Dogkennelhillbilly

I'm not convinced by your cost assertions tbh but I'm surprised that Labour is proposing more devolution - as it's never been particularly popular with English voters...

Do many people really associate Labour with the unions any more?

Buddy - the problem is still not that people won't see the illegally parked cars. Stop rage typing for a second and read what someone else has already explained to you: I don't think there is any point in us wasting more of each other's time. 🎩

The problem is not that people won't see the illegally parked cars. 🙄

It appears that Baroness Hussey of North Bradley isn't her real name. But in any case you'd have thought the Royal Household would be pretty cool about changing family names to better reflect your identity...

The photo gets taken and sent to the Council with a note that says "hello, council, someone keeps leaving this car parked illegally on double yellows. It's blocking sight lines at a busy junction." The council sends an enforcement officer along, tickets the car, the silly owner doesn't park there again, and there is no crash caused by sight lines being blocked. It ain't complicated.

I think that's a bit of a simplistic position. I can easily believe that some people like HeadNun are sensible and sensitive enough to "read the room" to ask it in a nice way to the right people, while others by intent or ineptitude will end up bothering people with the same question.

No explanation is necessary. "It may be that illegal parking is not the only illegal activity to be associated with these vehicles..." Totally weird to leap from "these cars are illegally parked" to immediate speculation about criminal activity.

Or just produce energy-intensive goods so the energy export is embodied in the goods.

I don't think anyone that asks is necessarily being rude or discriminatory but personally I avoid asking the question out of nowhere because: 1) it gets quite boring answering the same question over and over again 2) I don't want to pry into people's lives (if they bring it up etc then it's a different matter) 3) there are people who have spent a lot of time being othered and made to feel like they don't belong, and who may understandably feel narked off being asked where they're from just because of the colour of their skin. As an aside, it's striking that the "rudeness" took place within the institution that is so painfully up its own arse when it comes to protocol and etiquette...

Probably better that people don't park illegally in the first place, and so there are no consequences of an accident to bear.

This is one of those lies the English tell themselves. Yes, there were poor aristocrats regarded as upper class, and the newly rich not being accepted by the upper class. But they are a small number of edge cases and generational transition: you look at where those exceptions' kids are, you see the class system is totally resilient. That's because the overwhelmingly constant and only useful predictor of class is wealth, and wealth is becoming even more concrentrated over time. The signifiers of class and wealth are changing - it's not Cleese's bowler hat any more - but they're unquestionably still important in this country.

It seems like a sensible solution: the building must be expensive and inflexible in its current state. You couldn't sell it on the open market. Moving the library into the row of shops will also mean that "plaza" looks a bit less unloved.

I do and I did talk about those things. The idea that the UK is become a more classless society is rubbish. All that's happening is the signifiers of wealth have changed (not disappeared), and the way wealth is distributed has got more unequal and imo worse.

No. But that's the only option until we change our minds, which will require at least one general election.

Crikey. How do you even do that without a bell bollard to flip you?

It is 100% an I Told You So thread, and I doubt there is any way to recover it. But TBH the question "what do we want to do now?" seems a little hopeless. The EU and EFTA seem like they have a pretty established approach to how they're willing to engage with third party states, and "we" don't like the terms of entry. So we can piss off...

Does the UK have a skills gap (low unemployment, demand for low wage labour)? The UK economy just received 500,000 immigrants, driven by oppressive political events in Ukraine and Hong Kong. Does the economy need to be hooked back up to the cheap labour IV drip of central Europe?

Come off the high horse, ignore the Khan-related conspiracy memes, and read less crappy media. There's an extremely detailed map and tons of background information here (just Googling "tfl ulez extension" worked for me): https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/ulez-expansion-2023

The Tweets don't say that at all. You've made a leap of logic so big you could probably commute to the City on it...

There is no way that bike haters are going around maliciously and meticulously repositioning yhese bikes to obstruct people so they get irritated enough that the bikes get banned. That's just wild That seems like a US press inquiry contact email.

Too late now, but isnt there a printing business inside Oru?

It's easy to be wise in retrospect. I mean, who could have predicted the downsides (apart from everyone who predicted them)?

My old landlord (who was very experienced and sensible) always used Daisylets.

Is the "local resident who is also a solicitor" the failed Tory candidate in the recent local elections and who practices a completely different type of law?