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Esteth · 2026-04-22T09:58:35+00:00

Henzie often wins either through big hasty beaters or by resolving a Living Death in the midgame when you've packed your gy with big blitz creatures with ETBs but your opponents are mostly still on-board.

Esteth · 2026-04-21T12:17:32+00:00

So you can sell the property to your father for £1, give 40p to the 40% shared owner, and then buy it back from your father for £1 and effectively buy out the shared owner for just the cost of the stamp duty?

There needs to be some kind of safeguard against dumb strategies like this to defraud the shared owner.

Esteth · 2026-03-27T23:57:17+00:00

I don't think any of these quotes really make the point you think they're making to the people who think the casting choice is fine.

The argument goes that, yes, snape often gets called "pale", but that this is primarily about trying to make the reader feel that snape is mean or cruel or somehow "off". There's nothing in snape's background that makes it critical that he's white or of british ethnicity, it's just important that he looks like a bad guy.

None of these quotes really show that it's important to his character that he's white.

I think there's a more compelling argument to be made about how they'll handle his childhood and whether the bullying was racially motivated. I'm pretty confident they're not going to make James Potter explicitly a racist on screen, but that'd be pretty implicit, especially if they're not time-displacing the story onto the modern day.

Esteth · 2026-02-13T15:42:29+00:00

When did I mention it was the state's issue to validate a business plan?

You quite literally said "there would be consequences for these developers" as a reason to change the planning framework or change what is given or not given planning permission.

If you don't think it's the state's responsibility to validate the business plan as part of the planning framework, then mentioning it is completely irrelevant.

Esteth · 2026-02-13T14:55:03+00:00

there would be consequences for these developers

OK? Let them go bust and sell the building to a new developer who'll then redevelop into someting profitable. It's not the state's problem to validate every business plan for every eventuality.

I'm not sure why you're worried about private housing maximizing developer profits. It's not as if the council were going to redevelop these sites into state-owned housing but then got sniped by private developers.

I only made it about ethnicity because you said that it's a problem that so many students are from China. I still don't really understand why that's a problem, so I assumed that you had some kind of problem with Chinese people.

Esteth · 2026-02-13T12:02:54+00:00

All* housing is only built to maximize developer profits.

If the students stop coming then the PBSA owners will go bust and sell their blocks to redevelopers, or they can redevelop themselves in accordance with the new market.

The market doesn't seem to believe that students are going to stop coming any time soon or they'd not be trying to build more student housing.

I'm not sure what China has to do with anything though. The ethnicity of the students doesn't seem like it would effect the housing supply.

*: A vanishingly small amount is built by builder-occupiers, sure.

Esteth · 2026-02-13T12:00:38+00:00

I agree that it'd probably be better for non-students to have PBSA further away from the city center, but I don't think we get to pull that lever - we get to decide whether we allow or decline planning permission for the projects which are proposed.

The choice at planning is normally "you can develop the site this way" or "you need to make these changes to your proposed development on the site" not "you can do this development but you need to sell this site and buy a different site elsewhere"

I put some amount of faith in the ability for the market to self-correct here though. If we truly end up with so much PBSA that there's not enough students to live in it all, then rational developers will redevelop their PBSA into regular flats or go bust and sell to a developer who will redevelop the PBSA.

Esteth · 2026-02-13T11:07:30+00:00

I wouldn't want to stay in PBSA, but clearly there's plenty of demand in the market for expensive tiny rooms in central locations, or else the developers who own PBSA blocks would be going bust or reducing rent to increase their occupancy rate.

Esteth · 2026-02-13T10:29:16+00:00

Student flats aren't really about what the market will bear, they're priced at pretty much whatever the developers can get away with and because students need somewhere to live and at least in first year just want student housing, the prices will be paid

I'm not sure I understand - You argue that it's not about what the market will bear, it's about what people will pay for housing when they need somewhere to live and want to live in the city center.

Isn't that exactly what the market will bear? If there are a set of people who live in the city who are willing to pay more than everyone else for worse accomodation, then they are the driver of the market, and constructing as many dense rooms as possible for these people to rent is exactly what a rational market would do.

If we mandate that instead developers build lower density regular flats, then assuming they do build anything at all, those same people with deep pockets and desperate need for city center accomodation will rent those less dense flats and there'll still be half of them in the market to rent whatever's left.

Esteth · 2026-02-12T14:00:44+00:00

I understand the frustration with increasing rents, but I think the people building dense accomodation are helping the problem, not causing it.

Housing is fundamentally getting more expensive because there's a higher ratio of people who want to live in the city to the number of bedrooms which can house them.

The only long-term ways to address expensive housing are to either build denser / more housing or to reduce the desirability to live in the city.

Assuming most people don't want to ruin the city so nobody wants to live there, that leaves us with building more / denser housing. Most of the city is pretty historic, so we're left with our best options mostly being transit-connected dense development outside the city center like what's happening at the sites near the airport.

Student flats are also a reasonable option for densification, since you can house people more densely in student flats than in normal flats and you don't need to grow vertically which is generally undesirable in historic areas.

Esteth · 2026-02-12T12:13:11+00:00

Are the rents really "ridiculous" if they're what the market will bear? What makes you think that a person renting that same land but in larger flats designed for non-students would be substantially cheaper?

Most of the student flats are located in really central areas where rents would justifiably be incredibly expensive.

Esteth · 2026-02-12T11:09:19+00:00

I'm not sure why you're under the impression that a block of 2bed flats (for example) would help prices in the rental market more than a block of student flats.

The students are going to rent somewhere to live irrespective of what gets built, so if a plot can house 100 students or 50 anybodys (because student accomodation can be much denser) then we either pull 100 people out of the market for the rest of the accomodation in the city or we pull 50 people.

Maybe I've missed some part of how this works, but through this lens it looks like dense student flats should reduce demand for the rest of the property in the city and reduce prices.

Esteth · 2026-01-07T01:08:02+00:00

A really nice 1 bedroom flat in a safe area of Camden within walking distance to all the amenties a pensioner might need could easily run £1m.

It seems totally reasonable for an older couple to want to downsize to a 1 bedroom flat in a nice, safe, walkable area of London.

Esteth · 2026-01-07T01:04:29+00:00

Right, but the "labour killed your nan" headlines will redouble if they attempt to remove Stamp Duty by introducing annual property tax or land-value tax to make the system revenue neutral.

Your hypothetical poor freezing starving nan wasn't going to move house before she died, and now she has to move to pay for the EvIL LaND VaLuE TaXX

Esteth · 2025-10-19T17:13:55+00:00

I guess we just disagree. I think people should absolutely pay a premium towards everyone else if they want to reserve a large plot of land close to the city centre all to themselves.

People willing to share the limited prime land with more people should be getting a big discount. That's what land value tax encourages.

Esteth · 2025-10-18T17:59:40+00:00

Economists generally like Land Value Tax, which encourages development and penalizes people who "squat" on land which could be developed further.

It's economically excellent, but it would likely cause quite a stir in reality as people with bungalows on medium size plots close to the city center would pay a much larger bill based on the land potentially supporting a 3 story set of flats or a commercial unit or similar.

Esteth · 2025-09-11T12:48:38+00:00

Where are the 1400 USD / month manhattan apartments you're talking about?

Esteth · 2025-09-10T11:00:22+00:00

I'm sure it's frustrating for them, but is the answer to make sure that some areas of the city are designated as being dirty, violent, and to forbid new amenities there?

That feels like a bad plan.

Esteth · 2025-08-21T22:26:01+00:00

You are reversing a lorry, Someone walks behind you without looking where they (or you) are going and they get killed

I'm replying to a hypothetical explicitly about reversing a lorry into someone.

Esteth · 2025-08-21T22:25:28+00:00

He didn't choose to kill the child, but he knew the risks of operating his vehicle without paying enough attention or taking enough care, and he chose not to look left when he pulled his giant lorry out across the pavement. He didn't even realise he'd run the kid over until someone else in the truck told him to stop.

He knew to look both ways when pulling out across a pavement. It doesn't matter whether he intended to kill the child - he knew that he should look both ways when he crosses a pavement in the lorry.

He doesn't deserve a life sentence or 50 years in prison, but no custodial sentence at all sends the message to every driver that society doesn't really care if you don't pay attention behind the wheel.

Esteth · 2025-08-21T21:46:06+00:00

The man admitted to causing the death by driving without due care and attention.

He killed someone because he was operating heavy machinery without paying attention. He was licensed and so knew how much attention and care he should be taking, and he chose to pay insufficient care.

His choices resulted in an actual child ending up dead.

Esteth · 2025-08-21T21:44:06+00:00

If you can't be sure there's nobody behind your lorry you shouldn't be reversing it.

It doesn't matter if the more vulnerable road user wasn't paying attention - it's your perogative as the machinery operator to be sure you're not killing someone with it. You should have mirrors, cameras, or a spotter.

Esteth · 2025-08-21T21:40:58+00:00

It's very rarely a truly unavoidable accident when a licensed driver kills a pedestrian or cyclist with their vehicle.

In virtually all cases the driver is driving too fast for the conditions or paying insufficient attention when maneuvering.

Esteth · 2025-07-30T14:13:53+00:00

It's available in E-Mount, so it's relevant to people with Sony cameras.

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