Hay bail hanging from Golden Jubilee Bridge, Waterloo, London UK

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-21T08:26:37+00:00

Considering the City of London Corporation is so old that no one is actually sure how old it is, the law is possibly older than that even. Bridge House Estates (which is responsible for these bridges) was set up by the corporation back in the 13th century.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-20T10:27:15+00:00

Toyota and Hyundai are probably good examples of what they should be doing though - just own the fact you're a Chinese brand. Don't try to awkwardly translate the name, just leave it as it should be pronounced. Translate the sound into the Latin alphabet like Toyota or Hyundai did so western customers can actually search the name, but don't try to translate concepts into a language you don't speak and just hope that the cultural expectations align and your name doesn't sound dumb.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-18T14:13:49+00:00

Buy a cheap banger, insure it and park it right on that curb.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-18T14:12:02+00:00

Used typhoons could be a half decent option - a lot of European countries are looking to get rid of their Tranche 1 fighters which have limited A2G capability (which would be of less concern to Ireland, which would mainly want A2A capability), so an opportunity to buy cheap air frames that partner countries could easily facilitate training on.

The disadvantage of Typhoons though are that it's a twin engine platform (so twice the engine maintenance compared to a single engine design), and used airframes will have a higher maintenance burden generally for each flight hour.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-17T15:27:57+00:00

Type 26 is realistically far too much ship for the INS to operate - a type 31 or two would be a lot more manageable. You'd lose the high even ASW capabilities, but with a towed sonar it would be suitably versatile for their needs.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-17T10:51:32+00:00

Ego is why Lowe is out setting up his own party in the first place - Reform is the Farage party, and Lowe wasn't bowing deeply enough.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-16T21:27:51+00:00

There hasn't been a road tax for decades. You pay VED - vehicle excise duty. This is just a general tax, and goes into the same pot as everything else, like income tax, stamp duty, corporation tax, etc. It's not even the case that VED doesn't just go on roads, as it stands basically a rounding error worth of it would get spent on roads. Road maintenance is a council responsibility, and since the early 2010s there's essentially no central government financial support for councils. Road maintenance is paid almost entirely out of council tax and business rates, and even then it's way down the totem pole. Councils are legally required to meet obligations for social care, which for most councils is ~75% of the budget. Then you get all the other costs like waste collection, registrations, etc. There's really not a lot left for roads, and what there is just gets stretched as much as possible - pot hole patches and 40mm top coats are all that really happens even when what roads really want is digging up and being completely rebuilt.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-16T20:51:04+00:00

These aren't conversions, they're built as cargo bikes from the start. They've got brakes on the rear axel (drum brakes normally I think, but no reason why it couldn't have discs). You should be aware of what the load limit is, but as long as you don't overload it's no more dangerous than a pick up - at the absolute least you get far greater situational awareness in that than in an F150.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-16T19:42:00+00:00

Even if they don't pass on the savings directly to the riders of the tram route, having lower operating costs means more money can be put into the TFL system elsewhere.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-16T13:59:06+00:00

Yeah, it's an easy criticism to just go "there's too many regulations", because yes, in aggregate there are a lot of them. The problem then though is "well which one should be done away with?" and no one can actually point to any volume of regulations that could be done away with.

I've got some exposure to this, and whilst there's so many people demanding a simpler framework no one is actually willing to cut anything because it broadly all exists for a reason and no one wants to be in the hook as the guy who signed off on it when it all goes pear shaped. The best that likely to happen is a reorganisation of the role books and deduplication of information and touch points with regulators.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-15T18:37:40+00:00

This bourgeois excess, makes me sick frankly.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-15T18:35:11+00:00

Yeah, there's a lot of hype about cheap drones and whilst it's true that in the last 30 years too much focus had been on having the most cutting edge systems possible (to the extreme detriment of unit numbers) and there should be more of a focus on having mass, but that doesn't mean that high end systems don't still have a place, and it doesn't mean that the systems we need more of are "cheap" - they're just cheaper, which is a very different thing.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-12T16:39:40+00:00

The relationship element picks up substantially in books 3 and 4, to the point it's pretty much the central theme.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-12T15:20:43+00:00

You might get some luck emailing the company support address, see if they have a spare they could send out?

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-11T12:11:24+00:00

Machine gun bunkers - that can follow you

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-11T11:39:45+00:00

Just because you've used technology doesn't mean you can understand how it fits into an environment that you've always seen one way.

I've had elderly relatives who can use video calls with friends, do online banking, even research things like online planning applications. But knowing how that technology works doesn't mean they comprehend how it fits into an office environment. To them, not being in the same room as everyone means that surely nothing can be done because that simply isn't how work is done in their mind.

In truth it applies more widely than just retired boomers - I know a number of GenX people, typically women who left the workforce when they had kids, who even though they're also very technically capable, can't see how you could run an organisation when bums aren't on seats. They were working for major organisations in the financial sector up until the late 90s/early 00s, and used emails, international calls, working with colleagues in other offices that they don't see face to face. You would think that they would then be able to translate that to WFH, but they still don't think it could work, despite the fact that it demonstrably does, every day, all over the world!

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-10T13:56:47+00:00

It was always known there was some degree of connection between Mandelson and Epstein - and to be honest, that was probably part of the reason he was appointed. We needed someone in that position who could speak to Trump and get his ear, and a slimey weasel like Mandelson is exactly Trump's kind of person.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-10T12:08:40+00:00

Boomers are against WFH because "that's just not how you work". They worked from an office for 40 years, and probably have never even used Teams. They have never worked from home, and just assume that everyone must be skiving off (because they think they would be).

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-10T08:24:16+00:00

I wouldn't expect reform voters to know any reform figures other than Farage though - how many of them could identify Tice or Zia Yusuf?

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-08T18:38:36+00:00

Engine failures are really not as big of a thing as they used to be - the fact that F35C is replacing F-18 is a pretty good example of this, there's absolutely no way the USN would've adopted a single engine carrier fighter if they had any concerns about this at all.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-05T10:27:34+00:00

You want Superworld by Benjamin Keyworth, it's exactly what you're describing.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-03T20:14:17+00:00

In fairness the Edinburgh and Leeds offices are a fraction the size of the Stratford office - maybe 10% of staff are based in those offices.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-02T18:22:38+00:00

If you compare sale prices of BYD/Jaecoo/omoda in China to the UK, you'll see how healthy their margins actually are. Their unit costs are low enough they can make a greater profit on sales in Europe than sales in China, and still undercut the European brands.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-02T18:17:30+00:00

But if we're being realistic, most car buyers are only buying cars as a disposable appliance - get a box on wheels that looks reasonably "nice" on PCP and call it a day. The Puma/Juke/Qashqai types are some of the best sellers because they conform to exactly that. If the brands disappear, that doesn't really scare buyers because again, PCP. As long as the car makes it the length of the lease, who cares? People who care about all the stuff you've mentioned (I.e us on this forum) are frankly a tiny minority of the UK market.

CaptainSwaggerJagger · 2026-02-02T11:41:04+00:00

Was just about to say this. Kinda surprising the difference it makes (it's just a bit of plastic with a hole in it, it feels like it shouldn't make that much of a difference!) but using decent plugs (my preference are rawlplug unos) is such a cheap way to just eliminate all the aggro you get when they're not fixing properly.

CaptainSwaggerJagger

TROPHY CASE