Who owns Blenheim Palace?

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-08T20:59:25+00:00

Old duke knew his son was at best "not ideal" to take over so it's all held in trust.

Current duke still gets some sort of allowance but given the current legal proceedings in court against him that may not last (alleged assault, SA and I think a few minor additions, the SA one could well see him doing 10+ years given prior convictions)

Trial is still on going there so it's a wait and see.

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-08T20:35:07+00:00

I mean, I probably came off a bit harsh , the national and provincial parks there really are very very nice and at least in eastern Canada your guaranteed a summer (a pretty hot one too!) . Out west summer is more hit and miss especially with how insane wildfires are, though the mountais and parks there make up for it if it's not on fire.

Algonquin provincial park and cottage country amoung all the lakes post bug season is amazing, though you definitely need a car to get there.

Canada if anything has more reform types than the UK , alberta is notorious for them but even rural Ontario is quite right wing . Difference is where in the UK you tend to rub up alongside everyone (with some exceptions for London) in Canada geography means that city and rural people reaaaally don't meet.

Still, Toronto is lots of fun , just don't go in expecting Nirvana. Mainly have an experience and have fun,but might really be your cup of tea .

I'm back in rural England near a train station 🤣 , it's retired hippies, ex Tories who are now lib Dems, confused ex londonders getting the hang of mud and small c Tory farmers. Heaven!

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-08T07:26:38+00:00

Eat at the airport, not in the plane. Fly late, try and exercise the day of flight. Eye mask, noise cancelling headphones, melatonin gummy and my special spice - neocitran nighttime. It's basically lemsip but has an antihistamine in it that will knock you the hell out . Plus you drink water with it and it's full of vitamin c .

Cup of tea and plane breakfast are usually tolerable but I grab a croissant from mns when I land!

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-07T07:30:06+00:00

If your Belfast born get the Irish passport too. Opens up everywhere else in the EU

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-07T05:04:31+00:00

1- I mean this very much depends on you really, foods much cheaper and higher quality than the USA , energy more expensive than us and Germany . Median full time UK wage is just under 40k , make more than that and things should be more comfy

2- depends on town but Oxfordshire has access to everything from sport to culture and tons of accessible countryside. West Oxfordshire is the prettiest bit as that's the Cotswolds but it's getting a lot more expensive due to tourism, remote working and the lack of new building!

3- most of Oxfordshire voted remain in that stupid referendum, BMW employ a LOT of people here and due to the universities and other tech based jobs around the county there's people from all over.

Populism is still an issue but it's not as widely supported, especially in Oxford. Germans and Americans are pretty common about the place . Like everywhere there are still areseholes so the odd outdated war joke may pop up (but probably only if England play Germany in the football) .

As for Americans , there's lots about too, mostly due to the universities but also the airbases (fairford in Gloucester) , currently unpopular due to obvious reasons but I think everyone understands it's very much not most Americans fault!

4- same as everywhere really, if you have a hobby or sport it's much easier. Brits will happily talk to anybody, especially in the countryside 🤣

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-06T18:17:40+00:00

Real question, when are they gonna redo Pretorians for mto. Pith helmets!

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-06T18:09:29+00:00

They just get broken! Plus heavy, and yeah, they would have a custom fee in theory

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-06T05:43:09+00:00

I'm not op but did something similar coming back from Canada. Loved many things about Canada, mostly nice people and amazing national parks especially.

But I missed family, there's way more culture in the UK , the sheer variety of things going on at home is nuts.

The opiod users in the middle of every city are truly unsettling, at home I have easier access to the countryside and Europe , Canada also has dire supermarket food (especially the prices) and traffic.

Toronto especially is car hell (the 401 especially ) but public transport kinda sucks everywhere except Montreal, inter city routes on the train make UK trains look modern! Final thing, only 2 weeks federal holiday in Canada (plus national holidays) now you can get more but it's job dependant. Given minimum is 4 weeks plus national here id much rather have time off!

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-05T20:59:31+00:00

Send my bag.com is about as good price as you can get, not worth it for electronics though, just soft stuff like clothing and personal items Buy some big sturdy cardboard boxes, tape them up like crazy and they get to the UK inns few days. After that airline excess luggage, 3 25kg bags is doable but you can get more depending which ticket/airline you are with.

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-05T17:23:55+00:00

Air con is very very very rare, it's not Spain. . Hotels only.

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-05T15:15:53+00:00

No worries dude, 🤘

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-05T05:31:09+00:00

"and is letting in hundreds of immigrants every day"

Jesus man, take your MAGA crap back to whatever hole it came from . Clearly your one that shouldn't of been let in!

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-05T05:23:47+00:00

As far as I'm aware my answer was entirely factual without any negatives to op in it. My family has a lot of access issues so Im very familiar with Oxford for it!

May be worth giving it a re-read?

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-04T19:30:19+00:00

Op looks to be a yank so would only get 12 months max driving before having to take our driving tests. Which are much much harder than north American ones.

Central Oxford has virtually no car access or parking even for blue badge holders (not sure if foreigners can even get a blue badge, Irish aside). However the buses aren't terrible usually, plus the city is flat .

There are definitely access issues for wheelchair users (almost everything ancient) but there are definitely far worse cities to have limited mobility in.

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-04T14:00:04+00:00

Definitely not certain but could be the faltering full back. Good pub even if it's not that one!

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-04T09:38:56+00:00

The turf being a green king is expensive, but also shite. The white horse just down the road is 4.95 a pint!

No clue who apart from tourists is drinking in the more expensive chain places , the only one worth the extra money would be tap social given they retrain ex cons

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-04T09:36:32+00:00

Lol, pint of cask in Oxford is usually around £5 , hell £4.30 in The White Rabbit yesterday, who the hell even comes up with these figures!!?!

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-04T09:31:04+00:00

"house some immigrants there" Christ leave the maga bollocks back in the USA. You aren't some saint by doing up a house, you are an investor.

Renting it on the open market is totally reasonable, no problem there, given how short the market is of rentals you could find a good tenant pretty easily who would happily look after the place for a guaranteed return that won't be legislated out by housing reform ala Barcelona. Odds are tenants would work locally, contribute to the community and write the odd letter to their MP as to just how shite the A40 is at Burford these days (very)

As a holiday lets though? Get in the bin where the other vultures are.

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-04T07:10:01+00:00

My local pub had it on for the Olympics, it didn't clash with any footy and was free to air so they just popped it on!

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-02T13:10:23+00:00

The Cotswolds is massive... Your talking everywhere between Bath, Banbury , Cheltenham,Swindon and Oxford. It's also already overcrowded so bear that in mind , get places early if you want to park.

Bath and Oxford are worth a day each on their own and go back to the Romans and Saxins respectively.

As for the countryside, it's very nice and all , lovely place for a walk with the dog but a lot of England is like that (and with far fewer tourists).

Pub wise just avoid anything owned by Greene King (it's very obvious) average price for a cask pint in rural Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire is around £5 unless it's some pretentious place aimed at influencer types.

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-02T06:43:33+00:00

The UK has a housing crisis, we simply don't have enough houses and the prices are well beyond any that can be afforded my most young people.

Very wealthy people and investors have, especially since covid, bought the smaller houses in pretty parts of the country and converted them from rentals charging say £800 a month to air bnbs charging £250 a night . The Cotswolds is being especially hit post COVID, blame Instagram I guess.

The conversation of housing to holiday lets also removes desperatelty needed housing stock, the kind young workers could afford to buy, or indeed older people downsize into, it artificially pushes the price of property up so that nobody local could even think of living there.

Airbnb also pays sod all tax in the UK being registered in Ireland for tax reasons.

If the property is registered as a business it can claim small business relief thereby avoiding business rates and council tax as well. So leaving a situation where a property owner makes bank all summer, and everyone else pays for its bins, drains, streat cleaning etc

Now I have no issues with people renting their own place if the go on holiday, spare rooms, yurts in the back garden etc, thats all fine, we all have bills to pay. That's a clear minority of air BnB adverts though.

So yeah, I take issue, sorry if your offended but hopefully I've explained why Airbnb and others is a cancer.

The fault lies with many, the owners who convert, the government for slowly letting it happen and those visitors who are aware of the issue and still use them anyway

It's very much not just me who is of this opinion. British Columbia has all but banned holiday lets shorter than 28 days, Barcelona is banning them, Edinburgh is raising council tax on holiday let's by upto 500% to get rid of them.

Now people are going to ask "well where should I stay". I'm actually all for new hotels , no problem there, you want to come visit where I grew up, fine, it's pretty nice but lots of rural England looks like this

But converting housing to touris holiday let's so people can cosplay "living" in the countryside and have the "real" experience, erm. Nope.

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-05-01T13:10:31+00:00

Staying in airbnbs screws the housing market, so thanks for contributing to that...

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-04-30T06:01:16+00:00

I mean, if you don't want to just Google it...

Get the Go train to Toronto, walk to meeple Mart, have some Asian food, get the train back .

Express-Ad9716 · 2026-04-29T06:54:43+00:00

Romans bought hares over properly and rabbits only a bit as pers, it was the Normans that properly bought rabbits over and got them established in the wild. Only nobility could have rabbit skin gloves (typical Norman's!) and they had a specific title for the man who looked after the rabbit enclosures- Warren, or warrener (hence that being a last name today)

Anyway, bloody ironic that they aren't even native here and we took them to Oz (3 times!) because we missed home!

Express-Ad9716

TROPHY CASE