I think somewhat separately there are some students who currently do business who might be better off waiting & working. If you’re studying business because you’re not interested in anything and just want a job … maybe you should get a job, and return part or full time when you have a reason to.

Also of course, a blinkered view of university. Many, many students live at home! Many others stay local and go home frequently. Most universities are not Oxford!

She has done nothing wrong. She is, however, extremely rich, and in future will be spending a very small proportion of that wealth paying an additional tax. (Equity release products are available if she doesn’t have the cash. Nobody is making her sell.)

Have you experienced a push to become South African by Zambians? I definitely met highly educated Congolese workers who spent time in South Africa, gained citizenship, and returned to Congo on expat wages - though I have no idea how common that is!

I have an idea that it was Labour programmes post-97 that finally began to update schools’ fabric. I was taught in portacabins in both junior and secondary school. They were called “temporary“ and they had been there for decades.

Renting Victorian terraces, which took all my money in fuel costs and yet we’re always cold, and which had interior rooms with practically no outside light, has definitely made me pro knocking lots of them down!

My assumption is that the government fears that right to work is a pull factor (which, like all of these government beliefs seems to assume asylum seekers have way more granular knowledge of different countries‘ policies than research suggests is the case.)

If this means we should make sure we build some 3+ bedroom flats and houses (and not just say they’re “executive” and so not needed) sure, great. If there are already so few affordable places for single people they live in shared houses for decades and then are not even allowed that then nope

I used to do volunteer street collections when a student & we joked that “give puppies to children with cancer” would have had people queuing up to donate.

Even decades ago when the BNP was at its high-point, its London party political broadcast specifically talked about British & Irish “people of these Isles” vs “them” (everyone else.) It stuck with me as such a clear example of redefining the in-group while keeping the fascism

I find I’m far more likely to leave traffic waiting at an empty crossing if there is a delay between pressing the button and the light changing, as if I see a gap while waiting, I take it.

I’m sure many customers are making exclusively reasoned decisions, but I think for others that warm feelings about milk deliveries in the past - combined with the kind of reasons you give - make them happier to pay the premium for milk deliveries now

It's interesting that milk deliveries are - I think - becoming more common again with a limited group of consumers. My parents have started getting milk delivered again as its convenient, and local, and because they like the aesthetics and ritual of taking in / putting out glass bottles. Nostalgia+!

I’ve listened to them as audiobooks. I’m sure they’re great in general but the audiobooks make them one of my favourite series

About 20 years ago, I worked for a London council & in ethnicity statistics of schoolchildren and there was a *massive* jump in the proportion identifying themselves as Black African / Black Caribbean the year those shifted to make explicit that also included British people from those backgrounds

but the value of your home is ignored for UC purposes if you're living in it? It's people who've been saving up to buy but haven't yet managed to do so who are really hit by the capital limits - homeowners are fine.