I know multiple people who after 10-20 years with them, they have tried to increase the price to 4x what a new customer would pay. They phone to complain and it’s cut to 3x. This is despite alternative fibre having been installed on their street so they switch to that. VM make no attempts to cut the price to something even close to reasonable.

We do have a right to free speech under article 10 of the human rights act - the thing that all the right wing parties are saying we should remove.

It’s the amount the average energy bill is going to increase by between January and April. It’s not supposed to solve problems now, it’s for that specific problem coming in January.

They’re hoping energy prices will drop by April.

I don’t think it’s about a widescale attack with catastrophic loss of infrastructure.

You’re right, in those situations 72 hours isn’t going to help much.

A more realistic scenario might be power failures across a region caused by extreme weather. Or something like the Spain and Portugal blackout last year.

Last year during a storm a tree came down and blocked our road for 36 hours. They had over 60 across the area to deal with. We’ve had 6-8 hour powercuts caused by a bird because the power infrastructure here is 80 years old and fragile.

Nearby, a fault with a valve meant 5000 people didn’t have running water for a week. They were able to provide bottled water but they had to prioritise vulnerable people so this just means you don’t need to be top of the list.

Our modern society is incredibly fragile.

They’re doing this where i live. Mostly grazing land. Cows all summer, then they’re brought in for winter and the whole place becomes a swamp. The farmers are tenants and the landowner sold to developers a few years ago who now want to build 1000s of houses. It only takes looking at the topology and the location of the existing houses to realise why it’s not been done before.

Yeah, i agree. You can cut the benefits bill by reducing payments and making lives worse, or you lift people up so they no longer need them. This seems like an attempt at the latter and I hope it works.

We have 2 mongrels. We had their dna tested to see what breeds they were. It was complete nonsense. They came back with 20+ breeds each, not matching anything like what they look like.

For one of them it flagged his mother, who’s owners had done the same, as a distant relative, 1% match. It also flagged pure breed dogs 1000s of miles away on a different continent as relatives. Possible but very unlikely.

They also induce demand and push up prices to the cap

Same here although i cycled. Was about a mile each way. Fairly low traffic. I imagine it’s way more traffic now so that might be part of it.

Our typical rainfall is 80mm/month. So we’re talking an extra 16mm. We had 16mm in one afternoon a couple of weeks ago. It was very heavy rain, but hardly relentless.

Given that i had my right to live and work in the majority of Europe taken from me against my will and now half our political parties are looking to strip me of my human rights I’d say it’s pretty self evident that it’s A and governments can take them away.

We got our water butts free on local Facebook groups or marketplace. You’re right though, they don’t store a lot. Our outside tap is somehow unmetered so i mostly use that anyway. The water butts ran out weeks ago. No hosepipe bans here (north west).

Affordable houses are a scam as well. Most people think it means, a house, that is affordable.

Instead it’s usually a shared ownership thing so it’s still stupidly priced but you can buy 25% of it.

New development near us the affordable houses were 25% of a 2 bed semi for £100k.

Then you get to pay £800/month rent on the other 75% while being 100% responsible for all the costs and maintenance.

Watch the actual interview. It’s about 2 minutes on benefits starting at 2:30 https://youtu.be/rEiJPHHg4dA

Supporting people into a better position rather than just giving them money forever is a good thing. As always the devil’s in the details but I’m willing to hold judgement on this one.

This entire article is rage bait.

He’s such a hypocrite. Was criticising the arrests for social media posts before.

My wife claims pip and application is awful in every way. I cannot believe there is anyone that successfully gets pip who should not. I find it much more likely that there are many people who should get it but don’t because their disability prevented them filling in the application.

What are you on about? This is the cost of writing a prescription which is free for humans on the NHS. This isn’t about the price of the drugs which can be anything for pets and £9.90 for humans.

Presuming this is a residential street im sure the neighbours are happy about 100s of people driving in from surrounding towns every day.

I agree there should be easier paths to compliance but clearly these rules exist for a reason and shouldn’t be ignored.