[robertajobb]

robertajobb

Absolutely, but what you’re proposing would require nothing short of a revolution.

Introducing land value tax would turn this country upside down.

In fact, it’s probably one of the most critical and effective pieces of legislation that the UK government could make.

But, of course, it will never happen.

If you accept that government spending must be limited at some magical figure, then the obvious ways to “raise” revenue would be introducing a land value tax but in a land-owning aristocratic nation that would be akin to a revolution. Corbyn tried that and look what happened there. Another one would be addressing tax havens and offshoring wealth, but again, the rich call the shots in this country and so you’ll never see either of these implemented in any meaningful way.

It’s both bizarre and depressing: Reeves and Starmer are gaslighting the entire country with this “black hole” nonsense. There’s no such hole and any basic understanding of economics works makes that plain to see.

Ever since the narrative the country had “maxed out its credit card”, politicians have lied constantly about how the countries finances work, and what is possible and what is not, this is especially true how the Tories dealt with the threat of an anti-austerity Labour Party under Corbyn, insultingly taking about a “magic money tree”, which incidentally, did magically appear in 2020. The same applies to Reeve’s “black hole” excuse.

The fact is, Brexit and Covid have compounded the damage of a dysfunctional economic system. There’s nothing left to asset strip now and this has resulted in very persistent inflation among many other problems. Inflation needs to be addressed by removing currency from circulation; however, it will be the workers and the poor and vulnerable who pay for it because they are the least well position to oppose it.

I don’t think there’s any ambiguity here: this is managed decline and unless there’s radical social change, which in this country would look like a revolution, it is here to stay.

Driving needs to be made the least convenient and most expensive way to travel, at least on local journeys which could otherwise be made by “active” travel. Of course, they’ll be significant pushback on this, both from “consumers” and the motor lobby.

After decades of effective lobbying and promotion of car ownership as aspirational, driving is linked to power and success in public discourse, so anyone not driving has therefore “failed” at life. The tabloids are terrified of cyclists because their owners fear the type of society active travel can help achieve: less status anxious, more socialable, more connected, and therefore more organised and coherent (but of course, far less profitable!).

Indeed, it must be perverse the amount of resources we dedicate to driving massively inflated and heavy vehicles around relatively tiny and highly populated areas. In effect, cars, as a mass urban transportation system, are the most inefficient yet the most resource intense and expensive. But anything or anyone that tries to address that imbalance will face relentless attacks, such as the 20-mph scheme in Wales or ULEZ in London.

While its correct to highlight the importance of defining certain terms, especially those which carry such weight as genocide, the belief that Israel is targeting Hamas and not Palestinians for the “crime” of being Palestinian is naivety in the highest order and ignores the basic facts on the ground. For example, the murder of a 6-year-old girl and her family by the IDF who fired 360 rounds into her families vehicle, killing her family instantly while she died alone and terrified some hours later. When the paramedics came to rescue her, they were murdered too, despite the relevant authorities calling ahead for clearance. These atrocities are not accidents; they are intent to kill individuals because they belong to a certain group. What is happening in Gaza is genocide.

 Netanyahu’s sense of entitlement is obviously too great to worry about such things. He is obviously convinced that there are no red lines and he can do whatever he wants.

He knows it and our governments know it, but the people of Gaza know it more than anyone.

If this was a state full of Muslim “dark people” inflicting endless atrocity and genocide on a Christian/Jew “white people” country, the narrative would be rather different.

The DM = owned by part of the elite who finance this propaganda operation to distract and obscure.

The landed gentry who own most of the land and don’t pay any tax = ????

Poor people, disabled people, migrants, etc. = KILL THEM ALL

Malagacar.com or Hellis are great. 

I’ve used Malagacar several times and never had an issue whatsoever, but I’ve always taken their excess insurance as it was never that expensive.

Cars were always good and pickup and drop-off were hassle free. No need to use anyone else in Malaga.

Embarrassing for the Germans bankrolling a state which is blowing up her key infrastructure.

It was originally a road bike. I can’t remember but it’s defo Shimano.

If anyone can recommend something cheap off eBay/Amazon uk, that’d be great (!)

Marin, did you have any problems with theft? Did you worry about the vehicle much if you went for a ride/hike/etc?

Thanks again (and to everyone else who’s contributed).

Some sound advice, thank you!

Marin, that would be the long game, hence why I’m concerned about keeping most of the money. As I said, it seems vans in Spain keep their value pretty well. Second-hand newish vans seem to go for similar prices to new. Did you ever get any hassle about just pulling up in villages?

I’m reasonably familiar with Andalucia myself, and it would seem like a better place to do it than southern UK – but would the heat in the summer be an issue?

Pretty much, you could drive up high to the Sierra Nevada to escape the worst of it, but I’d spend the summers in the UK/ROI anyway.

To those ppl asking, I just do random jobs online, a bit of teaching, editing, proofreading, and examining. I live around the Granada area — some months I make quite a bit more, some a lot less. Andalusia is a fantastic place to live, there’s something timeless and nostalgic about the place. I can’t quite put my finger on it — and yes, I was lucky getting out of the UK and taking advantage of the Withdrawal Agreement.

Thanks, myti — maybe I’ll repost there too and see what comes back. I didn’t think about Morocco, but that could be an option too.

The idea of putting my bike and kayak on the back and going off exploring is very appealing. Maybe I should look at cheaper vans, but there’s also the issue of size and reliability and the need for a relative amount of comfort for living in something for longer durations.

Definitely hope Alpin can share his thoughts!

Davros has it right!

“I read somewhere that the ‘life expectancy’ of a motorhome is 700 nights use…..so less than 2 years.”

That’s an interesting point of view, but what’s going to wear out really? Cupboards and stuff?

Yeah, I’d be doing this a lifestyle change really.

I’ve been living in a medium-sized Andalusian city for 4 years; maybe it’s time for doing something different.

Like I say, it seems like a nice way to live, especially if I was able to do regular housesitting.

blokeuptheroad, sorry but that’s total nonsense.

The rich and powerful are truly shining examples of the how hard work and perseverance pays off — True Grit, if you will, which the lower orders should all hold in the highest esteem. Take Hugh Grosvenor, for example, a formidable business man who, powered by ambition, landed himself on the Times’ Rich List, he might have inherited 12 billion pounds, but that’s rather beside the fact. How about Lord Cameron, Osbourne, and Johnson? Shining examples to us all who came up the Eton way, landing the highest positions in the land through nothing but hard work, competence, and unparalleled ability. People from estates in North Liverpool or Sunderland should take note.

The irony.

There are huge chunks of this  country which get zero attention from government at any level. These places and the people who live in them are neglected and forgotten except at election time. 

This needs to be remembered, but then the press has been so successful in framing this narrative that it’s not the establishment that are responsible, but the migrants. The way it looks to me, the whole modus operandi of outfits like the Mail is to divert attention away from the fact that a very small minority of the population own two thirds of the country and are only to happy to print money for themselves but enforce a regime of austerity on everyone else, which is on-going, even with a supposedly liberal government.

It’s a well-known one in the north east of England.

Our current students are all international students, so are being made to feel very unsafe because of their ethnicity.

Post-Johnson Tories have all been twerking for these racist scumbags for years, now look how they’ve all fallen remarkably silent.

Daily Mail still at it, despite total breakdown in law and order.

If anyone can countenance it, read the comments section — their readers can’t get enough of this.

God, this is utterly depressing.

At the university I’m working at, all the international students were asked to go home today. Some of my students were racially abused in Tesco. This, sadly, does not feel out of the ordinary.

Brexit, the crapulent corruption on show on Johnson’s watch, and now masked **** in Under Armour running amok and down the country, lynching people, burning books, I mean, what the **** is happening here?

I can understand how the likes of Anderson and Fox enjoy this, but the Sunaks, Bravermans, Bandernochs, your legacy is that my students no longer feel safe. How the **** do they sleep at night?

Sorry, I’m just ranting here, but our reputation of a law abiding country, a sense of fair play, due process, and all the rest of it, would appear to be flowing down the rivers and into the sea along with all the other shite.

Limmy said it best: Musk is Tony Stark for incels.

You’d think a lawyer could produce grammatically correct English, though?

In any case, I’m so sick of these “alt” right crowd now, aka, Peterson, Musk, et al.

Peterson had Yaxley-Lennon on his podcast, and while I normally tolerate other view points for the sake of curiosity, I cannot watch it.

Musk saying a ‘civil’ war is inevitable in the UK as reminds me of the typically embarrassing commentary from yanks talking about something they have absolutely zero understanding of [and, yes, I’m finishing a sentence with a preposition].

Does anyone know how this shakes out if you’re a resident in an EU country (Spain, in my case)?

My dream was to sail around Europe in a (cheap) yacht but that’s probably unrealistic now even with my Spanish residency unless I, of course, stick to Spanish waters (not too bad, although the 3k I spent on my tickets is worthless now as they’re no longer recognised in the EU).

However, I was thinking of buying a van, so presumably no one really knows how long I’ve been in France if I drive there from Spain? I think I’d mostly reside in Spain anyway because I love it there, but always wondered if being an EU resident afforded me any additional rights beyond those I’m entitled to in my host country.

I got 50 quid too.

@retrorick

Do you get a special email or an amount like that or does it just show up like 50 quid would?

Nah, it’s a large on eBay.

Maybe I’ll pass.

so if I dropped the stem back would it feel a bit weird at the front end? Maybe a L is too big for me.

At least in terms of land, England’s an occupied country and has been, more or less, since 1066.

Take the Duke of Westminster, for example, whose estate I was ejected from for the crime of riding a bicycle (by some other peasants like me albeit in a Landrover).

The Grosvenor Estate had an operating income of 1.2 billon dollars in 2017 an a total worth of 66.2 billion dollars, according to Wikipedia.

The “Duke” paid zero tax on an inheritance of £9 billion — yet my family paid the full tax on my late uncle’s estate.

Tell me again why migrants are being blamed.

God only knows how those poor people in those hotels feel — they’ve likely escaped unimaginable suffering and danger to reach the country they heard was supposed to be civilised, only to find an angry mob literally trying to burn them alive.

Compared to the Gaza Hate Marches™, these riots are quite mild, understandable even.

The Israelis would have been better off assassinating their leader rather than that of Hamas.

Reeves would argue that it’s not austerity, it’s balancing the checking account.

That’s the problem — there isn’t a checking account. That’s nonsense.

Austerity doesn’t “save” money, it means that the money isn’t created in the first place.

We’ve had this imposed on us for fourteen years — how’s that been working out?

Poverty in the UK today is systematic and is largely a political choice, not an economic one.

So, 205 billion for Trident, but no money to address child poverty — I wonder who sets the department budgets, Nick? Austerity is a political choice, not a limitation of our financial system — given the basic facts at hand, how can it be understood in any other way?

It mostly doesn’t matter in which order it happens. 

This is like trying to argue that someone who lives in the North Pole needs to stick to a strict ice cube quota. It’s not the creation of ice cubes, but rather how these are distributed. That’s the political choice, and is why it is apparently so difficult for people to accept that government spending is the inverse of a household budget, is because ipso facto they must accept that Labour, really, are not fundamentally different to the Tories, at least on political economy.

When there’s a political will, governments issue themselves money and spend it on infrastructure, on a pandemic, on a war — you use Western economics as an example, so tell me the last one that ever ran out of money in the post-war period?

What’s curious is that Reeves herself stood up and highlighted that Osbourne et al.’s rational for austerity was nonsense in 2011, but now, in 2024, she’s using the same nonsense to justify its continuation. Why? I think we all know the answer.

Kielder off limits for SUP/kayaks (apparently). 

But then you’ve got a culture in which moving around a mostly 2-3 square mile radius in a 1.5-tonne tank is considered the height of success. The modern Range Rover and similar vehicles epitomise the crass individualism and cosmic stupidity of 21st century consumerism. More so, “Moronmativity” isn’t the result of accident — it is the conclusion of well-funded lobbying in government by the extremely powerful interests, backed up and supported by the oligarchy press because a threat to a Range Rover is the beginnings of a threat to their obscene super yachts and private jets.

@fasgadh

Why, my imposing £80,999 Range Rover Defender 130 takes me anywhere I want to go. It’s composed on any surface (such as British roads), and allows me to embrace any adventure. It’s a smooth and engaging drive whether one smashes through school fences, walls, killing little kids (Landrover call it “unstoppable” for good reason), maiming cyclists, or just generally getting in the way of everyone else. I love it.

What a load of nonsense.

Driving’s just right and the British Way to get around.

If anything, I’d remove pavements altogether because let’s face it, they’re used by mostly undesirable types, who can’t afford to drive.

Thanks, will keep this in mind.

Don’t worry about trying to swerve IHT. The Royal Family don’t.

Near Durham (does seem like some sort of gravel bike would be most appropriate here!)

Fenix 7 and an iPhone 12 mini.

If doing very remote stuff, I’d take something like a eTrex for backup and possibly an inReach mini, too.