Interesting Links for 28-11-2025

[andrewducker]

1. Two-thirds of Scots support independent pupil opt-out for religious observance

(tags:religion Scotland children school )

2. Valve block Steam game with queer art in Russia after state censor attacks it for "promoting non-traditional sexualities"

(tags:censorship bigotry lgbt russia games valve )

3. How the UK's property taxes compare to other countries

(tags:property housing tax )

4. Tick bites can cause red meat allergy

(tags:meat allergies insects )

5. Tech firms battle for undersea dominance with submarine drones

(tags:drone ocean submarine military russia )

6. 250MWh 'Sand Battery' to start construction in Finland, for both heating and ancillary services

(tags:sand electricity heat batteries )

7. Keir Starmer's shock at homophobia is absurd and ignorant

(tags:gay LGBT bigotry UK labour )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

we just had a property tax reassessment here in germany (last year) Hadnt been done since the late 80s IIRC.

One rule was that the TOTAL tax raised from each "Gemeinde"* could NOT rise. SO it was purely a redistibrution to reflect any relative changes in property values.

*(literally, "parish", but a local electoral area, I believe)

[andrewducker]

Scotland does it whenever a property is sold, which seems pretty reasonable.

[mtbc]

I think that's only if the property was much improved/renovated, otherwise they don't bother, though the new owner can require them to within six months of the sale.

[andrewducker]

Ah, that makes sense.
All of the houses in our street have been expanded in some way, but only one has been updated, at the point of sale (the others haven't been sold since)

[armiphlage]

In at least two Canadian provinces, the value of properties are assessed annually.
The total revenue to be raised is divided by the total assessed value of all the properties to get a percentage (or "mill rate").
Your property tax bill is your property's assessed value multiplied by that percentage

[cmcmck]

The term 'bloody hypocrite' suits Starmer pretty well I think.

[juan_gandhi]

Oh. #5. The world started changing even faster.

[bens_dad]

3. Seems a very partisan report.
Reminds me of an oppositely partisan report (some time ago - maybe more than a decade) which noted that someone bought £20 million (or possibly £200 million) properties in London and New York. Property Tax on the NY home was 100 times the council tax on the London home.

A lot of mention of stamp duty, but the US equivalent can be similar and is slipped into the text.

Inheritance and capital gains taxes are pushed as being related to property, but there are explicit exemptions and limits for main homes in the UK, whereas France appears to charge capital gains even on first homes.

Overall this article seems to be a complaint that investment property is taxed, pretending to claim that our property taxes are higher than other countries.

--
I'm hoping that the separate valuation scheme for the mansion tax will be practical and can then be extended to council tax, giving England a system which can be up to date and cost effective.

Scotland's "when you sell the house" sounds efficient, but will be another encouragement to stay put. My Mum has been in the same house for over fifty years and her next door neighbours paid about a hundred times as much rather more recently.
Also a colleague was involved in a scheme which got the buyers out of stamp duty by taking a house in part exchange, so there was no full cash exchange to reflect the value of each property.

6 Sand Battery

[danieldwilliam]

The long slow roll out of technologies and infrastructure to accomodate non-dispatchable renewables on the grid is very pleasing to me. It's a mostly market respose to a changing set of prices and technologies. It's not big or flashy. It's just nibbling a bit of value here and there and will do so for decades to come.

Re: 6 Sand Battery

[andrewducker]

Yeah. Whenever I see an article saying "There's now too much electricity during the middle of the day!" my instant thought is "Well, there's a glorious opportunity for someone."

Re: 6 Sand Battery

[danieldwilliam]

I think the problem with public perception and therefore some of the political problems that renewables face is the the general public don't have a good handle on how long energy infrastructure takes to build.

"Here is a glorious opportunity for someone - that will take five years to realise."

Re: 6 Sand Battery

[andrewducker]

A perennial problem with infrastructure projects that take more than one term to run.

I'm sure that back in ye olden days, that even if there were large differences between the parties, larger scale projects used to involve some kind of understanding/agreement/compromise because of this. I may be wrong about that, of course.

Re: 6 Sand Battery

[danieldwilliam]

in my experience there's a lot of very careful dancing around with all the parties trying hard not to spend significant amounts of money until they've got all of the different elements agreed. So you get contingent contracts to buy and sell energy and for the equipment to transform it and then you work away trying to get all them lined up with the permitting and what not. And everyone knows how that works and how quickly a good idea can become a bad idea.