merridew @ merridew @feddit.uk

Posts

68

Comments

172

Joined

2 yr. ago

And doctors & dentists will still legally be able to use laughing gas.

"Female" as an adjective isn't the problem. The problem is "female" as a noun.

You can describe a person as being female all you like, but if you start calling them "a female" & defined purely in terms of the existence of their sex organs, you're in the wrong.

Yes, I've seen the screenshot. Eh. It's a gross post, and apparently OP acted like twat; I won't lose sleep over it not getting attention.

All the top posts on r/askwomennocensor seem to be women complaining about how the sub is overrun with men asking for dating tips, with the mods stating in a thread 16 days ago:

We remove a thing, and suddenly we get called fascist, tyrant, "chronically online," etc., and members wildly upvote those public callouts.

Yall gotta decide if yall want "fascist tyrants" or to be plagued with inane incel questions. We remove a dating question? "Tyrants!" We let it go? "Why is this sub so trashy?"

As one redditor notes:

I know this sub was created because the other asksubs have so many rules. But this is unfortunately one of the reasons why so many rules exist.

A lot of damage has already been done in terms of brain drain to the continent. I never got the impression that the Brexit gang understood it isn't just about money; it's about the ease of collaboration. As if British research, unique among the world, didn't derive benefit from collaboration.

Correct. Well, not all the work week. One person will sleep in it Monday-Thursday. Maybe Friday if it's a heavy one.

ETA: Rest of the family will be living in a separate house outside the Home Counties where the schools are better.

They increase the overall cost of both buying and renting a property within that market, and are a nuisance for existing residents.

Historically -- in the UK, at least -- the market equilibrium has been that the rich own all the property and the poor pay rent until they die, aware that they can be served an eviction notice at any time.

This has not proven to be a popular policy. In 1918 all British men, regardless of whether they owned property or not, got the vote, and since then politicians have found it useful to not have the majority of voters perpetually furious about it.

Some people own more than one house, and perpetually rent those properties out via sites like Airbnb.

So we have:

• Buying a property that you don't intend to live in, so that you can rent it out to other people as a short term let.
• Buying a property that you live in, and occasionally renting out a spare room as a short-term let while you continue to occupy the property.

These are not the same.

It goes for £2000 a month ($2500) and is in Zone 1, a 25 minute stroll from the London Stock Exchange. You aren't going homeless if you have £2000 a month to spend on rent, and Zone 2 is one stop away on the Jubilee line. You're moving to Zone 2/3, or moving into a flatshare. Or out of London.

Given the location, pricing and finish I suspect it's more likely to be used as a pied a terre -- a second (weekday) home -- for someone in the City.

Interesting. Here, when conversions happen to make cellars into self-contained units, I'd argue they are frequently only suitable for short term lets, on the basis that no-one should have to live like that. In converting properties whose lower ground floors were never meant to be used for residential purposes into housing, we get stuff like this.

Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Remodelled Crypt, for Goths Your own windowless basement in London Bridge, for just £2,000 a month.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/akz9ze/rental-opportunity-london-bridge-basement

Well on that we are definitely in agreement.

In this specific instance, I suspect it is because there is every indication that the basement room rented by OP was not, in fact, a fully self contained suite within a house, but was a guest room.

How do you physically get into these "basement suites" in your part of the world? When I lived in a townhouse, access to the cellar was via a door in the middle of the property leading off the kitchen. There would be no practical way to split the cellar off from the main property as a separate dwelling. But having guests sleep down there every so often was no big deal.

I understand that. OP expressly described this basement experience as "renting out spare rooms", though, so I hope you'll understand why I'm treating this as a spare room being rented out.

I live in London and am very familiar with the issue of affordable self-contained accommodation being flipped into overpriced Airbnb units, and I would agree with you that such units should be retained as residential housing.

I slept on a pull out bed in a mate's living room once so I guess that should be converted into a separate dwelling.

I don't see how that matters. A spare room is a spare room whether it's in the basement, the first floor, or the attic.

I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't reopen. Channel crossing passengers are down 30% since 2019. They've also canned the Disneyland Express.

You can only starve a government body of funding -- making it muddle along depleting its reserves and selling off assets -- for so long until a final bill tips it over the edge, so I'd argue that if it wasn't this bill it would be another bill.

Other councils took risky approaches to replace money cut under Austerity:

Woking said that against its available core funding of £16m in the 2023-24 financial year, the council faced a deficit of £1.2bn.

Racked up to finance the building and acquisition of a vast empire of commercial assets, its investments included a complex of sky-high towers – standing as the tallest buildings outside a big city in England – including a four-star Hilton hotel, public plazas, parking facilities and shops.

Many councils piled into property and other commercial enterprises to raise money to fill gaping holes in their budgets and to undertake regeneration projects after sharp cuts to central government funding introduced under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/07/woking-council-declares-bankruptcy-with-12bn-deficit

If Birmingham city council was taking money from Russia it probably wouldn't be bankrupt.

If the owners are living in it at the same time, and you're renting out a room, that's hardly a hotel.

Equal pay is something women have had to fight for.

In this case,

the court found hundreds of mostly female employees working in roles such as teaching assistants, cleaners and catering staff missed out on bonuses which were given to staff in traditionally male-dominated roles such as refuse collectors and street cleaners.

Women in the UK only gained the right to equal pay in 1970.