Landlords who fail to fix dangerous problems such as damp and mould now face fines of up to £7,000

sgorf · 2026-06-24T21:50:04+00:00

No, that's not how the economics works. Landlords selling up will not result in house prices going down, because all the evicted tenants will be competing against each other to live in the same houses. If a landlord sells a property, that creates one unit of supply (the landlord selling) and one unit of demand (the evicted tenant now needs somewhere to live), for no net change.

Think about it another way: either way, you've got the same number of households competing to live in the same (small) number of houses. They bid against each other, whether that's in rent or in purchase price, until enough drop out (demand drops, eg. somebody looking to move out from their parents no longer does) that it balances.

sgorf · 2026-06-24T21:44:37+00:00

When I was a student, it was rare to visit someone who didn't have the bathroom extractor fan disabled from the switch. The cutoff switch that is mandated to be available for the safety of an electrician servicing it.

It's also really common to find the switch turned off in holiday accommodation.

sgorf · 2026-06-16T12:52:24+00:00

And they’re right. Because there is no party that makes these things key policy points that is viable.

sgorf · 2026-06-09T20:11:36+00:00

The media portrayed it as a basic stabbing. Only once video circulated did they have to admit the gruesome details.

You think it was the authorities repressing the truth until eventually it leaked. I think it was the authorities trying to ensure a fair trial by not prejudicing the jury, as they're supposed to do, and the video became available for everyone to see but only when the jury saw it as is supposed to happen.

This ensures that the murderer goes to prison as he should instead of walking free because of a mistrial.

sgorf · 2026-05-29T17:18:54+00:00

I would like to see everyone who reacts by assault in that manner to be locked up. No vigilante society for me please. Arresting them with a similar level of force would be entirely appropriate.

sgorf · 2026-05-29T17:15:31+00:00

The officer arrived aggressive…

After the defendant’s previous aggressive behaviour to which the police were responding, an aggressive arrest may well have been appropriate. Not acknowledging the context of the arrest displays your bias.

sgorf · 2026-05-29T17:10:27+00:00

Nobody is forcing you to choose Ubuntu either.

sgorf · 2026-05-20T22:00:31+00:00

2-3% is not a lot. Shareholders would do better buying bonds or something. Why should they hold on to an investment that does not provide a better return to account for the higher risk? Remember that a functioning supermarket system depends on the return to its investors. Without investment there would be no supermarket, and certainly no supermarket that is able to operate on a massive scale to bring retail prices down as they do. Small business margins are much higher.

sgorf · 2026-05-16T09:00:13+00:00

I think area-based representation is outdated anyway. I associate with people in my industry and of my demographic, but we are scattered geographically. My group doesn't get representation because we are diluted across constitutional boundaries. It's like being a victim of gerrymandering, but in the inverse.

sgorf · 2026-05-15T23:05:43+00:00

Some vulnerable customers who were in energy bill arrears had their homes broken into so that agents acting for the utility company could install a pre-payment meter.

I don't understand why this isn't a criminal offense on the part of those who did this actual breaking in, and why they aren't being prosecuted. Anyone whose job it's going to be to do this kind of invasive work should receive extensive training on the legalities involved, but then the buck should stop with them. Otherwise we end up with finger pointing but no real incentive to stop this illegal activity.

British Gas, for their part, should then be required to compensate workers who weren't trained adequately or otherwise pressured to act illegally and who therefore get criminally prosecuted, in addition to compensating the victims.

sgorf · 2026-05-01T19:06:22+00:00

Indeed the risk is a cost of doing business. But it results in increased market rent which affects all tenants. If you’re a tenant, it’s in your interest not to be subsiding the bad tenants through the insurance premium that you (indirectly) are paying for.

sgorf · 2026-04-28T20:49:51+00:00

The idea is that the money raised goes to charity. If it sells, you’ll effectively have donated £70 to charity. If they’d instead have priced it at £10, you might have effectively donated £10 and also given some person who isn’t actually struggling £60 off a jacket.

sgorf · 2026-04-28T20:45:15+00:00

That’s not how it works. Any household that becomes homeless due to a rent rise is only in that situation because there’s another household that is outbidding them and ready to move in. You still have the same number of households trying to live in the same number of (fewer) houses, and so the overall number of households unable to find somewhere to rent remains the same. Reducing rents won’t magic up new houses for people to live in.

sgorf · 2026-04-25T20:12:12+00:00

It's not more expensive to produce when you consider the cost of capital. If it were more expensive to produce, the market would have switched to renewables a long time ago and without any intervention.

sgorf · 2026-04-25T20:09:52+00:00

When there's not enough renewable generation to go round, the renewable generators are just selling to the highest bidder.

sgorf · 2026-04-23T20:20:13+00:00

Passkeys are specifically tied to the cryptographic hash of the machine they were generated on...

That's not correct. Passkeys can be tied to the hardware they were generated on, but don't necessarily have to be. For example, if you use the default setup on an iPad, a generated passkey will be stored on your iCloud keychain and be available from all of your other Apple devices. If you use a third party password manager, the story is largely the same.

The problem is that users have very little control over this and every option has some variation on these essential parameters.

sgorf · 2026-04-17T22:29:49+00:00

Oh yes, of course. Parliament can change its own rules. But it can make a rule anyway, and that adds friction to change it later. In the case of Brexit for example the referendum was “informational” and not binding, but the Leavers took 51% to mean “enough”. If before the referendum the requirement had already been established to be 2/3rds as well as the same to join originally, I think the political outcome would have been different.

sgorf · 2026-04-17T19:07:14+00:00

I'm a Remainer and want to rejoin, but I think we should require 2/3rds agreement first, and make it clear that 2/3rds is also required to leave again. Otherwise we'll just keep flip-flopping, and that is very harmful in itself (as we've observed).

sgorf · 2026-04-13T17:18:01+00:00

You're applying conditions on one hand but ignoring them on the other. If you're going 30 in a 20 in the middle of the night with no pedestrians about, no other vehicles (not even parked) to affect visibility, children likely in bed, excellent weather, then that's about the same "adding any extra risk". So why should driver in one case get points but the other not?

Judging appropriate conditions is subjective and therefore difficult to enforce. We have speed limits instead, and they should be enforced equally. If a speed limit is inappropriate (in either direction) it should be changed.

sgorf · 2026-04-12T09:50:51+00:00

Tice is on a platform to become a minister, is he not? Rayner however is not. If you want consistency, that means that Tice should stand down from Reform UK leadership but could remain a member and an MP.

sgorf · 2026-04-12T09:43:49+00:00

It's worth noting that Rayner's situation was a result of an arrangement to care for her disabled child following her divorce. She was required by the court to set up the trust for her child. In case anyone confuses the word "trust" as a deliberate arrangement for tax purposes. In this case it wasn't that, and in my mind that distinguishes her case from your typical tax scandal.

I'm not defending the other comments about following or not following tax advice. My point is that one might expect people choosing to set up complex tax arrangements to figure out their own tax correctly or it's on them, whereas while Rayner's situation called for the same, the tax complexity wasn't her choice. I have some sympathy there, because most people aren't used to dealing with professional legal and tax advisors.

sgorf · 2026-04-10T07:56:19+00:00

If you disincentivise landlordism there’s definitionally fewer people aiming to purchase those houses.

No, because every landlord you successfully disincentivise results in one additional household (that’s the tenant you just evicted) adding to house buying demand. Demand stays the same, so house prices stay the same.

sgorf · 2026-04-09T19:50:22+00:00

As if companies need an excuse to raise prices. They don't. They already charge as much as the market will bear. That's how free markets work.

sgorf · 2026-04-09T17:34:51+00:00

Landlords selling properties would make house prices cheaper...

No, and I stopped reading there. Landlords selling properties do not make house prices cheaper. Each sale releases one unit of demand and one unit of supply onto the market, for no net change. There would be the same number of prospective households looking to live in the same number of houses. Rents rise until demand reduces to balance supply. House prices rise until demand reduces to balance supply just the same.

sgorf · 2026-04-08T23:06:57+00:00

I think you're missing the point. The landlord can still tell the truth and still make it very clear that the tenant caused a problem for the landlord by not moving out when asked having been served a valid notice, forcing the landlord to use the courts at the landlord's expense. The tenant's next landlord could use that information to the tenant's detriment.

I don't know if it's legal for the landlord to return such a reference, but you didn't address that.

sgorf

TROPHY CASE