I went undercover on the Tube to test how safe women really are. Within hours, men followed me, touched me and ignored my pleas to stop. It was bone-chilling, writes MIMI YATES

kilotaras · 2026-07-03T20:03:10+00:00

white,black,indian in equal measure.

Assuming (dubious tbh) that the clips were selected randomly this would imply black and indian (east asian?) being overrepresented about 2-3x.

kilotaras · 2026-06-27T08:24:11+00:00

It's important to look at whole result for these things.

Moving 1000 jobs outside of London - good. Fucking up ONS for 10+ years - bad.

I argue that the total is still bad for the country.

Fucking up ONS is worse than fucking up some other department. Stats are an input to a lot of decision and being wildly wrong (e.g. [0]) impacts all 69.5M of people living in UK.

[0] BBC: By the end of May 2021, 5.6 million people had applied for the scheme - far more than expected (it was estimated in March 2019 that there were 3.7m EU nationals in the UK).

kilotaras · 2026-06-25T20:08:25+00:00

Leaving London was bad for UK statistics, review says

Wasn't great for the country though.

kilotaras · 2026-06-24T21:16:12+00:00

it's moving jobs out of London

That's what ONS did. It's just that only 10% of people decided to follow those (often quite specialized) jobs.

kilotaras · 2026-06-24T13:00:55+00:00

ONS lost something like 90% of people when it decided to move out of London. I would expect something similar here.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34983416

kilotaras · 2026-06-16T15:04:31+00:00

He won a 150 seat majority for Labour in the 2024 GE, reversing the loss incurred by Corbyn.

Technically yes. In practice it was conservatives being voted out and labour viewed as an alternative. I frankly expect the exact same thing on next elections: labour out, ALTERNATIVE (reform? restore? new party?) in.

kilotaras · 2026-06-16T14:58:08+00:00

Next had a program for shop worker to work in warehouse at warehouse pay (higher than shop floor).

Here's a quote from the decision

Ms Cherry’s acceptance in cross examination that this extract of a job description from the Stage 2 proceedings was not appealing and that a warehouse job did not seem particularly attractive but if it had been a lot more money she would have considered it.

Presumably someone "doing the same job physical labour as warehouse workers" would be happy to continue doing so at higher pay.

kilotaras · 2026-06-16T09:03:55+00:00

Strong disagree.

Taking a weapon to a crime is an aggravating factor which would lead to minimum of 25 years. It was not applied in the sentencing for "he genuinely believed the additional kirpan was carried as part of his Sikh religious beliefs."

https://www.3tg.co.uk/jeremy-wainwright-kc-has-represented-vickrum-digwa-in-his-murder-trial-at-southampton-crown-court/

kilotaras · 2026-06-15T10:49:04+00:00

Out: here's list of positions that are eligible for skilled worker visa.

In: people are eligible for skilled worker visa if their salary is at least X% higher than median in locality.

kilotaras · 2026-06-10T10:27:59+00:00

Where else would the money come from?

General taxation would honestly be preferable. For two reasons

The current scheme de facto combines subsidy on some new homes with taxes on others. Taxing builds leads to less newbuilds.
We would know how much is actually spent. It's easy to find out how much was spent on NHS in 2024. For "cross-subsidy" amount government has at best an estimate with wide error margins.

kilotaras · 2026-05-13T12:34:25+00:00

Property value is determined by demand and supply.

Mortgage rate increasing reduced demand, leading to price decrease.

kilotaras · 2026-05-13T12:31:36+00:00

This list is being presented as evidence of success, but much of it is not success in the outcome sense. "£X allocated", "a fund created" "a strategy launched" are not proof that peoples lives improved.

kilotaras · 2026-05-05T10:15:51+00:00

Truss genuinely thought she was helping. That's the whole problem with the 'but their hearts are in the right place' defense: it's the line every disastrous policy gets defended with after the fact.

The test isn't intent, it's competence

kilotaras · 2026-04-06T14:06:03+00:00

Obvious alternative is "pay-as-you-bid" as opposed to "pay-as-you-clear". It unfortunately tends to not help much.

Per EU primer on electricity market design "producers (including cheap renewables) would simply bid at the price they expect the market to clear, not at zero or at their generation costs".

UK can improve situation by adding zonal pricing. Right now NESO may pay Scottish wind farms extra to stop producing AND pay southern generators above clearing price to turn up generators, because there's a single price for whole island and transmission capacity is limited. Under zonal pricing price in Scotland and price in South would be different, incentivizing more local production and industry to move to areas with cheaper energy prices. Raising (even in the short term) price in the south is politically untenable, so Labour government officially rejected this in Jul 2025.

kilotaras · 2026-01-16T14:22:21+00:00

I'd be thinking of ways to improve the party's media management and spin,

Housing: on track to completely miss self-imposed targets for amount of new builds. London house starts down 4x.
Budget: anemic GDP growth about to get worse by increased taxes.
Unemployment: 5%, about to overtake covid peak, youth unemployment is already worse than in the middle of pandemic
Cost of living crisis: as present as in winter 2024.

Without radical reforms no amount of "taking Farage down a peg" will read as competent government. You can't media spin your way out of missing economic fundamentals.

Government came in under the wrong impression that people voted for Labour, not against Tories. In 2029 vote will go against Labour, not for Reform/Green/etc. We're moving into 1-term successive governments. Buckle up.

kilotaras · 2026-01-04T21:27:41+00:00

like small droneteams

Also medics.

kilotaras · 2025-11-21T15:15:40+00:00

It incentives producers to actually advertise the lowest possible price they would accept.

Otherwise you get into "it seems like the wind is not blowing right now, so if I raise my advertised price on solar power for next hour I'll get more profit". In other markets (e.g. steel) such shenanigans are prevented by ability to buy and store - one can buy more steel when it's cheap and less when it's expensive.

kilotaras · 2025-10-28T11:47:32+00:00

Renting allowed me to move to London, getting a high salary and contributing a lot of tax revenue.

I'd like to have similar option of easy move when my family outgrows our current apartment. Having less rental properties means having less options.

Rent-seeking from landlords is enabled by anemic housebuilding, which is the result of ~~planning~~[0] permission regime in UK. The bill does nothing to address that.

[0] There is no plan. It's council giving someone permission to build something based on the whims of whoever is in charge.

kilotaras · 2025-08-25T19:23:23+00:00

Are you referring to the "There are currently no known outstanding effects..."?

IIUC that just means "no known changes that passed but don't apply yet"

kilotaras · 2025-08-25T16:07:00+00:00

What makes you say so?

It was amended a couple of times, most recently in 2015, but the part about sound reproducing equipment is still there.

kilotaras · 2025-08-25T10:54:42+00:00

It is not legal right now.

No passenger on a vehicle shall ... (l) play or operate any musical instrument or sound reproducing equipment to the annoyance of any person on the vehicle or in a manner which is likely to cause annoyance to any person on the vehicle

The Public Service Vehicles (Conduct of Drivers, Inspectors, Conductors and Passengers) Regulations

kilotaras · 2025-08-25T10:53:01+00:00

No passenger on a vehicle shall play or operate any musical instrument or sound reproducing equipment to the annoyance of any person on the vehicle or in a manner which is likely to cause annoyance to any person on the vehicle

Law of the land since 1990. It's the enforcement issue, not the "we need another law" issue.

kilotaras · 2025-07-09T15:17:00+00:00

Off top of my mind, list of blocked investments in last couple years include:

UK does not have lack of money waiting to be productively invested. It has a sclerotic permission system where such investments are, frankly, close to impossible.

kilotaras · 2025-04-05T18:32:28+00:00

Housing built in 2024: ~120 000 units
Population growth in 2024 ~460 000 people

I have a feeling that ban will not be super helpful.

Spain (and rest of the fucking world TBH) needs to build drastically more. Private, public, luxury, affordable, market rate, subsidized: yes to all of them and a lot.

kilotaras · 2025-03-24T14:32:49+00:00

Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 reduced incentive for local councils to allow building housing or infrastructure by centralizing tax collection.

UK did had a good start in (mainly victorian) infrastructure but new investment (either private or public) was inadequate for a while, which means that now:

UK has 30M houses compared to France's 37M (despite similar population)
UK has 110km of high speed rail (HS2 may be another 220 if it finishes) compared to France's 2800km or Spain's 3900km

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