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Aggy

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Posts posted by Aggy

  1. Posted

    I mean there are actual philosophers and scholars who can’t agree on a definition of atheism so probably not one to get too worked up about on here!

    The initial point LYB was trying to make though seems to be correct - the ruling has created no legal precedent to get rid of faith schools or stop faith schools from forcing children to pray in assembly. It has merely established that if a school wants to be ‘secular’ and ban all forms of religion and praying, it can. 

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  3. Posted

    Haven’t really seen much about it but all seems a bit nanny state. Given the number of smokers has almost halved in the past decade and, I imagine, is as low as it ever has been in the younger generations, probably see it as something that won’t get much opposition.

    Which makes you wonder whether alcohol is a few decades behind. It already results in more cost to the NHS and society than smoking, and is becoming less and less popular with younger generations….

     

  4. Posted

    51 minutes ago, Rock The Boat said:

    I'm agitated by facts. Like all woke people you wish to ignore the facts. I wouldn't give a monkey's if they really were a religion of peace. I would be agitated by Quakers and Buddhists if the facts showed Quakers and Buddhists were committing heinous crimes. But they are not. If you're not going to be guided by the facts but by your feelings then you are never going to arrive at a solution to the problem of heinous crime.

    Like the peaceful Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar in recent years? 

    You and Broadstairs were agitated before you knew the “facts” simply because you saw the suspect didn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes. You stopped caring when you realised the “facts” were that he wasn’t a Muslim terrorist but some Australian bloke with a European surname and mental health issues. I am sure people will “draw their own conclusions” as to why…

     

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    10 hours ago, Herman said:

    We've had all shades of blue for nearly 15 years and they have trashed the country, from its economy through to its institutions. If you are worried about Starmer and his cabinet then you haven't been paying attention.

    Certainly can’t be any worse and you’d hope there’d be fewer ‘controversies’ at least. I’m not convinced there’ll be as much change as we would like, partly because there isn’t the money to do it but partly because I’m not entirely convinced by the current Labour Party leadership either. 

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    2 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Yes. And as I've explained, the operators of these parks are the developers I'm talking about when I said 'developers'. Those 80 parks owned by Berkley Parks didn't appear out of thin air, or the brand new one I linked to.

    Anyway, really not the time for this.

    Understood.  The developers building park homes to ‘get round the law changes banning ground rents’ are developers who were unaffected by the ground rent law changes and who were building park homes before those changes anyway. Makes sense.

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  7. Posted

    1 minute ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Really? After you come in with a 'not really', dismiss it like it doesn't it exist, argue with all of my word usage with things like  'what you mean is pitch fees, not ground rent', you say I'm in wind up merchant mode?

     

    Yes. Nobody has said they don’t exist. The “not really” was in response to your claim that developers are using park homes to get round the ground rent law changes. You still haven’t shown one example of that. You do though continue to post posts like this.

  8. Posted · Edited by Aggy

    4 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

     

     

     

    As for park homes more generally, I’ve already posted my thoughts on them. Are they exploitative? Possibly yes to an extent but for the reason that they need to have some form of income generation to be developed. They are predominantly retirement schemes (both links you posted above operate sites for over 50/55s).
     

    One of the main other retirement scheme models sees people buy a long lease for a premium, and then have to sell it back to the developer when they move out (or their estate sells it if they die) for 90 per cent of what they bought it for. Most retirement development schemes need some form of income generation to be viable/to attract investors to fund - if they had to sell up front with no future income generation, the developments  wouldn’t get off the ground.

    So if park homes were unable to charge the fees they do, I suspect there would become even fewer of them

    The flip side with park homes is that you get to live in something that cost you a lot less upfront than a “traditional” house, which is useful when you’re a retiree downsizing and unable to get a mortgage.

    As I mentioned though, the reality is that for this reason (and the fact you can’t get a mortgage on one) park homes aren’t close to becoming a solution for the housing shortage. They are though a potential option for building much needed retirement living stock, which in turn would free up residential accommodation.

     

  9. Posted

    4 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

     

     

    I suspect you’re back in wind up merchant mode to try and avoid saying you were wrong, as I think you’re probably intelligent enough not to be as confused as your posts suggest.

    If I owned an off-licence and the government banned pubs and bars in order to stop people consuming alcohol on site, would you suggest my continued use of my shop as an off-licence was trying to get round the law change banning alcohol consumption on-site? 

    Park home developers are unaffected by the ground rent law changes, so don’t need to “get round” the change in ground rent law. Developers of traditional homes are affected by the ground rent changes but are not building park homes to get round the ground rent changes. So one group isn’t and the other doesn’t need to.  

    Park homes also continue to be a tiny percentage of the market and almost exclusively aimed at over 55s- no developers are using them as an alternative to traditional housing because they can no longer charge ground rents.

    So, I’ll ask again, which developers are developing park homes to get round the ground rent law change as you stated? 

     

  11. Posted · Edited by Aggy

    1 hour ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

     

    I think we need to agree a definition of 'developer', so we'll keep it simple and use the first dictionary definition I can find on google. Here's one: A person who develops real estate, especially by preparing a site for residential or commercial use.

    The site owners I'm talking are clearly developers, who are developing land to provide pitches for residential accomodation in the way of prefab houses with a teensy set of wheels on them, not temporary accomodation or holiday accommodation, hence why I've brought it up in a thread called 'the housing shortage', for people with which they have to pay monthly fees ad infinitum and have to conform to rules set by the landowners in a fashion very similar to leasing, albeit subject to different legislation as some pedants may be wont to make a big thing of for reasons known only to themselves.

    Oh and incidentally, I checked and pitch fees are often also referred to as ground rent, even by lawyers, which makes sense given that pitches are allotted areas of ground. https://parkhomemagazine.co.uk/legal/pitch-fees-on-residential-parks-key-questions-answered/ I suspected this might be the case given that my uncle does actually live in one, pays this monthly, and described it to me as 'ground rent', which I would suspect he picked up from the bills from the site owners and/or the contract agreement and conversations when signing up.

    But ironically, your excessive pedantry is actually reinforcing my point that to all intents and purposes residential parks are creating a leasehold freehold situation that is technically not subject to that legislation, which arguably should be. A loophole, if you will.

    There are 827 such residential parks in the UK at the moment. I've no idea what the average size is, but just guessing that Hoo Marina is average on the basis it's a very densely populated, although I suspect it might be on the smaller side given land prices and availability there, that's an estimate of 250,000 such park homes out of 24.8 million houses in the UK, making it probably about 1% of all UK housing, which is growing because places like this are being actively developed. Assuming my uncle's ground rent is typical, about £200 a month, that's 2,400 quid a year out of his pension, then that's a sector turnover of about 600 million quid a year employing very few people, so you dismiss it if you will, but personally it bothers me as being exploitative.

     

    So… which developers are doing this to get round the changes to the ground rent law?

    Edit: and I don’t see any excessive pedantry. You claimed developers were getting round changes to ground rent laws by building park homes. Your “evidence” is park home operators who operated park homes before the law changes continuing to operate park homes after. Your claim is simply wrong.

  12. Posted

    14 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

    Very good point. It's just an anecdote but is interesting nevertheless - I was watching a series of videos on YouTube by a bloke called bald and Bankrupt. He went around some of the grimmest towns and cities, talking to the locals that live there. In all his videos there are streets and streets of bordered up housing, run down, desolate, windows smashed out and uncared for. One wonders why these can't be done up and sold off cheaply, and I think the answer is thy are in locations where people don't want to live (or can't) because there are no jobs there. Housing has to be targeted. Anywhere will not do.

    While I agree with your last two sentences, it isn’t just thinking about where you build the houses as such. It’s also whether new jobs can be created in the area and things like whether you can rejuvenate high streets to make it a more appealing place to live. You might not mind a longer commute if you’ve got nice things to do near you at the weekend.

    Often you get planning issues stopping the first point…

    Near me recently there was a run down, old council estate whose inhabitants raised all sorts of objections to a proposed development turning an abandoned car warehouse (which was bordered up and frankly just looking a mess) into life science labs and a couple of shops and bits and bobs like that. It was virtually city centre and the estate was on a main road near the university and hospital - so not countryside quiet. Would have created hundreds of jobs (many of which could have been filled by locals) but still got objections.

    A bit further out, an industrial development on greenbelt land (which I appreciate is a bit more controversial) would have created over 1,500 jobs near a deprived area.

    One I’ve been involved in in the West Midlands saw a large industrial estate  built as well as a large housing development around it - with schools, pharmacies, shops etc. The industrial estate has created thousands of jobs plus those in the schools, shops etc. and the houses are very popular.

    And then you see city centres and big towns trying to rejuvenate high streets by turning the old abandoned retail into more “activity” based things - can that filter down into the smaller towns? Can there be tax / rates cuts to attract businesses and retailers? Etc etc.

     

  13. Posted · Edited by Aggy

    14 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Oh,  sorry. I thought you were making a serious point rather than picking over semantics. I apologise for the misunderstanding.

    'A monthly payment to the land owner/free holder for very little in return'. Better?

    So which developers are getting round the ground rent law change by setting up park homes?

    So far you’ve only mentioned one park home operator who was operating park homes before the ground rent law changes anyway. And you’ve tried to dismiss the stats showing park homes continue to be a tiny fraction of new builds.

    There aren’t any are there?

     

  14. Posted

    2 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Which bit of 'Last week, I was literally sitting in a chalet in a park of about 300 similar chalets where the park is having properties added at a rapid rate' did you have trouble understanding?' Let me assure you that the model described in the article of only five years ago is still the model that the park I was talking about is working on. They currently have 53 other parks in the same company operating on the same model. And like I said, they're growing.

    It's a substantial amount and, like I said, every single person that has one is locked into ground rent and subject to the rules set by the land owners. This applies now to both new and older ones, so clearly whatever legislative changes have happened since 2019 don't affect the specifics here regarding the ground rent changes applied.

    Aside from that, I don't recall making any assertions about this specific issue pertaining to what percentage of the overall development industry it accounts for at all, so not sure why you're trying to pick an argument about percentages here. I don't see that as particularly important, seeing as every single new property in action like this is another pensioner having their pension milked for the ground rent for the benefit of private companies with not a lot in the way of staff or overheads.

     

    If it’s a residential dwelling “sold” by the grant of a long lease, they can’t charge a ground rent. The only way your examples can charge a “ground rent” is if they aren’t dwellings.

    You’re talking about pitch fees at mobile park home sites - there is separate legislation which deals with those. Looking at the government’s figures from 2022, around 159k people live in park homes - so around 0.3 per cent of the population. And the majority of those are retirement schemes.

    The reason I’m mentioning percentages is that the park home sector is tiny. If it was the case that developers were trying to “get round” the law change banning them from granting leases with a ground rent by building park homes on wheels instead, there’d be more park homes. The big house builders aren’t building park homes - and the example of a park home business you’ve provided must surely have been in business since before the ground rent law change if it has got 50 sites (so just continuing to expand its existing business, not changing its practices to try and get round the law change).

    I haven’t seen anything suggesting developers are trying to get round the ground rent law change in such a way (and worth also noting that a lot of the big house builders had already started moving away from ground rents before the law change given public perception of them). 

    More generally on park homes - the occupant doesn’t own the land. You own the temporary structure on the land. You can’t get a mortgage. They don’t really increase in value so aren’t much of an investment. You also have to pay a chunky commission if you sell. I don’t see it as being a serious solution to the housing shortage more widely. Where it may have some significance is in the retirement sector. A lot of park home sites are already over-55 only - if you’re downsizing, have the spare cash, and don’t really need an investment as such, then they perhaps make some sense. 

  15. Posted · Edited by Aggy

    On 11/04/2024 at 15:15, Nuff Said said:

    Maybe this belongs in the “too dull for conversation” thread, but for twenty years or more, I’ve been waking up in the night with headaches that seem to get worse lying down, so I’ve had to get up, take painkillers and wait for them to subside until I think I’ll be able to get back to sleep. They’ve steadily got worse over time and I’ve often ended up with migraines the next day.

    One night I was miserably surfing the net and came across the term “hypnic headaches”. The cure for these, counter-intuitively, is to drink caffeine at bed. Since then I’ve had a strong cup of caffeinated tea at bedtime and have never had a similar headache. Weird but true. So no decaf for me!

    Strange but interesting! Google says cause unknown - any idea what might have triggered it?

  16. Posted · Edited by Aggy

    4 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Last week, I was literally sitting in a chalet in a park of about 300 similar chalets where the park is having properties added at a rapid rate that works on exactly the basis I've described and which is growing quite fast. The entire ground is privately owned, not by the residents and every chalet, which is year-round residence, works exactly the way I described. In this instance, the development is actually just the concrete pad; the occupier shells out the entire cost of the prefab chalet that's sat on it, which is hundreds of thousands. These are all full-time, year-round residences.

    In fact, some people are also being tricked into buy holiday chalets as homes that they have no right at all to live in full time. What I'm talking about is an absolutely genuine part of the overall housing pictiure, without suggesting at all that it's the whole picture.

    Edit: Look here; the Guardian even wrote an article about it, which is usually the threshold around here for believing something might be real, isn't it?

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jul/13/park-homes-cheaper-than-bricks-and-mortar-but-not-trouble-free

    Ah yes an article from 2019 proving your argument that developers are using this to get round a law which came in… after 2019.

    And your example of being in one park of 300 chalets is absolutely definite proof that modular homes do in fact make up more than <2 per cent of new homes each year.

    Good arguments.

  18. Posted · Edited by Aggy

    2 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Developers are getting around that by starting to go for prefab chalets on wheels where you can have a ground rent.

    Not really. Virtually none of the big house builders use modular (less than 2 per cent of all homes built each year still) and even fewer of those are on wheels…

  19. Posted

    On 04/04/2024 at 15:00, king canary said:

    My first buy was a new build house and due to stretched budgets the council refused to adopt the road- meaning we all had to pay a private service company for 'maintenance.' The most I saw them doing was a bit of low level gardening of the green spaces yet there were over 100 houses paying about £300 p/y for the service. Felt like a bit of a scam to me and I've no doubt those charges will have gone up since I moved out.  

    That’s not really limited to leaseholds though - a freehold can have an estate service charge. 

    Now you can’t charge ground rents on new leases, leasehold will start to go out of favour (except in apartment blocks where it’s necessary). I expect it won’t be too long before they ban ground rents from continuing to be charges on existing leases as well. The current bill is more about having to pay to extend your lease - if you e got a 999 year lease it’s not so much of a issue, but if only 99 then it could be especially as many lenders don’t like leases with less than c.70 years on them.

  20. Posted · Edited by Aggy

    58 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Mid 19th century we're talking, but we're now heading onto the best part of a century on from the formal establishment of Israel. Multiple generations have been born in Israel as Israelis. It's a sovereign nation, both de jure and de facto. And Balfour predated the second world war.

    The ship really should have sailed on people actually challenging and questioning Israel's right to exist at all but you and many others still do it. People do that like it's perfectly reasonable, while in any other context we'd be talking about hate speech and encouraging genocidal sentiments; then everyone wonders why there's no chance of peace while the Palestinians deludedly demand a 'one-state solution' according to polling data, while a growing proportion of Israelis cease to believe in a possible peaceful solution and start thinking about the only other solution that doesn't entail their own extinction and which their enemies openly state is their preferred fate for them and which they demonstrated they'd only too gladly do if October 7th was anything to go by (polling data also shows majority Palestinian support for October 7th).

    Snore. Has anyone on these threads ever said Israel shouldn’t exist at all? 

    • Like 2

  21. Posted · Edited by Aggy

    7 hours ago, Yellow Fever said:

    Years ago I used to used regularly 'commute' to LHR - eventually got so fed up would always drive and park (from here). Rail was too expensive, unreliable and even then in order to get anywhere near a sensibly priced ticket had lots of constraints. And that was just for 1 person. Recently had to look at the trains again (to London)- ended up arranging travel around strike days or bus replacement services. It's not a 'service' but a joke - a cash-cow rip off of the public.

     

    I genuinely can’t remember the last time I’ve been on a train back from London that was as you’d expect. Every time for years either mine has been cancelled so I’ve had to get another one, or was crammed because another service had been cancelled and about three trains’ worth of people were cramming onto mine. And let’s not get started on anything going east/west instead of north / south…

    I only travel by train now if the company is paying and if it’s for a meeting I wouldn’t mind getting out of!

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    For a team from the last twenty five years or so that I can remember watching us, full backs are probably the weakest position.

    Drury the obvious shout at left back and probably Aarons at right back. 

    Edworthy? Helveg mentioned above who I was excited about signing but only 20 games. Lappin? Russ Martin I suppose.

    Whereas up top you’re struggling to get Earnshaw even on the bench and in midfield you’re probably not starting Maddison.

  24. Posted

    What is the point of the rules?

    My understanding was that originally ffp was brought in to protect clubs from overspending and going into administration. If that’s still the case, then I don’t see that letting them spend as much as they want but making them pay more on top by way of a tax helps very much.

    If the rules are about “levelling the playing field” then it doesn’t help with that either if it lets clubs spend whatever they want anyway.

    If it’s about keeping the big boys as the big boys, and even about keeping the top 17 much better than anyone in the championship, then it would probably help do that.

     

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