BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

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Psamathe

Squire
Local authorities should licence Airbnb style properties and be willing to make a charge for doing so, and then ban letting out unlicenced premises.
Or define them as 2nd homes and impose 200+% Council Tax on all 2nd homes.
 
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Beebo

Legendary Member
The thing about the tourist taxes I've paid in France is that they are small enough that no-one complains, and if anything there's a bit of a chortle about "Oh there's 1.27€ to pay, sorry!" as you get a few coins out of your pocket. So I think that DB is quite right about their magnitude.

My one this year was €200 in cash on arrival at the hotel.
€5 per person per night for a family of 4.
That is quite a chunky number.
 
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briantrumpet

briantrumpet

Timewaster
My one this year was €200 in cash on arrival at the hotel.
€5 per person per night for a family of 4.
That is quite a chunky number.

Fair point, though I've never been charged anything like that (plus I normally only ever do one night in transit in hotels, as I don't like them really).
 

AuroraSaab

Epic Member
Local authorities should licence Airbnb style properties and be willing to make a charge for doing so, and then ban letting out unlicenced premises.

Round here an empty property is charged double council tax rate, even if you're doing it up before you move in. An Air BnB that's unrented for months isn't. Air BnB has apparently been ruinous for places like Whitby where there's around 1200. I can see why people use them but I'd rather stay in a Premier Inn or Travelodge that actually employs people.
 

Psamathe

Squire
From this year's IgNobel Awards, one bit of research I found interesting
IG NOBEL ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA]
Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior.

REFERENCE: “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. <doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109>
Full list of awards https://improbable.com/ig/winners/
 
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farfromtheland

Regular AND Goofy
They’ve got a second home tax in Wales now. Obviously there was a lot of whingeing from the people who snapped up properties for AirBnB but it should be rolled out nationwide.

Careful on this one! I'm close to a couple with a child who can't both find work in the same region. Disability adaptations on my new home are taking many months. Without an ideological focus against profiteering landlords it would sometimes be deeply imperfect.

Middle class politicians (and their focus groups, committee wonks) don't appreciate the needs of poor folks - witness the Renters Rights Act coming in without either a boost in legal aid for those opportunistically evicted, or a housing initiative for carers and cared-for to share social and private rented homes without penalties.
 
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briantrumpet

briantrumpet

Timewaster
The only conclusion it's possible to draw is that some people are just fucking idiots.
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farfromtheland

Regular AND Goofy
Careful again please - very few people believe that my perfume allergy (combined with auto-immune disease) could kill me, despite blood tests after being stuck on a perfumey train showing raised Troponin levels (evidence of a mini-heart attack.)
 

farfromtheland

Regular AND Goofy
There are many chemical pollutants in our bodies now. Some of these can be activated by environmental factors to disrupt the endochrine system. Then further negative effects can accumulate.

Badly calibrated ultrasound can cause tissue damage. What makes you sure these censors do not have 'hotspots' where two otherwise safe levels of signal boost each other in interference patterns?

I guess don't judge anything at all from a meme?
 
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