Posts by bebopalula

Quote from Imwriting

The Supreme Court in London is only for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I can provide a citation if requested.

I should add that case law in Scotland is considered “persuasive” in England and Wales and may have been considered accordingly if some Judgment of relevance has been made there.

That may be the case for civil litigation and criminal matters but the UK Supreme Court is the Supreme Court for the whole United Kingdom for constitutional and similar matters. It's worth remembering too that this case arrived at the Supreme Court via the Scottish route.

I'm in the UK and I'm using mobile internet through a base station router. 4G signal, two different providers. The point is that apart from the slight increase in latency of the mobile system over fibre, all my other sites are loading just fine. AE just timed out everytime I tried yesterday and this (if the message actually sends) is my umpteenth attempt this morning and third different browser (Firefox, Chrome now Opera). All timed out connections until now. I was wondering if the host's servers have been altered in some way or whether they might be experiencing DDoS attacks or something?

Has anything changed in the last few days? Up until about Friday I could load the site onto my hopelessly out of date Android with prehistoric Chrome and now I can't. Back to my reasonably up-to-date laptop and the response delay is such that it often times out or doesn't respond at all. It took ages to load this site just now and took several attempts to log in. First attempts to post this message failed after about one-and-a-half minutes of circling the drain. DownDetector says everything's okay but I've still had trouble these past few days.

Quote from GlasgowJohn

Would my two years of experience managing a Wm Hills shop stand me in good stead to be her assistant?

Absolutely! You should most definitely apply for the post.

(My invoice for career advice will be sent shortly)

...and another thing: Chris O'Shea's remuneration package isn't even amongst the highest of the FTSE 100 company CEOs where 10, 12, even 16 million salaries may be found. And to find the highest paid British executive you have to look outside the Footsie to Bet365 and their chief executive Denise Coates.

Denise Coates package of salary, bonus, shares etc was increased this year - increased - by the same amount as the total Chris O'Shea gets. It currently stands at over two hundred and twenty million pounds per annum.

Not just privately owned but majority owned by overseas investors whose own country regulations wouldn't allow them to make the same profits in their home markets.

Also:

Government mandated smart meter roll out levy - added to everybody's bill

Government "Green Deal" home insulation upgrade scheme - added to everybody's bill

Upgrades to National Grid - added to everybody's bill

Etc etc etc. Always added to the customer's bill with never the suggestion that investors ought to shell out as a cost of making their investment.

Eight million quid for the CEO is disgraceful, obscene and a very bad look for the company, in my opinion but is little more than a rounding error in the context of Centrica's annual turnover.

When I first arrived in Argentina, in 2002, I was dragged off the street, up a flight of stairs into a language school where I was forced to play the role of "Native English Speaker" in a group class. One of the beginners in that class was an ex-FAA pilot from the days of the Great Unpleasantness in the 1980s who had converted to flying airliners.

...I thought you had to be able to speak the international language of aviation before they would allow you to fly those things! How come, only then was he beginning to start learning it?

Some of these stories really belong in El Reg (theregister.com) filed under "ON CALL" or "WHO? ME?" Or maybe they have already appeared but you've been so successfully "Regonomised" that I didn't spot you.

Good stuff

Quote from serafina

That's what I told my husband. He says he still wants to go out and try bad pizza for $$$ because "it is fun".

And to say that I did sacrifice so much in trying to perfect my home-made pizza while he was away!

Those prices are incredible, serafina and to be honest Floresta isn't the sort of place where I'd have expected such overpriced food.

We are not in Argentina at the moment but, talking this morning to a couple in Recoleta, at the moment they seem to be paying between $17,000 - $18,500 there for a pizza grande with between 2-6 empanadas thrown in.

Quote from csmbsf43

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Ho do you move money to Argentina than?

I don't.

And to the best of my knowledge the majority of posters on this site don't rely on doing this either.

Which is why I said what I said.

I don't do the Western Union dance and I don't think many of the other members of this forum do either so this is probably not the best place to come for that information. There are other forums related to Argentina where they speak of little else but whilst I think it would be discourteous to our host for me to mention them by name here, they should be fairly easy to search for,

Quote from Rice

After seeing enticing promos on CNN for “Midnight at the Pera Palace,” we started watching it this week.

The Pera Palace is the luxury hotel built in Istanbul in the late 19th century, for passengers coming and going on the Orient Express. It was there that Agatha Christie wrote “Murder on the Orient Express, and there that she completely disappeared for 11 days, a still-unsolved mystery.

So it seemed like a great setting for a series. But after 6 episodes, we are starting to regret not exiting sooner.

Be careful about trusting what Netflix tells you or you might imagine that the ghost of Princess Diana walks the corridors of Buckingham Palace or that Emily could possibly survive for more than six hours in Paris! Agatha Christie certainly did disappear and she reappeared eleven days later. She was known to have left her home in England and when she was discovered she was nearly two hundred miles away from there in Harrogate, Yorkshire.

Quote from Splinter

No more balconies for me anymore.

Sadly, the new owners are still being looked for by the firemen

A reader of LaNacion.com.ar and listener to Radio Mitre has it slightly differently and at the risk of starting a whole load of brand new conspiracy theories may I add:

I believe that it is the old owners who are being looked for in the rubble. I understand that the new owners allowed them to continue living there. In first reports, quite a lot of detail was broadcast about this and about the new owners who are said to be living in CABA, of Croatian background and invested in the transport industry. The four builders were in the habit of going fishing during the night and were dressed and ready to go when they -reportedly- heard structural sounds and got out quick.

Today's reports were talking about a possible gas explosion, that the four builders have been taken into custody that the current building owner is a société anonyme and nobody knows who is behind it. Everyone still agrees that the building works were unauthorised.

Have I got any of this correct? What about latest developments?

Quote from Splinter

I'd like it if members could try the new Foxhole theme and let me know what they think.

You can change theme where it says Change Style in the bottom right of the home page.

The Foxhole theme seems to work as I would have expected on my little netbook (1024x576) but I think we discovered a while ago that certain things that you might have expected to find in one place appear in different locations on this little display. I'll try it on my 14" display (or is it 15"? I never can remember) when I get a chance.

To be perfectly honest, I generally accept the default offering for any software product: customisation isn't really a big thing for me.

ETA Tried on the laptop (1366x768) Still good!

Top Threads used to be the landing page when launching argentinaexpats.org but now this only seems to appear if one selects Home after signing in. Of course that's not an issue for members who stay signed in but the first impression given to newcomers and members who sign out after each session doesn't offer a lively and inviting impression of what's actually being discussed right now.

Tested with (old) Android with (old) Chrome; current Linux Mint with current Firefox and Windows with current Chrome, Firefox and Opera and all give the same results

Quote from Rice

I’d like to know! And yes, I think knowing writers’ backgrounds and possible biases is helpful.

I don't know! So my questions are genuine enquiries. I don't use Twitter/X (thanks Splinter ) nor Facebook, Instagram etc but all my more general internet searches for BowTied Mara bring me back to organisations providing goods, services or support for Sovereign Individuals.

Sovereign Individuals are not to be confused with Sovereign Citizens such as Vem Miller, the crank who said he didn't want to shoot Trump but if the term sounds familiar it might be because it's the title of a 1997 book called The Sovereign Individual whose adherents have turned up in all sorts of extraordinary places. The writers of that book have links to the discredited "Clinton Body Count" conspiracy theory; the son of one of the writers was one of the primary fomenters of Brexit in the UK; Peter Theil has endorsed the Sovereign Individual and is one of the promoters of Project 2025. Etc.

I'm not saying that anything written by BowTiedMara is untrue - I simply don't know - but in my opinion the writing is there to promote the Sovereign Individual agenda either for idealogical reasons, commercial reasons or both.

In my home in the UK I have at least one working radio in each room so you could probably put me down as a listener to the radio.

So who is BowTiedMara?

Is it a consortium?

Is it Christian Henrik Nesheim or another individual?

And would knowing the answer make any difference to the esteem in which you hold their writing?

This doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing. The usual advice is that someone should make an extended, fact-finding visit and then go back home again and consider what to do next. Nobody I know who has a serious and longstanding commitment to an Argentine or Argentina has made it based on the economic health of the country or its politics - or whether the shops sell Poutine - but whether you can stand the very un-Canadian-ness of the country for very long might be a factor and you need to spend long enough in Argentina to find that out before you commit to a lifetime. I'm fine about the shops not selling Horlicks bedtime drink - though I'm a bit iffy about the lack of good tea - and I'm okay about being the only native English speaker in my neighbourhood but I know others might not be.

Don't sell your house/give up the lease on your apartment yet: buy a return ticket, stay at least a couple of months and find out if it works for you - and if it works for you both as a couple.

Quote from serafina

I am not on Airbnb at the moment, but I still read Airbnb host FB groups. The one of Argentinian hosts is rather depressing. Provided that people who post on FB are usually seeking help, so they are either in a situation or facing a challenge, it seems that AirBnb rates have fallen so low in Buenos Aires ($10-15/night) that the STR business is no longer viable and some are switching to long term rental.

When we were renting on AirBnb, we provided toiletries (actually, Rice provided a supply!), 4-pack of toilet paper, new sponges for the kitchens and welcome drinks (still water, mineral water, a juice, a few alfajores).

Say we spent about 7 USD to replace these items between guests. I did the laundry myself and my husband did the cleaning. I did the laundry because I wanted to inspect the sheets and towels for hair. You can't expect a mom-and-pop laundry shop to provide hotel-like experience, just like not any maid will clean to Airbnb standard.

It comes to a price point where you can't really offer a clean and equipped place. I believe that $10/15 a night is very low and given my previous experience, I wouldn't be able to offer that rate.

I think one of your problems serafina is that you are too honest, too insistent on giving good service and responsive to customers needs to succeed on the "new" AirBnb. It seems to be geared up for shysters and tricksters on both sides of the pillow and people who adhere to the values of the old and original AirBnb are bound, in my opinion, to struggle.

I won't use AirBnb. Why should I condone sharp and sometimes illegal practices by putting my money into something dubious? No, you are not dubious, serafina but it ought to be AirBnb's job to weed out the bad, not the customer's job to suffer the bad and report it.

Let's talk about illegality.

If you have recently stayed in an AirBnb in London, was it a room in somebody's main residence, was it only available for a limited number of days per year? Well it should have been because London rules for short term lettings restrict owners - owners, mind: not sub-lets - to a room in their main residence available for not more than 90 days per year. Everything else is illegal.

Have you stayed recently in an AirBnb in Vancouver? Because of the housing and homelessness problem the city tightly restricts short term lets and a very limited number of city licences have been issued. Far fewer than the thousands of short term rentals displaying fake certificates. If you stayed in an AirBnb in Vancouver, odds-on it was illegal.

Did you stay in an AirBnb in Berlin? That was illegal. The city bans all short term rentals.

That's just three cities. It really is not my job to police the rental situation in any city I might want to stay - it's AirBnb's job to offer safe, legal, decent and honest arrangements and since they don't, I won't use them at all.