular coaches, but speaking more generally, and I think he has a point. I recently read that Robben, RVP and Sneijder played together in Dutch youth teams from their early teens, and although they then played at loads of different clubs in lots of different countries they don't have a problem playing 'Dutch style' for the national team. The Spanish were successful when they basically adopted the Barcelona style, regardless of the personnel, and I also recently read that Belgium credit a fair amount of their recent success to the fact that some years ago the national coach basically insisted that all Belgian club academy teams should play 433. Joachim Low tweaked the traditional German style but he had a basic style that all the players understood to start from. England don't have their own set way of playing that all the players understand, partly because the traditional England approach was more about attitude than tactical nous (or at best it was standard, boring 442), and partly because Premiership clubs mostly have foreign managers and foreign players who are constantly changing, so no consistency. If we want to do better we need a coach who is prepared to define a tactical approach and pick the players to fit the system. The best players will be able to adapt.

I'm not a land law specialist but I do know that restrictive covenants have to be capable of 'running with the land' i.e. have some connection with the use of the land. A prohibition on the occupier owning a car would be too remote (though a prohibition on using the land to park a car would be fine).

You are right that conspiracy requires more than one, but not all conspirators have to be defendants. As I understand it, the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice was limited to the defendants, and as a matter of fact there either was a plot or there wasn't, so logically all in or all out. The conspiracies to hack phones & pay off various public servants included others not in the dock, so possible for one defendant to be convicted. "Perhaps we really have got to the position in our society now, whereby "There's no justice in this country, only the law"." Not sure how apt that is for this case; it was all about the facts, and the defendants came up with a good enough story.

Pure speculation, but I can imagine a jury feeling sympathetic to the PA/security guard/husband, and where the charge is conspiracy it's difficult to convict one and acquit the rest. This is one of the few cases where there was a lot of reporting of the detail of the evidence and I thought the case against all of them was strong, but they came up with a positive story as to why they weren't guilty and (for whatever reason) the jury accepted it. Acquittals won't have much/any impact on the civil cases which are against News International and are mostly being settled as far as I can see.

Yeah, switched location services off and on again. Immediately afterwards it comes with a location halfway between new and old offices (initially funny but not exactly helpful) but then panics and reverts to former location. Tbh, it's been interesting as it's revealed how quietly I've been using lots of location apps, and I now resent having to go out in the streets and look for things

I moved offices this week. My phone still thinks I'm in my old office - maps, location based apps etc. It's the same whether I'm on office wifi or 3G (I'm not surprised about the wifi because I guess the IP address is still the same). I though by the end of the week it would have sorted itself out by picking up GPS/cell site info, but no. If I go outside and walk down the street, it's fine. Obviously not a major drama, but kind of annoying. Have reset all settings but not full restore - seemed a bit excessive. Any ideas, anyone?

Interesting article from the FT: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c7df3466-f6fa-11e3-9e9d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz355n1B3Bo The thing that really jumped out at me was Italy's pass completion percentage - the highest ever recorded - and what that said about England's lack of a ball winner in central midfield, but also (not in the article) that Italy played very, very well, and England's performance should be seen in that context. All irrelevant now - we just have to beat Uruguay. My prediction - Suarez to be sent off for knifing Gerrard off the ball. PS - Paul Mariner interesting fact - he played Lancashire youth cricket with Bill Beaumont, later Grand Slam winning England rugby captain.

Lots of interesting stuff in the IPPR doc, and when you add in what Frank Field and IDS have been saying there's no shortage of serious thinking about the future of the welfare state and the wider approach to related public services. Unfortunately the context is that public spending has to fall, and most of the bold policy steps of the type anticipated by IPPR, for example, cost a lot of money, at least in the short term. I think the Ed Milliband announcement is opportunism/desperation - he had to find something serious to say publicly to take people's minds of bacon sandwich and the Sun stories (in the tabloids) and the "Milliband disaster as leader" stories in the serious press. It's not a new idea and I don't think Ed or Labour consider it important other than in immediate PR terms. Even if you take it on the merits, macro economically its an immaterial tweak.

Blair is now roundly loathed by all the metro liberal types who fell for him in the first place, and all the proper left wingers for getting them into power and then refusing to do a hard left turn. I think right wingers only say he has a point to wind up lefties. Whether he's talking shite or not is almost beside the point - as far as I can see, nobody is listening. Going back to the football, it's been shocking to find that often Rio Ferdinand is talking the most sense. Both BBC and ITV pundits have been bland/boring/obvious/cretinous, with occasional outbreaks of cringeworthy Smashie and Nicey style blokery. Shite is too polite a word for it.

"Liam Nolan, the head teacher who successfully turned around Perry Beaches school in Birmingham, thinks Mr Gove is a hero rather than a villain. ?I?m a Labour-voting member of the NUT but I think it?s an absolute disgrace that he is being criticised for a success story. In the past, schools have been too willing to blame culture or poverty for lack of success. We don?t take any excuses. I want the children I serve to have the same chances as children who go to Eton or Harrow. Michael Gove has exactly the same mission.? From yesterday's Sunday Times

So maybe SJ can explain the morally sound circumstances in which someone can end up owning two houses and renting one out? Like if your gran (who was lovely to everyone) dies and you inherit her house, and then you decide to keep it and rent it out, though of course you charge less than market rent, and make sure you rent it out to lovely people, and if god forbid you make any money via capital appreciation you only keep a bit and donate the rest to poor Guardian readers (if you can find any). Is that how it goes?

To be clear, when I said that SJ should read some history re feudalism I wasn't (only) being snarky. As noted above, feudalism was rooted in the concept that personal obligation attached to possession of land. At the bottom of the pyramid were serfs who were almost like fixtures; they were attached to the land and the service they owed to the landlord was part of the asset. The irony arising from SJ's comment is that the freedom to rent property was essentially the end of feudalism. Once there was a market for rights in land, landowners became as much prey to market forces as any one else.

"feudalism = people who have land, control those who don't" = someone needs to get a sense of proportion. And read some history. And economics 101 wouldn't go amiss. Edited to add: I find your world-weary, 'I just can't help you any more' tone hilarious. Away from your delusions of omnipotence there has actually been some sensible debate on this thread.

So there you are; simple. Don't buy "someone else's house". If I own two pairs of shoes, have I bought 'somebody else's shoes'? Oh no, I forgot, houses are different because......no, I still can't get it. Is it because there aren't enough? Surely not, because then it would just be a supply issue, and nothing to do with morality. Obviously, if you want to rent a house you'll have to find someone immoral to rent you one. Or maybe an investment savvy dog, or something. Ps does anybody know what feudalism has to do with this?

"perhaps they could have been more transparent about the probable costs of a day out." It is required by law. Miss May should be well aware of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regs which prohibit commercial practices i.e. sales pitches that omit 'material information', which is defined as "the information which the average consumer needs, according to the context, to take an informed transactional decision". If you haven't been paintballing before you probably don't know how many balls will be required, and therefore the likely total costs, but the company does, and there is a respectable argument that this is material information. I'd also be interested to know which precise words are said to be libellous.

Otta, I agree, but you don't have to be greedy to buy a house and rent it out, so the act itself is morally neutral.

I think the food/rent analogy is good enough for the limited purpose i.e. to expose the inability of anyone to articulate convincingly why an individual who owns residential property and rents it out for profit is acting in a way that is morally questionable. It always comes back to 'housing is an essential need' - well, so is food. It's a good way of showing that the reason people are angry about the housing market but not the market for food is because one market works much better than the other, not because there are lost of nasty people who own BTL properties. It's obviously a less good analysis to diagnose the problems in the housing market and look for solutions, tho' at the level of basic economics the principles are the same. When prices rise it incentivises suppliers to increase production and prices stop rising because of competition - that happens in food markets pretty well, where farmers can switch crops or start production on marginal land or wholesalers can start sourcing from new markets. It's a bit more difficult for housing, but it's a good argument in favour of cutting down the scale of the green belt, or making planning rules less restrictive. My real point though is that if people want to argue for rent controls or price caps or limits on foreign buyers or legal changes to security of tenure, whether I agree or disagree there is a valid argument going on. If people say buy-to-let is immoral I can only say I think that's a very stupid thing to say.

Loz, you're banging your head against a brick wall here. I've been asking for someone to articulate the moral/ethical case against BTL forever and it always comes down to 'its greedy to own more than one house'. Essentially, SJ and his ilk think that anyone (private individual or business) who makes a profit from residential letting is exploiting people's need for a roof over their heads. Like all those shopkeepers who make a profit from selling food - bast@rds! And what about clothes shops!!

You're missing the point, c. You go to a meeting in hackney then announced breathlessly to the world (or at least this forum) that there is a terrible problem we should all be worried about, and should all be badgering our local authority about, but guess what? You know nothing about science, and it just so happens that this 'problem' fits neatly with your pre-existing ill-informed prejudices. You appear to think that 'giving a shit' and making a noise is an inherently laudable thing. I disagree. Edited to add: you obviously know enough about science to dismiss research re concentration in urine as irrelevant. So, professor, what medium of transmission of glyphosate into human cells poses the greatest risk to health?

"DaveR - agreed, let's just ignore all this nonsense - Monsanto have our best interests at heart and probably wouldn't opt for profit over the welfare of people and the environment right? Best just to ignore it and hope that the The Chemicals Regulation Directorate will protect people against this stuff. They've completely failed in the past but there's a first time for everything! Are enjoying football and beers and giving a shit mutually exclusive?!" Science amateur + big company conspiracy theorist + recent expert on regulators = "giving a shit" Edited to add: I took a short time off dreaming about football and beers to test my theory that scientific ignorance + access to google is a dangerous combination. Look at this: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-press-release-from-fote-and-gm-freeze-about-glyphosate-in-urine/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair