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gp_

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Everything posted by gp_

  1. Neither Russia nor the US, nor China, nor India agree with you, nor any of the other countries that have not agreed to sign up to the ICC. The US has called the ICC illegitimate: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45474864 What exactly is "Europe" going to do? We can keep supporting Ukraine, but will we do so to a sufficient extent to allow Ukraine to win? If we do, might China react by increasing support for Russia? The latter would be a disaster because it would give the biggest threat to us greater access to Russian natural resources. We should have acted years ago, and stopped Putin getting into power in the first place. Having failed to do that, we should have reacted in 2008 when he threatened to invade Ukraine, or in 2014 when he actually did, or when he invaded Georgia. We could even have been honest with the Ukrainians and told them they were on their own in terms of defence, instead of pressuring them to give up their nukes.
  2. Does it matter? it is still denominated in its own currency and all index linking does is make it keep its value in real terms. Unless there is a severe recession and sustained it will not even make a noticeable difference. If there is a severe recession the government can print money to pay it off without worrying too much about inflation. Index linked gilt issuance peaked a decade ago, and I do not know how much of it is long term. It gives the government an incentive to raise interest rates and buy some of that back.
  3. Suppose they do kick out the current tenants to re-let at a higher rent: 1) is the market rate as high as the brokers say? 2) can they afford any void period? 3) how soon does the fix rate mortgage expire, and can they be sure of re-letting at a high enough rent in time? Reading the thread the LL seems inclined to sell up as even if they remortgage the repayments will make it unprofitable.
  4. the shape of the population pyramid explians it https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/ukpopulationpyramidinteractive/2020-01-08 right now there is a bulge in women of child bearing age.
  5. Interesting, we paid MUCH more in a house with a meter. Similar experience for other people I know Obviously it depends on usage patterns too (i.e. how much water each person uses). In general, the break even (according to the water companies who are desperate to persuade people to switch) is the same number of bed rooms as people, but that is an average. Around here it is approx £600/year for a three bed house (without a meter). The problem with switching to a water meter is that after a set time neither you nor any new occupant can switch back, whereas you can always switch to a meter.
  6. I take that means you cannot think of any real difference it would make? Whether we have it or not is just gesture politics, right?
  7. A water meter would save you money? Do you live alone in a large house or similar?
  8. Tax on (UK) dividends is unfair because corporation tax has already been paid on it. We should go back to normal income tax less a tax credit. CGT at the same rate is fine and simplifies things. Abolishing non-dom status is common sense, and will not do any hard. Tax on wealth? There may be problems enforcing, but you can tax beneficial owners to get around the offshore trust issue.. We can certainly tax some assets. Land in the UK for example. What about a 1% land value tax on everything but main residences?
  9. It varies a lot between Asian countries, but basically you are right - and even some of those that are now developed have a culture still influenced by past poverty. The US has an extremely welfare safety net for a developed country, and even those in work have to contend with things like paying for medical care. Also, long hours does not equal higher productivity! It varies by job, of course, but in many cases getting people to work longer hours is a result of a toxic work culture. There is an issue with people who are reluctant of demotivated doing jobs they think are not good enough for them. Again a cultural issue. Even by the end of lockdown we had pretty much forgotten the importance of essential workers apart from the NHS, and even there its mostly nice middle class ones (doctors and nurses) who are appreciated. Maybe we need to be a bit less snobbish about this? Its not only a British problem though. It is a problem of secure and affluent societies.
  10. The problem is created in the first place by managers who are short sighted or only care about short term costs in the first place. "Documentation and code review? We have heard of them"
  11. The reason may be something to do with the greater liability banks have for fraud. They now have to refund you if you were the victim of an push fraud (i.e. someone fraudulently persuades you to transfer money to them) and since that became the case they have become a lot more wary of large transfers. I am wondering whether something similar is happening with cash. Not that I know of, but the questions sound very similar to those they started asking after they because liable for push fraud, and so does the reluctance to pay out. My biggest worry about getting rid of cash is what happens if the whole payments system goes down: cyber war or space weather (coronal mass ejections etc.). We are supposed to be prepared for the latter - in the same way we were supposed to be prepared for a pandemic.
  12. I wonder whether this is a political move. The BoE knows they have to raise rates, but there will be public and political opposition to risking a house price crash. This way: BoE can raise rates without politicians trying to stop it, and, If there is a crash, politicians blame the BoE for telling them there would not be a crash.
  13. Its quite interesting I have ended up arguing with two people in this thread, who have very different views on very different topics, but neither is willing to provide evidence - just assertions that what they believe is true and anyone who questions their views is an idiot.
  14. You are bundling different things together. Yes, the science of greenhouse gases is well understood. Yes, there is good evidence of anthropogenic climate change. I do not disagree with any of that and its entirely irrelevant to my point. That does not prove that the predictive models are correct. The do not have a particularly good track record so far (e.g. models from the 80s predicted a variety of outcomes for the 2000s, ranging from freezing temperatures in Britain to so much warming it would never snow in winter). You are avoiding questions specific, and resorting to smear and ad hominem attacks. The very fact that we have many different models, rather than a single proven model, shows that the science is incomplete. What existential threat? We know human beings have survived (and flourished in) warm periods at least regionally, possibly globally, in historical times. Not all, or even most, models show the results would be an existential threat. Countries like Russia would benefit hugely. China and other East Asian countries would benefit too. Please define climate change denier. I asked you for measurements that confirm your claims, that is all. You are clearly ideologically committed to climate change being an "existential threat" so anyone who asks for evidence of that is an "idiot". Its very much "because I say so". Who is in a cult? If your only response to requests for evidence is to say asking for evidence or answers to question is "ridiculous". The fact is you do not know the answers yourself to the specifics about the models and the available data. You are just assuming the a particular view is true
  15. No. Atheists are less rational. Most Chinese people are atheists and believe in astrology etc. The Soviet Union were atheists, as is North Korea, as were the Khmer Rouge, Mussolini, and Mao. All rational? That sort of silly comment shows you have no idea what people actually believe or why, just a mass of prejudice. The government has taken control of the Orthodox Church, would be more accurate. Dictatorships have a way of doing that - read up on what Hitler did to German protestant churches, or China's ban on the Catholic Church etc. Russia's reasons for invading are entirely rational (they may not be right, or justified, but they were rational). People were predicting a new cold war in the 1990s, Russia threatened to invade Ukraine in 2008, if they took any steps towards joining NATO or the EU. Russia actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed a lot of Ukrainian territory. Given all that, pretending that the invasion in 2022 was some kind of black swan event is an excuse for not admitting the incompetence of western foreign policy.
  16. Those are global averages, right? How do you deal estimate regional variations? What about the evidence that much of Europe was warmer than it is now for much of that time? https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/the-coming-and-going-of-glaciers-a-new-alpine-melt-theory-a-357366.html On top of that, proving the earth has warmed does not prove predictive models of future change are accurate. How many variables does a typical climate change model have? How much data do you have to backtest it on? If you adjust models to fit the data are you not over-fitting?
  17. Or maybe he thought the best thing to do with a racist fruitcake harassing him was to ignore her. There is one indication he is a foreigner, he did not react the way I would if she tried that on me - I would tell her to ****** off or I would call the cops. He may just be a more peaceful type than me. Of course, even if foreign he could be here legally - he could be a tourist, or working here, or studying here. You are claiming a massive conspiracy exists, but have zero evidence.
  18. Exactly the point I was trying to make. What is their path to citizen ship? It is a pretty long one, right? They would also have to meet the criteria I mentioned in financial terms. I am not denying a lot are economic migrants, or partly motivated by economics. What I am denying is that its worth coming here for welfare.
  19. That is true. There is a joke I heard in Sri Lanka. A man emigrates to England and his family say he has a hundred people under him at work. He mows the lawn in a cemetery. One of the things I was thinking of was a conversation with a brother of an illegal immigrant. He paid a lot to get here, ended up low paid in a petrol station, got caught and deported.
  20. You people? Who are "you people"? Evidence of temperatures over the last 10,000 years in England? Can you tell me what the peak temperature in England was between the 10th and 13th centuries? Or between 200BC and 400AD? The overall European climate was warmer than it was in 1911. We only have proper records going back a very short way. Your problem is that you think of climate change as something you believe in or do not as a political cause, and therefore you do not differentiate between what is well proven and what is probable, and what is speculation. You are are just taking what experts say as true: that is an argument from authority, not science. "You are with us or against us" is a political stance, not a scientific one.
  21. They earn less. What makes you think it is feasible? They usually get sent back before they can earn back what they paid. They have false expectations of what they can earn. No, its not. debatable Not by anyone sane. This is what happens when you get your news from Youtube, And all it proves is there were people outside hotels smoking. One guy was not even in a hotel, he was sitting in a public place and there was no reason to even think he was claiming asylum. No one is debating that some people who claim asylum are housed in hotels short term. However far more get housed in horrible housing. You really think that they could be getting more money than the rules say they do without leaving any evidence of things like payments made, documentation, etc? So when people are openly racist and you say so, that is "playing the race card"? You really have to want to believe this stuff to do so on a complete lack of evidence.
  22. I agree, but it shows that her fiance being here did not help her get in. She was trying to come here separately and illegally, and had to pay a huge amount to do it. Its not economically viable to do that for the benefits.
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