Big J

I know what you mean. But I have to be very vocal about leaving so as never to give myself the option of staying. Staying here and struggling on is the easy option. If Sweden didn't work out (which is always a possibility) then we'd just go to Germany. I hadn't considered the possibility of multigenerational mortgages. Seems horrendous. To clarify my position, currently, unless you're on the housing ladder, you're going to find it extremely hard to get on unless you want to live in a minute house or Bolton. And there must surely be a crash coming, but I think it is a little way off because so much of the UK economy is tied to housing. It's almost too big to fail. It's a bit like when Blackadder is explaining how the war started to Baldrick and George, talking about the military build-up of both sides and how it was a grand plan: Edmund: Yes, that's right. You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan. George: What was that, sir? Edmund: It was bollocks. And that's sort of how I feel about the housing market. It's now so far down the road, with so many people so heavily invested that even though it desperately needs a reset, nobody except for first time buyers can afford for it to happen. It'll be interesting to see how long it can continue against all logic.

I don't think that I agree, but it's not as simple as whether you own it or not. I believe that everyone has the right to stable, secure, high quality accommodation. Owning your own house in the UK gives you the best chance of achieving that. The rental market is fraught with insecurity for the tenant, as well as being very unaffordable in many areas. The difference is that other countries manage to have a wonderful system of social housing and private rental properties. It is in places so good that private house ownership seems like a pointless goal. Like, why would you send your children to a fee-paying school is the local comp was outstanding? I've hypothesised in the past about why UK housing is so terrible, and my best guess is that we became a largely urbanised nation in the 19th Century, with the vast bulk of housing by provided by the industrialists who also provided the employment. As such, we absolved ourselves of the responsibility of building our own housing. The UK housing market is entirely in the hands of a few large developers, who are rather effective at lobbying the government to maintain very low building standards, both in terms of building materials used, but also house design and space. Couple that with the demise of UK manufacturing in the 70s and an exponential increase in investment in housing as a form of income production (fuelled by the right to buy scheme) and you're left with a situation where Joe Bloggs on the street is: Not interested in building their own house Not interested in the actual quality of the house, as it's only a step on the ladder/investment Then pack in historically low interest rates and money from quantitative easing and you've got crap housing, bought by people disinterested it it's crappiness, funded with money that doesn't actually exist and with interest charged on the amount that is so low that it's below inflation in some cases. Whilst all the time the property magically becomes more and more valuable..... I don't think the bubble will burst imminently, but it can't be far off.

Emigrate. It's not our only reason for going, but it's one of the main ones. Given the choice between paying off a mortgage for the rest of my life (given that a normal 4 bed house here is £500-600k, that's £20k a year on the mortgage for the rest of my working life) or buying somewhere outright for the cost of a 15% deposit here, the choice was pretty clear. Not being an oracle, I can't predict the future of the housing market in the UK, but logic dictates that if the young can't get onto the property ladder then the whole thing comes crashing down. The increases in National Insurance and inflationary pressures aren't going to help either. The UK has a pathological issue with housing. It can only be blamed on decades of successive political mismanagement from administration after administration. There is a list as long as my arm that illustrates this, but it's late and I just can't be bothered. You're f*cked if you want to buy a house now if you're not already on the ladder.

The productivity point is salient. Fundamentally, if I am a business owner and the people working for me aren't productive, I am not profitable. If I am not profitable, my business fails and then everyone is out of a job. As such (in my line of work), I can only afford to employ people that are productive and there are plenty of people out there that aren't even worth the current minimum wage, nevermind £15/hr. That being said, I do think that for most self employed cutters, £200/day is a good and sustainable rate of pay. It's enough that the cutter can afford to take 6 weeks holiday a year and only work 4 days a week and still take home around £30k after fuel/machinery costs. I say four days a week because there are always some unproductive days repairing machines, sitting inside looking at the god-awful weather, injuries and such like.

In principle, I have no problem with £15/hr. There is no one that I regularly work with on less than £20/hr. The problem is that you can't hold everyone to the same standard. I've had guys work for me at £10hr that have cost me £5/hr in timber not produced. I've got guys working for me who I pay £22/hr that make me good money each and every time they come to work. The problem with an hourly rate is that there is a massive chasm between the best and the worst workers. To apply such a high minimum wage would be fine if everyone was at least reasonable at their jobs, but there are so many people in society today for whom tying shoe laces is the limit of their technical skill. A lot of these folk you'd genuinely be better off funding to stay out of the work place and prohibit them from reproducing. It could be considered seriously harsh, but the world is full enough already without generating millions more useless people whose jobs have already been replaced by machines. Postscript: That's what I love about Arbtalk. You can start a post being very supportive of socialist ideals and end up on a bit of a eugenics vibe 😬 😆

You're right to draw the line between tree surgery and forestry. I've worked with so many cutters over the years and the spectrum of ability and work ethic is huge. Some cutters are very talented, but lazy to some extend. Others are talentless but work very hard. The unicorn is the hard working talented cutter and there aren't too many of those about. I know a few and work with them whenever I can. To put it into context, on a site a few years back, I was working with a couple of my best cutters and one of my worst. Same trees across the site. The two skilled cutters did around 27t a day each on average in decent douglas fir. Felled and processed. The other guy did 6-8t. It's situations like this that make minimum wages very tricky as production rate when you're unproductive can put you below that threshold. That being said, when I was felling a lot (25-28 years old) I was really bloody fast, but I did take a lot of breaks. I only had an on or off setting, in terms of felling. That's probably why I'm a bit broken now 😄 I did feel pleased with myself the other day felling 230 relatively small (50-60ft, 6-12" DBH) spruce at the harvester in 15 racks in 3 hours. Still got it - even if I needed physio afterwards 😄

When I was hand cutting, I used to follow a pretty rigid routine, which worked well with the chap I used to work with. Two tanks (of fuel in the saw), breakfast. Two tanks, lunch. Two tanks, second lunch/tea. One or two tanks then home. That was a 07:30 to 16:30-17:00 day. It worked very well and we usually took breaks of 20 minutes, 30 minutes and 20 minutes. Motor manual chainsaw work is hard graft and you have to make time for refuelling yourself. I always cut quickly and put a good tonnage on the deck. Now that I don't do so much cutting, I tend to take fewer breaks, or eat as I'm driving the forwarder. I do get annoyed if people take the piss with breaks, but I always breaked regularly and worked fast. Everyone is different.

The statements from Sarah's family are wrenching. There is no punishment that could really befit the crime. For a police officer to so heinously abuse their position of public trust and power defies belief. I doubt that he'll last very long in prison. Unless he's completely separated from the rest of the prison population, I'm sure there will be a queue of fathers of daughters lined up to put an end to that monster.

Surely it's much more than 12%. Current minimum is £8.91 so it's over 50%? I believe that it's a 12% increase on the national average wage.

Epic rain here today, both on site and at home. Rain gauge at the bottom of the lane has recorded 55mm. One of the torrential showers today coincided with a brief stint out of the cab chucking trees at the harvester. A complete change of clothing was needed at lunchtime

I think that property ownership is pretty common in rural areas even amongst those of modest means. Not to say that there aren't rental properties, but they are far harder to find. Why would you bother spending £8k a year on a house in rent when you can buy it for £60-80k? I wouldn't blame you for leaving Scotland. The lockdown trashing of the countryside has underlined how a significant minority of the country are ruining if for the rest of you. Of course we get litter down here too, but it's not in the same league as what we used to see in Scotland. It's a shame, because so much of Scotland is so pretty.

I know that the tax burden is very high in Sweden. I'm not pretending it'll be anything other than that and I'm sure it'll still bite 😄 But, having a mortgage free house and limitless work, alongside much improved (for us) freetime activities will take the sting out of it. Everyone has to prioritise what's important to them, and for us it's not money. Maybe we'd eventually make more money here, but at what cost?

I'm on my fuel card so about £1.11 plus VAT. It had never occurred to me before but isn't it wonderful that we pay VAT on the full amount? So we're charged VAT on the duty. A tax charged on a tax. Fabulous. 😠

Both my wife and I got fuelled up fine in Tiverton today at Esso. Seems to be a lot more supply there without the massive queues we have in Cullompton.

I would say that that is a little bit ambitious. It's not that the machines can't produce that, only that you can't do anything else. So clearing sawdust, clearing the offcuts, banding packs, moving them out of the way, maintaining machines, dealing with jams/breakdowns, changing blades, sharpening etc. We used to do lorry loads of western red cedar for beehives at 35 cubic metres a time. We had the big Trakmet TTS800, the multirip saw and the frame saw. It'd usually take us a hard three-four days to fill the lorry with a 4 man team. And then an easier day of tidy up and resetting before doing it again.

After a long stable spell, it's wild out there this morning. I could hear the rain lashing the window overnight. 6mm so far on the gauge. The forecast for the week is pretty poor. Autumn has arrived.

Local Esso garage has a delivery at 22:00-00:00 so I'll fill up on the way to work tomorrow. Perhaps I'll drive a little more economically than usual 😬

I wonder how long it'll be before people start putting red in their tanks. I've got hundreds of litres of that and a van fuel tank with the fuel light on. All stations in our town are out.

I suspect that you have a slightly different perspective living and working in Norway, which I feel is the most capitalist of the Nordic nations. I however defer to your experience in the matter. What is worth noting though is that the Nordic Model of Socialist Capitalism is very different from the Socialist Hell that the right in America so often categorise it as. Yes, it is very supportive of entrepreneurs and yes, it's possible to make a lot of money there. The difference is that throughout all of that, there is a rock solid social security safety net. I'd argue that part of the reason that the Scandinavian countries have been so successful in recent years is that the risk of abject destitution has been largely removed from the public consciousness.