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This is how British streets should look

A friend of mine recently told me that the story of Jihadi John broke his idealism. As a nation, we’d given him and his family refuge and asylum, provided them with a council house in one of the most illustrious areas of the country. We’d done everything ‘right’ as a liberal and enlightened country to offer this child a good future, yet he still became a mass murderer intent on destroying the fabric of the nation that gave him shelter.

Reading the replies… it’s clear our idea of pensioners is about 20 or 30 years out of date. Pensioners are no longer the poorest cohort in society, they’re the wealthiest. This out of date mindset, is why I think the WFA cuts ‘cut through’ so viscerally.

Over 60s getting free TFL travel is another. It’s madness, AT LEAST put it up to the actual retirement age.

Me and my fam were actually bantering about this earlier today. My mum didn’t want to watch Adolescence cos it was "too much like work"… she’s a child social worker after all. But she also commented that basically, she doesn’t deal with families like Jack Thorne’s. Child murderers don’t normally ever have backgrounds like his.

If you’ve got £100 a day to cover rent/mortgage, commuting, food, energy, insurance, childcare, and life’s small pleasures, you’re generally one of the richer people in society. We’re an increasingly poor country, and I don’t think people have quite grasped that fully.

What an absolute travesty. I am speechless. I think More in Common is correct, I am a ‘disgruntled dissenter’. I just can’t see a way out from our political malaise. In doesn’t matter what rosette the politician is wearing, all I see are anti-growth, anti-housing, anti-culture, anti-infrastructure decisions. From Westminster Labour strangling Soho, to Labour Wandsworth suffocating the Wimbledon tennis championship, to the Green Party blocking 100% affordable housing and opposing solar farms, to Tory Buckinghamshire bludgeoning our film industry. It’s not about individuals, it is about systems and incentives and I’m becoming more and more convinced local government needs to be burned to the ground.

The British public are absolutely banter. Most pensioners live mortgage free. A £50,000 income without any rent or mortgage to pay = an insanely high income. Spending power I could only ever dream of.

This is why whenever people compared Sanders with Corbyn, my reply was "get Bernie’s name out of your mouth".

I think society is relatively chill about Ukrainians and Hong Kong refugees because voters see them as a one-off influx of immigrants, who will integrate and very eventually, assimilate…. Like the Poles post WW2 (interestingly, are there still descendants of these Poles in this country who predominantly only have close relations with other descendants of these Poles living in a distinct Polish-British community, or have they all assimilated?). And in many ways, like the Windrush generation (U.K. Caribbean population has been decreasing in recent decades, while our mixed race white and Caribbean population has been growing). People aren’t opposed to even a couple of hundreds of thousands coming from Ukraine for that reason. But if it was 75,000 Ukrainians coming here, every single year, indefinitely… people would kick off… just 3 years of that and we’d hit the numbers we took in due to a devastating war and refugee crisis! For context, about 30,000 Uganda Indians arrived in the U.K. in 1972, fleeing persecution. A one off influx, fleeing something devastating. Last year, there was approximately a net migration of 99,000 Indians to the U.K. - not a one off influx, just a standard year of people arriving from a relatively stable and peaceful country of 1.4 billion. 20th century migration was unprecedented in British history, but 21st century migration had been totally different to 20th century migration.

I saw a tweet that said the humane thing to do here is to give him a shower, give him a meal, give him some clothes, and call the Sri Lankan embassy and say we have one of their nationals stranded here so they can arrange a flight home for him. I guess cos he’s claimed asylum we’d need to check he’s not in imminent risk of death or persecution upon his return? But otherwise, what’s the Left-wing case against this approach?

1. Housing is unaffordable due to demand vastly outstripping supply. Producing subsidised affordable housing is a distraction from this fundamental issue. We created the conditions to build 350,000 homes a year in 1930s, primarily through the private sector, we can do this again. The end goal is we don’t want to build ‘affordable housing’ but instead build enough homes so housing in general, is affordable. I work for a housing association. 1. Social rents do not provide us with enough income to maintain our homes at a good, safe, modern, environmentally friendly standard, over the long term. Day to day we can just about cover our costs regarding repairs and maintenance etc (just about). However, we need government grants to do major improvements works. Social housing stock is subsidised by the tax payer over its lifespan. 2. About 60% of our tenants are in work (I don’t know the breakdown of part time/full time). Fundamentally, I’d imagine perhaps a third to almost a half of our tenants shouldn’t really be in social housing. We should have enough abundant housing in the UK that it means if you work full time, even on minimum wage, you should be able to comfortably rent or buy within adequate commuting distance of your workplace. 3. There should certainly always be a place for social housing in our society, but it should be designated for those who are ‘vulnerable’ and unable to work for whatever reason, or only work limited hours. These people will always have their rent paid for (fully or partially) by the tax payer, so it makes sense to put them in very low rent housing. Finally, on this specific policy announcement. Brutal inflation and absurd new safety regulations (absurd because the regulatory burden is now crippling, for developers and registered housing providers alike, when to prevent another Grenfell all we needed to do was simply ban flammable cladding) have made the cost of building new homes almost prohibitive. Construction has practically stopped in London. It is now simply and totally unviable to build homes in London with existing affordable homes % targets, so this policy was inevitable to get any building started again. And back to point one, if nobody is building anything at all, we all suffer.

This is SO annoying and is exactly why we need a more utilitarian culture. Allowing al fresco dining here will bring joy and goodwilling to lots of people, but will provide a relatively minor inconvenience to a small number of people with certain mobility issues when they navigate this tiny stretch of the Thames path. On balance, let’s choose the option that maximises happiness and wellbeing to the greatest number of people.

Terrible how many politicians humoured this offensively absurd campaign

This is how British streets should look

This person is called Jack Connor. He’s one the most consistently vile people on his website. He spends his time quote tweeting people and encouraging abuse.

If you’ve got £100 a day to cover rent/mortgage, commuting, food, energy, insurance, childcare, and life’s small pleasures, you’re generally one of the richer people in society. We’re an increasingly poor country, and I don’t think people have quite grasped that fully.

Reading the replies… it’s clear our idea of pensioners is about 20 or 30 years out of date. Pensioners are no longer the poorest cohort in society, they’re the wealthiest. This out of date mindset, is why I think the WFA cuts ‘cut through’ so viscerally.

1. Housing is unaffordable due to demand vastly outstripping supply. Producing subsidised affordable housing is a distraction from this fundamental issue. We created the conditions to build 350,000 homes a year in 1930s, primarily through the private sector, we can do this again. The end goal is we don’t want to build ‘affordable housing’ but instead build enough homes so housing in general, is affordable. I work for a housing association. 1. Social rents do not provide us with enough income to maintain our homes at a good, safe, modern, environmentally friendly standard, over the long term. Day to day we can just about cover our costs regarding repairs and maintenance etc (just about). However, we need government grants to do major improvements works. Social housing stock is subsidised by the tax payer over its lifespan. 2. About 60% of our tenants are in work (I don’t know the breakdown of part time/full time). Fundamentally, I’d imagine perhaps a third to almost a half of our tenants shouldn’t really be in social housing. We should have enough abundant housing in the UK that it means if you work full time, even on minimum wage, you should be able to comfortably rent or buy within adequate commuting distance of your workplace. 3. There should certainly always be a place for social housing in our society, but it should be designated for those who are ‘vulnerable’ and unable to work for whatever reason, or only work limited hours. These people will always have their rent paid for (fully or partially) by the tax payer, so it makes sense to put them in very low rent housing. Finally, on this specific policy announcement. Brutal inflation and absurd new safety regulations (absurd because the regulatory burden is now crippling, for developers and registered housing providers alike, when to prevent another Grenfell all we needed to do was simply ban flammable cladding) have made the cost of building new homes almost prohibitive. Construction has practically stopped in London. It is now simply and totally unviable to build homes in London with existing affordable homes % targets, so this policy was inevitable to get any building started again. And back to point one, if nobody is building anything at all, we all suffer.

The British public are absolutely banter. Most pensioners live mortgage free. A £50,000 income without any rent or mortgage to pay = an insanely high income. Spending power I could only ever dream of.

Over 60s getting free TFL travel is another. It’s madness, AT LEAST put it up to the actual retirement age.

A friend of mine recently told me that the story of Jihadi John broke his idealism. As a nation, we’d given him and his family refuge and asylum, provided them with a council house in one of the most illustrious areas of the country. We’d done everything ‘right’ as a liberal and enlightened country to offer this child a good future, yet he still became a mass murderer intent on destroying the fabric of the nation that gave him shelter.

Me and my fam were actually bantering about this earlier today. My mum didn’t want to watch Adolescence cos it was "too much like work"… she’s a child social worker after all. But she also commented that basically, she doesn’t deal with families like Jack Thorne’s. Child murderers don’t normally ever have backgrounds like his.

I think society is relatively chill about Ukrainians and Hong Kong refugees because voters see them as a one-off influx of immigrants, who will integrate and very eventually, assimilate…. Like the Poles post WW2 (interestingly, are there still descendants of these Poles in this country who predominantly only have close relations with other descendants of these Poles living in a distinct Polish-British community, or have they all assimilated?). And in many ways, like the Windrush generation (U.K. Caribbean population has been decreasing in recent decades, while our mixed race white and Caribbean population has been growing). People aren’t opposed to even a couple of hundreds of thousands coming from Ukraine for that reason. But if it was 75,000 Ukrainians coming here, every single year, indefinitely… people would kick off… just 3 years of that and we’d hit the numbers we took in due to a devastating war and refugee crisis! For context, about 30,000 Uganda Indians arrived in the U.K. in 1972, fleeing persecution. A one off influx, fleeing something devastating. Last year, there was approximately a net migration of 99,000 Indians to the U.K. - not a one off influx, just a standard year of people arriving from a relatively stable and peaceful country of 1.4 billion. 20th century migration was unprecedented in British history, but 21st century migration had been totally different to 20th century migration.

Anyone else think that outside of reactionaries/normies, our cultural idea of asylum seekers are a little out of date? For a long time, my idea of your average asylum seekers was 1. A subversive liberal intellectual dissident that was exiled by a totalitarian regime, and 2. Tiny numbers of children/families fleeing war. George Gamow, Victor Kravchenko, Natalia Makarova, Ioan Petru Culianu, Martina Navratilova, Mihai Suba, Masih Alinejad, Oswaldo Payá, Daniela Larreal, Lorent Saleh, Thubten Jigme Norbu, Nathan Law, Murad Subay, Malala Yousafzai, Chen Guangcheng, Garry Kasparov… people like that, not small time gangsters from Albania. But that’s a sort of a survivorship bias that comes from their names surviving due to their recognised talents? You know the asylum seekers that are gifted dissidents, but there were probably loads of normie refugees throughout modern history. However, in the past, it was much harder to travel, so mostly it was only those with lots of money, or links/cultural capital, who could successfully travel and gain asylum in the West… so maybe asylum seekers back when were more likely to be individuals of particular wealth, talent or intellectual, than today?

This is SO annoying and is exactly why we need a more utilitarian culture. Allowing al fresco dining here will bring joy and goodwilling to lots of people, but will provide a relatively minor inconvenience to a small number of people with certain mobility issues when they navigate this tiny stretch of the Thames path. On balance, let’s choose the option that maximises happiness and wellbeing to the greatest number of people.

What an absolute travesty. I am speechless. I think More in Common is correct, I am a ‘disgruntled dissenter’. I just can’t see a way out from our political malaise. In doesn’t matter what rosette the politician is wearing, all I see are anti-growth, anti-housing, anti-culture, anti-infrastructure decisions. From Westminster Labour strangling Soho, to Labour Wandsworth suffocating the Wimbledon tennis championship, to the Green Party blocking 100% affordable housing and opposing solar farms, to Tory Buckinghamshire bludgeoning our film industry. It’s not about individuals, it is about systems and incentives and I’m becoming more and more convinced local government needs to be burned to the ground.

Fascinating stuff here. My pal went from getting 0 points for PIP after their initial claim, to winning enough points to be entitled to PIP after they appealed. They said they got all the advice they needed on ‘what to say’ during their appeal, via TikToks.

What places feel untouched by national decline? My guess would be small affluent towns that are almost entirely made up of older owner-occupiers? That’s the cohort the Tories protected from austerity and they’ve only started to feel the consequences of those Tory policies in the last couple of years. I visited Grange-over-Sands a few years back and it felt untouched by austerity. The public realm looked unscathed… a healthy little high street, clean streets, pristine grass verges with perfectly maintained flower beds alongside them.