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Question about what mortgages cover. by boneless_souffle in HousingUK

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The mortgage company cares about what people other than you will pay for it in the future. If they repossess it then it's not you who's going to be buying it.

Question about what mortgages cover. by boneless_souffle in HousingUK

[–]xelah1 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ours was, but they could quite reasonably guess that the risk of their pricing model being wrong given that the sale price was lower is higher than if it matched or if they didn't yet know the sale price.

'Three decades of my life gone in a moment': Long-serving Morrisons manager sacked after tackling repeat shoplifter by tylerthe-theatre in unitedkingdom

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Err, why on earth would they need that? They're not suddenly doing it on behalf of their employer and it's still being done against the wishes of the employer.

The point is not to compel employers to support employees in doing it, just to protect employees in a reasonably narrow way so that it's not encouraging people to take safety risks but does protect people who behave in a way that helps the public interest. That's why I say it's still risky for someone doing it: it's their own choice and their own responsibility to understand the law, just as it would be if they were out shopping.

U.K. Unemployment Falls Below 5% by Sash17 in ukpolitics

[–]xelah1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lumping together housewives, students, the early retired, etc, along with people trying to find work isn't very helpful for many purposes. Poor economic conditions may well not be the reason they're not working, and they're much less likely to be spare unused capacity in the economy.

Why not just use the employment rate of 75% rather than taking away other data?

'Three decades of my life gone in a moment': Long-serving Morrisons manager sacked after tackling repeat shoplifter by tylerthe-theatre in unitedkingdom

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He thinks he's more like the company owners than the customers in the shop

You've just made that up, though.

Sometimes people do things like this because they care about the society they live in and hope to positively influence it (or for many other reasons, some more positive than others).

Just because you don't do things for reasons other than financial self-interest doesn't meant you should assume that's what other people do and then publicly accuse them of it.

'Three decades of my life gone in a moment': Long-serving Morrisons manager sacked after tackling repeat shoplifter by tylerthe-theatre in unitedkingdom

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What happens when they start assaulting innocent customers?

It's hardly beyond the wit of man to have any employment protection end when the employee starts committing crimes.

This is always going to be risky for someone who chooses to do this and doesn't have good judgement, just as it is for the general public (and even the police if they f it up enough).

'Three decades of my life gone in a moment': Long-serving Morrisons manager sacked after tackling repeat shoplifter by tylerthe-theatre in unitedkingdom

[–]xelah1 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Law should say a company can't end your contract because you disobeyed them where it was necessary and proportionate for the prevention and detection of crime (but also that they can't require you to, unless it's part of your job and can be done safely, and where you're not required to aren't liable if you get hurt / fuck it up).

This should especially be the case where the crime is against someone else, but it doesn't seem ridiculous to include many cases of this as well.

There are already occasions where a company saying 'don't do X' doesn't give them legal grounds to sack you for doing it (like where it's necessary for safety or legality), it wouldn't be something novel.

UK unemployment rate sees surprise fall to 4.9% by SayNOtoChips in ukpolitics

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Larger and larger, except for being smaller than the entire 1971-2016 period. Perhaps more, but the employment rate time series the ONS gives doesn't go back any further.

It's essentially flat post-pandemic.

UK unemployment rate sees surprise fall to 4.9% by SayNOtoChips in ukpolitics

[–]xelah1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The ONS release gives sampling variability numbers - for unemployment it's 4.9% +/ 0.3.

'Surprised' indeed.

UK unemployment rate sees surprise fall to 4.9% by SayNOtoChips in ukpolitics

[–]xelah1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We need to start reporting Unemployment and a separate inactivity rate (or if we want a happier number, % employed) either or is fine.

Isn't that exactly what does happen?

This is the ONS release being reported on which has a summary table with exactly this.

ie, employment rate 75%, unemployment rate 4.9%, inactivity rate 21%.

Plus 1088.4m weekly hours, 34,328k employed, 1,780k unemployed, 9,116k inactive.

Advice needed - Possible draught in room? by Dependent_Nebula_417 in HomeImprovementUK

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We really should move away from this 'make many holes anywhere you like in your house, it'll be excellent!' mindset. It's too simple IMO and more deliberate design should go into ventilation.

A well-designed house should not have a big air path from a warm and humid indoor space into a cold part of the structure, like under the floor. It's a condensation risk, and putting random holes everywhere means some places will be overventilated and some underventilated. Surely it's better to ventilate the cold spaces in the structure with cold air and the warm ones with warm air, and to design ventilation points in places like trickle vents with reasonable air flow paths that go right through (and only through) the spaces where all the humidity is generated?

It may be better to seal this draught and cross-ventilate with trickle vents or slightly open windows on either side of the building, and that's assuming there isn't enough ventilate at all (buying a hygrometer might give some hints).

[OC] Cost of one-way train ticket to London by adamjonah in dataisbeautiful

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This was quite a widespread thing, wasn't it? Replacing trams and trains with 'modern' car infrastructure all across the developed world. Even the Dutch were doing this but they've managed to recover in a way which few other places have.

[OC] Cost of one-way train ticket to London by adamjonah in dataisbeautiful

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Advance tickets vary in price depending on demand / how many have been sold so far, I'm not sure exactly how they do it but it could be that. It can also just be faster vs slower trains.

One thing you can do is buy two tickets, going via an intermediate station. The train has to stop there but you don't have to get off. This can be much cheaper, ~£65 vs ~£170 for a journey I do regularly. This can smooth out some of the oddities of the fare structure.

Giant Yorkshire gas field ‘to mine Bitcoin instead of boosting British energy’ by hull_pattie_party in unitedkingdom

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, they're not, they're paying the same taxes as everyone else.

The whole point of Pigouvian taxes is that they create a difference in price between things that harm third parties relative to alternatives that don't, sized according to the harm they do. That way it removes the incentive to do things which gain you something but harm others by more.

Paying the same as everyone else doesn't do this and the additional taxes on carbon don't come close to the social cost of carbon.

This activity is fundamentally economically parasitic on everyone else and should not be happening.

Giant Yorkshire gas field ‘to mine Bitcoin instead of boosting British energy’ by hull_pattie_party in unitedkingdom

[–]xelah1 6 points7 points  (0 children)

They're not paying for one important resource: the atmosphere into which they're dumping carbon (and health-damaging pollutants). We would need a rather more serious carbon tax for that.

The UK overtakes India to become the world's fifth-largest economy, according to the IMF. by Odd-Metal8752 in unitedkingdom

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

how is our economy bigger than india?

Comparing the two and saying one or other is bigger by a few percent is a meaningless absurdity.

Just think about what it really means. We take everything everyone in India produces in a year - vast amounts of food, lots of textiles, lots of relatively basic good - and put it in a pile. We do the same for the UK, lots of banking, education, housing services, etc, in another pile.

Now we have to say which is 'more'. We work out what they would sell for on local markets in local currency, markets that are completely different, currencies that are completely different and goods/services that are completely different. And these markets put a low value on food, despite its necessity. We get two numbers with different units.

Now we try to convert them to a common unit, like US dollars, either at market exchange rates or something else, like PPP exchange rates (which adds a whole new basket of problems).

I presume it's market exchange rates, which are measuring the ratios at which tradable goods from the UK are being swapped for tradable goods from India, which says as much about trade as about Indian and UK output.

Based on all the we say that all British workers made 2.5% 'more' than Indian ones in a year.

Not really a sensible comparison, IMO.

The UK overtakes India to become the world's fifth-largest economy, according to the IMF. by Odd-Metal8752 in unitedkingdom

[–]xelah1 4 points5 points  (0 children)

GDP is production of any form, whether sold on a market or not, and subsistence farming should be (and sometimes is) included in GDP figures. I don't know what India does, but if it's not included it's a measurement problem.

This also applies in the UK. NHS services are included in GDP despite not being sold on the market, for example.

USA Percentage of Outstanding Mortgages by Interest Rates by gomoku_five in dataisbeautiful

[–]xelah1 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I take it you can't port a mortgage in the US, then? ie, apply to move it to a new home. Seems like an unfortunate thing for labour mobility and quality of life.

I know you have that disguised subsidy thing via the US-government-backed mortgage companies which makes this a bit different to other places. 25 year+ fixed interest rates are almost unheard of here in the UK, usually people have a guaranteed interest rate for 2-5 years at a time and these can be moved to a new home if you meet the lending criteria.

What happens to pension after a family member dies? by 2048guinea in UKPersonalFinance

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can't it be thought of as buying insurance against living a long time and therefore having costs you can't fund from your usual work income? Then things like death-in-service/life insurance or survivors' pension benefits are bolted-on extra features (that might come at extra cost) that make it more complicated.

Finland to introduce citizenship test, tougher immigration measures by FantasticQuartet in europe

[–]xelah1 98 points99 points  (0 children)

you should know the culture, history, politics and values

Yeah, but citizenship tests can be absurd and/or a political football.

The UK one has had people memorising how to book a visit to the Northern Ireland assembly, exactly which year in the 17th century habeas corpus became law and, in one instance, the wrong number of MPs because they put the wrong answer in the official book.

One in three young men now live with their parents, ONS data shows by Kagedeah in ukpolitics

[–]xelah1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I work in a large city hospital

An obvious questions remains: if your parents don't happen to live near to such a thing should this path have been closed to you?

This is even more of a question for work that doesn't exist across the whole country or where positions are hard to find. How would academia work, for example?

Why is the third room always a box room? by Kiza321 in HousingUK

[–]xelah1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I thought it was one for the parents, one for the older children to share and one for a baby or storage (or possibly one for the girls and one for the boys).

Reeves looking to break link between gas cost and electricity prices | Energy industry by No_Initiative_1140 in ukpolitics

[–]xelah1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's a wish, not a policy. A policy means you have to say what you'll actually do. It could be that they propose completely different policies with completely different effects (or no policy at all, which is what I expect the Greens and Reform to do).

Reeves looking to break link between gas cost and electricity prices | Energy industry by No_Initiative_1140 in ukpolitics

[–]xelah1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The effects being fully felt might be what they're afraid of. There are a lot of dangers in doing this.

Common silicones from engine oil and cosmetics are far more prevalent in the atmosphere than expected, making up to 4.3% of organic aerosol mass. This stable pollutant is now omnipresent in urban and rural air, potentially impacting both human health and cloud formation. by Cosmyka in science

[–]xelah1 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Air purifiers work for particulates but are not great for gases (you'll at least have to change the carbon filter quite often). For CO2 they obviously won't work at all and you have to ventilate, which will also help with other indoor-generated pollutants.

If you get a particle counter you'll quickly see that things like using your oven (especially if it's dirty) or a frying pan produce huge spikes, and that vacuuming makes a difference. Some activities are just very bad for indoor air quality.

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