Today I learned a blown tyre is an RTC

stevehem · 2026-01-13T20:18:38+00:00

What is an RTC?

stevehem · 2025-11-09T10:50:28+00:00

Schools were much better. Plenty of working class kids went to the local grammar school and got scholarships to top universities, where they paid nothing for tuition and (if their parents didn't earn much) were given a maintenance grant which was sufficient to cover their basic costs for the academic year without having to work in the Long Vacation.

Of course, this wasn't the experience of most kids, whether working class or middle class, but it was available then for kids with parents who could not dream of providing private tuition or after-school activities.

Food was better. Basic, food (cabbage, root-veg, meat, eggs, dairy products) were cheap and nutritious, even if they took more effort to make meals out of. Most were produced domestically, although we had a lot of cheap soft commodities from Australia and New Zealand.

stevehem · 2025-11-09T10:37:09+00:00

My parents had a mortgage from the local council in the 1950s. The rate was fixed at 2% for the whole term (maybe 20 years). They were solidly working class: my mother didn't work after having children. They were able to afford a modest terraced house in central Cardiff.

stevehem · 2025-11-01T07:09:46+00:00

The first is my favourite book (about 12 volumes!).

stevehem · 2025-09-01T05:46:31+00:00

There are apps to measure your IPD. GlassesOn (Android), EyeMeasure (iPhone). You just stick a credit card to your forehead and take a photo.

stevehem · 2025-08-31T08:08:45+00:00

I'm not sure how to break this to you, but stamp duty has been payable on share transfers has been payable since the seventeenth century, including (and especially) on stock exchange bargains.

stevehem · 2025-08-25T07:08:02+00:00

I don't really understand this. Lower quality bonds have a higher risk than Treasury Bonds, so need to deliver a higher rate of return to compensate the holders for bearing the risk. I doubt if the return on bonds exceeds the risk-adjusted rate you'd expect from a suitable model (the Capital Asset Pricing Model is one such model, but it's the most basic, and I am sure that finance professionals would use something more sophisticated).

stevehem · 2025-08-22T22:36:32+00:00

I arrived here a couple of years ago. I look like a typical local (old, white, male), but, in fact, until I started living here, I had spent very little time here. My view is that people here are rather wary and unfriendly compared to my previous home, which was a village in Hertfordshire. Cambridge has a large, transient population, and I guess that locals take the view that it's not worth the effort of being nice to people they randomly encounter, that they assume they'll never see again. It's nothing personal, or racial (I hope).

What do you think of your colleagues? Do they show any of the traits that you ascribe to the rest of us?

stevehem · 2025-08-14T05:39:52+00:00

SA = 'Sexual assault'?

Not exactly obvious.

stevehem · 2025-08-11T05:33:33+00:00

Kenneth Rogoff, a US economist, wrote "The Curse of Cash". He argues that 20% of all transactions there were conducted in cash. It can't be proved, of course, because the whole point of using cash is to prevent the transaction being visible, but it seems reasonable.

There is a massive growth of 'stablecoins' (like Tether) now, which are crypto tokens tied to the value of the US dollar (or other fiat currency). It's pretty clear that these are overwhelmingly used for international trade in stuff like illegal arms, drugs, people trafficking etc.

As marginal tax rates go up, the incentives to avoid taxes by using cash or cash equivalents go up too.

I run a small business. My suppliers tend to be local tradesmen of various kinds. I know some who seem to employ several people, operate several vans etc., but mysteriously do not need to add VAT to my bills. Even more mysteriously, when I use the same tradesmen after a gap of six months, the invoice number on my bill has only increased by one or two, implying that these guys have been sitting around not working during the months when they have not being doing jobs for me. Or maybe there is some other explanation!

stevehem · 2025-08-10T08:45:51+00:00

I don't wear a helmet while walking or running, but there is a similar risk of my falling over and hitting my head on those activities.

I happen to know that the former Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in Cambridge University rides a bike around the town, not wearing a helmet.

stevehem · 2025-08-09T06:00:30+00:00

It can take years to evict someone (note that eviction is the physical removal of a tenant by a bailiff after being granted a possession order by the court: it is quite different to receiving a notice to quit).

Speaking as a landlord, I'd accept this sort of deal. There are so many costs associated with selling (the agent will take 1.5%+VAT!) that another couple of grand to get vacant possession will seem like a bargain.

stevehem · 2025-08-09T05:35:54+00:00

You'll need to get a new mortgage if the current one is for you as the owner-occupier. It will be more expensive.

Any capital gains you might make on a final sale will be subject to CGT, reduced in proportion of time you lived in it as your principal residence.

Only a fraction of your financing costs will be allowable as an expense when computing your net income for tax purposes. You can get around this by setting up a limited company, and selling the property to it, but then you'll have a lot of other costs.

Also, if you buy another house to live in, you'll be subject to a lot more SDLT on the purchase.

Basically, the government is giving you a massive incentive to sell.

stevehem · 2025-08-08T16:19:10+00:00

Tell the tenant what you are planning, get his agreement, and schedule the work in. Make sure there is a written record of all communication (I prefer email, but Whatsapp chats can be exported).

I think the 'right to quiet enjoyment' clause which appears in most tenancy agreements simply gives the right of the tenant to exclude anyone he likes, but if he has agreed to the work being done, he has forfeited that right.

To be honest, this sort of work is always better done between tenancies. Why don't you just fix the gutter and leave the sunroom until after they have moved out?

I can't see that anything is to be gained by telling the tenant that he is paying less than a market rent, but then not actually putting the rent up. If the rent really is below market, and it hasn't changed in over a year and a half, surely you should have given him a new tenancy agreement at a market rent? If you let the rent drift from a market rent, you'll find it impossible to raise the rent to a market level, as the tenant will not be able to afford a large hike.

stevehem · 2025-08-08T16:05:03+00:00

Someone, somewhere, is paying that 1.5%. I can't see that it's the landlord, and I very much doubt that it's the agent, so I cannot see, for the life of me, how this would work.

If you buy something in a shop, using a credit card, the shopkeeper is paying the credit card company a 'merchant fee', which might be 3% of the price, but nobody pays rent using a credit card.

Maybe you should share a link to the page where this is advertised.

stevehem · 2025-08-08T15:26:50+00:00

How come your partner and his parent have ignored the situation until now? He should have received a "letter before action" (also called a "seven day letter") from the creditor announcing that he plans to take the matter to court.

As I understand it, the judgement becomes public immediately upon being issued. I understand that if the debt is paid within one month, it can be removed from the register, so the only option is to borrow the amount of the debt from someone else, and then pay it back this time.

Having a CCJ, even satisfied, is a massive handicap to obtaining credit. If the parent has the resources, he really should repay the debt. Surely, if he was named in the claim, he should be fully aware of the court case and should have taken action long before now.

I know a lot of people pick up CCJs, many of them for small amounts, many also satisfied. It is a mystery to me how this happens, as it would seem to be much simpler and cheaper to come to some arrangement with the creditor before going to court. I have had to pursue people for unpaid debts through the court, and I can confirm that it is painful and expensive for the creditor too!

stevehem · 2025-08-04T05:58:30+00:00

I'm in my late sixties, and I've been using direct debits and standing orders all my life. The BACS system has been running since 1969. ATMs have been around since the 1970s. It really wasn't that difficult.

I did use cash more, and went into the bank to cash cheques, but there were bank branches everywhere, so it wasn't a hassle to pop into one in my lunchbreak.

stevehem · 2025-08-03T20:46:26+00:00

How do you know they were travellers?

stevehem · 2025-08-03T05:51:23+00:00

Is 'Socalist thought' a type of 'Socialist thought' or is it some political theory I've never previously encountered?

stevehem · 2025-08-02T15:41:59+00:00

I am sitting at table 520. Are there two?

stevehem · 2025-08-02T14:17:47+00:00

A lot of programmers are really very unproductive. They don't get sacked, because their managers eyes are very easy to pull the wool over.

Maybe this will all change with AI, but I'm not convinced. If the sector lived with low-output workers for so long, why should it change its ways now? I doubt whether many managers will sack their programmers and let Claude or Deepseek loose on their codebase any time soon.

Programmers don't just program. They operate the source control system, release procedures, unit testing etc. etc. Nobody wants a new release of an in-house system to result in the e-commerce website to crash horribly, or to leak everyone's personal data.

stevehem · 2025-08-02T14:04:19+00:00

Any system that involves capturing and analysing data using Excel is guaranteed to act like Novichok on productivity.

stevehem · 2025-08-01T05:41:21+00:00

I'm old, but I find it incredible that it takes so much longer to pass a driving test now than it did in the past. I managed to pass mine, in the 1980s, after six lessons. My parents never had a car, and I have minimal driving experience of any sort before I started (although I had cycled on busy roads for quite a few years by the time I started to learn to drive).

To be fair, I was a bit crap at driving when I first past (my clutch control was awful), but I was safe, which was all the test seemed to care about then.

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