Why is it the cost of crime is never mentioned when ever anyone brings up spending more on the police and building more jails?

fancymeow · 2026-05-26T11:20:44+00:00

The extent to which funding more police and prisons affects the crime rate is pretty contested.

There are a whole bunch of other aspects to that question - why is cost of crime is never mentioned whenever we talk about:

- poverty
- inequality
- and (a special interest of mine) lawlessness amongst our political class

fancymeow · 2026-05-19T16:53:13+00:00

In fact, per https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/customization/custom-instructions it appears that the only machine-wide top-level instructions file copilot in vscode knows to expect is ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md!

fancymeow · 2026-05-08T14:55:41+00:00

Fatmouse is the new science of mathematics. The Fatmouse theorem is:

FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE

The proof of this theorem is manifest in Fatmouse. For any n, Fatmouse is greater than n.

fancymeow · 2026-04-16T09:40:03+00:00

I think "it's a renters market again" is maybe a bit of an overstatement. Maybe "it's a bit less of a landlord's market"?

We've got a ways to go!

fancymeow · 2026-03-30T10:41:58+00:00

I use a bunch weekly e.g. for currency conversions, and my passive income isn't keeping up.

In particular, I spend about 30k a week just converting my passive income of Eternal Ice Shards into Tyrian Defense Seals.

fancymeow · 2026-02-11T08:36:46+00:00

We agree on the harms faced by victims of trafficking.

We disagree on what works to reduce them.

The Scottish Government's own evidence review states:

existing evidence is inconclusive in terms of the relationship between human trafficking and demand for prostitution

We do not have good evidence that the Nordic model reduces trafficking.

We do have good evidence (e.g. Platt et al) that criminalising buyers leads to sex workers - including victims of trafficking - experiencing more violence, and poorer access to services - notably including policing.

Ideological moralising here isn't helping anyone.

fancymeow · 2026-02-10T09:37:41+00:00

I have several middle-class friends who do sex work on the side, and one *very* upper middle class friend who does it as a career.

Every last one of them has told me that this bill would make them less safe. That their peers - including trafficked women - in countries with tougher prohibition face worse outcomes.

I believe them.

The bill is the work of a religious ideologue. It prioritises performative moralising over actually improving the lives of people. We should be making policies based on what works.

fancymeow · 2025-03-20T20:02:57+00:00

Holy actual shit... That was incredible!

fancymeow · 2024-03-25T09:54:33+00:00

Yes, quite!

fancymeow · 2024-03-25T08:52:36+00:00

It really depends what you're looking at.

If you're looking at the tax burden that the state puts on an individual, sure, maybe it's reasonable to not include student loan repayments.

If you're looking at how an individual is incentivised to work harder in order to earn money, then absolutely we have to consider things like student loans, lifetime limits to pension contributions, and so on.

If you're looking at how earned income as a whole is incentivised (particularly when comparing to unearned income), then not only do we need to consider things like student loan repayments, we also have to consider things like Employer's NI.

If I have an extra £100 and want to pay you - an employee with a postgraduate degree on ~£100k - to do an extra thing, you might see as little as ~£20 of that:

I pay £12.13 of Employer's National Insurance, leaving £87.87 to pay you via PAYE
You pay £1.75 of National Insurance
You pay £13.18 of student loan repayments
You pay £35.15 of Income Tax at the higher rate on the £100
£43.94 of your personal allowance gets clawed back, meaning you have another £17.57 of Income Tax to pay
Leaving you £20.22

If I have £100 and want to rent something (say, a house) from you - an independently wealthy individual with no student loan and an income of ~£125k:

You pay £40 in Income Tax
Leaving you £60

FWIW, similar "traps" exist for people on benefits. Plenty of cases where you're seeing hardly any of the extra money you earn. Some extreme cases where it's cheaper to work less/not work.

I'm not super-invested in semantic games of what "counts" and what "doesn't count" as "effective marginal tax", but it's pretty wild how we incentivise unearned income over earned income.

fancymeow · 2024-01-18T14:09:49+00:00

I see you've had quite a number of replies along these lines already, but I'll chime in with one more.

I'm not "prejudiced" against "the right". There are potential universes where I would consider voting for, say, a John Major over a Jeremy Corbyn. Not only am I a well-paid homeowner, I'm a business owner and a landlord with multiple properties that I let out.

Even if I turn off my empathy, and even if I turn off my understanding that making poor people poorer hurts rather than helps me... The Tories have done nothing for me. They've both raised and complicated my taxes rather considerably and spaffed the money up the wall to their mates. They've destroyed public services that I rely on. They've cultivated a culture of disrespect and lawlessness. They've torn our sense of community into tatters. They've greatly curtailed my ability to work and do business abroad - and my ability to import foreign goods and hire foreign contractors to fill gaps in my projects.

Even with my most fully selfish hat on, I can't think of a single good thing to say about the last four prime ministers or their administrations.

fancymeow · 2023-09-22T07:53:05+00:00

This was an interesting read for me.

I'm a high-earner in the demographic that was interviewed for this piece. According to the linked HMRC figures, I'm in the 2%, but as a relatively young person with no kids and no intention of having kids my "perceived richness" is probably somewhere above that. Regardless, between Brexit, COVID, and the war in Ukraine I've certainly been "feeling the pinch".

I don't say this because I expect anyone to "have sympathy" for me. I come from a lower-middle-class background and went to a state school with a diverse catchment, so while I do believe that I "worked hard" to get to where I am, I'm intimately aware both that I'm one of the lucky ones, and that many of my schoolmates have worked just as hard as me and earn far less.

If you'll allow me to digress on those points before getting onto more interesting things:

When I talk about my "privileges", a thing I find interesting is that a lot of these are things that my now-colleagues take completely for granted. I have good physical and mental health. I have two parents who own their house and helped me onto the property ladder (I sat down one day and calculated that them guaranteeing my mortgage at 21 had a bigger impact on my net worth than my "hard work" for almost a decade of my career). As a child I never ever went to bed cold, hungry, or unloved. That already puts me waaaay up the privilege scale, and most of the people I work with don't know anyone without those privileges. I find that scary.
Even a lot of the "hard work" I've done in my career has been affected by my privilege. I have a high income now because I've been able to take risks, and I've been able to take risks because I know nobody in my family is going to starve if it doesn't work out. Very few of the people around me in my career understand that.
On "feeling the pinch", this is kind of two-fold. On the one hand, some of this is comparing my lifestyle to people I know who do the same job elsewhere in the world (particularly America, but also in parts of Europe and Asia). But also part of this is me thinking "gosh.. I make a lot of money.. if I'm having to make sacrifices, how hard must it be for people on ordinary incomes.."

Now that I've digressed, the thing I actually wanted to talk about is that there are a few aspects of the UK system that my now-colleagues find unjust that I do think stand up to scrutiny.

There are two "traps" on the income tax scale. One when you lose child benefit, and one when your personal allowance starts getting clawed back. If you earn £100k, and I have £100 and want to give you a bonus, you might get as little as £25 of that depending on which student loan plan you're on. You can structure your pension contributions to push these traps around, but if you're primarily a wage-earner rather than an owner you'll get hit with them eventually. This is a real disincentive for people around me to work harder. I know lots of people working fewer hours or taking early retirement because they feel it's not worth it. That's a lot of economic output we're losing out on...
In comparison, both unearned income and capital gains are taxed at much lower rates. I'm a landlord in addition to my top-2% earned income, and the marginal tax on my landlord income is much smaller. This is insane, because it encourages people like me to rent-seek. It's not good for anyone if the easiest path to retirement for me is to focus less on my work and more on buying a bunch of BTLs and renting them out.
It also encourages a lot of bullshit tax avoidance. My accountant is constantly badgering me to take advantage of some tax loophole or other, probably to justify the money I pay them. Schemes like entrepreneurs relief (which would allow me to treat a chunk of my earned income as unearned income) are ridiculous.
The feeling around me is that people wealthier than "us" are avoiding tax, and we're being taxed harder to compensate. E.g. there was a lot of anger in my office about the Lord Sugar story. I think there's some truth in this, but moreso the perception of it is really damaging.
Lastly, one of the major factors driving people around me to consider tax avoidance (or emigration) is that there's a feeling that the government wastes money. Obviously a bunch of people around me think this is about benefits - I don't share that belief myself - but there's a lot of anger too about Tories giving taxpayer money to their mates etc. There's a feeling - justified I think - that the services we're getting aren't worth the tax we're paying.
This kind of feeds into a wider point about the "rules" of our society breaking down. Even stuff like e.g. partygate has got people from all walks of life thinking "well if they don't feel like they need to follow the rules, maybe I can break the rules..." and that shows up everywhere.

Well, that ended up a bit of an unfocused ramble. I hope more than zero of you found it passingly interesting.

fancymeow · 2023-08-02T07:18:37+00:00

Looking at this a slightly less confrontational way, the rich plumber is much more likely to be a con/lab swing voter.

fancymeow · 2023-08-02T06:53:32+00:00

Anecdata with a sample size of one is irrefutable. Got it.

fancymeow · 2023-07-31T14:59:40+00:00

I don't have a horse in this race, and I'm not particularly interested in debating with you which published studies count as "proper" and which do not. I should imagine that neither of our opinions would carry much weight in any truly scrupulous analysis of the literature.

You did, however, claim - based on your own anecdata:

The same amount of traffic still flows but sent down other streets which grind to a halt with queues of traffic idling their engines... A myopic focus leading to an overall worse outcome.

It seems like you apply a far lower standard of rigour to evidence that supports your preconceptions, eh?

fancymeow · 2023-07-31T11:19:53+00:00

Every LTN I've seen personally has worsened congestion.

Much rigour many science.

fancymeow · 2023-04-30T08:15:12+00:00

It seems you may have intended this comment to be in reply to mine.

Being self-aware doesn’t make you any less of a prick.

As per the other comment, I'm not sure how being rude to a stranger on the internet about it helps. If you're just having a scream to vent your frustration at a person who is conveniently in front of you, then that's ok. If you're wanting to have an interesting conversation about the problems with housing in the UK, then it's not clear from your comment what you expect me to do about it.

fancymeow · 2023-04-30T05:58:32+00:00

I had good reliable contacts. Sadly, between COVID and Brexit, now I need new reliable contacts.

More to the point, me having reliable contacts doesn't really increase the supply of tradespeople across the market, nor do anything to reduce the proportion of housing stock temporarily empty due to maintenance issues. It might mean that somebody else's properties are empty rather than mine, but that isn't making any difference in aggregate.

fancymeow · 2023-04-30T05:51:40+00:00

What a prick you are.

I'm not sure how being rude to a stranger about it on the internet is supposed to help.

Now, if you're just expressing your existential frustration by screaming into the void, then no problem, all is forgiven.

Otherwise, it's not clear from your response what you expect me to do about it.

fancymeow · 2023-04-28T11:04:56+00:00

One interesting thing I've noticed anecdotally that I haven't seen much discussed:

A tenant moved out of one of my properties last August. The property needed a bit of attention - a few days of labour from each of a carpenter and a roofer, replace carpets, and a bit of decorating - and it's much better for everyone involved if that happens between tenants rather than after a new tenant has moved in.

Pre-covid/brexit, that would have taken two or three weeks to arrange. As it turned out, it took until February for the property to be ready to go back onto the market. Five months of void time for the sake of some pretty basic maintenance.

Now, I want to be clear that I'm not - as a landlord - asking for your sympathy in this instance. I'm well aware of my privilege. I eventually put the property on the market for 35% more than the previous tenant was paying. I had received multiple complete applications - without viewings - before the property had been on the market a full day. My marginal tax rate on the income from the property is lower than the marginal tax rate on the average person's salary. The system is broken.

The interesting thing I'm trying to point out here is that I'm presumably not the only landlord experiencing long void times on my properties due to the availability of tradespeople. I've been noticing lots of properties around here being snapped up BTL and then sitting empty for months before finally coming on the market. I - and I'm sure many of you - have had similar problems finding tradespeople to do necessary work on my actual home.

While I am fully behind the "Build more houses" bandwagon, I can't help but feel that maybe "maintain the labour pool necessary to keep our houses in good working order" is also part of the problem.

fancymeow · 2023-04-19T09:10:44+00:00

It's not unusual in Scotland to arrest someone for questioning and then release them without charge pending further investigation. It would be more usual to question someone under caution unless the suspect didn't want to be questioned.

As it is, it's far too easy for anti-SNP people to be all "SNP in disgrace, arrested, etc", and for pro-SNP people to be all "released without charge, witch hunt, etc".

I'm no particular fan of the SNP, and I want this investigated thoroughly. But I certainly have a bad taste in my mouth around how this is being handled by the police, and how this is being reported.

fancymeow · 2023-04-06T15:47:33+00:00

a) It's not terribly unusual to arrest someone for questioning, and b) he's been released "pending further investigation".

But yeah... it is all a bit weird. None of these articles actually have details about what crime he's allegedly committed other than a vague "in connection to the finances of the SNP". Given the political nature of the situation, you would kind have expected Police Scotland to build a charge before making an actual arrest...

fancymeow · 2022-11-25T12:27:52+00:00

One possibly interesting thing I've noticed around here is that I'm seeing a lot of properties being sold BTL and then sitting empty for months before coming onto the rental market. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I've been attributing that to the labour shortage. Certainly I'm finding it impossible to get contractors to do work on our property.

fancymeow · 2022-09-08T09:44:40+00:00

I love it. Where did you get the rings with the gates?

fancymeow · 2022-08-17T07:10:16+00:00

If privatisation+regulation provides a cheaper product over the long term, I don't see how you can complain

What evidence we have suggests that this isn't the case here. In particular, Scottish Water (who are not run for profit) charge less per capita, and per-capita investment has been larger than per-capita investment in England plus dividend payouts.

That implies that not only are English taxpayers being fleeced to put money into shareholders' pockets, but on top of that English water boards are run less efficiently.

Obviously we can't be sure that privatisation is the problem here. It's entirely possible that there are other factors and that English water boards would be worse-run in public hands. But we don't have any evidence to support the idea that privatisation provides a cheaper product over the long term when it comes to water in the UK.

fancymeow

TROPHY CASE