Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 5]

[popeyewhite]

psi310398 said:

I don’t get your workings. At Twickenham, you’re limited to four pints per person a visit which is usually enough to last a rugby half or maybe I’m getting old.

Four pints would kill me. You're probably not getting old, just your rotting internal organs racing ahead of you.

NB "gigs"

[Abbott]

Is there a Truant task force watching the Euros and noting all the children that are not at school

[StevieBee]

The price of a house is determined by the level at which the market is willing and able to pay. For as long as there are people willing and able to pay a high price for one, a high price they will remain. This, obviously disadvantages some/many first time buyers.

What is to stop a local authority commissioning a builder build some homes and sell those homes at an affordable price?

I think it costs around £120k to build an average 3-bed home (excluding the land) but let's assume it's council land:

They could then choose to sell that home for, say £200k. This makes it 'affordable', the council gets some coffers to spent on potholes and first time buyers get a house. If they commission a local builder, they're also supporting local enterprise, boosting local jobs, etc.

Seems simple enough so what am I missing?

Edited by StevieBee on Thursday 27th June 13:34

[P-Jay]

Abbott said:

Is there a Truant task force watching the Euros and noting all the children that are not at school

I'm not saying there wouldn't be a desire amongst some civil servants to spend the Summer in Germany following the home nations around to spy on kids, but it's probably just easier to follow the current process of counting the kids who don't turn up for school.

[RizzoTheRat]

StevieBee said:

Seems simple enough so what am I missing?

That people will buy them for 200k and immediately sell them on for 300+k

[Gecko1978]

48k said:

AstonZagato said:

Doofus said:

What's the business model for funfairs?

Does one person/business own the lot, and employ people, or do different people own the rides/attractions and they just come together as a collective?

Presumably somebody has to be in charge, and who's responsible for things like fences, litter and the like?

I can only give a very incomplete and dated answer.

It used to be (I'm talking 50 years ago) a very close-knit group of a few families. New members would start working on other peoples stalls. Then they'd be allowed a small stall of their own and then work their way up until they owned many stalls, waltzers, dodgems etc. They'd then buy amusement arcades in seaside towns. They generally intermarried. My knowledge of this was from a friend of my parents who had married into one of the families and would talk about it from an outsider's point of view.

There is also the Showmen's Guild of Great Britain (https://showmensguild.co.uk/) that seems to have an overseeing role.

It's all about the ghost train. Ghost train owner is the daddy.

My wife's family do this. They call themselves travellers not to be confused with gypsy's. Essential grounds are agreed via the Guild and local council travellers are members of the guild and stick to a region but when a large fair comes about Hull being thr largest people travel from far an wide. Busiess model varies sometimes you pay the host (council) set fee other times a percentage of thr take or combination of the two. The pitch at a fair is usually allocated to a member they can have more than one pitch an will let others use them.

It's not so much the pitch etc (think small fun fairs outside shopping centers) more the support of the members so ride breaks or your generator does can you fix it will someone help you etc.

Sea side towns were a logical step from travelling. Wife's family used to own a fair in Scarborough

[P-Jay]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

Gladers01 said:

Partly to spend money on drinks, but how do you know they are all girls? A friend of mine went to one of these bars whilst on holiday in Thailand and got the shock of his life

Some are ladyboys (ie. don't identify as women, or don't identify solely as women) and some are trans women (ie. do identify as women), so technically you're correct that they're not all girls. You'd have to be pretty naive not to know about the possibility of a Thai girl being a ladyboy, though, as Thailand is famous for this.

There's a sizeable Wikipedia page on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathoey

Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Wednesday 26th June 15:20

I'm willing to bet that 99% of people who "got the shock of their life" in Thailand actually got exactly what they were looking for, but don't want to admit it, even to themselves.

I've never been myself, but I've got a mate who went for a bit of sex tourism after a painful breakup, no one is trying to trick anyone into any nasty shocks and there is no shortage of female (from birth) prostitutes / escorts.

[StevieBee]

RizzoTheRat said:

StevieBee said:

Seems simple enough so what am I missing?

That people will buy them for 200k and immediately sell them on for 300+k

Well, yes, but there are controls in place to prevent that happening for supportive purchases at the moment so some measure would be needed here as well.

[Gecko1978]

RizzoTheRat said:

StevieBee said:

Seems simple enough so what am I missing?

That people will buy them for 200k and immediately sell them on for 300+k

Plus why would a builder make 80k when they could make 180k etc. Price fixing never tends to work

[Speed 3]

On many modern car tv ads they depict a RHD car on UK style plates, often in a recognisably UK location. Then they show a disclaimer saying "Specification shown not available in the UK". How do they get away with this ?

[StevieBee]

Speed 3 said:

On many modern car tv ads they depict a RHD car on UK style plates, often in a recognisably UK location. Then they show a disclaimer saying "Specification shown not available in the UK". How do they get away with this ?

Despite appearances, the primary advert will have been shot somewhere else - Spain is commonly used, as is Dubai. The same advert will be used in all the markets the maker wishes to target. Sometimes, Cgi is used to place the car in a regionally specific environment. For RHD markets, the image is flipped. All written artefacts on the car will have been removed when filming / shooting and added in during post production.

This means that the various vagaries of trim, colour, etc may not be available in all of the countries the advert will be shown. They can get away with it because they are promoting the car and brand, not a specific variant of that car.

As an example, Ford may run an advert promoting the virtues of the Ford Focus. They may choose to use the ST variant in the advert because that has the sexiest trim and 'look'. But the ST may not be available in some markets but it's not the Focus ST they're promoting - it's the Focus. This is dealt with the the presence of the disclaimer.

[StevieBee]

Gecko1978 said:

RizzoTheRat said:

StevieBee said:

Seems simple enough so what am I missing?

That people will buy them for 200k and immediately sell them on for 300+k

Plus why would a builder make 80k when they could make 180k etc. Price fixing never tends to work

You're confusing Property Developers with Builders. Sometimes they are both but often it's the former that appoints the latter. In my example, the local authority would be the property developer.

Building companies are often commissioned to build any number of things for local authorities; schools, sports centres, etc. So if a local authority has a plot of land, they'd issue a tender inviting building companies to bid to build, say 100 two-bedroom homes on that land. Once complete, the homes belong to the council. They then sell those houses at a price they see as appropriate.

To protect against profiteering, they could look at a sliding scale of pay-back whereby if someone sells their house with in two years, 100% of the profit goes to the council, 85% after two years, 60% after four years and so on.

[P-Jay]

StevieBee said:

Speed 3 said:

On many modern car tv ads they depict a RHD car on UK style plates, often in a recognisably UK location. Then they show a disclaimer saying "Specification shown not available in the UK". How do they get away with this ?

Despite appearances, the primary advert will have been shot somewhere else - Spain is commonly used, as is Dubai. The same advert will be used in all the markets the maker wishes to target. Sometimes, Cgi is used to place the car in a regionally specific environment. For RHD markets, the image is flipped. All written artefacts on the car will have been removed when filming / shooting and added in during post production.

This means that the various vagaries of trim, colour, etc may not be available in all of the countries the advert will be shown. They can get away with it because they are promoting the car and brand, not a specific variant of that car.

As an example, Ford may run an advert promoting the virtues of the Ford Focus. They may choose to use the ST variant in the advert because that has the sexiest trim and 'look'. But the ST may not be available in some markets but it's not the Focus ST they're promoting - it's the Focus. This is dealt with the the presence of the disclaimer.

Exactly this, and it's what you see a lot of number plates with symmetrical lettering that looks fine flipped left to right.

As for the ST example, a lot of times they will use the 'sporty' one for the outside shots, but also feature a special option like pan roof, heats steering wheel or whatever that's not available on that trim.

[98elise]

StevieBee said:

The price of a house is determined by the level at which the market is willing and able to pay. For as long as there are people willing and able to pay a high price for one, a high price they will remain. This, obviously disadvantages some/many first time buyers.

What is to stop a local authority commissioning a builder build some homes and sell those homes at an affordable price?

I think it costs around £120k to build an average 3-bed home (excluding the land) but let's assume it's council land:

They could then choose to sell that home for, say £200k. This makes it 'affordable', the council gets some coffers to spent on potholes and first time buyers get a house. If they commission a local builder, they're also supporting local enterprise, boosting local jobs, etc.

Seems simple enough so what am I missing?

Edited by StevieBee on Thursday 27th June 13:34

You are giving away council land for free and not replacing it, so you will soon run out. That said what land do councils have sitting about ready for building on?

Ignoring that the recipient gets an asset worth much more than they paid for it because you've given them some free land.

Anyone can sell stuff cheap when they use taxpayers money to subsidise it.

Edited by 98elise on Thursday 27th June 14:56

[captain_cynic]

RizzoTheRat said:

StevieBee said:

Seems simple enough so what am I missing?

That people will buy them for 200k and immediately sell them on for 300+k

Either that or put restrictions on the sale price.

But the entire idea that governments should build houses instead of letting the market do it is columnism of sumfinfg so we'll never do it.

[EmailAddress]

Affordability is for the poors

[Granadier]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

Some are ladyboys (ie. don't identify as women, or don't identify solely as women) and some are trans women (ie. do identify as women), so technically you're correct that they're not all girls. You'd have to be pretty naive not to know about the possibility of a Thai girl being a ladyboy, though, as Thailand is famous for this.

There's a sizeable Wikipedia page on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathoey

Kathoey - I remember when she was MP for Vauxhall

[Clockwork Cupcake]

P-Jay said:

I'm willing to bet that 99% of people who "got the shock of their life" in Thailand actually got exactly what they were looking for, but don't want to admit it, even to themselves.

I've never been myself, but I've got a mate who went for a bit of sex tourism after a painful breakup, no one is trying to trick anyone into any nasty shocks and there is no shortage of female (from birth) prostitutes / escorts.

Well, quite.

They can get enough attention from people who want to be with them without needing to 'trick' anyone.

Anyone remember that guy in one of the transgender threads who repeatedly went on and on about how trans women were all trying to trick straight men like him into bed for some kind of nefarious reason? In the end we started asking him if he was actually just talking about his own sexual fantasies.

[Rusty Old-Banger]

Gladers01 said:

ambuletz said:

I've never been to Thailand..but what's the deal with these bars on Soi 6?

to preface, I've no interest of ever going there specifcally, the idea of walking down that street and seeing them all stare at me would fill me with dread. But I look at these videos people post online and there seems to be 20 or more girls to each one of these bars, more girls than the bars even have seating. The ratio even when busy is always well off with tons more women then men. Is it just to get them in to stay the evening and spend money on booze?

From what it looks like it just feels like you're walking down a market but all the vendors are selling the exact same thing.

Partly to spend money on drinks, but how do you know they are all girls? A friend of mine went to one of these bars whilst on holiday in Thailand and got the shock of his life

Would probably dabble

[48k]

StevieBee said:

The price of a house is determined by the level at which the market is willing and able to pay. For as long as there are people willing and able to pay a high price for one, a high price they will remain. This, obviously disadvantages some/many first time buyers.

What is to stop a local authority commissioning a builder build some homes and sell those homes at an affordable price?

I think it costs around £120k to build an average 3-bed home (excluding the land) but let's assume it's council land:

They could then choose to sell that home for, say £200k. This makes it 'affordable', the council gets some coffers to spent on potholes and first time buyers get a house. If they commission a local builder, they're also supporting local enterprise, boosting local jobs, etc.

Seems simple enough so what am I missing?

Edited by StevieBee on Thursday 27th June 13:34

Councils don't have any money.