Exclusive: Duchy of Lancaster has maximised profits on land deals despite claiming it ‘does not rely on taxpayers’ money’
"Rely on taxpayer money" would be taken by most people to refer to a general grant, surely? Selling land under compulsory purchase is surely something different, and not surprising at all?
Re: Guardian
Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2025 9:29 am
by Boiler
Man from country that drowns everything in subsidised corn syrup bemoans traditional British puddings.
Exclusive: Duchy of Lancaster has maximised profits on land deals despite claiming it ‘does not rely on taxpayers’ money’
"Rely on taxpayer money" would be taken by most people to refer to a general grant, surely? Selling land under compulsory purchase is surely something different, and not surprising at all?
Not taxpayer's tax money.
They're quite happy to lap up the estates of Scousers who don't leave a will.
(Source Graham Hughes - well travelled scouser and leftie off the YouTube.
He states that the Dutchy inherits from any of its subjcts that die intestate.
If true - Now that's Feudalism. Now many Hiillsborough victims funded the latest Swan casserole).
Re: Guardian
Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2025 10:19 am
by Bones McCoy
Boiler wrote: ↑Tue Sep 23, 2025 9:29 am
Man from country that drowns everything in subsidised corn syrup bemoans traditional British puddings.
Puddings, indeed much of "national cuisine" emanates from the houses of "Jane Austin Characters".
Eeee we were poor, the Butler only had three pairs of shoes..
Highly reliant on a staffed kitchen with hours to invest in fiddly courses.
Meanwhile the doughty salt of the earth types were sitting down to a single course of Skause pot, or if travelling a pie or a hunk of bread, cheese and ham.
Pudding was an apple - if thee were lucky!!
We are heading back into time poor age, with the youth grinding their days on the gig economy treadmill.
Time is short, life is cheapening.
Pudding is the reserve of the Nigellas (Other, less MILFy, tradwives are available) and other nepo kids.
This said, the tree in my garden just yielded over 400 apples.
I've perfected a means to whizz up 3Kg of crumble topping in half an hour.
So the McCoys will be having Apple Crumble daily until December.
Re: Guardian
Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2025 10:25 am
by Boiler
Oh, I dunno: I have fond memories of my great-aunt making Spotted Dick.
If I could cook I'd be making coffee and walnut cakes and date and walnut loaves until Christmas - I've just cleared the brambles under the walnut tree and there's loads on the floor. Of course, now the brambles have gone those twitchy, furry little cunts with good PR will pitch up.
Fears of new PFI-style ‘disaster’ as firms handed £6m to advise on using private funds for NHS clinics
Pathetic clickbait. There's no evidence that the Government is considering 40 year contracts including maintenance deals or anything like that. Note "handed" for "people we don't like win contract to provide service". And even if the contracts were similar, the National Audit Office and others have done loads of reports on how to avoid them being a disaster (and by no means all of the PFIs were bad). Employing people with the right expertise like these contractors, as opposed to having people in the Treasury do it, might be considered an improvement,
You might as well have a headline "fears of new Concorde Disaster" every time something is funded in a fairly conventional way. See also any change to anything- Reeves makes a speech about financial regulation, and that's "Reeves announces 2008 style crash".
Re: Guardian
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2025 11:04 am
by Tubby Isaacs
Special relationship? There can be no such thing with a snake like Trump
Aditya Chakrabortty
Keir Starmer has spent the best part of a year cosying up to the US president. It will be no surprise when he gets bitten
It's a proper mystery why Starmer (and other European leaders) are being nice to Trump. Perhaps Aditya could put this point to Zelensky?
As a bonus, there's investment, schminvestment. And data centre, schemata centre.
Far more striking is Starmer’s doffing his cap at foreign investors as “life-changing”. Most Britons will feel differently. The Glazers, Blackstone and Macquarie are all examples of “inward investment”, but fans of Manchester United, patients of Southern Cross care homes and customers of Thames Water could tell MPs how well those went.
So it shall prove with the £31bn of technology investments. Whitehall’s own publications make clear that most of the US cash is not going into new businesses or swanky offices, but datacentres – which are absolutely central to AI, yet barely discussed in British politics. Our government claims they are “the factories powering AI” because in Westminster “factories” is shorthand for production, people, jobs. That is exactly not what datacentres are. They are much closer to hi-tech warehouses full, not of people, but machines. They don’t produce, they store: your data and mine. Nor do they provide much employment.
Luckily none of the investment announced was leveraged buyouts of football teams or care homes. So no, most Britons probably don't think it's bad.
As for the second bit, AI is above my pay grade. But there are the construction jobs, which one presumes might involve a few more engineers than building a warehouse). And there's a stunningly new concept called productivity, which takes account of such things as "machines". There's another stunning concept called "tech clusters", whereby you get other firms might set up near these big data centers.
I think there's a danger in overcooking the value of this investment, but that's a different point.
Re: Guardian
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2025 11:26 am
by Tubby Isaacs
Microsoft say half of their investment will be in ongoing operations. So not all in building "warehouses" then. And here's another investor, absolutely not investing in things like offices where people work.
BlackRock will open its new Edinburgh offices on 18th September, demonstrating its ongoing commitment to the region. The new space will allow BlackRock to grow its local workforce from 800 to 1,400. Once complete, two of the five largest BlackRock offices globally will be located in the UK. It is also investing £500 million into enterprise data centres across the UK, supporting infrastructure growth and digital transformation.
And another.
Bank of America is set to create up to 1,000 new jobs in Belfast, marking its first-ever operation in Northern Ireland. This milestone highlights the region’s growing importance in global financial services.
And another not building offices, admittedly. But not just a fancy "warehouse" either.
X-Energy and Centrica plan to build up to 12 advanced modular reactors with a follow-on UK-wide programme targeting a fleet of 6GW of nuclear power. According to the companies, the Hartlepool project would generate enough power for up to 1.5 million homes and create up to 2,500 good jobs. They estimate the overall programme could deliver at least £40 billion of economic value for the UK and US, with £12 billion specifically for the North East.
Special relationship? There can be no such thing with a snake like Trump
Aditya Chakrabortty
Keir Starmer has spent the best part of a year cosying up to the US president. It will be no surprise when he gets bitten
It's a proper mystery why Starmer (and other European leaders) are being nice to Trump. Perhaps Aditya could put this point to Zelensky?
As a bonus, there's investment, schminvestment. And data centre, schemata centre.
Far more striking is Starmer’s doffing his cap at foreign investors as “life-changing”. Most Britons will feel differently. The Glazers, Blackstone and Macquarie are all examples of “inward investment”, but fans of Manchester United, patients of Southern Cross care homes and customers of Thames Water could tell MPs how well those went.
So it shall prove with the £31bn of technology investments. Whitehall’s own publications make clear that most of the US cash is not going into new businesses or swanky offices, but datacentres – which are absolutely central to AI, yet barely discussed in British politics. Our government claims they are “the factories powering AI” because in Westminster “factories” is shorthand for production, people, jobs. That is exactly not what datacentres are. They are much closer to hi-tech warehouses full, not of people, but machines. They don’t produce, they store: your data and mine. Nor do they provide much employment.
Luckily none of the investment announced was leveraged buyouts of football teams or care homes. So no, most Britons probably don't think it's bad.
As for the second bit, AI is above my pay grade. But there are the construction jobs, which one presumes might involve a few more engineers than building a warehouse). And there's a stunningly new concept called productivity, which takes account of such things as "machines". There's another stunning concept called "tech clusters", whereby you get other firms might set up near these big data centers.
I think there's a danger in overcooking the value of this investment, but that's a different point.
Of course for every Glazer there is an FSG, who the majority of Liverpool fans would say they are happy with.
Re: Guardian
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2025 2:20 pm
by Tubby Isaacs
It's a stroppy teenager standard argument.
Here by contrast is the ONS in 2021.
Of the total approximate gross value added (aGVA) from the non-financial business economy, 29.0% was generated by foreign-owned businesses in 2021; foreign-owned businesses contributed £400 billion in aGVA.
Re: Guardian
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2025 5:25 pm
by Tubby Isaacs
Credit to the Guardian here.
Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians
Exclusive: Tech firm ends military unit’s access to AI and data services after Guardian reveals secret spy project
Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Thu Sep 25, 2025 5:25 pm
Credit to the Guardian here.
Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians
Exclusive: Tech firm ends military unit’s access to AI and data services after Guardian reveals secret spy project
I think there's a danger in overcooking the value of this investment, but that's a different point.
Former tech journalist Ed Zitron is the go to guy with a Dolly Downer on AI. I’m not hearing his perspective convincingly challenged. He argues AI has some impressive niche uses but is a limited technology that nowhere near justifies the billions in investment it is sucking up. Based on hype with little of its promised potential being realised. Unlike former tech advances like smart phones or the web which were real and transformative.
Re: Guardian
Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2025 12:39 pm
by Tubby Isaacs
I think the obvious retort is that the people chucking money in are tech firms who know about tech. And indeed know about profits unlike the likes of boo.com who swallowed up money in the dot.com crash.
Re: Guardian
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2025 7:42 pm
by The Weeping Angel
Re: Guardian
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2025 7:55 pm
by Boiler
The residents of the Chilterns have been whining like fuck since HS2 was first proposed and bear responsibility for why HS2 has cost so much.
Maybe they'd have preferred an eight-lane motorway through it.
Re: Guardian
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2025 5:57 pm
by Tubby Isaacs
You both beat me to it. This seems to be part of something called "Green to Grey", bemoaning the loss of Green. How this position can be serious combined with the paper's opinion that Starmer's views on immigration are reactionary rubbish, God only knows. Or perhaps Zack Polanski does.
There's actually a map on there which manages to show quite how little is being lost to HS2.
Amazingly they did the same sort of article yesterday too. Both photos are of HS2 sites. Quite how you build a railway without going through green land, I don't know. Perhaps they should give up and just spend the money on extending the Bakerloo Line or Crossrail 2.
We also learn:
Most of the large projects highlighted by the analysis, beside HS2, that have spilled into the areas of outstanding natural beauty are housing developments, such as the northward expansion of Poundbury in Dorset, the Lancaster Park development near Hungerford in Berkshire, and a field of new houses to the north-east of Fownhope in Hereford.
Fownhope isn't in Hereford, it's 6 miles away. Did a nice place just get some more houses, where people can live and use the local pub, shop and post office? Oh no. I think the Fownhope vibe won't change too much,
Similarly, Poundbury isn't my thing, but I can see that some people might like it. Did it become a bit bigger. It has very good bus services to Dorchester and Weymouth. There are worse places you might build new houses.
Re: Guardian
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2025 9:39 pm
by Youngian
Poundbury looks like an odd pastiche of a town you'd find in a leafy part of New England but I suspect its a very pleasant place to live.