the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

not sure how building insurance works for cladding 1 flat at a time

buildings insurance seems pretty useless in my reading of it - another frustration is that a leaseholder (at least ex-LA) you don't get to choose this, you just have to go with what the leaseholder chooses.

Okay so suppose the unthinkable happens and the Croydon block burns down tonight killing lots of people. It's already been established that the owners were fully aware of the risks and declined to do anything about it until the residents paid up, rather than taking the cladding down immediately and worrying about the money later. They had deep enough pockets to do that easily. Who is legally liable?

There's an extra £44m for reinforcing Fortress Calais meanwhile.

xp

I wonder if the Freehold owner's employment of Fire Officers - even if they intend to charge the residents for the privilege - would count as admission of some level of responsibility

Do you mean in this case or generally, Toby? I am personally very fond of it, as an electrical fire in my flat last month means that I get put up for a few months until insurance-provided builders rebuild my bedroom, rather than sleeping on a soot-covered futon.

This is the extent of my experience with it, though, but it's been pretty smooth.

I meant generally - although that sounds good! "Pretty useless" is way too strong a term, sorry - but I don't like not having any say in the provisions of the insurance (and e.g. as providers have changed over the last few years, the exclusions have varied, so sometimes we'd be covered if our neighbours accidentally blew up our flat making bombs, sometimes not...Hopefully that's not really a practical concern, but it has made me sceptical of exactly what would be covered in the event of something serious.)

We definitely had to choose our own buildings insurance provider when we bought last year, so either the terms of our contract are way off in a number of ways or the insurance rules just vary from building to building.

I'm not sure insurance would cover this particular eventuality given there isn't any damage to the building and the cladding was presumably there when the policy was taken out (even if there was no survey going 'dudes this is highly flammable'). Most policies won't pay out for things like asbestos removal afaik.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/18/council-set-to-take-on-tower-block-that-landlord-refuses-to-make-safe

ctrl+ "guillotine"

if the taxpayer is going to have to pay for this shit, might as well just confiscate the whole building from the leaseholder and save him the trouble of paying for the upkeep

TBF the article says the council will purchase the building for a nominal fee, of course lumbering the council with legal costs and ongoing management costs and the freeholder getting away scot free having supplied a substandard product, not discharged its obligations and presumable having made a bundle in the process.

Confiscate is too close to seizing and you know who else seized it don't you? And you DO KNOW what happens next don't you?

If not, learn some history.

hey what are kickstarter’s rules on crowdfunding an assassination

uh asking for a friend

what are the stretch goals?

the target spends some time on the rack before the finale

IN

Digging myself deeper into the unpopular opinions hole but if the freeholder doesn’t have a legal obligation to pay, Javid has left councils with next to nowhere to go by saying that residents have no obligation to pay either. The council should turn the freehold over to the flat owners, provide a loan to cover repairs and structure that loan over a long enough period to enable people to pay it back. The going rate for those flats is £300k+.

Actually it should be central government, not the council.

no i think yr opinions are basically sound re: the leaseholders being property owners

Boris Johnson's proposal for a bridge linking Britain to France has been greeted with scepticism by representatives of the UK's shipping industry.

The Foreign Secretary floated the idea of a cross-Channel bridge between during talks between the UK and France on Thursday.

He said "good connections" were important between the two countries, and suggested the Channel Tunnel might simply be "a first step."

The countries had agreed to establish a panel of experts to look at major projects, Johnson said.

he's right guys, currently we can only reach france by air, sea and train, we def need to be able to drive to calais too

It's so he can set charges on it.

we should really also consider building a zipline between the countries and/or an array of cannons by which goods and travellers can be fired back and forth across the channel

can't believe Boris hasn't suggested dirigibles crewed by picaninnies

i'm all for boris being encouraged to play with explosives tho tbf

he really has just wandered into work after having a vivid dream last night hasn't he?

it's entirely possible he was sleepwalking at the time of his comments

never let it be said he's not an ideas man

boldly looking beyond the economic dissolution of Brexit to a bridge-based powerhouse

if anything it's kinda impressive that in his years of blue-sky thinking he's not once come up with one good idea

honestly, what are the odds

we could spend all the money saved by brexit by driving this bus back to europe

this kind of thoughtless fuckwittery confirms the Nincompoopolis portrayal of Boris, not that there was ever any doubt.

"With his achievements he showed us all that massive privilege, leaping ambition, no concern for detail and a wasp’s attention span needn’t hold you back when it comes to creating terrible architecture."

if he really wants to get to galaxy brain why not just fill in the channel

fuck blue passports, I say bring back doggerland

Jet packs for everyone.

I tentatively support electric hydrofoil shuttles between Folkestone and Boulogne.

not gonna lie, i'd fucking love a jetpack and only partially because of the suicide-bombing potential it offers

'Migrant crosses Channel by drone' is a headline I expect to see before 2020.

not a tech-type in general but I wonder if over the next 100 years it might totally undermine border control

one would think that BoJo would steer clear of all things bridge-related given the outcome of his last foray in that area

i think you're giving boris too much credit for thoughtfulness there

He just goes for any fucking shit that can be alliterated with 'Boris', it's why the airport island was such a dismal failure.

It's probably not especially compatible with the government's pledges to send 'em back at Calais either.

UK Shipping OTM

Building a huge concrete structure in the middle of the world’s busiest shipping lane might come with some challenges. https://t.co/jYD5O8B19W

— UK Shipping (@ukshipping) January 18, 2018

where's your plucky can-do blitz spirit, uk shipping? it's this kind of obstructionism which burble blah zzzzz

it will be a symbolic drawbridge
and we will raise it up on the day of our glorious brexit
two fingers to johnny foreigner

it's this kind of Marxist kvetching from the shipping industry that makes it so important to replace all ships with lorries. huge, huge lorries.

typical politically correct Remoaning we've come to expect from the representatives of multinational freight and logistics corporations

hull to tyboron, what can possibly go wrong

http://ounodesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/TheBridgeBronBroentitlesbridge.png

(s/b thyborøn)

Aw, I like the idea of massive bridges joining places. Fuck the Tories having anything to do with it, of course.