[Tubby Isaacs]

Sometimes I get the impression Monbiot wouldn't be happy unless we were a solely agrarian economy and lived a de-industrialised 17th century lifestyle.

WTF is "inclusive, low-impact travel" anyway? Accessible horse-drawn omnibuses?

It's a very odd phrase. You'd expect him to say public transport, but he may be anticipating a lot of people BTL pointing out that HS2 is public transport, and so are all the lines that full HS2 would relieve.

I think it would be a mistake to base climate change policy on not traveling. Any government trying to do that will get killed on "hypocrisy" grounds, fair or not.

[Yug]

WTF is "inclusive, low-impact travel" anyway? Accessible horse-drawn omnibuses?

Cycle rickshaws? Seventeenth Century Dutch-style horse-drawn barge buses? (We've got rivers and canals.)

I used to have a lot of respect for Monbiot, but lately he's been reinventing himself as a crank.

[Andy McDandy]

Stuff that he enjoys, is going where he wants to go, and isn't in his way.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't get how people strongly in favour of immigration, like Monbiot, can also adopt the position that we don't need to built a load more new stuff to meet the demand.

Even without the population boom, the idea that we've somehow got the right amount of roads already is a load of nonsense. There's not to my knowledge been a population boom in Merthyr, Neath and Blaenau Gwent. but the A465 upgrade is still an excellent project. People in South Wales travel long distances for work, and lots of them will now have to spend less time doing it and probably be safer too.

[Tubby Isaacs]

In today's entry where the Guardian resolves th housing crisis by sticking it to "neoliberalism", we're off to Portugal where housing affordability is terrible.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... rm-rentals

In other news that may not surprised you.

https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/20 ... pare/89489

According to a recent Financial Times article, Portugal has had the lowest number of new homes built per 1,000 inhabitants over the past decade compared to other developed countries. This lag in construction has been a significant factor contributing to the increasing property prices across the country.

[Tubby Isaacs]

In today's entry where the Guardian resolves th housing crisis by sticking it to "neoliberalism", we're off to Portugal where housing affordability is terrible.

We learn

All this contradicts the neoliberal supply and demand story as the escalation of property prices is not linked to an actual demand for homes to live in and the formation of new households. Instead, what we see is that Lisbon is now on the radar of investors who use housing as a financial asset

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... rm-rentals

People wanting to buy places for reasons you don't approve of are still demand, as is people who want to rent them. That's not any sort of challenge to supply and demand. That's exactly what supply and demand is. Some of these people, shock horror are professionals. How about we stop blaming people who want to do no more than live somewhere they like? That the left does this stuff beggars belief. You're opening the door for the rabid to Right to use your own logic against poor immigrants moving to cities.

In other news that may not surprised you.

https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/20 ... pare/89489

According to a recent Financial Times article, Portugal has had the lowest number of new homes built per 1,000 inhabitants over the past decade compared to other developed countries. This lag in construction has been a significant factor contributing to the increasing property prices across the country.

[The Weeping Angel]

Hey, you know those new weight loss drugs that help reduce weight loss and work well, they're bad because reasons.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... SApp_Other

[Boiler]

There is going to be some research into their effect upon the pancreas though:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4ged0r1n3wo

I'm on the tablet form of semaglutide at the maximum dose (14mg): it worked for a while (I lost ~15kg) but ultimately the real issue has shown up - I use food as a crutch when I'm in a bad place, like I have been for a few months now and I eat even when my brain is telling me I'm full up.

No-one seems willing to look into the psychological side of obesity.

[The Weeping Angel]

That's hundreds amidst the thousands, if not millions, of people who use it.

[Boiler]

Hundreds *who've reported effects*, yes.

[The Weeping Angel]

Out of thousands. It's a bit like saying hundreds of people have reported side effects of paracetamol; therefore, we should be careful with paracetamol.

[The Weeping Angel]

[Andy McDandy]

Whoever said that it was the easiest thing in the world to turn one group of English people against another, was bang on the buck. This is very much Chris Morris's "...less educated, less middle class than me..." made flesh.

[Boiler]

Out of thousands. It's a bit like saying hundreds of people have reported side effects of paracetamol; therefore, we should be careful with paracetamol.

I don't know how old you are TWA (that's not meant as a dig, for the avoidance of doubt by the way), but I wonder if you remember when you could buy paracetamol over the counter in a box of 100? That stopped when it was learned that people were taking the whole box to commit suicide (a former colleague's son did just this but was found in time) as it causes catastrophic liver damage. Now you can only buy it in small quantities after the government of the day acted.

I get where you're coming from TWA, I genuinely do - this has echoes of "the vaccine" all over again and yes, there's no such thing as a medicine without side effects. I should know, I'm on seven different tablets daily and the semaglutide replaced one that had rather unpleasant side effects for me and didn't actually help either. When I was prescribed that one, the brilliant pharmacist at my local chemist was rather alarmed and made her disquiet known to me.

[kreuzberger]

Death By Paracetamol is unimaginable grim. An old client's brother in Scotland accidentally went that way and it was simply horrific.

[Boiler]

Whoever said that it was the easiest thing in the world to turn one group of English people against another, was bang on the buck. This is very much Chris Morris's "...less educated, less middle class than me..." made flesh.

And doesn't it just? You only have to look in the paper this forum takes its name from to see a diverse range of stories about this class of drugs - more often about appearance than anything else, but. In those cases, it's seen as 'cheating' somehow.

[Boiler]

Death By Paracetamol is unimaginable grim. An old client's brother in Scotland accidentally went that way and it was simply horrific.

Agreed. I was told what the aforementioned son went through prior to his eventual recovery.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The latest installment in a regular series- "Bad people don't get into Government with PR". PR is better, but bad people are in government all over the place under PR. And the projections for Reform now don't take into account how much tactical voting there would against Reform or (Reform-Kemi, if they do a tie up). The solution to Reform is there under FPTP too.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... gel-farage

[Tubby Isaacs]

Actually having had my weight loss drugs appointment (at the pharmacy) , I think I understand where she's coming from a bit. The NHS doesn't have the money or GP appointments it needs for the drugs to work as widely as people want them to. The parallel with eg Athlete's Foot doesn't really work. It's actually affordable and easy to sort out that problem via cheap drugs (and off the shelf medicine).

So in that sense they aren't a solution- you need other stuff too, traditional campaign stuff which we've always done and perhaps things like taxes on fattening food. Whether any of this stuff works is of course, dubious.

I wonder if there's a case, given the benefits of weight loss drugs, for the government to spend a lot more money on them than it's proposing?

[Youngian]

I've found the easy to understand nutritional information on food products invaluable to switch to a healthier diet.
Japan's already low obesity rates are still falling despite income rising, every school has a dietician assigned to them.
This country’s almost abandoned caring about children's diet and more alarmingly hospital patients don't fair much better.
And according to gammons, doctors warn everyone they're heading for a stroke, diabetes and heart attack 'just to scare you.'
Welcome to stupid Britain.