thod

The vast majority of cars on French roads are French. A Toyota is more expensive to buy than a French car and way more expensive to repair. Renaults are less reliable, but when they go wrong they are cheap to repair. Every village has a Renault garage whereas the nearest Toyota garage is over 30 miles away. There is one such garage in an area the size of the home counties. The local garages are not equipped to deal with Toyotas. Owning one brings the same sort of problems you would have if you owned a 1950's American import. Where to get parts, where to get it fixed. France is not the UK.

OK, I found steam, bought and downloaded a game. Where is my game? Why does it have to be in giant Steam file. I bought it, I want it on my disk exactly as if I bought the CD. I click the icon to start the game, the stupid steam browser is popping up asking me to login. I bought the game, that is the last I want to hear from the steam company. I am not going to ask steams permission every time I want to play. I understand that steam may want to collect stats on what people are playing but I am a private guy. I do not want to 'add friends' or chat with random people, it aint facebook. I wanted to down-line a game, that is all I want from steam. I click CNTL-S to save a game to disk, nope up comes a dialogue asking me to save it to the steam 'cloud'. Nope I want it saved to my disk, I do not want anything to do with remote storage. I cannot click ESC to bypass the movies so have to sit through a 5 min intro every time I start the game. These people are a fu**ing joke. They are taking every liberty they can to hook you into to themselves instead of offering a simple FTP service.

Nah, the best trader is the perfectly average trader. The job of the trader is picking tops and bottoms on the price charts. Buy low, sell high is how he makes his money. If there are more bulls than bears, the price will rise. If more bears than bulls, it will fall. Tops occur because, at that price, some bulls turn bearish swinging things to the downward side. The opposite with bottoms. Thus we can see it the average state of the market that is important. Yet the state of the market is actually the psychological state of the traders. When the average traders turns bearish, he sells. Because he is average that is the exact top. Smart people do badly. They do badly because being right does not matter. If you are still buying when everyone else is selling, you will get a margin call. Thus you seek Mr Average Trader for the job. To do this all you have to do is analyse the characteristics of the current set of traders. You end up with a brash young white male, so that is what you hire.

The problem is they will not stay in Ireland. The Irish know this. You can expect the Germans to object, so should the British. If we are to continue to have the right to free movement across the EU, then we need common policies for entry.

Your model is predicated on the idea that there is and will be a shortage of labour. Yet reality tells us there are millions unemployed and under employed. Why then do we need these mothers re-entering the workforce? If they 'get out of the way' then that job could go to an unemployed man. This would save the country from a welfare bill. The man could support his wife and kids. The wife looks after her offspring and house. All seems very right and wholesome to me. Instead you propose a form of nationalised child care. Why bother with parents at all? After all they are not trained for the job. All children will be taken at birth and raised in communal crèches under the red flag. And who will pay for these lavish child care schemes? There is only once source, the childless people. Single and childless couples are going to object.

The costs of cleaners are too high. So clean your own f***ing house then. Poor people cannot afford servants to do such work for them. If you find child care costs too high, you are too f***ing poor to have servants. Simple. What's to stop mothers forming self-help groups. One mother looks after 5 kids whilst the other 4 go out to work? They could easily split their income with the child minder to end up in profit.

That depends on the person in question. Competing with third world companies abroad and masses of immigrants at home does not make the manual worker richer. it makes him unemployed. Think in terms of cross border trade flows. If you import, then you must export something of equal value. Yet if you produce at home, there is no cross border flow, thus production is essentially free. No matter how low priced the foreign goods, they are still more expensive than free. It is because we have such home over-capacity that we should introduce a policy of home production. Of course this is going to be opposed by the corporate world. They wish to be bigger, spanning borders. So big that they are outside the control of any government. Unlimited power and greed for the execs.

Yet why are these things breaking down? I suggest that the current model of education is too subject based. Learning about physics or literature or post modern feminism imparts a body of knowledge. Yet the man produced is but an encyclopaedia bereft of values himself. He knows nothing of duty, community, integrity or a host of virtues. Instead he is fixated on immutable things like intelligence or good looks for which he played no part. Those attributes where he can self-improve are never taught, there are no ethics classes. This is very much part of the nihilist leftish agenda. All values make you some sort of '-ist'. The idea is to remake society by destroying it. My father raised 4 kids with a stay-at-home wife and paid off the mortgage with a single factory workers wage. We were not rich, but we got by. If problems arose, there was always more work or the wife could work if he was sick. These days it is a struggle even with two workers. Tax credits are a mask to allow nepotism. Set corporation tax at 30% but give credits to your proteges so they only pay 10%. They hide government spending. Much better to collect the tax, then give it your favored causes. That way everyone gets to see how much is taken and where it is spent. Exactly what they do not want. Lose your job at 45 and the chances are you will never work again because nobody hires older workers when there are so many young unemployed. Its all very well to keep raising retirement ages yet there are no jobs for such workers.

It is more usual to hire the wife of the politician as the consultant to keep distance.

Which is not to say grandparents did not live next door. The whole village was related.

Yet it is the students who decide which courses to subscribe to. The university must respond to it's customers and a course with no takers will be cut. The problem arises from the concept of the university, a place which offers all knowledge. As knowledge has expanded, it becomes impossible for any institution to remain universal. What is required is more specialization. A liberal arts university can offer media studies courses for those few that want it, yet other institutions should not. When they say "courses have been cut", I suspect they mean they have been cut at that particular university. The same courses are still available elsewhere.

Ouch. I pay 1000 a year for both combined. But then I live in Brittany and 100k will get you a modern detached house with acreage. Ain't much point in earning more if you have to dish it all out on the mortgage. Much better to earn less and be pay out less, more tax efficient.

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of photoshop could knock them out. I would be prepared to spends months forging them. The purpose? Simple, I get my kicks from watching the gullible squirm and the resulting fuss. It makes me feel powerful that I can so easily manipulate these fools.

Put 10k down on a 100k house (10%). Let it rise to 112k and sell. You repay the 90k leaving you 22k. Put down 11k on 2x 112k houses (~10%). Its margin trading. The problem comes when the market turns against you, you get wiped out. This is why you do it with borrowed money whilst squireling away cash. When prices fall its the banks problem (who get wiped out sans bailout).

France splits council tax into two parts. Tax fonciere is simply based on the size and facilities of the property (like bands A-G). Tax habitation depends on if it is a second home, if you have low income etc. The two parts together are probably still less than UK council tax. Being a landlord in France is not so easy. Tenants have rights and landlords responsibilities. If the landlord is losing money on the deal, tant pis, it ain't the tenants problem.

Yea but who wants to live in Limoges? You freeze every winter yet it is not high and cold enough for skiing. If I wanted that I could move to the Scottish Highlands. Rain, wind, rocks and poor soil.

I would raise the case of the employer who manages to win a years worth of work and then looks to staff it. Of course he will retain the staff if he wins more work and will fire them if he does not. All the risk is borne by the employee who finds himself in and out of work. The employer takes no risk at all. Yet the amount of work to be done is fixed, the only question is one of who will do it. The contract could go to an established company, that has enough orders to offer it's staff permanent work or to a series of chancers looking to make a quick buck by hiring and firing. Other countries make it difficult to fire to discourage such behaviour. If you cannot truly offer permanent work, then you have no business hiring someone. Let the contract go to a more stable firm. The costs of firing someone are zero, unless you fire them. Thus they do not effect ongoing concerns. It is only the fly-by-night operations which are effected. Perhaps it is better that such operations are inhibited so as to allow the more stable companies to prosper.

In talking about an individual business you are reducing he argument to micro rather than macro economics. Yet the argument of 'growth' can still be seen to be optimistic. If you have 100% of the market, then there can be no growth obtained through market share. The only way profits can be increased is via raising prices or cutting costs to raise margin. If your factory is working at 80%, then you should not be seeking to 'grow'. You should be cutting capacity not increasing it (cutting costs). Mature markets already have full capacity. That capacity may be spread between you and your competitors, yet demand is being fully met. If you take market share from him, he must drop his capacity. Thus at the macro scale nothing has changed other than ownership of the capacity. Increased capacity will only come about through one thing, more demand for your product and that depends on your potential customers ability to pay. The question is one of if cycling the profits of football back into football would generate further profits. This is the same as asking if this action would result in more football fans or if current fans would be willing to pay more. I suggest the number of football fans is pretty static and will not be increased by investment. You could fit gold-plated seats into the grounds, yet would current fans pay more? I suggest not, the number of fans would decline due to the higher costs. Thus football is a mature industry, a cash cow. Such industries are marked by cost cutting and commoditization. It is only the 'loyalty' factor that allows the clubs to generate the outsize profits that allows them to pay huge salaries. In theory you should be a fan of whichever club charges the lowest ticket prices and be willing to change clubs according to price. Since fans will not do this, they can be milked.

Of course. This is the same problem that has existed in Africa since forever. Plenty of demand, no cash. It is why the so called "trickle down" theory never worked. There is a trickle up mechanism, it's called profit. This accumulates money at the top, those who receive the profits. What is needed is a counter system, top to bottom, to permit money to flow around the system. The rich hate this idea. Such redistribution takes from them and they would rather sit on a pile of gold, like Scrooge McDuck, than have a functioning economy. Once again, it is like Africa where the dictators fill their bank accounts and never spend it into the wider economy. If the poor had cash, then the dictator could build a factory to supply them and get his money right back through profit. He would not lose out and everybody would be better off.

I recall when asset prices were rising. The bank said "It does not matter we only target retail price inflation". Now we have retail price inflation, they do not target it. I once watched a Merv interview and he made the banks position clear. The only inflation number they target is wage inflation. The idea of this is that the poor must suffer retail inflation but never respond. This makes them more competitive workers versus those abroad, thus preserving the wider economy. The asset price inflation was created by an expansion of bank credit, counterfeiting. Savings have nothing to do with this, there is no 10:1 ratio so often quoted for fractional reserve banking. If I lend you a billion, you can deposit it right back with me giving me all the deposits I want. At some point, and it can be entirely psychological, the people think a recession is coming and begin to repay debt rather than consume. The banks thus have a greater inflow of cash. However the drop in consumption causes many businesses to fold and people to default on their loans. The loss to the banks through this mechanism exceeds their increased cash flow and they go bankrupt. Since the money they lent as credit was entirely imaginary, it can be replaced by imaginary money coming from the BoE. The money thus keeps the banks alive rather than going to the real economy. Should the banks fail, the deposit protection scheme would mean increased government borrowing to make them good. Yet there would be much wider losses to those who hold assets through the bank. Thus QE is designed to maintain the status quo as is was at the top of the credit bubble. If you were rich, you get to stay rich. If you were poor, tough asset prices won't fall to help you. The 'real' economy does not need more money. The problem with a credit bubble is that everyone takes advantage of it by expanding. There is overcapacity in every single industry. The corporations will not build new plant if they have 6 factories and 2 are sitting idle. They look to close capacity to match the lower consumption mention above. This is why unemployment has been seen to rise. The corporate world is awash with money, their retained earnings. They are not investing it because they cannot see any opportunities, there is still too much overcapacity. What they will do with it M&A and share buybacks (always popular with execs looking to boost their options). The corporates understand all this, but hey, they always want to be given more public money. Any business can expand if it has customers beating at it's doors. They have no problems at all finding funding for a new factory. Yet none are in this position. What they need is more demand, for consumption to rise.

When people assemble, they talk to each other. Alcohol lowers inhibitions allowing them to talk more freely. They find that their neighbour is just like them. That he has the same concerns and the same problems. They talk together, compare notes and decide what needs to be done to fix things. This is against government policy. The government believes everyone should spend every night sitting in a brick box being programmed by an electronic box which they control. Thus all venues for assembly, all group activities should be discouraged. Divide and conquer.

The centerization effect argues for more devolution. The EU moves the centre away from the UK. The Germans are only too happy to see eastwards expansion because it centralizes them. After all who will build a head office on an offshore island, the UK becomes like Cornwall. If you were to build a distribution centre, assuming equal population distribution, you would place it smack bang in the middle to minimise paths. This alters when population density varies such as London skewing it the SE.

Just go across the channel to France and buy a detached for 30k.

They need to knock this on the head. It's the ambulance chasing lawyers new get rich scheme. Simply pass a new law. If you use the NHS, you accept all risks as a condition of treatment. You are taking your chances, take it or leave it.

Yea. But I just don't like reading kindles any more than I like reading large volumes of text on a computer.