The sectarian nature of the extreme attack by Tory politicians and mainstream media journalists (and it is genuinely difficult to tell which is which) on Jeremy Corbyn over alleged IRA links is extremely troubling. Not one MSM journalist or Tory has even acknowledged the existence of loyalist terrorists or British government atrocities, either by secret agents or in events like Bloody Sunday or the murders of Pat Finucane or Peter McBride. Yes, IRA atrocities were appalling. But they were by no means the only ones, and the Troubles arose from centuries of colonial injustice.
One reason this Tory attack does not have great traction is that everyone under 40 is more likely to have learnt a great deal of truth from the excellent film In the Name of the Father, than to have experienced the violence on both sides. The failure of the media in this election, while constantly raising the Troubles, to mention the Birmingham Six or the Guildford Four – for both of which Corbyn campaigned – does not stop people knowing those terrible abuses of state power happened. I speak as someone whose office windows were shattered by an IRA mortar.
So after all this truly dreadful Tory attempt to slit open old wounds to hold power, would it not be the most delicious irony, in the event of a hung parliament, if Sinn Fein finally took up their Westminster seats, in order to make up the numbers to support Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10?
We could have the most wonderful Labour/Nationalist coalition of the working class and the oppressed peoples of the islands – Labour/SNP/Sinn Fein/Plaid Cymru. And Caroline Lucas.
I do not in the least expect this to happen. But I am rather hopeful this post has severely annoyed some old Tories.
…and maybe “you” should try thinking for yourself.
Ask yourself how any idealistic vision of the future is going to be achieved absent money to finance it. Try to realize that the current answer is that finance is going to be obtained by stealing it from the foreign man. How does stealing money from the poor help you to live in idealistic moral purity and what happens when the foreign man says “stop stealing from us, or we will fight you”
Whattya gonna do shame them on the internet? That is not an option open to the poor as the rich thieves of the world obviously have no shame and obviously refuse to even acknowledge the magnitude of their crimes.
Instead of bleating about past injustices which cannot be rectified simply stop stealing from people in the here and now. The solution is oh so simple – but really there is no solution because no-one cares and the British (every last one of them) are addicted to stealing.
Obviously an entire nation of kleptomaniacs will elect fellow kleptomaniacs to rule over them.
Loonie you clearly don’t understand what money is. Do some bloody work before your prophecies of doom.
I note that you appear far to busy to actually point out any factual or interpretive errors in my analysis. In the real world this renders your remark useless and without value – very much like the British economy.
So, thank you for so succinctly proving my point.
Moneys always been a big problem.
My solution is get shot of it asap, and I’m ok at that personally. But seriously it’s notion needs transforming beyond all recognition, if “it” is to exist in any form that actually serves people. And i’d rather it didn’t exist or factor into peoples lives at all.
Anything you can simply materialise, then treat as a scarce commodity. It’s just so messed up where does one begin. The prison of humanity.
I don’t know how long money has been killing people, making them hungry and sick, as others call that justice. But it’s too long.
About 5000 years, as dept or credit originally .
Money, coinage? Created for wars.
Whatever,
Loony,
Whilst I really like a lot of things you write, and it is exceedingly hard to criticise you, cos you are much brighter than me, you seem to have a very naive view of money.
Basically money has only one real use. It is to motivate people to do something useful. To create a functioning well ordered fair society. I accept that money has recently been used by the incredibly evil and powerful to motivate people to destroy,create chaos, and directly cause wars and conflict. But that is merely because the people currently in control are complete and utter psychopaths – with no understanding of basic empathy. They are like the people who block off the river with a dam, and do not let any water flow to the country below – whilst they go fishing. The people below starve to death, but they don’t care.
That is The Tory Party For You. I suggest you don’t vote for them. There is no shortage of money – they have just hoarded it for themselves (in case it doesn’t rain).
Debt – who do we all owe all this money To? Those who are already incredibly rich who do absolute;y Nothing of Any Use?. How can the entire world be in debt? What is the other side of the balance sheet?
I have tried to write about what money is really about – by using the ananalogy of a few people stranded on an island – rich in resources, but who realise they have no real hope of escape to get back to where they were. Of course this story has been written many times before – most recently so far as I am aware with The American TV Series Lost
But what do you do if you are stranded on a Desert Island.?
There is no money. How do you hope to survive?
If you are Responsible how do you motivate people to do something useful – to build shelters, to fish, to hunt in order to survive – and grow food? Some will just do it naturally, but some who also have exceedingly useful skills, will want some reward.
They will want some of the beautiful pebbles (that I have found trecking on the other side of the island)
I reply – well you can’t have any more unleass you do something useful – and if you don’t we are all going to die.
That is the fundamental basics of money.
I might know where all the golden pebbles are – but they are no use to me. I only found them to try and motivate them so that we can all survive.
I could go much deeper than this with respect to economics partcularly of a sovereign country who create all their money out of nothing but I would recommend you read Australian Professor Bill Mitchell instead. He is much cleverer than me.
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
“Modern Monetary Theory … macroeconomic reality”
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/
Tony
I am sure that it is very easy to criticize me – take a look at some of your fellow contributors, they don’t seem to find it at all difficult.
There are a lot of proponents of MMT – but I am of the opinion that it is one more con job. The policy implications of MMT are broadly similar to the policies followed by the Roman Empire right through to present day Venezuela. Always and everywhere it has ended in the same way. There are no exceptions.
Money is basically a medium of exchange and a store of value. Money can only serve these functions if there is widespread confidence in its ability to perform both functions. Confidence is an emotional and subjective condition. The only reason there is confidence in present monetary arrangements is widespread ignorance. Often this is willful ignorance – even when people are told the verifiable truth still they deny it. This is very dangerous and has frightening implications for the future.
Money is supposed to support work, and work in turn supports money. When this relationship functions you have a kind of virtuous circle. The UK, and many other western countries, have stopped doing work to the extent necessary to support the money. The consequences are as obvious as they are inevitable.
Not diagreeing, but Money is supposed to support work, and work in turn supports money. is questionable. Ever since I can remember Utopians have been telling us that this or that technology will lessen or end the requirement for work: it will be done by machines. Harold Wilson was very big on this, for one. With the steady erosion of even good middle-class occupations by networked digital techniques accelerating, the actual amount of useful (ie producing commodities or tangible assets) work being done by humans requiring money is diminishing. But the humans aren’t. The relationship between work and money, never intact, is breaking down completely. We need to address this, urgently.
You are correct it was badly written – a failure to communicate a complex idea in a few words.
You are also correct that technology and AI is about to decisively fracture the relationship between work and money. I guess that this is what ideas like Universal Basic Income are trying to address.
It is unlikely to work out that well – some people like Drs. still seem to be doing plenty of work. I don’t think they will be too happy to be earning broadly the same as someone doing precisely nothing. Look out increasing class or social divisions.
It is an urgent problem but as is common with most urgent problems it is widely ignored and/or denied. Anyone that tires to raise the alarm is shouted down and drowned out in a torrent of abuse.
“…some people like Drs. still seem to be doing plenty of work. I don’t think they will be too happy to be earning broadly the same as someone doing precisely nothing”
______________________
Broad equality of income isn’t the aim or the consequence of the universal basic income, surely. Someone out of work (for example) will get it but doctors (for example), who will also get it, will also get the proceeds of their work on top. Or have I misunderstood something?
Next time the Corbinator is pressed to give an exact costing for his policies, he should ask the interviewer to continue without referring to his/her notes!
Out of interest an setting aside the human cost of UK foreign policy. How much money has this cost the UK taxpayer. Money that could be spent elsewhere. Are there any stats available?
Good point.
It comes from the “magic money tree”.
Technically speaking Tax payer’s money is by definition cancelledout when it’s paid to the treasury. Governments raise funds by selling bonds on the financial markets and then buying them back, as long as new money production is below inflation it won’t cause hyperinflation.
Money and tax are used as a method of social control nothing more. There is absolutely no reason to have any cuts
Sorry, I’m an engineer and don’t understand finance. To me it’s all a big con – lots of losers and a few big winners. I hate most financial people – especially hedge fund managers and speculators. And those a-holes in “the city”.
So what have we got for entertainment?
You identify a group of people who do things that you admit that you do not understand. Based solely on not understanding what they do you conclude that you hate them. For some reason you also conclude that it is appropriate to write these thoughts in the public domain.
Is there any fundamental difference in your approach to that of say the Nazi’s?
I don’t understand finance, but I do understand that certain people make a lot of money without adding any value to the world. In the meantime professions such as teachers and medical professionals are undervalued and underpaid.
Loon (are you from Forfar?), hate is a bit too strong – please insert strongly disapprove of!
Smoother, I’m an engineer as well, I just studied economics – if the system were to be explained and more to the point used properly instead of just by the crooks in charge it could enrich everyone’s lives. In fact macro economics is not so far away from engineering it’s a mechanical system that’s been designed like an electronic circuit. I find electronics easier to understand and more practical but I find economics fascinating.
Hmmm. You might have trouble relating electronics to economics. Take a look at a squegging oscillator, though.Make it broadband, with intermittently variable reactances, and don’t forget the randomly modulated power supply…a faint approximation, but it serves.
Do you work in the fake news business?
In order not to cause inflation it is necessary that new money creation is linked to changes in the output of goods and services in the real economy.
As part of the scheme for rescuing banks the linkage between new money creation and the performance of the real economy was decisively broken. A lot of this new money has been sterilized in “excess reserves” – a trick designed to mask the insolvency of the banking system.
The rest of the money has indeed led to a form of hyperinflation – this is visible in record bond prices (so record that the world has been introduced to negative interest rates), overvalued stock markets, insane real estate prices in select locations, and eye watering valuations for art. During this month a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold for $110 million. You can also see it in the pay levels of senior executives – for example Jamie Dimon who is basically a manager or custodian of a business he did not create is now a billionaire. Take a look at the salaries of professional football players.
What is going on and so denied by the pure and the virtuous is that all this money printing is shafting the poor. Whatever happens they are done for. The rich will be OK provided there is no rerun of 1789.
The current status quo cannot last for ever and as soon as someone decides that they want access to the excess reserves to “help” the poor and disenfranchised then say hello to economy wide hyperinflation – take a look at Zimbabwe and take a look at Venezuela for they are examples of your future.
Loonie, you don’t know what you’re talking about every night you come on here and talk fatalist stinking bullshit.
Once again I note that you are too busy to point out any errors of fact or analysis that I have made. Once again I thank you for so elegantly proving my point.
I’m into designing and building things, like the Germans do. Shuffling money from A to B and pretending it’s a job isn’t my bag
loony, I think everything you write is an error.
OK just for you.
I wrote: “During this month a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold for $110 million.”
You wrote: “I think everything you write is an error.”
Here is The Guardian confirming the accuracy of my observation. Maybe you don’t like the Giardian – there are plenty of other sources.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/19/basquiat-110m-dollar-sale-proof-of-art-growing-attraction-to-super-rich
Aint it disconcerting when the target of a baseless smear just does not let it lie – in this case lie would have a different meaning to the meaning that you are likely familiar with.
If what you say is true then the US with trillions of debt and relentless printing of money should be witnessing hyperinflation.
The truth is that the economics practiced by the global capitalist gangsters, there are no logical fixed rules. These are made up as they go along and backed up not by gold but by military might.
Loony is telling it as it is. QE is effectively money printing which should result in inflation. If you borrow in your own currency you can inflate and print to pay off your debt. If you can’t print, or if you borrow in a other currency your need your Wellies as your stuck in shit.
In addition to only borrowing in your own currency and having a printing press one needs a servile electorate and an army.
The army is in case other countries come to collect and are unhappy with the debt having been effectively eradicated through inflation.
The servile electorate because essentially we are the shareholders. The board of directors is borrowing and endlessly issuing new shares to cover. Our shares are diluted. They can only succeed in this through control of the media.
I’m wondering if the inflation (necessarily) consequent on printing unbacked money isn’t simply being localised in time and space. The subprime crisis, housing bubble, and the collapse of the pound on the Brexit vote can both be seen as obscuring the real problem, which is the fundamental unsustainability of the growth model. We can’t see the wood for the toppling trees. Whether this is intentional or merely fortuitous for the money-printers is open to debate.
For what its worth, my view is that there is a popular reaction to the “Westminster Bubble” or its equivalent in many countries. Hence the anti EU vote, the election of Trump, and the move towards Corbyn despite the personal attacks on him.
The actual brand of politics does not seem to matter…provided the candidate/cause is anti the smug entitled ruling elite and their friends who have profited greatly while ordinary people have suffered. The phrase “all in it together” in respect of that group only meant all in clover, with the rest in the shit….austerity was for the common people.
I think many people who were “Conservative” will not vote for May…some will vote for Corbyn. I wish I had backed my instinct two years ago and put 50 quid on him to be the next Prime Minister after May….
Today has been a good day, but the election is in no way won, we must not get to carried away though we must stay focused
Irony is the fact that I was recently researching this area and appreciated that the loyalist bombings in Dublin in the early 1970s were the worst in the whole of the troubles and it was accepted that British security forces aided and abetted the perpetrators. Furthermore, Corbyn was asked on monday about meeting the IRA after the Loughgall ambush. In my teenage years I loved reading how the SAS socked it to the IRA gunmen at Loughgall. I can’t help but feel in adulthood that the British citizens were massacred by state forces using excessive force- With the result that the average squaddie’s existence in N Ireland became slightly more precarious in much the same way that Bloody Sunday begot Warrenpoint.
Anon1, He’s getting plenty of applause – but perhaps the live audience are not as smart as you.
PS. He is half German and so you may be misunderstanding his demeanour.
The first rule of leadership is to show up, but Theresa May couldn’t be bothered, and the others let Amber Rudd know that.
Maybe Theresa May was back in the Welsh hills pondering..hmm.
I wonder if Theresa May will bother to show up on the Brexit negotiations?
May has bottled it in the most symbolic way by not appearing on the debate, whilst purporting to be strong and stable.
Jeremy Corbyn has shown real political nous in coming in at the last moment. For that alone he has shown he is more competent than May,
If Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell want to spend another £ 30 billion on the National Health Service they should be prepared to raise National Insurance contributions from employees to pay for it.
In France, total social security contributions by the employee amount to about 27% of gross salary, compared to National Insurance contributions by employees in the UK of about 13%.
Those who use the service should be prepared to pay for it, that’s only fair and logical.
You know perfectly well that Employee National Insurance is simply is a quirk in the taxation system and does not directly pay for any services.
The only reason that it continues is that it disappears in the higher band effectively meaning that a real higher rate does kick in until higher than advertised. This little accounting trick is why the Tories are almost certainly going to increase N.I if they win a majority as it is more regressive than income tax.
Stu
Well, it certainly wasn’t a quirk for Beveridge – it was the bedrock of the system he envisaged.
But certainly, let any increased rate apply to every wage/salary without limit.
BTW it is essentilly flat rate because state pensions are flat rate and the same NHS treatment is avaolable to all.
So, in summary – let the “consumers” pay.
Habb.
Or we could use the money that will be used to renew Trident. We could invest it into the NHS, not only would it improve the health service,
but it would send out a clear message, that the health of the nation is more important than weapons of mass destruction.
If Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell really wish to spend tens of billions on education (including zero university tuition fees), early child care, maintaining the pensions triple lock and non-means-tested winter fuel payments and sundry other election bribes then they should be prepared to raise the standard rate of income tax and/or VAT to pay for it.
That’s where the big money is, after all – the taxes paid by the broad mass of the population which will benefit, sooner or later, from all the goodies.
There is no Magic Money Tree.
Habbabkuk,
Actually, as ever you are wrong, but the fact remains there is a ‘Magic Money Tree’, one the banks use continuously to create money out of fresh air, and not out of savers deposits. Suggest you begin reading some Michael Hudson or, visit either the research and papers sections of the Bank of England or Bundesbank, both of whom now accept money is created out of thin air by our banks. Just think, if you circumnavigate the banks the Treasury could do likewise, which is why so many object to the US Federal Reserve System created in 1913.
The biggest evidence for this magic money tree was the collapse of 2008. The deficit from this magic money was then passed on to the taxpayer and the banks continue to wallow in more magic money.
Exactly
Nine years on and we, the people, are still suffering from the effects of the multi £billion bail outs for the bankers.
This morning, a sneaky thought like that crossed my mind too…..;O))
Another obvious money raiser to help pay for all the election goodies being offered by Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell would be to impose lower-rate VAT on food and books.
After all, there is no reason why food and books should be zero-rated.
It isn’t in any Continental country.
And it might even help in the fight against wasting food.
What about this for a novel concept?
Instead of borrowing money to finance deficits incurred by failed banks, we reign in these banks borrow money cheaply and reinvest it into infrastructure. This has the effect of creating more real employment which in term reduces spending on some benefits and at the same time creates consumers with purchasing ability leading to stimulation of economy. The profits accruing from the public investment will then be used to pay the debt and also lead to increased ability to further infrastructural development. Win win all the way I say wouldn’t you agree?
I don’t know how often you leave your accommodation Habba but food prices have went up massively in the past 12 months. Putting VAT on food at a time when many people are struggling to make ends meet would be crazy.
We do need a new national perspective on food but the nation is a long way, away from being able to think those kind of thoughts.
Stu
I’m aware that the price of food has risen by more that the RPI or CPI but to call the increase “massive” is overstating matters a little.
My thought (about bringing foodstuffs into the VAT assiette (at the lower rate, of course) arose out of wondering whether this would not be an efficient and socially just way of raising revenue to pay for the £ 60 billion (and perhaps more) required for the policies being proposed by Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell.
More efficient because a company which might struggle to pay higher company tax can after all, as a last resort, pack up. And because levying income tax at 45% and 50% on the earnings bands proposed will bring in far less money.
Socially just because everyone eats and therefore everyone will bear some of the the burden of more costly public services from which everyone has either benefitted, benefits or will benefit.
We are, I feel, coming to a crisis point in the history of these islands. There’s a lot at stake, and it’s not just the UK elites who know that. Other states, those who might wish for business as usual to continue, desperately want a Tory Government. There may well be nothing they won’t do to try to guarantee that.
Also, I’m sure those quasi-military coup plans that were being studied and discussed here in the 1970s have been dusted off and updated.
Jeremy Corbyn represents a serious threat to the status quo; an even greater one, I would argue, than Scottish independence. Why? Because he is the figurehead of a UK-wide movement first, and the leader of a parliamentary party second. He might not see it that way, but he is, whether he likes it or not.
Austerity is killing people. War is killing people. Our leaders ignore carnage while selling the perpetrators weapons. They destroy countries and introduce obscenities like the rape clause. People know, instinctively, that destroying countries must be linked to terrorism. Some even know that terrorists were used to help carry out that destruction in Libya and Syria. MI5 sent them there.
Quite a lot of people can now see all this, and they don’t like it. They want it to stop. They want to find another way.
Does hope always defeat fear?
Let’s hope so.
I hope so Mike.
Whatever the result next week is it’s vitally important we continue to fight for a better country. A Tory victory must be opposed in any possible, in the unlikely event of a Labour we will have a huge battle on our hands to implement the manifesto.
Quite apart from how the £ 30 billion for the NHS is going to be financed, it is to be hoped that – unlike under previous Labour governments – the money will go to front-line services and not be wasted on creating new management and secretarial jobs.
Creating jobs in the public sector for the sake of building up a loyal voter base is the sort of thing cynical and profligate Greek governments used to go in for.
You’ve got it in for the Greek government haven’t you.
I think it is beyond doubt that the previous Labour governments created a lot of public sector jobs both to massage the employment figures and to build up a loyal voter base (along the unspoken lines of “let in the Tories next time and you might be out of a job”).
No problem with creating more, even many more, jobs in, say, the NHS provided that the increased cost is funded in a proper way and that those jobs are frontline jobs (doctors, nurses..) and not what one might call “drone” jobs (eg, more useless layers of “management” and the secretaries and other ancillary staff needed to support them).
You could probably rip an entire level of management out of the NHS, and many other organisation, both private and public, without making the slightest difference to the quality of the job they do. Also the workers with purely decorative functions such as PR – does anyone going to hospital really appreciate the design of the NHS logo? You could also remove tasks allocated to the workers at the coalface which are wholly intended to make life easier for managers while absorbing time and commitment which would be better spent on patients.
And for the remaining managers, a compulsory re-education course designed to convert the manager from a profit-driven business wonk to someone actively helping to cure people would also be a good move, I think.
OK, that’s the NHS done. Now what about the railways?
I’ve probably misread you, but it does seem that we agree.
Regarding the railways : I think most people will agree that the railways, in their nationalised period, were vastly over-staffed (that goes for most continental railways in the same period by the way). Mainly at the coal face, less at the management level (management was distinguished by its ineptness). Funnily enough, a labour shake out would have been perfectly feasible and even economically sound given the tightness of the labour market, especially in the 1950s.
Where we agree, and on some issues (only) we undoubtedly do, we’re arriving at similar conclusions from opposite directions. Which is somehow encouraging.
Your comment on pre-privatisation BR perhaps ignores the fact that nationalisation was intended to provide a service rather than show an operating profit for shareholders. The staffing levels on the ground were appropriate to this: most stations had a human being selling tickets , initially at a fixed price per mile. A generation accustomed to porters carrying its bags was indulged too. Some role had to be found for the firemen left without a function after steam was phased out…etc. And the management, however poor it was, was at least accountable to the public, via the government. The cost of the (necessarily subsidised, because a service) exercise proved too much for the Tories, greatly incentivised as usual to hand business to their friends. And New Labour’s similar attitude ensured the completion of privatisation.
The problem was compounded by a switch of emphasis to road transport, whose consequences of pollution, the cost of road maintenance and systemic congestion we now enjoy. Include those, and we’ve probably saved nothing at all by privatising rail, and as an additional bonus we have a rail non-service whose operating costs are cut to the bone, whose comfort and convenience is generally nil, and which costs an arbitrary fortune to use. You need a degree in informatics to find an economical match between journey time and destination, no national timetables are available, and on the whole you’re better off flying. Porters? LOL. The really idiotic feature is that Raitrack had to be nationalised because no-one could suck a profit out of it except the government.
And the franchises change hands at arbitrary intervals. The best franchiser can be completely buggered by a competitor using the same track. GNER lost their franchise on the East Coast line, not because they were useless (IMO they were pretty good) but because Virgin didn’t run their trains to time, delaying everyone else. This may have been intentional, but given Beardie’s fondness for litigation, best leave it there.
If anything in this country is crying out for central control, it’s the rail system. It works for other countries, and it can work for us. Shed no tears for the squadrons of suits made redundant thereby: they’ve never shed any for their passengers.
I blame that Tony Blair…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3473995/How-Blair-NHS-black-hole-wasted-BILLIONS-Former-PM-tried-transform-health-service-throwing-money-disastrous-results.html
Though he’d inherited the overmanagement problem from the Tories, he too believed that suits talking bollocks in PFI buildings were in some way related to healthcare.
Re the BA crash – out all weekend.
Well our system didn’t crash (well once it did) but that is only because the management in control – would not pay £100,000 to upgrade the part of the sytem I was responsible far. It had been running with over 99.5% reliabilty for 5 years.
I submitted a peper to the most Senior Management of the company…
It is already well over 100% design capacity – running Two Servers in Parallel at Two Different Datacentres
I have costed it all – I submitted the paper.
They replied “It hasn’t crashed yet.” “Its perfectly reliable (and you don’t appear to be doing anything)” (i wasn’t going to fill in their stupid time sheets and fault sheets – wel I did but I largely made it up)
I still got it back up and running on 1 server by 9:00am from home.
I knew something had gone wrong – I wrote the alert paging system too…
My bleeper went off at 6:30 am…..
I thought how the hell do I fix this?? The failover worked perfectly to the other server but it simply couldn’t cope with the load. I did tell them it was going to fail.
Then at 7:00am my mobile phone, my home landline phone, my company supplied landline phone – were just ringing continuously..I said I am working on it…
Turned em all off, and went outside into my garden, and made myself a cup of coffee ad a cigerette and thought about the entire design of the system, that I had been involved with.
I realised the problem, an extremely large number of people (who had been denied service) with 8 mega inputs, were now trying all to get in via 4 mega inputs.
I thought how the hell do I turn the data taps off – we are getting flooded and the server can’t cope with it.
So I studied the X25 notes in my head – and turned 3 of the mega inputs off..
There was only 1 mega input coming in now…
and the bloody thing worked…so I gradulaly increased so that by 9:00am I had all ther service back up and running.
I felt really proud of myself…
I drive into work – get theire about 10:30 am – with the intention of getting the other server back up and running (it was only a hard disk crash – no data was lost ) – and I get dragged into a high level management meeting and Slagged Off.
I looked at These Stupid Cnts and Told Them this Was going to happen…I submiited the paper nearly a year ago and have been nagging at you since.
Can I get the other server working now, or do I have to continue talking to you idiots?
They finally agreed my paper – and came up with the £100,000 (complete and utter peanuts)
I don’t think it has failed since…cos they are still paying my pension.
I have never worked for British Airways – nor BT…They are Rubbish.
We are Brill – well we were when I worked for them – they still seem reasonably O.K.
Tony
Why do you write this nonsense Tony?
steganography?
Maybe we’ve all got it wrong and this is actually Tony’s Blog ?
Let them eat cornflake.
How do I put a pic next to my name?
Here I seem to remember
https://en.gravatar.com/
K,
You need a word press account.
https://wordpress.com
I think basic blogging is free – at least I’ve never paid anything
I was all fired up studying physics and maths – well and chemistry and biology too when I was 16…but my older brother said you have got to take it further – the physics and maths at university – so I did (my brother Richard was a genius)
But I wanted to do computing and so I did (best Training in The World at ICL in West Gorton and Bracknell)
I thought we were going to end up with a completely lovely society where most of us would only need to work 2 or 3 days a month.
The prospect of computing and automation made this (Paul and My theory) completely possible in 1969 (and it was)
Even The New Scientist Agreed…
So Who Fcked all our Futures up???
Last week – I knew my old car needed new front tyres and I had used this garage before…
They again did a brilliant job..but the boss was away on holiday…
and he hadn’t taught the kids everything they needed to know about how to use the computer to print out my receipt.
It took ’em 10 mins to balance and fit my high profile tyres..and 25 minutes to try and work out how to use the computer.
Sorry about that.
All I wanted was a hand written paper.
I will have a word with the boss when he gets back (he is a really nice guy and would have done the entire job £20 cheaper) –
The kids get the tips. They did a good job.They just didn’t know how to use the computer.
Tony
TM frit.
But JC a reluctant critic.
He was great in Watford, yesterday. But it is a mistake for him to allow Rudd and co to hogg the space.
I do find it wearisome point scoring when journalists press a politician for a figure, because although its important information its also irrelevant. That is, its a politician job is to provide direction of travel and a civil servants job to provide the details and the electorate job to hold them to account at election time.
The tactic is to get the politician to implicitly or explicitly say “I don’t know”, followed by the journalist saying “what, you don’t know” as though it was a terrible failing. But again despite the offensive repetition from the journalist Corbyn was his usual Zen self.
Money in itself has no value whatsoever, its merely an artificial medium used as an exchange value between labour,goods and/or services.
Bartering, still used today, uses market values to compare unlike goods without money being exchanged, a much older system.
regulatory networks such as the WTO were created to create nominally uniform exchange values accepted by all that trade under it, it stifles with regulation and favours large corporations and does not recognise un favourable political developments, a very rigid system indeed we are choosing to regulate our tax haven to come, the HQ of all other UK tax havens.
I wish we could all distinguish more clearly between what money ought to be and what it is. It ought to be a medium of exchange, whose abundance is consistent with the abundance of goods and services for which it is a token. But what it is, is a commodity, tradeable in its own right, manufactured on demand by the banks. Its exchange value in terms of tangible goods is constantly eroded by the ability of financiers to print it without reference to the physical market. Why? Because for them, it does have value: its potential to be parlayed into more electronic credit or lucrative debt.
Would that it were otherwise.
And, in its guise as a commodity, money doesn’t obey the fundamental economic relation between supply and demand, in which either is limited by the other. The supply is infinite, as it can be generated from nothing, and demand is effectively infinite too. No-one ever has enough, and even billionaires are not short of justifications for wanting more. No actual limitations apply, except the confidence of the public in the system -it’s a confidence trick. Of course, when the confidence collapses, and Joe Public decides his money’s safer under the mattress than in the bank, a lot of money vanishes into the thin air it came from. Including Joe’s if he hasn’t converted it into real commodities like gold., which has physical existence and can’t be synthesised economically (yet).
All that you say is correct, and it applies to all fiat money systems. These are the reasons why all fiat money systems, always and everywhere have collapsed. The only difference between the current system and past fiat systems is that this one is yet to collapse.
Signs are everywhere that we are in the terminal phase of this particular system and that collapse is already underway.
Monetary collapses are always bad news for everyone – this one could be much worse. The levels of delusion, denial and willful ignorance are staggering to behold. These kinds of mind sets are ideal breeding grounds for mass panic. Having billions of people with no money but plenty of panic would appear to suggest that the ultimate outcome will likely be non survivable.
The Guido Fawkes website has made a great deal of this which is rather ironic given that the website is named after Guido Fawkes.