FallingAwake

The more traditional term is smear campaign. And yes, it's been on since 2016. We had four years of the BBC's "Beyond 100 Days" constantly reporting on the minutia of the Trump / Russia smear, which turned out to be a nothingburger.

Yes, that is the constant perception they keep trying to give people of Trump since 2016, and you keep falling for it every time. Wake me up when actually he's arrested, tried in a court of law and imprisoned for those so-called "stolen documents".

At least they put a $ amount to what they consider to be "affordable housing". What's "affordable housing" defined as here, in £ terms?

I'll sell you one for £40.

Dear Leopard, Could you please change your spots? Yours sincerely, Gazelle.

Sounds like half of the debates on this forum 🤣

I wonder what the actual profit is for a bank, with, say, a £10k loan over 5 years at 3.2% APR? Presumably it would be somewhere in the region of £200-£400? Not bad for transferring a few digits from a central bank computer to one of their own computers.

I don't see that as "gaming the referendum". We'd already tried negotiating with the EU before the referendum, and that got us nowhere, so we had to Leave before negotiations of any substance could begin. Except they didn't really "evaporate"... they probably weren't all that realistic as options to begin with, so the referendum wasn't "gamed" because the only realistic options were Leave or Remain. Well, I saw it differently, especially as so many of them were literally using slogans like "Stop Brexit". Kinda sounds like the opposite of democracy trying to reassert itself. I mean, imagine if the Scottish people had voted for independence, and then Parliament spent several years basically trying to "Stop Scootxit." Nah, referenda aren't merely opinion polls, especially in this country when they don't happen very often. If the Scottish had voted to leave the UK and it was treated like an opinion poll, there would have been hell to pay. Yes, we're up to the equivalent of 1975 in EEC membership (we joined in 1973, so two years later). Can you show me that EEC membership was worth it, based on data from 1975?

I'm surprised politicians haven't proposed the poor set up personal gyms and treadmills, where the energy produced can somehow be fed into the grid, thus keeping them warm and saving them some money off their leccy bill. It would be a step up from the "stick on a woolly jumper" argument. Might even be a good idea?

It'll be hijacked by @MonsieurCopperCrutchand turned into an "On a Scale of 10 To 20, How Sh** Was Brex*sh**"? thread.

Discounted food and energy costs? Yes please. Where do I sign up?

Ha. I didn't know that the official name of China is... drum roll... the People's Republic of China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China Even the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) never bothered with the "People's" part 🤣

Personally, I think if a person's wealth depends on house prices, they're not a whale but just a tiny frog.

Yeah, even with all the debasements, the denarius looked like a haven of stability compared with the dollar. But what have the Romans ever done for us? Haha.

That's kind of fascinating. As expected, technology helps to bring prices down. In fact, you can easily pick up a decent TV for under £260 today. Mine is a Bush 32" LCD, and I'm pretty sure it was under £200, and is pretty low on wattage (maybe 60w an hour on Economy setting, i.e. an older 60w lightbulb!). As usual, it's housing that screws everything up. From £19.40 in 1970, to £118.95 in 1979. Yikes. Oh, housing and denim jeans

Precisely. In a way, it's like Scotland in relation to the UK, except that Scotland are currently part of a formal Union. If Scotland ever truly decided to part company, I'd be sad... but I'd never dream of telling them, "SCOTLAND WILL IN NO WAY EVER BE ABLE TO LEAVE THE UNION." That's basically what the Chinese rulership are saying to the Taiwanese. You've checked in, but you can never leave.

Since you clearly aren't listening to the answers you've already been given by others, let me ask you a question. We joined the EEC in 1973. Would it be fair to judge whether membership of the EEC was a good idea, based on the state of the economy in 1973, or even in 1974 and 1975? (i.e. the first 2 years). Can you show me the figures proving we were better off in the EEC, based on statistics from 1973-1975? In the same way, why do you think it would be fair to say whether we're "better off" outside the EU, based on data from 2020-22... especially since this period is also when there was a coronavirus pandemic, and a crisis in Europe caused by Putin? This is, by the way, assuming that the benefits are all statistical, which is what you seem to care about the most. Anyway, we'll talk more when you can demonstrate that the UK was better off in the EEC, based on figures from the first two years of membership, i.e. 1973 to 1975 at the latest. After that we can then discuss how it morphed into a much more political union anyway

You can see why so many people have so little faith in the fiat money system. Even the Romans probably had a more stable money system.

A post full of simpletonian logic.

This is kind of amazing, if one of the world's most indebted countries is quite willing to raise their rates to something closer to a historical norm. It suggest, to me, that they want to get interest rates back to a historical normality, and they probably know that the current rates are an aberration that has caused a lot of market distortions. 0.5% rates were supposed to be for an emergency that happened in 2008... i.e. FOURTEEN YEARS AGO.

You're right, but the real issue is pretty simple: After 70 years, Taiwan doesn't want to be part of China. That's not a clear-cut "fact," because Taiwan can't come out and say it because of the repercussions, but I'd suggest that if they wanted to be part of China they'd be part of China by now... ergo they don't want to be part of China. The real problem is that China can't let go. As zugzwang has made abundantly clear, it IS and ALWAYS WILL BE part of China, as far as the CCP is concerned. All the resolutions in the world don't change the facts on the ground, which is that Taiwan doesn't want to be part of China, and since this status quo has existed for 70 years now, it is, for all intents and purposes, a separate country. What makes it worse is, Taiwan has already seen what happens to territories that get absorbed into China. Hong Kong is a perfect example. It became part of China again peacefully and legally, and the Chinese were ok for it to have a somewhat different and more open system... until it decided, nah... and then cracked down. Taiwan don't want what happened in Hong Kong to happen to them. In short, it's effectively been a separate country for 70 years now, but China just can't let it go. I mean, it can... but politically, it can't.

Strange use of the word "choose" when communism often starts with a violent revolution, rather than, say, an election. But maybe you're fooled because they often put "People's Republic" into the names of the countries? What a load of nonsense. Just like with Russia and Putin, most people are able to make the distinction between the people and the rulers, i.e. the Chinese people, and the CCP which has only existed for a tiny slither of China's epic history.

Someone recently posted a link to the history of house prices in the UK. https://builtplace.com/subscribers/digging-deeper/housing-downturns/1979-82/ The part I quoted above made me laugh out loud. History rarely repeats, but it does rhyme.

Aww, poor diddums. Sorry you lost. And you wanted us to stay in the EU and empower Putin with his hand on the gas tap of Europe. 🤡 Also, since we left in January of 2020, you might have noticed a little thing called the coronavirus pandemic, which might have had a slight impact on this country, don't you think? 🤡 (And yes, I've always called it a pandemic.) And then we've had to deal with Putin and Putin patsies like yourself who want us to be tied to the EU, and thus subject to the whims of Putin's gas taps. It will be an interesting winter for Germany, as that Nordstream pipe needs yet more "fixing" 🤡 Oh, you think the clownworld emotes only worked one way? 🤡 🤡

What variables? Unless you're talking about setting up the spreadsheet so you can vary the interest rate, term, initial cost, payment per month... which is what I presume you're talking about. It looks to me like a regular spreadsheet could handle this, at least if you keep, say, the term within a reasonable length, i.e. not 500 years. You can just use one row per month, so for 50 years that's 50x12 =600 rows.