Prediction: the next amendment they try is getting rid of the term limits amendment…

Amazon spent billions to buy the company and millions more to get the legacy producers out of the way. I’m sure they want a return on that.

So if they are going to make more, we as consumers want then to be good, don’t we?

Something completely realistic, right?

Buddy, the world is a dumpster fire right now and it’s only getting worse.

I don’t watch films for realism. I want the billionaires to get fed into their drug crushing machine*, or sucked out of the window of their private jet, or get minced by their giant drill or blown up in their yachts.

I want the good guys to win for a change.

*yes, I know this was a henchman. Don’t @ me

I don’t know about the US, but in the UK, rebuilding would be covered by the homeowner’s buildings insurance.

Although insurance companies would probably try to claim it as an Act Of God to get out of it. Don’t know how that would go legally…

No, just a shitty kettle.

Shakespeare invented literature, so clearly there’s no value in teaching anything from before him…

Bloody shoppers!

Do it. We’ll adjust and hopefully take it as a kick up the arse to increase speed on the transition from gas.

Whereas they’ve just stood up in front of the world and said “we can only operate by violating human rights, which we are absolutely doing”

To adapt the Mitchell and Webb sketch… yes, you’re the baddies.

There are many reasons why renting is better for some people and buying is better for others.

Renting gives you the flexibility to just up sticks and leave at a known notice period. You don’t have to worry about the boiler breaking, or mould/damp, or the roof coming off (or like I’m about to have to deal with, a fence panel getting blown away in a storm) because your contact with the landlord says they’ll fix that for you.

There should absolutely be that choice available.

The problem, at least in the UK and probably elsewhere, is that renting is just SO expensive that it’s not possible to rent and save money, meaning that if your goal is to buy, you can’t because you can’t raise the deposit, even if paying a mortgage on a similar sized property would actually be cheaper on a monthly basis.

Sure, you read stories about people who are wonderful landlords, they don’t raise rents, or at least, by less than market rates, they’re quick to fix any problems the tenants have, all that good stuff.

Equally, you read stories about people who are basically renting from Satan and all the things I mentioned above take months or years to get fixed, if ever. (Slumlords are definitely people who should be put up against the wall and shot come the revolution)

I’m assuming the vast majority are somewhere in the middle.

But the fact that you’ll probably rent for at least some of your life shouldn’t drain all your money into someone else’s mortgage. As I said in that other post, housing of some form should be a basic human right. And the fact that individuals or companies can buy many houses and leave them empty because they can afford to have rents set so high that most people can’t afford them? That’s just wrong.

Hah. I meant socially, not that it happened by accident!

To be clear, I wasn’t trying to say ALL rental housing should be subsidised, just that there should be a healthy supply available for local councils to make available to people who need it based on whatever criteria they set for that.

Even when I was renting, I’d earn too much to qualify. People with young children would take priory over single people. That sort of thing.

It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than companies gaming the system to maximise profits at the expense of the most vulnerable.

Yes. The ability to have a place to live should be a basic human right and therefore be affordable.

If that means the government* subsidises it for the low income families (as in owns them and rents them at below market value), so be it.

We used to have “council houses” in the UK for exactly this purpose, but in the 70s, Thatcher came up with a “right to buy” (at a decent discount) and then made two mistakes - there were no restrictions after buying to stop you selling to anyone else, and there was no building of replacement stock after they were sold. So the result 50 years later is that there are nowhere near enough council houses any more, and a lot of the old ones are privately owned and being rented out at market rates, which are (depending on the area) very expensive.

*local or national, I don’t really care which

Because the way to increase government revenue is to raise taxes, and businesses and the rich can afford to lobby against that for them, so it means raising taxes for the poorest.

Which doesn’t raise that much and is always unpopular.

We’ve known this since they threw the 2016 Brexit referendum, but finally a government has had the balls to call it out and re-do the vote.

Genuine question - what device do you have that has USB-C ports, no USB-A ports, doesn’t have WiFi, but supports the dongle?

Rather than the outrageous number of fascists and the disturbingly high number of people who’d rather not vote (or vote third party) instead of voting against the fascist in a meaningful way?

Like, I get there might have been issues with the Democratic campaign, but for fuck’s sake, the alternative was what you got. Well done. Hope the view was worth it from atop that high horse.

Oh, sorry, don’t misunderstand - obviously a crushing defeat in the popular vote is the best outcome.

I’m just saying they have a plan for a narrow loss and a plan for getting the shit kicked out of them.

You’re missing MAGA logic though. If Harris wins in a landslide, that’s further proof that the results were tampered with, because clearly not that many people actually voted for her…

It’s more Y’all Quaeda

My boss told me verbally “don’t call your colleague a fascist by email or anything else that leaves a record”, so that was nice of him.