Also, in my view the EU is quite undemocratic. The separate Council, Commission and Parliament are an affront. Especially the fact that the Parliament, which represents the electorate, does not have the power to introduce legislation.

You do realise that the entire structure of the EU was primarily dreamt up by British legal experts? It's quite literally one of the best, most robust and most competent systems of governance in the world.

Yes, Parliament can't introduce legislation by themselves, but that's because we don't want populists like Farage, Boris or Trump to do that. They're charismatic, but not actually competent. That's why talented legal experts in the European Commission (who are each appointed by elected governments of member states, the UK had 6 iirc), people who actually know how law works, write the laws. The elected MEP's vote on the laws.

However even here we're missing the fact that the European Parliament (EP) do have a say in the legislation. The EC writes an "Impact Assessment" with rough draft of the law they're thinking of writing (which anyone can comment on), then this is presented before Parliament who propose and discuss amendments. So it's completely disingenuous to imply that the elected EP is somehow beholden to the "unelected" (but chosen for competency by elected member governments) EC bureaucrats.

And all that skips around what starts the EC's initial proposal. Aside from occassionally writing laws off their own backs, the EC responds to requests from:

• The European Council (heads of state or government of each EU country)
• The Council of the European Union (government ministers from each EU country)
• The European Parliament (directly elected by EU citizens)
• Citizens themselves, following a successful European Citizens’ Initiative

That's right, not only can Parliament demand new legislation (they just have to get the big boy lawyers to write it for them), but individual citizens can directly!

Parliament has the final say in whether or not legislation is implemented. That's completely democratic. What you call "an affront" is actually competent people writing effective legislation. Rather than bullshit like the Rwanda deal which states the UK will accept vulnerable refugees from Rwanda in exchange for the small boat migrants to Rwanda (all paid for by the UK taxpayer), or the general ineptitude of no legislation at all and a Hard Brexit causing issues like sewage being dumped in our rivers since water companies now face restrictions on importing treatment chemicals from the EU.

William Rees-Mogg wrote 3 books in the 90s, I forget the 3rd one but the other two were called "(The Best Time To Buy Is When There Is) Blood In The Streets" and "The Sovereign Individual". The latter describes a Sovereign as someone who earns more than $200k per year (90s money, so more like £500k today) and uses their wealth and influence to live above the laws of any nation. This is the kind of "sovereignty" his son Jacob Rees-Mogg campaigned for, he's literally laughing at all his supporters while he's doing it.

This makes me want to sing the Tetris theme.

Yeah, I mean apparently this is being driven by charities for the blind, but you can even see in the main image for the article that there is a defined crossing over the cycle lane with different texture pavement tiles. The blind are far from being ignored here.

but Rwanda can only take about 150 people a year

Don't forget the vulnerable refugees that the UK will be taking from Rwanda, per Article 19 of the agreement.

It's more than that in the UK, unfortunately. Suella Braverman's father ran British concentration camps in Kenya, she's trying to restart the family business (funded entirely by the taxpayer), the reason they haven't been processing people is simply so they have enough occupants for their new camps.

Most civil servants are good (for government workers) but the Home Office has been stacked with people by all the vile Home Secretaries the Tories have had over the last 14 years. Sacking them is prudent.

They are, that's why they freeze things first and only proceed when they get a copy of the death certificate. Someone has to give them the death certificate, which is why nothing happened here for 4 months.

For bank accounts, this means you can't withdraw their money until it's gone through probate. However, if it's a joint account then the surviving account holder can still use the account as normal. However if no one's pushing for probate (and without death certificates) nothing much will happen for a while.

This is why it's a bit of a non-story, nothing major happened ultimately, nothing was likely to happen soon (her carer's payments stopped temporarily but it sounds like she didn't realise until after the hospital appointment), and if anything the most surprising thing is that it took the "dead" person 4 months to even notice the mistake.

NHS England said they were aware of an issue involving an incorrect death registration which was rectified by the patient's GP but they do not notify the DWP of a death.

Let me guess, NHS England uses a version of Horizon, and DWP have special secret backdoor access into health records...

Bastards getting free cocaine, no wonder it's so expensive now!!

The petition isn't over with this response, it'll run for 6 months and if it breaks 100,000 signatures it is required to be debated in Parliament.

Recycling is bullshit, we should be re-using glass with a deposit system. Like much of Europe.

You don't apply for a permit, you go to LinesearchbeforeUdig - lsbud.co.uk. This is a free service anyone can use, and you'll get emails from various asset owners with maps of what they have in the area you select. Some might try to charge for this, these ones are assholes.

As far as the law is concerned, it's up to you to make sure you do it right and the costs for doing it wrong will all fall on your shoulders.

The only permit you need AFAIK is planning permission - which won't be granted until you convince them you've done a sufficient line search. Aside from that, you need permission from the land owner, of course.

Exactly. The whole "privatise the profits, socialise the losses" needs to end.

Currently Network Rail owns and operates (nearly) all the railways, signals and ticket offices. Not sure about stations. Train companies rent rail stock, but they pay a high price for this and subsequently pass that onto the consumer, while maintaining that it's necessary to charge expensive fares because their costs are so high.

The government owns Network Rail. The government will take over the rail companies, and this will probably end up staggered as different companies have different contract dates. The rail stock itself will probably remain under the same ownership with more or less the same ridiculous rental charges.

So all in all this probably won't make that much difference.

Exactly. The rolling stock is where all the money goes, meanwhile the public-facing train companies you buy tickets from (who rent rolling stock) operate at or near a loss. This way the train companies can negotiate better contracts with local governments - "Look, we're barely making any money, we have to charge ludicrously high fares for piss poor service!"

"Promises".

You should remind those people that the Rwanda deal is two way, the UK is taking vulnerable refugees from Rwanda in exchange.

The majority of children involved are already dead now.

While the chance of dying in a plane crash is very low, if you get into a situation where the plane is going to crash then the chance of dying is very high. In which case, being drunk might make that experience a little more bearable.