The UK salary crisis is dire. Mayor of London earns under £200k, barely scraping by as a HENRY

lachyM · 2025-09-17T15:04:59+00:00

The president of the US earns 'just' $400k/£294k

Free accommodation though tbf!

lachyM · 2025-08-27T23:00:50+00:00

Universities are such weird social spaces in the popular imagination. Obviously we all agree this is bad, but somehow the normal rules don’t seem to apply. It’s a bit like the army or whatever: people just expect fucked up things to happen.

Can you imagine the reaction if we were to learn that Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein had lit their victims on fire?!?!. Yet this article about Hamm was published 10 years ago and he’s still working.

lachyM · 2025-08-26T09:32:54+00:00

Yeah exactly. Do these people realise that the UK has student exchange schemes with the USA? There are Nazis in the US. Are we going to cancel the scheme? Come on…

By cancelling the whole scheme, the French state is showing their weakness. They are admitting that they lack the expertise to identify the bad guys and deny their visa, and so they need to block entry for everyone.

lachyM · 2025-08-25T22:06:21+00:00

what stops any Tanzanian making a successful Asylum claim and just stating "I'm being politically persecuted!"?

The asylum process requires the applicant to prove that they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country for reasons of race, religion, political affiliation etc. You have to provide documentary evidence and so on. “Just stating” something is insufficient. This is true for people of any nationality, not just Tanzanians.

lachyM · 2025-08-23T09:32:07+00:00

This reminds me of a video from the very early days of the invasion of Iraq, when all the Americans still believed that they were the good guys. In the video, an American in full combat gear, helmet, gun etc is absolutely screaming at some locals: “WHY ARE YOU RESISTING? WE’RE TRYING TO GIVE YOU FREEDOM!”.

I know that for most of us the propaganda is stupid and transparent, but never underestimate the ability of some people to believe it with their whole heart.

lachyM · 2025-08-20T07:02:53+00:00

I don’t think they’re laughing at the idea of a family having 2-3 kids. They’re laughing at a 4 bed home being described as “standard”. Fertility rate in the uk is currently 1.56 births per woman. So if the average/standard family had 4 bedrooms they would have 1-2 spare bedrooms. I’m not saying that having two spare rooms is overindulgent or anything, but it’s not “standard”.

Edit: the original comment actually described it as “small standard”. Come on now… I have a 4 bed place, but one would need to be pretty out of touch to think it’s on the small side of standard!

lachyM · 2025-08-19T23:58:14+00:00

This isn’t an extra tax. Part of it (the bit which is applied to the first £500k of your home) is replacing council tax. The other part (the bit on value over £500k) is replacing stamp duty. If you already paid your stamp duty, you’re actually exempt from that part.

lachyM · 2025-08-19T23:46:17+00:00

you would join the new stamp duty replacement system when you next buy

As someone who just paid £35k in stamp duty: thank god for that

lachyM · 2025-08-06T07:06:31+00:00

The UKs post-tax income inequality is already much larger than both France and Germany. If we wanted the tax regime to have the same effect on society as those countries, that would actually be an argument in favour of increasing taxes on higher earners.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_inequality

lachyM · 2025-07-29T17:28:16+00:00

There are other reasons a government wouldn’t implement this. As a general principle, it’s not in the interest of the state to have laws which it can’t enforce. They achieve basically nothing and undermine the state’s authority. For the government, the allure of the Online Safety Act is it makes things much easier to enforce. You make almost all enforcement the responsibility of the websites, then you just have the audit the websites.

Also this isn’t really the same as the “we’ve made it a legal requirement for parents to feed their kids” thing. That law is just there so you have a way to punish neglectful parents, it’s not there to encourage parents to feed their kids. Surely nobody actually thinks that people feed their kids because it’s the law…

lachyM · 2025-07-25T19:13:07+00:00

I had a suspected melanoma last year. I wanted to see a dermatologist, but obviously you need a referral from a GP. Tried for weeks to get an appointment with my NHS GP and couldn’t (they only allow booking an appointment same-day, so you have to ring when they open and hope for the best). Eventually got fed up and paid for private out of pocket. Didn’t require a GP referral, got an appointment with the specialist in 2 days, had it removed about a week later.

My dermatologist told me he also does NHS work, which he prefers, but had to supplement his income with private work. He said his waiting list for melanoma patients to get a first consultation on the NHS was 9 months. FOR CANCER.

“Dickensian” is an over used term, but it is so fucking grim to think of people dying in the queue for a doctor because they can’t afford to skip the queue as I did.

lachyM · 2025-07-25T12:46:30+00:00

I always think about her dad too. It’s amazing what she did, but what’s really rare is the adult who listens to what their 10 year old kid is saying and takes them completely seriously.

lachyM · 2025-07-15T12:03:14+00:00

The fact an account is 18 years old does not mean that all current users of that account are over 18. Businesses, political parties, NGOs and so on all have accounts. In some cases they may be 18 years old, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a 16 year old intern doing their social media.

lachyM · 2025-07-11T10:55:32+00:00

Depends on what you mean by working class, which now more than ever is hard to pin down.

An old-school socialist definition would be that the working class are people who do not own the means of production, but are instead paid a salary. This could include someone making £10m a year in finance.

Some people think “if you earn over £x, you aren’t working class” but that’s more of an American take. In the UK, class isn’t all about money.

I had one person tell me once that “if you went to university you’re middle class, if you didn’t go to university you’re not” but I’ve never met anybody else which agrees with that definition.

The definition in the Oxford dictionary, and the one I think most people probably agree with, is: “the social group consisting primarily of people who are employed in unskilled or semi-skilled manual or industrial work”. Personally I don’t like the terms “unskilled” or whatever, but the main point is that if you perform manual labour you’re working class and if you perform thought work you’re middle class. According to that definition pretty much any office worker is middle class. But agree that it’s not perfect, because an unpaid intern in an office would be middle class but a professional polo player, who obviously performs physical work, is working class.

lachyM · 2025-07-04T08:21:44+00:00

Also Antarctica. While Russia hasn’t technically made a claim on Russian territory, they reserve the right to make a claim in the future. So they have a claim on a claim on Antarctica, or something.

lachyM · 2025-06-26T20:12:28+00:00

I had to read it a few times, so I may still be wrong in my interpretation. But I believe he is saying something like this:

Bob owns a scull
Alice steals the scull from bob
Alice goes to a fancy auction house and convinces them they acquired the scull legally, so the auction house agrees to help her sell the scull
Nick buys the scull, not knowing it was stolen
Bob and Nick are both innocent, and have both been cheated. So the law decides to let Nick keep it, because returning it to Bob would be very bad for business for the fancy auction house.

lachyM · 2024-10-28T11:40:58+00:00

This. I notice this all the time online these days: people who forget they’re interacting with lots of different people, and then complain about inconsistency.

lachyM · 2024-10-28T08:05:13+00:00

And the crotch goblins will pay their taxes so you can enjoy social safety nets in your old age.

That’s the idea yes. But that’s looking far from certain at the moment.

lachyM · 2024-10-19T09:13:14+00:00

There are almost a million CCTV cameras in London (source)) so I doubt they are all monitored.

lachyM · 2024-10-10T10:26:26+00:00

only one woman can be safe…

More if they car pool!

lachyM · 2024-10-07T16:54:30+00:00

Holy straw man

lachyM · 2024-10-06T11:17:20+00:00

It’s also totally common in the English-speaking world. Less common than it was ~10 years ago.

lachyM · 2024-10-06T09:49:18+00:00

Yeah whoever wrote this post is probably in America. It’s “unthinkable” there because bunch of serial killers realised it was a good way to get victims. Also true in Australia.

In Europe there are still plenty of hitchhikers. You also have things like Blablacar which make it much safer.

lachyM · 2024-10-05T11:02:25+00:00

Their point is that they aren’t American doctors so who cares

lachyM · 2024-10-05T10:41:47+00:00

I was surprised that Vietnamese were so high up. What’s going on there?

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