joefife

Seems surprising to me. I've not swiped a UK card in many years. Honestly can't remember the last time.

It's curious you're seeing so many stripe fallback incidents. Is this a USA issue?

Yup - and this is where we're at with car safety too. Car marque CEOs are free to say "Yeah, it'll cost hundreds of millions to fix, it's cheaper to pay out per death for a rare event".

We're all worn down by this and, in essence, we operate on blood money.

Because people who you want to come and work in the UK won't bother coming if it's hostile. The quality immigrants will simply not bother turning up. There are not the British bodies to fill these roles.

Instead, you'll be left with the less desirable and desperate.

Do you really want a workforce of those who grudgingly turn up, or would you rather the happier workforce of those who can enjoy family life?

You can get residential interest only mortgages - at least here in the UK.

I used to have one, but remortgaged to repayment ten years ago.

It's quite common to see "buy to let" mortgages as interest only rather than repayment, where the owner is concerned with cashflow rather than the asset itself.

The author talks about many aspects of traveling in London as though they are novel.

Signs to hold on to the handrail, or to report antisocial behaviour are not new in London - and many famous styles of public information poster originate from this area, in particular, the Underground.

The opening paragraphs suggest a level of paranoia, frankly.

Oi. Fife isn't ENTIRELY about bowling clubs and dogging.

Are you having a stroke?

NHS practices are private businesses, which are contracted to provide NHS services.

That's why there's the complex business of 'partners', which buy into the "business".

The rest of the civilised world manages just fine.

At a tangent - I'm quite worried about software licencing costs due the divergence in fortunes of the USA and the UK.

As a UK small business, we've seen software licencing rises between 10 and 40% this year, on software purchased from US companies. Clearly, those companies must price for their home (and much larger) market. But, it is making it much harder to budget for software commitments, and to buy the tools needed to run and secure small and medium businesses.

I realise this isn't a problem to enterprise, and there's nothing anyone here can do - this is just my observation working in the SME space in the UK.

Ah got you. I live in the Scottish countryside where property is cheap. Forgot about insane city prices.

While I'm inclined to agree - I wonder why you are still in a basement if you're renting?

Surely the benefit of renting is the ability to quickly change living environment as you want, rather than stay somewhere you're unhappy for ten years?

Even within BBC News, there is notably different content between the World Service and home stations.