Torres

Is there an echo echo echo in here or what?

Should I now expect to be called a poohead, or similar? I'll be back in the morning to find out. Laters, all.

What is they say about assumptions? Come and join me on the other thread - "Why seatbelts should be banned" - where I'm telling everyone that will listen, and plenty that don't want to, that we must ban seatbelts from cars because they kill people involved in accidents. I'm not going to tell anyone how many they kill (between you and me, pap, I don't know, but I'm not letting on!) and I'm refusing to accept that they save lives too. Wade in on my side of the debate, you'll feel right at home.

I'm sure heads would roll, Lord T.

Alright Sweary Mary, calm yourself down first. I've not made any assertions on the subject that demand to be backed with facts and figures, but be sure to ask if there's something I have asserted that you'd like a little more clarification on and I'll see what I can do. As for you actual figures presented, well, they don't really tell us anything do they? And they certainly don't do anything to support your warnings of these houses being hoovered up by slum landlords and sold off en masse to tenants working clandestinely with dodgy companies intent on turning murky profits. I've no doubt that there have been some cases of this, but without knowing how many it's impossible to make an informed decision on whether the costs outweigh the benefits. But then, I suspect you knew that and just hoped that you'd get away with it.

I'd suspect it's not, given the variance in average house price between London and the national average, but that is only my suspicion. What we don't get from these pieces are any numbers on the number of purchases that were contrived in order to provide profit to dodgy companies. I'm not surprised that a large % of those former council homes are now in private ownership. I know plenty of people in London who rent or own former local authority houses and flats. That not necessarily a bad thing though.

Without going off on a tangent, why do you so often feel the need to get personal in your responses to others, pap? It's not particularly dignified.

Actually pap, given that you've obviously researched the subject in some depth, and even written a blog on it, I did actually expect you to be able to tell us. It's not really. You've repeatedly told us about all the former council houses now in the hands of slumlords, and the companies aggressively targeting those with the right to buy to enter into an underhand agreement to turn a quick profit, so it's actually really rather pertinent to get some idea of how common this actually is so that we can all gauge it's relevance to the debate. There's little doubt it happened, but it makes a huge difference if it happened 30 times or 30,000 times. You don't seem to know this, yet expect other to accept your assessment that it's a significant issue. That's a shíte debating tactic.

And how successful were these firms? How many tenants actually entered into agreements like this?

And how successful were these firms? How many tenants actually entered into agreements like this?

Not with improvements in fire awareness, smoke alarms, material technologies etc. When was the last time you saw a fire engine going anywhere in a hurry?

Yes. They simply don't give a **** and want away from the UK as quickly as possible and with as much as they can grab. Doing the English over is hardly going to go down badly with their core vote, is it? If they get their way this will be the last parliament of the UK as we know it and so they have absolutely nothing to lose.

It would leave this country in a much worse state after 5 years, certainly.

If that doesn't sway undecided voters this side of the border, nothing will.

I actually wouldn't put it past them.

I'm sure your post is going to help him not worry about crashing the extremely expensive hunk of metal and carbon fibre. This will definitely not stick in his mind now.

I can't imagine Steve Bruce is too happy with one of his better centre-halves being distracted like this as they fight relegation.

Settle, petal.

OK, so you don't have the right to buy a council house after all. Interesting lie.

Oh look, we have our very own Bob Crow.

It should be an easy question to answer then.

You could always answer your own question pap.

pap?

Don't crash

I hadn't seen this plan before you raised it but I've had a quick read through the reports of it and I'm yet to see anything this is approaching horrific, let alone going beyond it. What is it that I've missed that's so dreadful?