carstout · HackerTrans

4 months agodiscuss

In the UK and I assume elsewhere they do at least at the major sites. There is the onsite housing, leisure facilities and in some cases schools. Lakenheath has a couple onsite serving the various bases in the area for those wanting to stick with US curriculum vs local schools.

carstout

5 months agodiscuss

No more so than anywhere else. The primary reason was Oxbridge blocked the attempts at forming universities elsewhere and the early centralisation of state authority aided them in this. There were several other universities in England in the middle ages but none survive. Stamford is one. Northampton founded in 1261 but was banned in 1265 due to a mix of its patron having become an enemy of the King and Oxford supporters taking advantage of it. When the local polytechnic wanted to become a uni in the early 2000s they had to specifically request it be repealed.

carstout

7 months agodiscuss

Most of the pubs are owned by the PubCos Back in the past it was mostly brewery owned with 6 big brewers owning most of them. So a law got passed in the 90s which limited the breweries to a max of 2k pubs. Unfortunately what happened was we ended up with a bunch of very large Pubcos who were often linked to a particular brewery anyway (some were formed by former brewery execs and the pubs were "donated" in return for an agreement to keep buying from the brewery"). The Pubcos started with low rents but high stock prices but now go for both high rents and high stocks. Its why often see pubs changing hands frequently when someone tries the dream of pub landlordship but runs out of money. Its why Wetherspoons is "cheap" since generally they convert buildings and so have a freehouse model.

carstout

8 months agodiscuss

Having used the UK rail service both public and private the "better service" is optimistic. The too poor to afford a car is more associated with buses. You need to be rather fortunate to be poor and able to use the train to get to work. Maybe in London using the tube but working office hours it will be cheaper to buy a car or move. I would suggest the main driver in the leap in passenger numbers isnt the far superior private sector offering but instead the massive leap in house prices forcing people to move out of London.

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