[RedSparrows]

The willingness to leap into advertiser buzzword market reaearch-as-history slop is tiresome. Newspapers don't have to do this, and yet...

[Andy McDandy]

Fills space. Gets people talking. Generates hits. Job done.

[davidjay]

Our school houses were A, B. C and D.

[Bones McCoy]

Was Adrian Chiles not available to muse about rebranding confectionary?

[Philip Marlow]

Fills space. Gets people talking. Generates hits. Job done.

I have in fact fallen headlong into the Graun’s cunning hate clicks generator. Even if the writer himself isn’t, someone at Guardian Towers must be aware that it’s an awful piece, which is going to generate an awful lot of chatter about what an awful piece it is.

The first time I became aware of them doing this was when they gave the hapless offspring of one of their freelance travel writers space to write about his tremendously exciting gap year in India and parts beyond. It was supposed to be a series, but in those days of looser moderation it got so comprehensively slaughtered below the line that they nixed it after the first article. That then generated at least two other articles by established columnists about the beastliness of the plebs towards this promising young man.

[Andy McDandy]

Ah yes, shades of Radio 4's "Excess Baggage", in which Sandi Toksvig would listen in fascination to some home counties person who had just "discovered" the lost city of Sen-Ta-Parx deep in the bowels of Sherwood forest, before musing on whether or not Nottingham had drinkable water yet.

[Philip Marlow]

An awful lot of work seems to be going into convincing that percentage of the Great British public which can still afford to go to the pub that shrinkflation should be welcomed with open arms.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... a-schooner

I’m assuming the ‘leave our pints alone’ rejoinders are in the works.

[Andy McDandy]

For some unknown reason, journalists love writing about alcohol consumption and betting.

[Bones McCoy]

For some unknown reason, journalists love writing about alcohol consumption and betting.

Au-o bigrafical - innit!

[davidjay]

For some unknown reason, journalists love writing about alcohol consumption and betting.

Au-o bigrafical - innit!

Shows they haven't forgotten their roots - couple of pints and an acca on the football.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Why does the Guardian keep pushing left NIMBY rubbish?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ing-crisis

However, the theory does not appear to work in practice. Even though housebuilding in the UK has decreased since its high point in the 1960s, we are still building new homes faster than the population is growing. In 1971 there was almost one dwelling for every three people in the country. Today, there is about one dwelling for every 2.25 people, meaning we actually have more homes per capita right now than we did 50 years ago.

That stat doesn't tell us anything about demand at all. Note the disingenuous "dwelling" there like a studio flat and a four bedroom house is the same.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I see one of the people bigging this rubbish up is a Green councillor from Bristol. Poor Thangam losing her seat to this lot.

[The Weeping Angel]

I think James has it right.

As for tech workers wanting to start a culture war maybe they were pissed off with having to deal with selfish arseholes like this

When a woman stood up and waved a courgette in the air at a City of Berkeley council meeting this summer, complaining that a new housing development would block the sunlight from her zucchini garden, she probably felt confident that the community was on her side. After all, hers was the kind of complaint – small-scale, wholesome, relatable – that has held up housing projects for years in cities around the world.

She didn’t expect the wrath of the yimbys.

“You’re talking about zucchinis? Really? Because I’m struggling to pay rent,” retorted an indignant Victoria Fierce at that 13 June meeting. Fierce went on to argue that it was precisely the failure to build new housing that is causing rents to climb in San Francisco, to the point that she can barely afford to live anywhere in the Bay Area.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017 ... g-solution

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, I think it's what James O'Malley says. And it is only one aspect of regulation that's being loosened- location.

[Killer Whale]

There's no way I'd want to mess with someone called Victoria Fierce, I'm prepared to admit.

[Youngian]

A muddled argument; more houses won't solve housing shortages but we need to build more sustainable quality houses. There may well be more housing stock than is perceived but is Phineas going to move out of London for Stoke or Newark? Even Bob Jenrick the metropolitan elite hating MP for Newark isn't.

[Andy McDandy]

Building new houses won't fix the problem, because they'll get snapped up by people who already own homes, because they have the leverage and the housing market is pretty much a one way bet. Whether to move into or to rent out, it doesn't matter. First time buyers will be priced out.

Building loads of new community housing with a rental/deposit system running (so from each month's rent a percentage goes into a deposit fund; tenants can up the payments if they like (or decrease them if they're happy to rent) and put in an offer to buy sooner rather than later), with infrastructure built in (local retail, schools, medical facilities, leisure amenities), controlled at a regional rather than council level? That could work.

Thing is, however you want to fix it, it will require loads of government involvement. If you leave it to the market, you'll just perpetuate the current system.

[Youngian]

Building new houses won't fix the problem, because they'll get snapped up by people who already own homes, because they have the leverage and the housing market is pretty much a one way bet.

New houses will still be rented to human beings but point taken. What would happen to the market if owning a second home became almost impossible through crippling taxes (with some caveats) is an interesting thought exercise.

[Killer Whale]

Building new houses won't fix the problem, because they'll get snapped up by people who already own homes, because they have the leverage and the housing market is pretty much a one way bet.

New houses will still be rented to human beings but point taken. What would happen to the market if owning a second home became almost impossible through crippling taxes (with some caveats) is an interesting thought exercise.

https://nation.cymru/news/second-homes- ... declining/

Gwynedd has seen a sharp drop in the number of second homes and long term empty properties subject to the county’s council tax premium over the past year.

Council research revealed there were more than 500 fewer second homes in the county subject to the tax in November 2023, compared with November 2022.

Although the number of properties appeared to have dropped, there was “not enough evidence to say it was due to the effect of the premium itself”, cabinet member for finance Cllr Ioan Thomas told the full meeting of the council on Thursday.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This looks not unlike trolling the Labour Government for easy clicks from Wolfie Smith.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... orth-korea

Anger at UK’s ‘bonkers’ plan to reach net zero by importing fuel from North Korea

Government criticised over list of potential countries for sourcing biomass, which also includes Afghanistan

Eagle-eyed readers might have spotted that the subheading is a bit different from the headline. "List of potential countries" sounds a bit weaker than "plan". Is there a plan at all?

There's support for biomass. There's a list of places with resources, which includes North Korea and Afghanistan. There's no plan for the UK to important biomass from North Korea or Afghanistan, for fairly obvious reasons.

This is tabloid level shit. I'm not by the way a fan of biomass and it would be perfectly fair to say that biomass on the scale needed would involve some of the serious downsides that the article sets out (certainly if everywhere else goes for biomass too). But plan to import biomass from North Korea? That's absolute bollocks.