Not where Semmy lives. Warmer than Indiana.
1 Like
Excellent. Family of four incoming.
Weâre gonna need a big turkey for the Crimbo dinner!
2 Likes
and there in one easy step is the magic of Vancouver real estate pricesâŚ
2 Likes
Iâd de-camp to Harrison Hot Springs for Christmas 
I dunno what the answer is. my ex-wife moved from Canada to Denver, Seattle, then Florida and AFAIK is currently residing in Tampa with her citizenship and now twice divorced.
land of opportunity means different things to everyone, but cannot deny her drive to succeed transcends her upbringing. She was in foster care as a 15yo and moved out at 18. (her dad was a shut-in and mom couldnât even look after herself). Was working nights with one of my friends at a restaurant whilst going to uni during the day, I met her in her final year of a 2yr course in Marketing and Comms. govt social program paid for her tuition, she paid for everything else on her own and we moved in after a year. within 10 years she had started her own successful business that she still owns doing SEO work and I believe sheâs part of the MOZ group now as well. sheâs recently been visiting her employees in EU last month whom she hired right before the pandemic and hadnât met. Havenât spoken to her in a decade, but my mom does and apparently sheâs burned her mortgage and bought a new Tesla last month.
1 Like
itâs fucking atrocious how bad itâs gotten. theyâve lose control here, government opened up the housing market to offshore ownership and theyâve bought up everything. houses are sitting empty as âinvestmentsâ and thereâs a rental shortage. itâs insane. Weâve had some pretty serious discussions in my house about cashing in and moving to Costa Rica where we couldnât be mortgage free, living walking distance from a beach and still have money in the bank. If it werenât for that pesky 7yo at home.
Some friends of ours got tired of the bullshit and are world-schooling their kids. https://www.instagram.com/on_the_road_again_family/?hl=en
Sure beats living through rainy/cold Canadian winters!
You just let me know when youâre coming. Friend of mine just bought his last house there. he and his missus are near 50 and closing in on retirement.
1 Like
Itâs a crazy one, the drive and opportunity thing. My wifeâs dad was a college professor, here in the States, and also in the UK too. Not a wealthy life or anything, but comfortable enough with it. But he wanted to innovate more, and has an excellent business brain, a scientific mind, and knows lots of talent in lots of places, and so on and so forth.
Long story short, he founded a company that has a process to treat water so that it sterilizes any surface it comes into contact with. He sold half of it to Delta as they shared some patents early on, and Delta is free to bring it to the domestic market, as they are one of the big players in the area of faucets/taps.
With the other half of the company he has, the applications are genuinely world changing. He has been at the CDC quite a lot with this, and also has a deal with some key hospital groups.
I told him when he sells the company it I want a nice steak dinner from him and he laughed, but a friend of mine, who was an early investor with him, told me that he has turned down some offers north of $100M, because now that the concept is proven and it is being manufactured, and there are customers, it could grow very large indeed. Since he is from Indiana, and so is Mike Pence, when he was VP (before they all started storming the castle) he had a couple meetings with him.
So he went from a professor to this. Not a starting place of poverty by any means, but the desire to press on and do more, and innovate and so on⌠itâs fascinating to observe.
1 Like
Thatâs the thing, as long as you have the margin for failure, a lot more things become more possible. If Iâm not wrong, I think micro-loans have played a massive role in bringing some communities out of poverty in some places in the world, the key benefit being that some households had more disposable cash they could use to invest in some things they couldnât before because of how tight their finances were.
2 Likes
Yes they vary, but in my opinion the variance in the UK is massive. The lack of investment in certain areas has killed them and created this market where people have to travel vast distances to work or get work. Have an income that falls below a certain level and the travel costs make it unfeasible to actually work.
By government intervention I believe in investment in things like infrastructure that gives adequate transport links but also encourages business into areas knowing that moving materials / products in an out is possible. Other incentives too perhaps.
1 Like
THAT is the responsibility of govt, in a nutshell. to provide infrastructure to communties both in growth and ones that are fading. to provide and implement a PLAN for the future of an area that needs direction.
2 Likes
yes, and that is where successive UK governments have failed
thatâs not just the UK. problem is there needs to be an OCP involved who can make that long-term vision a success. When you have 4-year tenures in a local government that is constantly in flux, it really makes progress difficult.
one of my wifeâs friends is an OCP for the City of Vancouver, I love hearing about what that looks like on a day-to-day basis, planning for development in 2040 and beyond
1 Like
Yet big companies do this all thye time!
The brachiosaurus was only 2 heads taller than Jesus?
Love the different perspective you bring to threads.
2 Likes
Particularly when the painting looks like it was painted by one of his disciples. 
For me that was one of the big benefits of EU. It supported deprived areas continually overlooked (Liverpool, Wales, Glasgow)
The UK is far too London centric.
Live somewhere like Middlesbrough you might as well be in a different country. The trains they have in the National railway museum I shit you not are still in service between Darlington and Middlesbrough.
I would not mind if they were half decent trains but these were the crapiest type of trains. Like those school buildings that were only meant to be temporary but somehow become permanent. I remember I went for an interview. It must have traveled at 30 mph, filthy, and had to stand the entire way.
5 Likes
I think even most Londoners would agree with you. From the perspective of a Londoner, you see ever more concentration in London, resulting in more people moving to London as living wherever theyâre from just even feasible any more, not if you want opportunities for careers outside a few options. Then you have housing costs rise because of this increased demand, resulting in increased rents and property prices. Sooner or later, you have to build new infrastructure because the existing one isnât sufficient to handle the demand any more, but then youâd have to acquire existing property at sky-high prices to build the new infrastructure. In the end, the government will end up spending a fortune of taxpayersâ money, much of which goes into the pockets of only a few.
At the same time, itâs not feasible politically to kill the golden goose, although in this case itâs definitely unsustainable to have things go on the way they are⌠The easy win is to invest money in London, rather than trying to revitalise the other parts of the country, since that would require a lot more investment to make up for whatever went missing in the last few decadesâŚ
3 Likes