LEAVE the Conservative Party and save your country!

I've lost track of what you think I believe. I guess because I posted an article on what I was curious about, I disagree with everything. Because that's how discussion works.

Does it matter that the article both supports the general point you are making and caveats the international comparisons? Or is that not binary enough?

The important point is that the number of people in temporary housing has increased since 2010. This is clearly not great and no doubt leads to a few hobby horses about building more houses.

Comparisons to other countries are pretty pointless.

Thank you, but I feel sure that in the near future someone will take something other than blind faith in twitterdata and extrapolate it to full on climate change denial or ask, "Do you honestly believe the world is flat?".

Twitter isn't a source. The authors of the tweets are the source. Questioning them is fine. Dismissing it because it's on Twitter is like dismissing anything that isn't handwritten on cartridge paper. It's not difficult to look at the credentials of the author and take a view on the likely accuracy.

I've been lots of places but wouldn't consider my recollections to be material to a population level question.

The comparison with our peers is useful in jolting comfortable people out of their "oh it's not that bad" inertia.

I had a quick look at the OWID link and the figures for the US look broadly consistent with the figures. The original FT link makes clear that the US is worse for unsheltered homeless but has far fewer in temporary accommodation

TBF, two of those are good reasons to be sceptical 🙂

You seemed to suggest that the line for the US was incorrect on the basis of your own visit to Chicago. As to dismissive I think the quote was "some Twitter journalist". Then you posted the OWID link, which supports the general accuracy of the FT report as far as I can see.

It was on the money to the extent that BB has tried to explain, by saying the same thing as be, but using a different person.

I also wasn't dismissive over it, I questioned the inter country comparability, because such things tend to be incomparable, and in an interesting way, when you look into it a bit. This is exactly what the article I posted concluded, that only the point in time surveys are comparable, but even those should be caveated.

The US, for example uses point in time measurements in January. The UK does them in autumn. More, or fewer, unsheltered people in January do we think?

The precariously housed numbers are much more variable. You will note one study that puts homelessness in France at 1000% of that in Portugal, for example? Is it so wrong to question comparisons of that nature and postulate that one might be comparing apples and pears?

Okay. But who is being dismissive?

Ah yes, London, that world city, well known for being so successful with....protectionist policies...oh, wait.

Look at a map of world lithium supplies and then tell me howu h difference it makes where a vehicle is finally assembled.

Fair point.

As a general point, encouraging local manufacturing is a good thing. I don't think that is achieved by forcing public bodies to buy local is helpful for maintaining a competitive manufacturing.

There was quite a bit of Scottish government procurement done locally rather than competitively in Scotland. Perhaps not quite a bit, actually, but at least two fast ferries. Hasn't gone well, and fast hasn't been a word used to describe the builds.

I think the idea, if they thought about it at all, was to provide a few years work to a failing shipyard to keep jobs and allow them to build some reputation and attract more work.

Hasn't worked.

There's no connection between this discussion and a major donor to the Conservative Party building buses in Ballymena, NI.