Ignorantbliss

This site giving an old school Texan oilman's view of US shale drilling, amongst other things. https://www.oilystuff.com/ In their view shale economics just not what is portrayed.. https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/stripper-well-economics-101

Posted this elsewhere in the forum a few months ago. They've changed estate agent so worth posting again here. That new bathroom accessory, the dead pigeon. The pigeon poo in the other rooms just adds to the property character. https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/66200312/

Ah, been a while since seeing a large clock.. https://www.aspc.co.uk/search/property/421683/1-Mount-Keen/Banchory/

Kirkwood Homes are one to watch here in the NE. They've been caught out infilling flood plains near Sauchen and Inverurie and thanks to SEPA et al are being forced to restore them - a lot of soil to be moved and plenty £££ involved. Maybe explain why they are rubbing up communities across Aberdeenshire by appealing against existing agreements to pay for infrastructure development. As an example, here is one in Sauchen where they are trying to ditch their requirement to pay for upgrading local healthcare facilities (APP/2023/2189 | Modification of Planning Obligation (Healthcare Provision)).

Had a quick search for a topic along these lines, if one does exist, mods please merge this entry into it. The 5 bed maisonette is up for auction in Huntly (NE Scotland) with £136k guide price... https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/142660301 First photos seem okay. Then pic 5 onwards you start wondering, what the heck is going on here. Until you reach pic 9 of 9 and spot the dead pigeon on the bathroom floor - ah, that is why there was bird poo everywhere in the previous photos. As for the toilet itself.... A few minutes preparation would have made such a better impression than this disaster!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67470876

Been following a new development near our friends in Aberdeenshire as a gauge of how things are. Its location is quite far out of Aberdeen and the village has literally no services at all. Add in fact the estate is badly designed it should be first one to show a major downturn - the developer has stalled construction since the spring with something like 20+ houses still to be built. This house was completed last year but was immediately rented out for a few months. https://www.aspc.co.uk/search/property/417538/24-Cluny-Meadows/Inverurie/ It was then put on market for offers over £395000 in January. Reduced to £360000 in June. They changed the estate agent in July and at same time dropped to a fixed price of £350000. Finally went to "under offer" yesterday, so a drop of 11% or so. What is more intriguing is where Rightmove gets sold house price data. According to Rightmove a house in a neighbouring street (same estate, completed at the same time) shows a massive 51% increase in price in a year! They allege that the data is from the Registers of Scotland - "House price data produced by the Registers of Scotland. Scotland house price data is publicly available information produced by the Registers of Scotland. Last updated 7 August 2023" First thing is the postcode is wrong as it should be AB51 7AB, as correctly shown on the espc site - https://espc.com/house-prices/inverurie/sauchen But search Registers of Scotland for either of these postcodes and this house is nowhere to be seen. Does this mean the publicly available data differs from that accessed by the likes of Rightmove etc?

How times change... https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-12456469/Aberdeen-affordable-city-home.html

Local Lidl had coronation mugs in the reduced to clear bin at 30% off this morning! Quite a few royalists around here (Central Aberdeenshire - balmoral effect...) so they've booked some of the local halls for the day for tea parties and big screen viewings - going to be interesting to see how many turn up. Kids football training is going ahead as usual on Saturday, some republican spirit there.

Friend of our lives there and in their mind they consider the lifestyle in many ways comparable to what life must have been like as a colonial administrator (or such like) in the British Raj.

Thanks for that link, very timely as there is a lot of discussion in our area at the moment about how to improve community resilience after the week long power cuts we had in 2021 & 2022 due to storms like Storm Arwen. Mind you, the primary cause of all the problems round here was SSEN cutting back line maintenance to a bare minimum to help boost profits. They basically allowed too many trees to grow too close and too high to the main transmission lines - which were then taken out when the trees fell on them. Not that they seem to have learned much, it appears that paying out compensation is still cheaper than reinstating the old pre-privatisation maintenance program.

Nice article in the FT on today's figures. https://www.ft.com/content/ea066246-98de-41c6-b1aa-0259744a6120

https://news.stv.tv/north/plans-to-build-homes-on-15th-century-battlefield-in-wester-harlaw-inverurie-backed-by-councillors Another example of how developer friendly councillors are in Aberdeenshire Council. The council's own planners recommended refusal of development on the battlefield site (as did the local community council) but the local councillors overruled them. Stuff local heritage seems to be their mantra and just build baby build - you do wonder what connection there is between the developer and the councillors...

Always find this Youtube channel interesting regarding future food price trends - latest video from Harrys Farm had interesting graph showing big drop in wheat prices (4min38sec), how much of that will be passed down to consumers? Also interesting to hear him saying that it may be more profitable to not grow any crops at all, and just take up some environmental subsidies instead (12min35sec). Importing even more food, surefire way to reduce inflation....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65255643 Oh look, one price cut at Tesco, lets get lots of free publicity on the Beeb...