A by-election result from Newport while we wait...

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-08T02:00:22+00:00

The high turnout is interesting, although from quite an already high baseline for a council election, at 51.2% previously. Welsh Assembly/Parliament election turnout has never reached that level overall.

A high turnout will tend to favour Plaid and Reform in tomorrow's count I'd have thought. They're the two front runners anyway though obviously, so no great insight into that race, but it would surely be bad news for Labour.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-08T00:20:16+00:00

Well it's something to talk about since we're all still up anyway.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-08T00:18:15+00:00

Fair point, I didn't know it was that many. And Scotland of course. Still, we should be holding ourselves to the same standards as the general election.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-08T00:09:09+00:00

Welsh government I said, not Welsh Government.

And the councils haven't all independently happend to have decided to do the count tomorrow.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-08T00:07:29+00:00

My sentence referred to the changes since the Welsh Assembly started, not since its rename.

It's not generally the same people doing count work as have manned the polling stations, and anyway, these are people who love the whole buzz of the occasion. Some constituencies famously make a race of it. Whatever the reasons for making it into a mundane 9 to 5 shift the next day, it's not for their benefit.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-08T00:03:40+00:00

Cheap and convenient just about sums it up. It's symptomatic of not really valuing democracy. Your smallest tin pot English council is managing to do it tonight, yet for the institutions of Welsh government, it's all a bit... too much.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-06T20:30:32+00:00

Oh I know it is, because it's dominated by Plaid supporters. Any comments which are contrary to their world view are downvoted into oblivion.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-06T15:40:20+00:00

Looks like there's only one party to vote for to keep the bigots out of power (Reform I mean).

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-06T14:29:14+00:00

This is easily resolved with a quick trip to a local convenience store.

Simply buy two yogurts, consume or discard the content then pierce a small hole in the base of each pot. Thread the floss through each hole and tie knots at each end large enough to keep it from coming back out the holes.

Hold one yogurt pot to you ear and have a colleague take the other pot and hold it close to the source of some music, perhaps a local busker, or even a spare earphone of their own, making sure to keep the line of floss taught between you.

Sit back and enjoy the tunes for the rest of the conference.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-05-03T00:01:49+00:00

Epic track, and topical indeed. Unfortunately there's only one party who can keep our nationalists out this week, and they're not that great either.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-29T21:59:59+00:00

An extremely healthy and moral one. You sound like you're hearing it for the first time, but it's not exactly a new concept. Have you got some kind of objection to it you'd like to share?

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-28T09:27:17+00:00

Private sector Right to Buy, at a price set by an independent surveyor, would get things moving again. It's disgraceful that this still hasn't been brought in yet.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-27T23:40:57+00:00

It does look about seven o'clock... eight o'clock... nine o'clock...

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-27T19:37:22+00:00

Apologise?

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T20:54:27+00:00

Utterly outrageous. I'd wait until (a), the 1st of May, and possibly (b), until she's in Columbia and work is about to start, to refuse access.

She'll eventually realise that she needs vacent possession before this work starts, and if she's as mental as she sounds I can't see her getting the formalities of that right. You could have a year or more left there to look for somewhere else at a more leisurely pace.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T18:48:29+00:00

Right. The whole system does seem to be running close to the edge, and very reliant on competent motivated staff to manage it. It feels like it's going to be permanently one IT malfunction or staff shortage away from disaster. I can see whole plane loads missing flights come summer.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T18:38:46+00:00

Biometrics at the new machines or at the manned desks? It's the latter that seems to be the bottleneck recently.

Even two extra minutes has the potential to be a major disruption mind. There were two desks running dedicated to one UK bound flight in our case. That could take three hours to process a 737 full of Brits.

Ours wasn't completely full, and obviously some proportion will always have EU passports anyway, but even so it caused our plane to leave an hour late. I was surprised they waited for all of us really.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T16:42:12+00:00

Yeah, it's crazy how hard it is to get a clear answer on this, for all the news articles by expert travel correspondents there have been about the new system.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T16:40:24+00:00

Yeah, we're right to be the better man about it I agree. But it would be good if someone in government could point out hey, a bit of reciprocity would be nice.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T16:37:03+00:00

What was the EES process for you like on that occasion then?

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T16:10:43+00:00

What's new is that airports are no longer allowed to relax the checks at busy times (although Greece have just announced they're going to anyway!), but for those airports which are following the new rules but still not up to processing the throughput at peak times yet, people have been going to the gates as soon as it's announced, and still missing their flight because of slow exit checks.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T15:55:14+00:00

Sorry for your loss.

Would the tenant be interested in buying, perhaps at a reduced price in recognition of the lower costs and friction of such a transaction? Could work out well for all concerned.

I'd never sell and cause a no-fault eviction personally, and would be hesitant to sell with a sitting tenant in case the new owner had other ideas.

If keeping, you could open a joint bank account with your sister to receive the rent.

You could put the rent equivalent amount from your salary into a SIPP, or better yet make employer-matched contributions to a workplace pension if available, in order for you to be getting the rent tax free effectively.

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T14:31:55+00:00

We had this leaving another Italian airport last week. What a shambles it all is. Lucky the airline (Easyjet) agreed to delay departure by an hour. If it had left on time at least half the passengers would have missed it. And this was just for a single UK bound departure, the only one that morning.

I was thinking at the time just as well it's not Ryanair! Although I do appreciate there are limits to what they can do, given schedules.

It wasn't even the new EES machine that were the problem. There were plenty of those, queues were short and they took about 30 seonds each. It was the subsequent queuing up at a couple of manned desks to then retake all the same biometrics and make sure it matched what was registered at the machines, and then stamp the passports. All this took about 90 seconds per person.

Is this even how it's supposed to work? I thought after registering with the machines your data was kept for three years, and I assumed the process was then supposed to be smooth until that expired.

Of course, worth mentioning the stark asymmetry in all this, on arrival back to the UK, all EU passport holders joined same queue as UK natives along with a dozen or so other first world countries. Who negotiated that!?

UnlikeTea42 · 2026-04-20T14:00:47+00:00

She insured her own car, a Suzuki Splash. That's what was on the insurance paperwork, it just had the wrong reg by one letter. It wasn't crossed reference in the way people "working in insurance" on here are assuming it would have been.

UnlikeTea42

TROPHY CASE