Wow a fantastic independent pub near where I used to live in London is seeing its rateable value go up 480%! This website really puts the headlines in to a nice local perspective.
It seems like the taxes only go up while the services get worse in the UK, although I’ve been away for 5 years now so maybe things improved.
But if the landlord owns the pub (rare in the UK I know), but I believe it’s the case in this instance, then what are they getting from unrealised property price gains?
What does anyone gain from it really, except money in the bank for a handful of individuals, outsized property prices seem to be a hurdle for functional societies in basically every way.
It doesn't benefit a town if rent is so expensive that their businesses shut down.
When young I use to work in construction. (With diplomas) The wages for 18 year olds in the Netherlands at the time were such that I got 340 euro per month for 40 hour weeks. It's a truly shit salary but you could also see it as a wonderful formula to build cheap houses. As my boss billed the customers 28 euro per hour for my work and those houses cost roughly 35000 to buy(!) and it took roughly 80 hours of work each. (Very rough estimates but that oddly doesn't matter) You could say I build 6.4% of the houses. They roughly cost 350 000 euro today which seems 10 fold but since people can't afford that they need a mortgage and pay 3 times that amount over 30 years. That would mean my labor now costs 10 000 per month. At the time I tried to calculate the savings escape velocity and discovered that if I saved 100% of my income I would be able to buy my own house in never years. If I build 6.4% of a house in 2 weeks that would be 3.2% per week or 32 weeks to build 100%.
Say 64 weeks and the process produces one whole home for someone else. I get that there should be some people between the construction worker and the citizen eventho they never did anything useful to the result but the margins are so preposterous that the original salary is a mere rounding error.
Then I look at Amish barn raising videos and the laughter becomes uncontrollable. I would definitely go there and help out - for free of course. If I had to keep doing that I would look for some vegetables and uhh my own house? Even if they would never build it for me it would still be more enjoyable than the western extortion scheme.
The were making 8.5 per hour which above the 2026 youth wage.
They also are relating a story from their past and since they have had an account since 2015, I am assuming their youthful past was at least 1 decade ago if not nearly 20 years ago.
No, the 340 were per month, the 40 hours are per week. I usually do back-of-the-envelope calculations with 4.3 weeks per month, which would leave them below 2 EUR/h.
Edit: But you are of course right about inflation! According to this website[1] it would bump them to 3.2 EUR/h.
Minimum jeugdloon exists since 1974. Of course the numbers change but the ratio doesn't.
Look at it like this: if 18y minimum wage was €3 back then and would double to €6 at 21y, and you're a construction worker working for €8.50 at 18y, you're sure as shit going to demand a raise at 19, 20 and 21 because all the people making minimum wage are getting those raises too. Maybe not a doubling, but you wouldn't (shouldn't) gnash your teeth and still make €8.50 three years later.
This is more or less exactly Marx's argument about extracting the surplus from labour, and the alienation people feel when they cannot afford the products they themselves make.
As property prices increase, developers are more incentivized to build new properties and increase density.
The increase in supply then lowers prices.
The problem comes when local laws and the planning permission system make it hard or impossible to increase the supply of homes. Then there's no balancing force to bring prices down when they go up.
I certainly agree with your last paragraph, however whilst I believe you're not wrong about the first I don't believe that is the only option for increasing supply.
For example, if you look at some of the densest cities in the world they are still predominantly single standing homes, just much more tightly packed, and in homes we can't huild. So I believe zoning and planning are the key issues, and I think property developers would actually play a smaller role in solving the supply problem if you allowed individuals to solve this problem themselves with less strict zoning and planning.
Obviously big developments still play a role, but at the stage American cities are often at, NYC excluded, I think zoning being more favourable to medium density would go a long way.
Leverages and confidence from the credit agency (be it banks or private investments), and the higher possiblity of approving the borrowing, and thus getting more shitty debts to be made, and contribute more to the total Gee-Dee-Pee which is the holy grail those economists chase after
Basically better rates to go into more debt. More importantly (and part of the risk) is that they have a safety hatch if they really need to exit the business.
Nothing, but if market value of the land is going up, then that means the price for government services is going up (e.g. government employees need to be paid more, land acquisition or rent costs more, materials cost more, etc). Hence taxes collected have to go up.
This could all simply be due to a devaluation of the currency, rather than due to increased desirability or productivity.
The Lamb and Flag has faced previous financial challenges.
It in fact closed temporarily in the pandemic due to UK law preventing their then owner / operator, St John’s College, a charity, subsidising a loss making business, despite having the wherewithal to do so.
> On the way to an Inklings meeting, Lewis gave some money to a street beggar, and I made the usual objection: "Won't he just spend it on drink?" He answered, "Yes, but if I kept it, so would I."
The services have certainly not got better in the last 5 years. This Government is fiscally illiterate and has hit the top of the Laffer curve and is now trying to go down the other side.
This government have been in power for less than 2 years. Despite launching a lot of trial balloons on raising taxes they haven't actually raised the headline tax rates (other than allowing fiscal drag to do so).
Overall the tax burden in the UK is middling for western democracies. It's actually on the low side for low earners - which is probably a problem because the distribution is such that the majority pay very little.
The other problem being cliff edges and complexities which distinctive chasing pay rises and working more for a lot of people.
The biggest problem is that the tax on a median taxpayer is not just "middling", it's a bit over a third of what a median German taxpayer is paying. The rest of the fiscal problems (convoluted tax rules, cliff edges to try to claw something back, abrupt tax increases like the one on pubs) are downstream from that.
> the tax on a median taxpayer is not just "middling", it's a bit over a third of what a median German taxpayer is paying
Could you put the actual numbers in for that please, because to me that implies German tax rates of 120%? Is that across all forms of taxation, including local (the relevant one here!)
Apologies, brain glitch: it's half, not third. Also, I'm talking about the effective tax rate, not the marginal tax rate. Here are the numbers:
Median salary of a full time employee in the UK in 2023 (to match the German source): £34,963 [1]
Take home on that salary (after income tax and NI): £28,692 [2]
Effective tax rate on a median salary in the UK: ~18%
Median salary of a full time employee in Germany: €4,479 pm [3] or €53,748 per year
Take home: €34,281 [4]
Effective tax rate on a median salary in Germany: ~36%
Tax _rates_ are not that different, but the previous British governments really ramped up the tax-free allowance, which significantly reduces the effective tax rate.
Unfortunately, if an election were to be held today, the morons at Reform would have the greatest chance of winning, thanks to Starmer's ostrich syndrome, Corbyn dividing the Labour vote and the Tories being absolutely irrelevant after 15 years of continuous rule.
I'd be interested to know your view on how you think Britain should be governed and the extent to which you think others would agree. Serious question: can you offer a link to some such description?
Curtail immigration to pre-Brexit levels (with a strong focus on repatriating criminals and net tax non-contributing immigrant households), focus on the working class and devise a route for the UK to get back into the EU. Also refocus policing to focus on actual societal issues - child grooming and the rise of fundamentalist elements (as evidenced by the UAE banning their citizens from studying in the UK) - as opposed to elderly citizens tweets. Devalue the GBP to refund the NHS and roll back austerity while investing further into energy independence and removing bureaucratic red tape for consumer scale mitigation technologies.
Any party that does all of these will be guaranteed electoral wins for decades - I've seen the data back when I was a Tory. Problem is, these points are kryptonite to the very identity of either major party.
Thank you! I took a bet with myself on what you would say (if you did) and lost! Seems to me that the EU as presently constructed is a huge problem; on some other points I'd agree.
Disagree on being subsumed into the stagnating EU (far better to align with dynamic English-speaking economies with strong growth, like the US).
The EU customs union prevented the UK striking bilateral global free trade deals, and the legacy of EU over-regulation continues to curtail our innovation. The UK has a solid history of global trade and innovation, and it can acheive more if unshackled from the EU.
Austerity is absolutely necessary. If we keep giving the NHS above-inflation pay rises inline with what their staff demand, it would consume the entire annual excess wealth from the productive half of the economy in a matter of decades.
What we need are sensible and pragmatic policies like Reform's scaling back of net zero, for example. The cost of Ed Miliband's net zero measures are an estimated £4.5 trillion over the next 25 years, and a gross cost in excess of £7.6 trillion.
That's more than our entire GDP. Just one example is the 20 year wind farm contracts that Miliband has set up, with a guaranteed energy cost that's nearly double the market rate for gas power (and then on top of that we need to pay for wind curtailment, grid upgrades and expensive backup power plants to cover low wind days).
We were promised that renewables would reduce energy bills. That was a total fiction, and the politicians are to blame.
Green energy could be a massive success story, and it could make our bills cheaper, but inept politicians from the Tories and Labour have focussed instead on vanity metrics.
Y'all got any of those bilateral trade deals yet? Brexit was done and dusted by 2019, it's been 7 years now. Where are those deals you're talking about? Where's your trade deal with English-speaking economies like the US? Heck, not even CANZ want to deal with you guys now.
On the NHS, of course, gut the only thing that's keeping the country sane. I can literally not keep count anymore of the number of skilled doctors and talent who have left the UK after years of practice because the pay was becoming untenable with current living needs. Remove the NHS and you might as well call yourself a client state of the US.
On renewables and net-zero, yes, what we need is more reliance on conventional fuels so that we can be ever more reliant on Russia and the Middle East and the US right? Meanwhile economies like China, India and even your brethren in Australia are racing to put in more renewables capacity because it is just so much more cheaper and efficient now. Those guys are forging real paths to energy independence, unlike you lot.
Renewables haven't been reducing your energy bills because you guys haven't been putting up anything of note. Wake me up when Hinckley Point C comes online.
We’ve struck an incredible 71 trade deals since Brexit. And there are more in the pipeline. We genuinely have a better global position now than we did in the customs union.
You think the NHS is “keeping us sane”. Two of my family members have been close to death waiting for an ambulance that never arrived / waiting in a crowded emergency waiting room with internal bleeding for hours. I pay about £10K per year in tax to the NHS for a service that is inferior to the private care I receive for approx £1K a year. The whole system is a shambles and gets worse every year. It underpays and mistreats its staff. It is inefficient.
On your point about renewables, I never claimed we needed more reliance on fossil fuels. I think we should be building more nuclear plants. France is a shining example of how to generate electricity. And then, once we have affordable battery storage (in a few years) we will be able to expand wind/solar in a sensible fashion without our stupid politicians making our energy bills the highest in the developed world.
> Renewables haven't been reducing your energy bills because you guys haven't been putting up anything of note.
The UK is #1 in Europe for wind capacity and #2 globally for offshore wind (behind China). And we have the highest energy bills in the developed world
- A strong leader and a weak bureaucracy, so that your vote means something.
- A good constitution that puts hard limits on what they can do, no boiling the frog with freedom of speech restrictions like Canada, Australia, and The UK
So basically an elected dictator with a functioning kill switch. Not a parade of faceless, temporary, unimportant prime ministers and elections which don't matter.
> your vote means something. - A good constitution that puts hard limits on what they can do
Quite a lot of serious problems arise when voters want things that are ""unconstitutional"". What if the voters want speech restrictions? That's a big part of why they're implemented, public/media campaigning for them.
> freedom of speech restrictions like Canada, Australia, and The UK
Unlike in the USA, where speaking out to, or disagreeing with, the president will get you removed from positions of authority?
(If you haven't already gathered, such bogus claims of free speech restrictions in other countries are distracting you from the reality of what is happening in your own country.)
The actual soviets - they remained in operation for the first few years after the Bolshevik coup, and the revolutionary slogan "All power to the soviets!" gave Lenin a convenient figleaf for sidelining the elected Duma.
Of course, the soviets also proved unwilling to entirely subjugate themselves to Lenin's whims, and made a habit of choosing non-Bolshevik delegates. This culminated in the failed Kronstadt rebellion of 1921, after which any pretense at democracy was finally ended.
But - in theory - the soviet model sounds akin to what you're looking for. Being made up of delegates rather than representatives meant that the power of recall on demand was baked-in at every level, and power flowed upwards to a strong executive leadership.
In reality, it's hard to see how any sufficiently strong leader wouldn't be able to override or simply ignore any sort of kill switch or other constitutional arrangements that might happen to stand in their way - as has happened every time it's been tried in the past.
I think the person elected should hold a lot of powers. Because otherwise, what is the point of voting if they're just going to leak it all to the civil service?
By "kill switch", I just mean you need a way to stop a leader with a lot of powers in exceptional circumstances - such as violation of a constitution.
It’s interesting to me because CSS is very stable. It doesn’t really change that often. It’s great foundational knowledge to have for people who build for the web.
And nearly every step it's made has been for the better. I used sass on that blog, because a few corner case features weren't widely available when I last did work on the style, but for the last 3 projects I've worked on, I don't use it anymore. Pure css can do basically everything I needed before. Sure, I bundle using bun's bundler, but that's for performance optimization, nothing more
Is it possible for humans to review that amount of code?
My understanding of the current state of AI in software engineering is that humans are allowed (and encouraged) to use LLMs to write code. BUT the person opening a PR must read and understand that code. And the code must be read and reviewed by other humans before being approved.
I could easily generate that amount of code and make it write and pass tests. But I don't think I could have it reviewed by the rest of my team - while I am also taking part in reviewing code written by other people on my team at that pace.
Perhaps they just aren't human reviewing the code? Then it is feasible to me. But it would go against all of the rules that I have personally encountered at my companies and that peers have told me they have at their companies.
I'm appalled this isn't talked about more. Understanding code let alone code written by others is where the real complexity lies. I fail to see how more written code by some dumbass AI that gets things wrong half the time is going to make the job less draining to me. I can only conclude that half the devs of the world, or more, don't really do code reviews, or just rubber stamp crap.
I have followed him for a long time and learned a lot too. I always wonder the same thing about the “tech influencers” and I’d love to know more about how they structure their days.
I find it difficult recently to sit down and complete a meaningful piece of work without being distracted by notifications and questions. In the last year this has been exacerbated by the wait time on LLMs completing.
I would love to know how top performers organise their time.
There are examples on YouTube of laughter tracks being removed and there are lots of awkward pauses, so I think you'd need to edit the video to cut the pauses out entirely.
Cutting the pauses will change the beats and rhythm of the scene, so you probably need to edit some of the voice lines and actual scenes too then. In the end, if you're not interested in the original performance and work, you might as well read the script instead and imagine it however you want, read it at the pace you want and so on.
Surely if the Big One hits then all of the metropolitan areas on the West Coast would be gridlocked in scenes reminiscent of zombie apocalypse movies anyway? I guess we won't know until it happens for sure, but I can't imagine it would be easy for emergency services to get around with or without Waymo.
It’s not gonna be good. But you want it to be a gridlock because the cars can’t get out fast enough because there’s too many cars on the road.
Not because a bunch of cars that are perfectly capable of moving are just sitting there blocking things purposefully waiting for the driver in the sky to take over.
And what if, due to $BIG_DISASTER they won’t be able to for a week?
> Do people load their Transits with piles of dirt and mulch? I doubt it.
I am from the UK but live in Canada. I only see three types of businesses using those Transit style vans here in North America: food delivery, parcel delivery and landscaping businesses. I assume the landscapers are carrying dirt at least some of the time.
I see carpenters and electricians who trick them out with a little workshop, but that's really it. Landscapers it makes sense because you're hauling equipment and storing it in the van, so you can probably both store more and protect from the elements
I would be interested in a web series (podcast or video) where people who do not know a language create something with AI. Then somebody with experience building in that technology reviews the code and gives feedback on it.
I am personally progressing to a point where I wonder if it even matters what the code looks like if it passes functional and unit tests. Do patterns matter if humans are not going to write and edit the code? Maybe sometimes. Maybe not other times.
It seems like the taxes only go up while the services get worse in the UK, although I’ve been away for 5 years now so maybe things improved.
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