My wife read this exact article from 2013, purchased a 'Finnish Baby Box' from a private company that makes and exports them from Finland, and our baby slept in it for his first seven or eight months. It actually turns out the idea for the company itself was inspired by the same article too. Here's the follow-up from 2016 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35834370

There are free to access castle ruins and buildings of a similar age and much older all over the UK, they're hardly in short supply. Maybe you didn't intend it but this comes across as overly pessimistic. It's hardly as if every bit of history in the country has had a fence put round it to charge an entry fee.

Not trying to say what you're describing doesn't exist, but the only place I can think of that I've been to that charges to see some 3ft high bits of wall would be Old Sarum, but that also has great views.

Indeed there are so many ruined castles, hillforts, vitrified forts and brochs about that even most locals are fairly oblivious to there existence.

Only a tiny percentage charge and are treated as proper tourist attractions.

31 years native. That's the first time I've ever seen someone write 27:00...

It's an opinion piece by a single journalist.

a journalist whose salary is paid for by advertisers, a journalist working for a concurrent of Facebook (in terms of ad revenue), a journalist who's probably complaining how internet 2.0 has killed his profession, how Social Media has killed Traditional Media, etc...

Plus how could a journalist suggest a nationalised alternative that would stop at UK's border, instead of a global one connecting people from all countries? It's extremely short sighted and closed minded.

Some people in the comments are enthusiastically agreeing with the journalist.

Because in practice it usually makes little difference. Ground rents are often as little as £10 a year.

That's not true - there have been a bunch of cases recently where the ground rent is much more than that a doubles every x years

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/25/leasehold-hous...

Yep - if one of you doesn't work(or earns less than about 11k/year) - and only if the other partner earns less than 45k/year! - you get to take 230 quid off your tax bill. I wouldn't call it an "enormous significant break".

I turned 30 this year, born 1987, and I had no idea that I missed out on this kind of education by so few years.

I remember there were a couple of BBC Micros sat getting dusty in the corners of a couple of classrooms in both my infant (year 1-2) and junior (year 3-6) schools, but we never used them.

Instead we had brand new Windows machines on which we learnt Powerpoint, Excel and used Encarta. Joy.

TIL: There are fried chicken shop clouds over London.

Try that at 3am and see if the cab driver cares.

If they want any paying at all, presumably they will.

They are required by TFL to have a working contactless and Chip'n'Pin device mounted in the customer compartment. I have a feeling we're talking about things that happened in the past.

What's required and reality are sometimes very different. I know I've been told the card machine doesn't work, then magically after saying I have no cash it'll start working a minute later...

Do TfL "mystery shop", they should and with confiscation of license and vehicle for malfeasants.

Yes, but their enforcement team is way too small for the number of taxis and private hires on the road for it to have much effect.

Pre-uber I'd take the night bus, as I'm not paying £50 or £60 for a black cab from town to my home. Post uber that same journey is now less than £25 and well worth paying for to avoid the occasional horrors on the night bus.