danny.

Labour doing great work for pushing electric cars. Only a few years ago it was zero VED, BIK 0% and now we're at full price VED, BIK goes up every year and now it costs 4.6/mile vs 1.6p/mile, which percentage-wise is huge. Probably won't bother going electric again for my next car, not sure it's worth the initial extra outlay and inconvenience on long journeys anymore vs savings. RIP plug-in hybrids too, they are not worth it at all any more.

I’ve got a mate absolutely hates Trump and the bias is hilarious. He was ranting once about deportations and how evil Trump was for deporting people. When I pointed out Obama had deported millions more I think his brain crashed to the blue screen of death. I think Trump is a terrible president, and how out of the millions of amazing people the US has they ended up with a choice of him or Harris is mind boggling, but they are all awful. It just depends on which political bias people have as to whether they say they are a hero or a villain.

Unrecognisable in 2025 with people using the inside lane

Depends what type. If it’s plaster probably not, although lightweight maybe they will. Best to ask the electrician.

What parallel universe did I wake up today. First Luke passes forwards and now Patson scores.

Did Luke Thomas just pass forwards!??

We don’t do planning in the U.K., haven’t for decades, it’s why our infrastructure is so behind. I.e. when Europe was building light rail networks we build motorways, and now we don’t even do that. Good at spaffing billions on HS2 though.

That's fair, I read into that myself as a millennial - only with informal communication though. Add exclamation marks to everything to make it seem more friendly!

100%, we are so self-destructive as a society. The internet is amazing and it's brought so much that we all like but is also probably the single worst thing we've ever created as a society interns of mental, emotional and societal health. Well not the whole internet, but certainly when social became popular that was the start. It was actually really nice in the late 90s when you had to boot up your 56k to check email but it's so invasive now it's ruined so many lives, people don't even realise it. I predict the quickest and easiest change we are already seeing, and that is making people stupid. Calculators killed people's mental arithmetic abilities, spell check their ability to write and AI will replace people's ability to think almost completely. We will see generations of fundamentally stupid and limited people barely able to hold a conversation or think about anything without "asking Chat". We've been doing this as a species a lot longer than the internet and AI too, look at things like tobacco and vaping, or UPF - we are experts at creating thing that do us untold harm in the name of profits and fun. Exactly, who is thinking about this - it's so short term. Organisations and businesses are saving money now by replacing workers with AI and then they will have no customers long-term. It's entirely self destructive.

It's so incorrect, mass scale AI will make the majority of people redundant.

Fair enough, I apologise for reading into that wrongly.

Well I said for 5 hours actually, most people have to work closer to 8 a day. But if that’s all they work in a day then that’s 10k a month. For trades like a plasterer or joiner the regular overheads are minimal so that’s well above what is needed to earn a living. My point really was, though, that often for that £500 the work is shoddy and no better than DIY standard, in my experience.

Yea, and there are other schemes I believe for a few trades. But as far as I know it’s only gas and electric you need a qualification for? Anything else you can just say you are something and start trading.

Having ran businesses for >20 years I probably wouldn’t. What does that have to do with anything I said though?

Valid!

I wasn't even arguing with you? Weird response.

It's bonkers how much people need to earn to even be net contributors. The Government spends around £17k per person per annum, and on PAYE you need to earn just over £65k to pay that. Over 90% of people earn less than that, so we have the vat majority being a net drain (loose figures, of course someone might pay in other ways and there is VAT, fuel duty etc. but they don't significantly change the problem). If we lose a significant amount of the top 10% there are real issues without massively putting up taxes.

I've used 2 people in the last 3 years who came recommend by friends and they were awful. It's still a lottery!

Anyone on around £73k pays £20k income tax and NI. Not sure where your stats are from @kenny? How did you get to £20k and £20bn?

The whole industry desperately needs some regulation. You don't need any kind of formal qualification needed to call yourself a trades, other than the schemes for Gas Safe and Electrical work. So I could start advertising that I'm a roofer tomorrow and take on work without having a clue what I'm doing. There needs to be some regulation in terms of practices too, it's insane we have an industry where people can take 10,000s in deposits and stage payments and then just disappear.

I’ve got to pick up on that. I don’t have a massive experience with minority ethnic trades other than some windows we had done by an Asian company. They did a terrible job and didn’t speak English on site including in front of us and I was fairly sure it wasn’t great stuff they were saying from their facial expressions and body language. They hated me pointing out the work that was wrong (and it really was bad, like 5cm out in measurements and bodged out of plumb and square to fit). BUT, the next set of windows we had were all white trades people. They were awful. They came recommended and were so bad they took 14 months snagging, had to replace some windows and doors three times because they couldn’t use a tape measure and actually went out of business shortly after they finished at ours presumably because they sucked at installing windows and wasted so much money everywhere. I’ve used plasterers, electricians, joiners, plumbers etc who have been white and all shockingly bad at their trades. It’s not a race thing, the quality of trades in the U.K. is just abysmal. I’m sure some are great but the majority want £500/day for 5 hours of garbage work. Best to do stuff yourself if physically able.

Dark patterns are a very annoying part of UX design but loads of sites do it, seems a bit harsh to investigate them for this. Although, I am very against it so if they could stop everyone doing it that would be great. Up there with removing Cancel Subscription buttons.

I mean, I know loads of thoroughly selfish people with immaculate houses. As you would say, there is no evidence that selfish people have dilapidated dwellings.

Couldn’t find a single dictionary to corroborate that, but OK. I know you have your own definitions of words from the TV channel discussion though so maybe you meant lazy, entitled or something else.