Thats part of the allure. Abit like nightriding I guess.

Be careful out there funny people, theres some Hora about

Don't start searching through the archive of bldgblog then

daren't look dmiller… is it tunnels of trannys?

I saw the first one, its very weak. The problem with these gimmicks where they send a celeb, or Micheal Portillo into poor peoples lives for a few day is that they are people who are naturally the centre of attention. They can't help themselves they hold the attention of the room in any setting. I want to know something about these people but they've got a film crew in their kitchen and someone who will speak to fill any pause, and I'm learning nothing.

I always find it quite telling when commercial channels bow to their charter and make actual, factual television that almost nobody wants to advertise in the commercial breaks, often theres no adverts at all, just trails for other programmes, or maybe public info-verts. But the Co-op advertises during breadline britain, good on them. And so do Crazy Georges/ Brighthouse, the hideous, unapplogetic vultures that they are.

I said in another thread that when you're poor nobody wants your money and nobody wants your vote. Well in truth only scoundrels want your money or your vote.

Theres one for Glasgow called 'Hidden Glasgow' I emailed a link to a friend of mine whos into 'Urban Exploration' with a witty subject line along the lines of 'This will be right up your alley' unaware that I'd mistyped the URL and sent him a link to a Transvestite Dogging site.

Be careful out there Hora, theres some funny people about.

Look up Subterrainia Brittanica too (for the right reasons and not the wrong ones I hope)

I'm not disagreeing with any notions of personal responsibility, for anyone. Nor would I say its absent within poorer communities – nor is it absent within families that had their children young as Epicyclo demonstrates. Even in the circumstances where young families break down I don't think the teen father is unaware of the gravity of the situation or the role they should play, but an unhappy relationship isn't good for any of the three of them. But while the overall concern is that a teen pregnancy can compromise the future of both the parent and the child (or are we still convinced they're all money grubbing scroungers?) it isn't the case that it always will.

Epicyclo is still with his childhood sweetheart, who else can say that? (And stalking people of facebook doesn't count) He'll celebrate his 80th Aniversary one day and it'll be in the papers! (I remember a 90-something year old couple on the news celebrating their 80th, asked what the secret of a long and loving relationship was the guy said its all down to two magic little words ; "Yes Dear")

Anyway its not wrong to say personal responsibiltity is important, or education, or fairer or crueler benefit system or any number of other things are important. But thats all things that other people should do. The issue is bigger than education, or tax and its bigger than government, the government has so little it can do to effect how people feel. Its about what I can do. Me myself. I don't actually know what I can actually do though. I can at least look and think and care.

"Reality, as it evolves, sweeps me with it. I'm struck by everything and, though not everything strikes me in the same way, I am always struck by the same basic contradiction: although I can always see how beautiful anything could be if only I could change it, in practically every case there is nothing I can really do. Everything is changed into something else in my imagination, then the dead weight of things changes it back into what it was in the first place. A bridge between imagination and reality must be built."

but smells like a bin

On a remote beach out on the island of North Uist, a massive stainless steel beer container (that looks like a stage of an Apollo moon rocket) was swept off a ship and has been washed ashore. – Its empty, I checked.

On it, in absolutely massive letters someone has declared proudly "Kat Smells Nice"

titanium helical tackers

Want!

I'd watch Jonathan Meades all day every day. Except for an hour on Sat to watch Harry Hill.

Thanks Terry

Wait til we all start on you! You'll be glad to get back to work in the morning.

Mr T and

Mrs T

^ oops, posted a picture of Captain Flashheart, I meant to post a pic of Terry Thomas 😀

Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee

I'll pass thanks.

Noel Edmunds can be guest and meal number 1

does it have to be on the 22nd floor?

cushty

On a more serious tip (do you want that?)

An older couple with a grown up child with limited social abilities (autism maybe) that need a house that gives the young adult a sense of independent living without being far from their parent's support

Or for more fun…. A guesthouse with one landlord and two tenents. The landlord needs to be able to enter one of the guests rooms unseen, murder them and then move corpse from the guest room to the dinner plate with out passing through any spaces where the other guest will see them. The remaining guest has to eat the victim (who has to be stored and processed in secret without suspecting a thing) In the meantime the first guests room needs to be re-let in time for the remaining guest to be be murdered and eaten in the same manner. Meanwhile you need to deal with the smell and dispose of the inedible bits unseen. Its a double whammy because you also have to work out how to schedule the build of all these elements without any of the contractors guessing what it is you are going to do before you even do it.

You can call your house the The H.H Holmes Home

An enthusiastic but flawed entrepreneur, his weary brother and their uncle, who sank with every ship he sailed on during the war. It has to have a cocktail bar.

Either you, your partner or both of you are entitled. Who gets the money is a decision that either or both of you can make.

If your partner or a flatmate flits owing stacks of Council Tax you, soley you would be responsible for paying it of they couldn't find them, or even if they could find them and they didn't feel like paying. Rudeboy was in exactly that position recently was he not?

You can claim it, but you should claim it honestly, theres no contract between you and your ex and its not the council's place to act as if there is one. Either of you can claim all of the money with out without the knowledge or the approval of the other, just as either of you can pay the bill with or without the knowledge of the other.

Committing fraud to claim small sum of money is nuts, committing fraud the claim something thats actually yours… how nuts would that be.

As I say, forget you said your GF lives there, let them forget it too, write to them and claim the money for yourself. If they ask about your GF tell them she's gone and she's non of their business.

more often than not, piles

sniggers

Theres no need to falsify anything, you're perfectly entitled to all of the money, if you fibbed on the phone so what. Write to them as they asked you too, honestly. They'll pay you all the money, correctly. Your Ex will have missed the bus, deservedly. Make a cup of tea, contentedly.

Hats off to Photographers Direct for obtaining conclusive documentary evidence. The camera indeed doesn't lie (although it does add 10 lbs apparently)

Get some bathroom scales, place them face down on ground. The earth is now sitting on the scales and being accurately weighed, trouble is you can't see the dial.

A gentleman who's name I forget accurately surveyed Schiehallion and worked out how much it weighed.Its a very regular shaped mountain so reasonably easy to survey. He then stood next to mountain and measured the tiny deflection in a pendulum caused by mountain's mass/gravity then did some maths

Pretty basic, but seemingly very successful

The thing is we talk about the poorer sector of society like they are a citizens of a foreign country. They're just ordinary folk. The folk in Possil and Sighthill are just ordinary folk. Talk to them, they're nice. They've had some tough breaks perhaps but they've got life skills and …. get this…. they've got a community that supports them too.

I think the media broadly suffers from not being able to understand and represent the ordinary. The media is made up of the rich and trendy and even if they wanted to, by and large they wouldn't know how to find, meet, befriend, talk to, and empathise with someone ordinary. And I mean this, they'll tell you outright, they don't know how to do it. If you make television then 'access' is the key to everything, its gold dust. You can have a great idea, but if you can't access the people to point the camera at then forget it. The media just doesn't know how to access ordinary people. And it hasn't been able to do so for such a long time that ordinary life and ordinary perspectives and ordinary experiences are so foreign to television audiences that even if they get access tv doesn't know how to serve that experience to the viewing public, even to ordinary people. Its not part of the media language.

And then there's charities…….. thats a kettle of fish for another day

Double post!

Write the letter, authorising them to send the cheque to you. Sign it. Yourself. As yourself. And thats it. There's no need to involve the ex's name or signature. Just you, in relation to your address and your council tax ref number. Repayment isn't contingent on her being there still, or signing anything is it. They just need to be sure that you OR her are receiving the refund and not someone else. The council has money that isn't due to them, they need to hand it back. They hand it back to you. Job done.

If the ex was to feel she had a claim on in it, then thats an issue for you and her. Its nothing for the council to involve themselves in. But if she was to subsiquently claim the same refund from the council – which she has as much right as you to do – shit would hit the fan if a forged signiture was unearthed. But if she made a claim only to find that you had got there first, then no doubt she'd be arsey about it, but you wouldn't be shown to be a criminal, just thorough and thrifty.

While you are umming and ahhhing she might be writing her letter right now, properly.

Mine is always in my wallet as I hire a lot of stuff. The result is that it ends up in a state of advanced decay very quickly. I had to hand it over in a tool hire shop once for them to photocopy and after I'd paid, sorted out all the other forms I went to leave and realise I didn't have it. They were convinced they'd given it back, I was adamant they hadn't. After a frantic search it turned out that the person who copied it had instinctively taken it out of the copier and chucked it straight in the bin.

skidartist puts in more detail/eloquently.

yeah sorry about that – my house was over run by kids this weekend, in the calm after the storm its such a pleasure to be able to reach the end of a sentence and remember how it started.

I've got it, you said I could keep it, remember?

You were 'Jointly and severally' liable to pay the tax (i.e either of you could have been persued to pay the whole debt), wouldn't you be also jointly and severally due the refund also? The refund is surely due to either or both of you. You'd need to research it further and find out.

difficulty is you've already lied, perhaps you would be perfectly correct to claim the full refund yourself.

find out whether you alone can claim the refund, if you can, see if you can backtrack. At the moment you've only said she lives there and been sent the paperwork accordingly. Thats just a mistake, but maybe its a mistake they made, it was a bad line and you said 'no' but they heard 'yes'.

You knowingly signing the paperwork turns the mistake into fraud though.

If you can legitimately claim the refund yourself (because although two of you were named on the bill perhaps only one of you might have been funding the payments) call them and tell them you've been sent the wrong form to fill in 'by mistake'.

What? Two other books? I'll be dead before I finish them 🙂

But if they have some pictures then I'm sold!

I've been a fan of the Onion ever since a very personable tramp sold me a copy under the pretense that it was New York's version of the Big Issue

Bill

I've got Wilkinson and Picketts book sitting here waiting to be read (might be a long wait I can probably count number of books I've read in the last 12 years one hand, some I didn't finish). Had a quick flick through those powerpoints but don't want any spoilers!

Slides 11 and 12 are absolute jaw droppers though. Shocking Shocking Shocking!

The thing is though, it should all be obvious.

What puzzles me (and if I'd read the book maybe it wouldn't) is that while all these things can corollate with income inequality, the poor in our country are not poor in absolute terms. Why should the presence of much richer people turn other people's modest lives into intolerable ones. What is it that rich people do, or seem to do? I think the money is just an easy measure, but whats happening socially, culturally, politically to cause all this? It seems too obvious to say wealth should simply be distributed more evenly, but I don't know what actions you could really take to make that happen (short of communism which tends to result in lots of corpses).

Issues of social mobility aside, it will always be the lot of some people to be poor, for some of the time or all of the time. What can be done to make a humble life a noble life?

Powder coat is more durable, but when it goes it goes worse. It almost seems as if your bike has been shrink wrapped rather than painted, so once there is a sizable scuff in the coating the area around it sometimes starts to lift. Its doesn't seem to be as stuck to the metal as regular paint. The frame I had done is alu, and the colour I used – a nice grey – isn't a million miles off the raw alu colour underneath so dunts don't really show (and I don't really care).

You'll get pretty much any colour you would hope to find in paint, but generally powder coat looks flat and plasticy compared to paint, not matt, but very opaque looking and without much depth, compared maybe to car bodywork which looks deeper bu comparison. With the right colour this looks great though. You'll pay a fair bit extra if the colour you want isn't on the shelf and needs to be ordered in.

Who here is still deeply in love with the first and only person they've ever kissed?

I think there are plenty of teenage fathers out there who are more than aware of what their responsibilities might be, but being duty bound alone is not the secret of a successful family.

You're all heart bob

Teenage mothers are only in the firing line as a means to attack the system, after them, they will attack something else.

There are not, and never have been, a lot of teenage mothers, the figure that sticks in my mind is something like 6000 across the UK at any given time. You could double or halve that number and the effect on the tax payer would be what exactly? But whatever their background, choices, motives or actions I can hardly think of anyone more wanting or deserving of utmost care, protection and encouragement. Being and child and a parent. Thats enormous, thats a massive live-shaking event. Every effort and every expense I reckon.

The poor have no voice. Poverty isn't just skint, its poverty of everything, poverty of influence, poverty of voice, poverty or representation. The rich and right attack the poor because they don't want their money and the don't want their vote, and because is gratifying to pick a fight with someone who can't fight back

Lets cut through all the bullshit and have a think about this shall we?

Teen pregnancy is symptomatic of poverty, not wholly, you don't need to be a poor teen to get pregnant, but within a population you'll see teen pregnancy within the poorer sectors of (our) society.

You'll also see child mortality high amongst the poor as was some hideous goons were giggling about here on a thread about road deaths a few days ago.

If you take all the social problems related to poverty and group them together (say child mortality and pregnancy, family breakdown, prison, murder, alcoholism and addiction, poor diet, poor health….. theres more) and give a comparative score between societies you will see countries with a big gap between the rich and poor have a corresponding high level of social problem –

like this

So rich countries like the Japan or the nordic countries can have comparatively low levels or social problems because the gap between rich and poor is quite low – their typical rich earn about 4 times what the typical poor earn. In countries like the UK and the US the typical rich might earn 9 times what the typical poor earn.

Now our poor in the UK are quite well off in absolute terms, they are poor within our society, but still amongst the richest people on the planet. And better off than the were at the end of the last tory government thats for certain. And although you'd never believe it in our doomlaiden papers many of our social ills are in decline. Not all, but many.

Now the interesting thing about all this though is that it suggests that a nations social ills, even if they mainly occur within the poorer elements of society, seem to be caused by the richer elements of society.

So back to the original topic – teen pregnancy. A synonym for 'contraception' is 'protection'. I think a typical middle class teenager – your daughter will be **** terrified of getting pregnant, all their plans all their ambitions, all those things they want to do before they have children are at stake, on top of their family relationships and any social implication. They bloody want protection.

A pregnant teenager is someone who didn't feel they need to protect themselves, they'll be well aware of contraception and they'll probably use it, but not with anything like the anxious zeal that your kids will. Protect yourself from what? Whats the worst that can happen when the worst is already happening? Has always been happening.

Apply those concerns to anything else, how is jail a deterrent when you've nothing to loose, why would you make choices about your food, drink, drugs on the basis of safeguarding your future if its a future full of the same shit that you live with day to day.

Now the thing is when the poor of our society are making these decisions they don't have a calculator in their hand working out that the richest 20% are earning 9 times more than me, so pass me the scagg. So why is it happening? What are the rich doing to make the poor hopeless?

Poisonous comments from braying leisure cyclists about child road accident victims being a fortunate mechanism of natural selection perhaps?

There are changes that can be made and they are much simpler than taxation or education because they've got nothing to do with government and everything to do with us.

You combat the ill effects of poverty by liking people