Big J

The Greek Economy is so bad... they've had to cut production of houmus and taramasalata. It's a double-dip recession.

So, so glad I'm not on the Isle of Skye. 550mm of rain so far this month (yes, 50mm per day on average) and this is the 36hr total currently:

Our nearest SMHI station is Målilla and they recorded: September: 20mm October: 36mm And our rain gauge at home has recorded 18mm so far this month. It's all a little drier than the average, and certainly a lot warmer. 6 years ago here was 6 inches deep snow.

He's from East Anglia, so about as dry as the UK gets.

Blue skies this morning and very mild. Winter has yet to make an appearance yet here in Sweden. So glad we're not in Devon anymore though. My friend's rain gauge (just down the road from our old house) has recorded 28 days out of the last 29 of rain, totalling just over 180mm. Poor bastards! 😄

We just got our bill for electricity for last month. The price has come right down due to Europe filling up with gas ahead of winter. It only came to £126, which covers almost all our heating (we use the stove occasionally) too. We have been making a bit of an effort not to use the tumble dryer. It has been fairly mild though, and winter hasn't yet started. At present kw prices, we might see £300 over winter for a month, but I doubt it'll be more than that (unless the price hikes again).

I agree, to an extent. It's a depressing situation where the agencies meant to be providing checks and balances are utterly corrupt, devoid of architectural or planning skills and allow 95% of all new building to be objectively substandard. How do we get from this state of affairs to one where responsible, environmentally friendly and socially acceptable building is promoted?

I know. But the vast majority of England isn't built upon. It's not a population density issue. It's a land inequality and awful infrastructure issue. Planning laws are anachronistic and promote cronyism. Councils are in the pockets of a few big developers. Land owners drip feed land into the market in order to keep prices sky high. House buyers have got almost no choice when it comes to purchasing new homes. Can a few people that choose not to follow these conventions really be blamed, given the often negative outcomes?

I haven't come across him myself. I don't see what the problem is personally. It's his land and it's a modest structure. It's providing holiday let rental without taking a home for locals out of circulation. Us Brits spend far too much time worrying about what other people are doing rather than focusing on being happy in ourselves.

That may possibly be the case, but there is a huge labour shortage and no prospect of rectifying that. How do you tackle that without additional people? There are a thousand other points to make but I'm wiped and going to bed! 😁

It's not a question of shaming anything away, IMO. Our forebears fought for a noble cause with the hope of a better future. That has largely been the case. But times change, three generations have passed and the future isn't exactly looking great. It's important that people have the right to try to improve their situation, and the freedom of movement we had within the EU afforded that. But I am biased, as I'm anti-Brexit and I've recently left the UK!

I appreciate that your location means you're at the focal point of one aspect of UK immigration. But seen as a whole, we don't take many. Go to Devon for instance, and it's a much less diverse affair.

Away with you and your facts Beau! How dare you spoil a good story with the truth?! 😁

In the South East, just east of Vetlanda

Haha! Couldn't resist. Sweden is lovely. Very relaxed and it's nice to have so much more space, both in our home, but also in our surrounds. The kids are settling in fairly well - their language development is being slowed slightly by the fact that everyone speaks English! Work is proving slow to get started, mainly as setting up a business takes some time here. Getting there though.

I do believe that I have already filled that role! 😆

Isn't that a shame though? I have found it almost impossible over the years to find cutters who were both properly competent and happy to work for someone else. The issue with running your own business is that inevitably, you end up pulled away from the saws. You're then forced to rely on subcontractors of inconsistent quality and the overall work quality deteriorates. Really good cutters should be paid really good money. I've paid £240 a day down in Devon (where rates are suppressed) and made good money off the back of those guys. Equally, I have lost money on guys I've paid £80 a day because they've been so bad. Perhaps some sort of cooperative, profit sharing company would be a way to go. A collective of top notch cutters, machine operators, foresters and timber sellers, working together to do the best job possible where everyone makes a fair and decent wage. So much of the timber industry is driven down to price and price alone. It is (I feel) one of the main reasons there is such inconsistency in the market. Boom and bust.

If I may take an analytical view for a moment, the biggest practical issue (leaving aside the frequent and pointless popularity contests the Tories seem to enjoy having at the moment) is a lack of money. In reversing Liz Truss's insane mini budget, Jeremy Hunt was able to roughly half the budgetary black hole, but that still leaves a £40 billion shortfall. So just to balance the books, £40b needs to be found in either cuts or tax rises. Add to that the fact that at the present level of funding, basic services are not being adequately provided. NHS, education, emergency services, infrastructure, transport. The list goes on. This is a poison chalice for any government to take on, let alone another Tory government who cannot escape some degree of responsibility for the previous 12 years of failure. To coronate yet another Tory PM and expecting a different outcome seems like an exercise in insanity. Repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome and all that. How best to tackle this though? In my view, the situation the UK finds itself in now is at least in part due to a large scale transfer of wealth from the public coffers to private individuals and companies. Widescale privatisation, lobbied interests and cronyism has only worsened over the past 12 years. The final straw was Truss's attempt to simply and overtly pander to these interest groups with her mini budget. At least at this point there was some pushback. I've got absolutely no idea how the next government can fix this extraordinary funding gap. In a time where more needs to be spent on public services and taxes need to be reduced to ease the cost of living crisis, the prospect of cutting funding and increasing taxes seems unconscionable.

It's not so much because he had a beer. It's because he lied and lied and lied about it and everything else. If he's the best the British public have on offer, then perhaps Kev's proposal ( 😉 ) for a military coup is the way to go.

There is something to be said for a benevolent dictatorship! The problem is that they rarely remain benevolent. I wonder how this period of tumult will be regarded in the future? The death of the Tory party? The death of common sense? The death of democracy in the UK? All of the above?

It's OK - I understood your intent. I agree, for what it's worth. It's a circus and so irrelevant to the average person. Simple, understated competency. That's what the country needs. The issue is that it's believed that such qualities don't win elections. So untrustworthy showmen like Boris get in....

I agree. Simultaneously hilarious and awful! Can you imagine how wonderful things would be if politicians' first priority was enacting beneficial policy for the country rather than self preservation? What a novel idea that'd be!