I know you were thinking it
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Iâve had plumbers, sparks, carpet-fitters, door-hangers, gas fitters ad every other kind of tradesman in over the last few years.
I just assume the price quoted is cash. I never ask if itâs going through the books. If Iâm happy with the price good luck to them.
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Getting a little harder to do this now. Banks will not permit deposits greater than ÂŁ8k in a year for example.
Not a full solution by any means but certainly something.
I do wonder if theyâre going after the wrong people though. No evidence for this but it often feels like the government always seem to come after people trying to do a little better.
Weâve had a bit of a blow this last week. We have a property we rent out. 2 up 2 down, old stone cottage. Government is bringing in new rules on how EPCâs are calculated. Rental properties must have a C rating or higher. The new rules say it is impossible to get a C rating with any form of fossil fuel boiler.
We can get exemption if we invest ÂŁ10k in the property, I think thatâs how weâve interpreted it so far.
Air source heating just doesnât work in these properties. We have until 2030 I think.
Weâre stuck a bit and itâs frustrating. We may have to sell.
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If Iâm asked, cash or bank transfer, my answer is always the same.
I never request cash payment, but I never refuse it.
Iâve done a lot of work for a letting agent, obviously bank transfer payments which i have no issue with.
Things Iâve seen in that time has led to me forming an intense dislike of landlords though.
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Is it regressive at the minute? Or is it just society doing what society does? I donât think there is any simple rule to answer that question. Like most things, itâs people like you and I forming opinions/arguments.
I agree we should expect human progress, but how do we determine what is progressive or regressive? They are commonly linked. If we take your reference to children having to deal with Facism, you could also state that schools are increasingly becoming multi faith and so children are more exposed and educated about people of different culture. Again, you could also look at how much the Country is embracing Womenâs sport and the increase in funding/exposure. These sports are increasingly being made available at schools, so again progression.
Infact there is a solution for almost all of the issues you raised. Unfortunately, the true regression is that generation by generation we have become more expectant, lesaccountable and spend more time moaning than applying ourselves.
Increasingly people are happy to be supported by the Government than work a job that they feel is below them. Look at the NEET figures! And yet how often do you see a young white person delivering food or post, cleaning toilets at shopping centres, portering at hospitals
But isnât this part of the problem tho? The problem is that we are developing an attitude of blame and excuse. Going by your own analogy. A rising tide does lift boats, but what happens if all the people who donât have a boat decide to hang onto the rich big boat, causing it to be overstressed and sink. Sometimes the big boat is the easiest way of surving but commonly not the only one. Maybe people could try swimming. You may not survive but at least you tried and didnât waste your energy treading water moaning about a boat you expected to âbailâ you out.
Fraud is massive full stop.
I would rather they focused on small businesses who dissolve, resign directors, set up phoenix companies and are often business which can falsely inflate sales. I think the Government have recently created a department dedicated to tackling this.
Where I live there are a lot of Boss mini marts, registered as Boss 1 Boss 2, etc. all Afghan directors similar names. The directors change between shops strangely just before filing or proving identity. One was raided by trading standards and fined, they resigned their directorship and registered at another franchise. Both shops still operating.
I got a parking ticket at training centre and researched the directors at companies house. And they had 2 directors across their history, exactly the same name, address, month of birth. The only difference was 5 years on their year of birth.
Another example is a lad who went to school with me, locked up as a teen for armed robbery, later on for being part of a hole in the wall gang, connections with the big players and yet despite all this became a director/owner of a football club, by simply changing the way he spelt his name.
Crazy when you think of it. Like why are there 3 24/7 mini marts operating in a mile radius that donât sell alcohol but by the looks of it, lots of bottled water and toilet role.
Of course itâs regressive. Not compared to the vast swathe of human history, where if you were poor youâd live to 40 and die of consumption. But certainly post war, following the consensus that created the NHS and the welfare state.
In the late twentieth century you could still support a family on one average salary. Education was covered. Bills werenât out of control.
Today more wealth than ever is held by fewer people. That isnât âjust what society doesâ. Itâs a reversal of seventy years of social progress.
You are stretching the metaphor a bit but here goes. If the person with a massive boat has only got a massive boat because heâs taken all the wood for everyone else, then he canât complain when all the people with no wood sink it trying to climb on it. Maybe if everyone had enough wood to build at least a small boat, it wouldnât be a problem.
As for telling people to swim, and they might die but at least they tried, you are the ghost of Thatcher and I claim my five pounds.
I think itâs certainly true that younger people seem (to me, anyway) less motivated, less ambitious and more lethargic in the the workplace. Weâve started referring to âmillennial health daysâ in response to the mysterious mental heath sickies taken by people under thirty.
But I think itâs a lot more complicated than just saying young people are lazy and unwilling to work.
I think what weâre seeing is an ennui symptomatic of the social contract breaking down. What are we telling them to work hard for? The dream of a house theyâll never be able to afford? A career that AI is going to fuck? A pension theyâll never get? And then there is the long list of problems weâre leaving them to deal with - global instability, climate change, species loss, plastic etc etc.
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Thatâs not limited to Afghan migrants. When I worked adjacent to architecture, there were a few famous big shot architects who had a track record of starting companies, running massive debts, closing them down leaving creditors fucked, and then starting again a few months later.
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Sounds like the MO of Donald Trump.
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lolâd at the Thatcher comment before you edited.
The gist of your post definitely ainât funny.
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Is the problem the people doing this or the fact that the rules and laws have loop holes that allow them?
This morning Iâve just been seeing reading on how Nvidia and associated companies have been selling stock to shell companies creating layers upon layers of confusion (which includes Grok) where ultimately the person holding that stock doesnât know they have it and what the risk is. Itâs all legal too.
Itâs 2008 all over again and the same people, including Michael Burry are switched on to it.
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What do you mean by stock - products they make, or shares in the company?
Physical ai server racks and gpuâs I believe. Iâm still digging into it but hereâs an example of what is believed to be going on
The Circular Capital Loop: In early 2026, a new entity called Valor Compute Infrastructure was formed. Nvidia sold $5.4 billion worth of GB200 GPUs to Valor and booked it immediately as revenue. Simultaneously, Nvidia reinvested $1.9 billion of its own cash back into Valor as an anchor investor. Critics call this circular financing; Nvidia maintains it is a standard strategic investment.
I think Iv worked it outâŚyou work undercover as the local paper boyâŚ.
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It wouldnât surprise me one bit. Just to clarify, I only provided their Nationality to demonstrate a trend. Like with the education/training company, the directors linked companies all had similar names, which is termed as Phoenixing.
Looking into it - and I accept that I am not aware of the reasons behind the listed events - it is shocking how many discrepancies there are at Companies House. You would think there would be tighter control measures, especially when there are trends with certain individuals.
As mentioned, I understand that there is a new focus on this practice and new measures in authenticating Individuals.
As i said, there is not a simple rule for this. There are so many factors and to dispute and disagree on all of these would be a waste of both our time.
As I said, your cup is half full and without trying to offend you it is in my opinion becoming a more common and accepted trend in todayâs society.
There will always be an inequality. There will always be an imbalance of wealth per person.
This hasnât reversed 70 years of social progress because how do you define it? The truth is that there are more people being supported by the Government, with to a wider range of circumstances.
I am no more guilty of stretching the metaphor than you are of changing the circumstances. So you suggest the man with the wood has taken it all, maybe he purchased it, maybe he worked hard to chop it all down? Maybe, he wanted to provide a good future for his children and was proactive in doing this, rather than wait for a problem.
What if the man, whilst chopping down trees off his hard work, provided wood to the others to help them out, but they misused it? Using it excessively because the man would give them more?
The man gives them the wood, do you then expect him to provide tools, training to build the boat or even better build it and just give it to them?
Taking the metaphor even further, what if this man who worked hard to collect the wood was forced to give it away to people who were unable or unwilling to collect wood. The flood came and the man had spent so much time collecting wood for the community that he didnât have enough to build his boat and likewise drowned. Who is going to provide wood for the winter?
The Ghost of Thatcher for telling people to try and (maybe) fail rather than accept you are going to fail and not bother at all. Wasting their time blaming other people for their failure rather than trying to do something to change their destiny.
Can I ask what the advice is of the Ghost of Political present and political futureâŚ
It is more complicated I agree.
I donât think I said young people are more lazy and unwilling to work, directly. But you are making a lot of assumptions based on opinion and ignoring the fact that similar problems have forever existed.
History shows us that having a dream is better than not having a dream.
What if Martin Luther King didnât have a dream, what if Emmilene Pankhurst didnât have a dream, what if we got told the world was flat and accepted it rather than challenged this theory and proved otherwise.
It is not easy to succeed in life and not all people with a bit of money inherited it or achieved it by ill means.
I wont give you the war and peace of my own situation but I had a period of my life when I was young where I was made redundant (financial recession) struggled to get reemployed, experienced depression and had to sell my house to pay my debts.
I was fortunate because I had a good support network, who believed in me and pushed me. I retrained, and pursued a different career. I now am financially sounder than I have ever been, have my own house, a nice car and live well.
I donât know where I would be if my support network had the same defeatist attitude as yourself. But I am pretty sure my life is better for its absence.
This isnât about wealth imbalance. Of course some have more than others and always will have. This is about the scale of the imbalance between rich and poor.
Youâre doing that thing again of assuming a position against obscene inequality is arguing for communism.
What youâre saying is young people should stop moaning about the prospect of structurally impossible home ownership, because of the Civil Righrs Movement and Womenâs Sufferage.
Hey kids donât worry. If women can get the vote through a decades long targeted campaign of non compliance and direct action (that would be now defined as terrorism) and eventually succeed, in no small part due to the fact that a world war wiped out all the young men, then you too can one day, possibly, with a bit of luck, be able to buy a house.
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I was a little uncomfortable with the initial statement. This equally so.
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Stop being alarmistâŚ
(Sorry, posted the wrong link initiallyâŚ)
This is from 12 years ago, btwâŚthings have deteriorated significantly since then.
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