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Trust matters. – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,161
edited February 2022 in General
Trust matters. – politicalbetting.com

Kwasi Kwarteng is I’m sure an intelligent man, but by arguing that fraud is not “real crime” or “what people feel” replaces the actual data, he is downplaying the impact of crime on ordinary citizens whilst trying to defend his lying Prime Minister pic.twitter.com/GzsimkrJOZ

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,175
    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,355
    There was a recent article about victims of fraud connected to online dating that was very effective in communicating the loss of trust that the victims felt in other people more generally. It really did not sound that different from the loss of trust that victims of physical crimes feel - and it's hard for the government to make a distinction between fraud and other crimes in terms of which crimes are more important to take seriously, when the government does such a bad job on taking seriously crimes of violence against women.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    A worthy header.

    The phenomenon of the virtual de-criminalisation of certain crimes is a fascinating one. In the case of fraud, it seems it is cheaper to compensate (most of) the victims of such crimes, via insurance. It's just the cost of doing business etc....

    What seems to happen is the building up of a wall of resistance to prosecuting the de-criminalised crimes. "Not in the public interest", "Needs to take into account community issues" etc etc.

    In one way the Nat West 3 did some good in the UK - prosecutors seemed to wake up (again) to the possibility of prosecuting financial crime. They had longs slept on the issue, after a series of high profile cases had collapsed after vast expense.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249

    There was a recent article about victims of fraud connected to online dating that was very effective in communicating the loss of trust that the victims felt in other people more generally. It really did not sound that different from the loss of trust that victims of physical crimes feel - and it's hard for the government to make a distinction between fraud and other crimes in terms of which crimes are more important to take seriously, when the government does such a bad job on taking seriously crimes of violence against women.

    Yes.

    Advocates of de-criminalising petty theft/shop lifting leave out the distress and anxiety caused to the victims. When someone steals, often aggressively, from the little shop that is your livelihood, on a weekly basis.. And nothing is done... well, not surprisingly, the victims start having all kinds of problems.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,355
    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    I believe it's been a general feature of the pandemic. Seen also in crime figures in Ireland, for example, that physical property thefts are way down (because people have spent more time at home, so their homes are harder to burgle and it's harder to mug people), but fraud crimes are way up - because people have spent more time online, and are more socially isolated.

    And, also, it seems to be pretty easy, with little interest from the authorities in taking any effective steps to prevent the crime, or to catch those responsible after the event.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    FPT for @Benpointer

    Leon said:

    You have now been talking about Scottish independence for, ooh, six hours. Whatever your opinions, the chances of a new referendum before the next GE are about 2%, and after the GE the chances rise to about 5-10%, unless that GE produces a remarkable finely balanced result where Starmer desperately needs Sturgeon (but why? She would have to back him anybobs, because otherwise: Tories return). So this is something that is not going to be a germane question, at least until PB reaches its 25th birthday, not its 18th

    Is the winter that dreary and the politics that repetitive back home? Should I stay out here?

    Yes, sadly. And yes, I would if I were you.

    Memo to self - must book some winter sunshine hols for next year.
    Thanks. I may well extend by a few days! Seriously

    You can generally tell how bad it is back home by the grumpiness or monotony of posts on here.

    And YES definitely book winter sunshine hols. You are a man of means, you are retired (I think?) why would you not bugger off to the sun for a fortnight or two if you can, in the dreary depths of Jan and early Feb?

    I don’t know why people who can afford it (in terms of cash and time) don’t do it more often. The absolute joy of getting off a plane that left a dank and drizzly Heathrow suffering 2 degrees C to step into blazing sunshine and 29C is probably one of the greatest pleasures of travel. Certainly much greater than just flying to the Med in summer when it is already generally pleasant at home

    This is, of course, particularly true this winter, when we have all been in jail for 24 months
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 5,288
    Is it possible that, in belittling the crime of fraud, he thinks he is defending, or is making the association whilst feigning tacitly to defend, his boss?

    Is this the pass we have come to, that the Conservative Party feels the need to defend fraud as a point of principle?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,663
    edited February 2022
    Leon said:

    FPT for @Benpointer


    Leon said:

    You have now been talking about Scottish independence for, ooh, six hours. Whatever your opinions, the chances of a new referendum before the next GE are about 2%, and after the GE the chances rise to about 5-10%, unless that GE produces a remarkable finely balanced result where Starmer desperately needs Sturgeon (but why? She would have to back him anybobs, because otherwise: Tories return). So this is something that is not going to be a germane question, at least until PB reaches its 25th birthday, not its 18th

    Is the winter that dreary and the politics that repetitive back home? Should I stay out here?

    Yes, sadly. And yes, I would if I were you.

    Memo to self - must book some winter sunshine hols for next year.
    Thanks. I may well extend by a few days! Seriously

    You can generally tell how bad it is back home by the grumpiness or monotony of posts on here.

    And YES definitely book winter sunshine hols. You are a man of means, you are retired (I think?) why would you not bugger off to the sun for a fortnight or two if you can, in the dreary depths of Jan and early Feb?

    I don’t know why people who can afford it (in terms of cash and time) don’t do it more often. The absolute joy of getting off a plane that left a dank and drizzly Heathrow suffering 2 degrees C to step into blazing sunshine and 29C is probably one of the greatest pleasures of travel. Certainly much greater than just flying to the Med in summer when it is already generally pleasant at home

    This is, of course, particularly true this winter, when we have all been in jail for 24 months
    Yeah, we should have gone this year but Omicron put us off - just the prospect of mega-hassle around what we would / would not be able to do really.

    Also we give quite a lot of support to elderly parents (just Mrs P's dad now) which makes her reticent to leave him for too long.

    But we'll definitely aim to get away next year.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,355
    I get the impression that Kwasi Kwarteng has had a bad few months. Wasn't he the cabinet minister who was on the media round the morning after the Paterson vote, who suggested that the position of the Standards Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, was untenable, he's been completely missing in action over the energy crisis, and defending the misuse of statistics in this way is very poor - it would be more defensible to say that it was valid to look at different subsets of crime, and that a fall in physical crime was worth noting, without dismissing fraud crime as a crime at all.

    I had thought that he was one of the more capable Cabinet Ministers, one of the few who would merit surviving the end of Johnson's Ministry, but I'm not so sure of that now.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,663
    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813
    edited February 2022
    Bit of a local tip for the Forest V Leicester FA game kicking off a 4 pm . I live about half a mile away from the City Ground and it is starting to get really windy and rainy. Convention has it that there are more corners in such conditions so i have gone higher than 10 with William Hill at 23/20.The game is on the BBC for added entertainment if you have a bet
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    Leon said:

    FPT for @Benpointer


    Leon said:

    You have now been talking about Scottish independence for, ooh, six hours. Whatever your opinions, the chances of a new referendum before the next GE are about 2%, and after the GE the chances rise to about 5-10%, unless that GE produces a remarkable finely balanced result where Starmer desperately needs Sturgeon (but why? She would have to back him anybobs, because otherwise: Tories return). So this is something that is not going to be a germane question, at least until PB reaches its 25th birthday, not its 18th

    Is the winter that dreary and the politics that repetitive back home? Should I stay out here?

    Yes, sadly. And yes, I would if I were you.

    Memo to self - must book some winter sunshine hols for next year.
    Thanks. I may well extend by a few days! Seriously

    You can generally tell how bad it is back home by the grumpiness or monotony of posts on here.

    And YES definitely book winter sunshine hols. You are a man of means, you are retired (I think?) why would you not bugger off to the sun for a fortnight or two if you can, in the dreary depths of Jan and early Feb?

    I don’t know why people who can afford it (in terms of cash and time) don’t do it more often. The absolute joy of getting off a plane that left a dank and drizzly Heathrow suffering 2 degrees C to step into blazing sunshine and 29C is probably one of the greatest pleasures of travel. Certainly much greater than just flying to the Med in summer when it is already generally pleasant at home

    This is, of course, particularly true this winter, when we have all been in jail for 24 months
    Yeah, we should have gone this year but Omicron put us off - just the prospect of mega-hassle around what we would / would not be able to do really.

    Also we give quite a lot of support to elderly parents (just Mrs P's dad now) which makes her reticent to leave him for too long.

    But we'll definitely aim to get away next year.
    i spent weeks researching my options, vis a vis Omicron. Nearly went to Dubai. UGH

    Sri Lanka is perfect, and so surreally cheap. You get negative sticker-shock. The bizarre feeling you are being consistently undercharged
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    Or nicking an iPhone to get at the cards in Apple wallet is quite easy?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134
    edited February 2022
    Yep, fraud is a crime of violence. The self-esteem of the victim goes along with the money. It can leave them more broken and for longer than a physical attack.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Second hand phones and laptops go for a few hundred pounds, if you have a really nice, up to date example. What's a iPhone 8 worth?

    Most things that people buy are often expensive at the point of purchase, but have little value second hand. A wardrobe full of expensive clothes is only good of the charity shop etc...

    If you have credit card details (for example), then you can steal 5 figures and up in minutes. In a different country - if you have friends abroad....
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.
    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
    Parts are re-cycled into the errrrrr.. more local phone repair outfits.

    Some phones are cracked, some the victim is threatened with violence for the passcode.

    In general phone theft has replaced the other kind of street robbery, since it is the only thing making *some* money.

    The big bucks in crime is in drugs and fraud.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813
    edited February 2022
    Crime is one of those areas where people just expect the government to be honest and have a solution . To try and claim its gone down by so and so usually doesn't get past the BS detector of the GBP as its one of those things people can sense well in their local areas. Just be honest . Fraud can of course cover everything from a person losing all their life savings to a plumber underdeclaring a bit on their tax return (or MPs claiming some dodgy expenses) so it does have a range of victims feelings from devastating to meh to even slightly supportive (at the slight tax dodging end by a grafting tradesman) . However it just canto be dismissed as trivial or not a crime for crime stats
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319
    edited February 2022
    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,561
    Uniondivvie, settlement made to a worthy cause.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,355

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    Google suggests that there are hardware ways to perform a factory reset of an iPhone without having password access. This results in all the data being lost, which is bad for the cops, but good if you want to resell the hardware.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319
    edited February 2022
    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
    Parts are re-cycled into the errrrrr.. more local phone repair outfits.

    Some phones are cracked, some the victim is threatened with violence for the passcode.

    In general phone theft has replaced the other kind of street robbery, since it is the only thing making *some* money.

    The big bucks in crime is in drugs and fraud.
    So these kids are stealing £1000 phones and making £50 or whatever. What pointlessness

    Re drugs, yes of course. The UK must do everything it can to stop Fentanyl and Co getting on to our streets. We need Singapore-style punishments. Reading about it in the USA, it is brutally destructive, and I see no reason why someone won’t at least *try* and extend the market to Europe

    It is the perfect drug in a terrible way. Quite a good high, but cripplingly addictive, with a grotesquely painful withdrawal
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
    Parts are re-cycled into the errrrrr.. more local phone repair outfits.

    Some phones are cracked, some the victim is threatened with violence for the passcode.

    In general phone theft has replaced the other kind of street robbery, since it is the only thing making *some* money.

    The big bucks in crime is in drugs and fraud.
    So these kids are stealing £1000 phones and making £50 or whatever. What pointlessness

    Re drugs, yes of course. The UK must do everything it can to stop Fentanyl and Co getting on to our streets. We need Singapore-style punishments. Reading about it in the USA, it is brutally destructive, and I see no reason why someone won’t at least *try* and extend the market to Europe

    It is the perfect drug in a terrible way. Quite a good high, but cripplingly addictive, with a grotesquely painful withdrawal
    The Economist did an issue on crime, years back. The guys at the bottom of the criminal gangs make less than minimum wage, per hour, in every country they looked at. They would literally be better off working in MacDonalds, even without the career opportunities that MacDonalds offers vs the gangs.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,783
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
    Parts are re-cycled into the errrrrr.. more local phone repair outfits.

    Some phones are cracked, some the victim is threatened with violence for the passcode.

    In general phone theft has replaced the other kind of street robbery, since it is the only thing making *some* money.

    The big bucks in crime is in drugs and fraud.
    So these kids are stealing £1000 phones and making £50 or whatever. What pointlessness

    Re drugs, yes of course. The UK must do everything it can to stop Fentanyl and Co getting on to our streets. We need Singapore-style punishments. Reading about it in the USA, it is brutally destructive, and I see no reason why someone won’t at least *try* and extend the market to Europe

    It is the perfect drug in a terrible way. Quite a good high, but cripplingly addictive, with a grotesquely painful withdrawal
    I was re-reading some William Burroughs over the Christmas break and this quote (about heroin) comes to mind :

    The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,931

    I get the impression that Kwasi Kwarteng has had a bad few months. Wasn't he the cabinet minister who was on the media round the morning after the Paterson vote, who suggested that the position of the Standards Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, was untenable, he's been completely missing in action over the energy crisis, and defending the misuse of statistics in this way is very poor - it would be more defensible to say that it was valid to look at different subsets of crime, and that a fall in physical crime was worth noting, without dismissing fraud crime as a crime at all.

    I had thought that he was one of the more capable Cabinet Ministers, one of the few who would merit surviving the end of Johnson's Ministry, but I'm not so sure of that now.

    Kwasi Kwarteng is just another Old Etonian, like Johnson and JRM, that think the rules are only for the despised little people.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,310
    Fraud by abuse of position seems to me to sum up the PM very succinctly indeed.

    Tories really don't see the extent of the harm the endless lies, evasive explanations and unbelievable contortions they seem to come out with every time they open their mouths are doing to them individually, their party, the country and politics generally.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,931
    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    If we gain independence, will there be a way of ensuring she is never allowed back?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
    Parts are re-cycled into the errrrrr.. more local phone repair outfits.

    Some phones are cracked, some the victim is threatened with violence for the passcode.

    In general phone theft has replaced the other kind of street robbery, since it is the only thing making *some* money.

    The big bucks in crime is in drugs and fraud.
    So these kids are stealing £1000 phones and making £50 or whatever. What pointlessness

    Re drugs, yes of course. The UK must do everything it can to stop Fentanyl and Co getting on to our streets. We need Singapore-style punishments. Reading about it in the USA, it is brutally destructive, and I see no reason why someone won’t at least *try* and extend the market to Europe

    It is the perfect drug in a terrible way. Quite a good high, but cripplingly addictive, with a grotesquely painful withdrawal
    Perhaps £50 is a lot of money to them
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    edited February 2022
    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319
    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    If we gain independence, will there be a way of ensuring she is never allowed back?
    Hopefully.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
    Parts are re-cycled into the errrrrr.. more local phone repair outfits.

    Some phones are cracked, some the victim is threatened with violence for the passcode.

    In general phone theft has replaced the other kind of street robbery, since it is the only thing making *some* money.

    The big bucks in crime is in drugs and fraud.
    So these kids are stealing £1000 phones and making £50 or whatever. What pointlessness

    Re drugs, yes of course. The UK must do everything it can to stop Fentanyl and Co getting on to our streets. We need Singapore-style punishments. Reading about it in the USA, it is brutally destructive, and I see no reason why someone won’t at least *try* and extend the market to Europe

    It is the perfect drug in a terrible way. Quite a good high, but cripplingly addictive, with a grotesquely painful withdrawal
    Perhaps £50 is a lot of money to them
    We are back to @Malmesbury 's point that most criminals would be better of working in McDonalds

    Although I suspect the one place where that isn't true is fraud as you only have to look at the African variations to see how profitable it can be. Once you've got a working scheme it's literally just a numbers game...
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    edited February 2022
    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
  • Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Second hand phones and laptops go for a few hundred pounds, if you have a really nice, up to date example. What's a iPhone 8 worth?

    Most things that people buy are often expensive at the point of purchase, but have little value second hand. A wardrobe full of expensive clothes is only good of the charity shop etc...

    If you have credit card details (for example), then you can steal 5 figures and up in minutes. In a different country - if you have friends abroad....
    I'm not saying you'll ever make a fortune of 2nd hand clothes but you can make a few quid (as I do). Sites like Marktt presumably do make more than a few quid off them.

    https://www.marrkt.com/


  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    eek said:

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
    Parts are re-cycled into the errrrrr.. more local phone repair outfits.

    Some phones are cracked, some the victim is threatened with violence for the passcode.

    In general phone theft has replaced the other kind of street robbery, since it is the only thing making *some* money.

    The big bucks in crime is in drugs and fraud.
    So these kids are stealing £1000 phones and making £50 or whatever. What pointlessness

    Re drugs, yes of course. The UK must do everything it can to stop Fentanyl and Co getting on to our streets. We need Singapore-style punishments. Reading about it in the USA, it is brutally destructive, and I see no reason why someone won’t at least *try* and extend the market to Europe

    It is the perfect drug in a terrible way. Quite a good high, but cripplingly addictive, with a grotesquely painful withdrawal
    Perhaps £50 is a lot of money to them
    We are back to @Malmesbury 's point that most criminals would be better of working in McDonalds

    Although I suspect the one place where that isn't true is fraud as you only have to look at the African variations to see how profitable it can be. Once you've got a working scheme it's literally just a numbers game...
    Which is why the intelligent get into fraud.

    Lot less dependence on the street level idiots who have trouble not fucking things up - which is why drug cartels spend so much time murdering people. You'd think that even the most basic idiot wold get the message - "Don't steal from a Mexican Drug Cartel". But no. They steal. And die.

    - Much more money comes in.
    - Since it is electronic, much easier to "wash" than physical, in many ways.
    - law enforcement is much less, and the sentence much lower than other crimes for the same return.
  • Uniondivvie, settlement made to a worthy cause.

    Ta.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,625
    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    If we gain independence, will there be a way of ensuring she is never allowed back?
    Hopefully.
    Who else is on the list? Lulu? Sheena Easton?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    If we gain independence, will there be a way of ensuring she is never allowed back?
    Hopefully.
    Who else is on the list? Lulu? Sheena Easton?
    Tony Blair?
  • I get the impression that Kwasi Kwarteng has had a bad few months. Wasn't he the cabinet minister who was on the media round the morning after the Paterson vote, who suggested that the position of the Standards Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, was untenable, he's been completely missing in action over the energy crisis, and defending the misuse of statistics in this way is very poor - it would be more defensible to say that it was valid to look at different subsets of crime, and that a fall in physical crime was worth noting, without dismissing fraud crime as a crime at all.

    I had thought that he was one of the more capable Cabinet Ministers, one of the few who would merit surviving the end of Johnson's Ministry, but I'm not so sure of that now.

    Kwasi Kwarteng is just another Old Etonian, like Johnson and JRM, that think the rules are only for the despised little people.
    Well they are right, because we let them maintain that status quo!
  • malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    If we gain independence, will there be a way of ensuring she is never allowed back?
    Hopefully.
    Who else is on the list? Lulu? Sheena Easton?
    Winkle the Grand Old Duke out of Balmoral for a start.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    I have ordered Sri Lankan oysters. EEEEK
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    edited February 2022
    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    Not quite, you have Scottish Bank (and Northern Irish Bank) notes. They belong to and are issued by the bank not the region.

    Most entertainment I've had in years was getting the Danske Bank counter at Copenhagen Airport to change some Northern Irish Danske Bank notes to Danish Krona - Danske had just introduced the polymer £10 note so it really did look and feel like toy money to the Danish workers.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990
    Another excoriating piece on Boris Johnson (as PM) by his old newspaper boss Max Hastings.
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/has-this-experiment-in-celebrity-government-given-us-the-most-disreputable-leader-in-history-m22zlpxk0
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,376
    Leon said:

    I have ordered Sri Lankan oysters. EEEEK

    We had Northumberland Oysters yesterday having made the long trek to Fenwicks in Newcastle.

    Very nice too.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319
    eek said:

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Is this true?


    There is quite a lot of phone theft in London. I’ve often wondered what is the resale value of, say, an iPhone? Given that most will be locked and pretty useless - and the data erased by their owners when stolen, how much can they be worth?

    Or can some criminal gangs unlock them and sell them on for serious money?

    This website suggests yes it can be done quite easily, but can it? I seem to recall the CIA having trouble cracking an iPhone without the passcode

    https://www.makeuseof.com/unlock-iphone-without-password/
    Might it be that cracking an iPhone to get at the data = really hard; resetting an iPhone for someone else to use = not so difficult?

    I dunno, just wondering.
    There must be SOME way of getting inside a passcode-locked iPhone, otherwise these feral kids would not be stealing them. A locked iPhone would just be a lump of very expensive but inert metal, worth nothing (unless they can use bit parts inside)

    This site suggests what they might really want is the SIM


    https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-stolen-access-apple-id-bank-account-details-sim-card-brazil-criminals-detail-2482218
    Parts are re-cycled into the errrrrr.. more local phone repair outfits.

    Some phones are cracked, some the victim is threatened with violence for the passcode.

    In general phone theft has replaced the other kind of street robbery, since it is the only thing making *some* money.

    The big bucks in crime is in drugs and fraud.
    So these kids are stealing £1000 phones and making £50 or whatever. What pointlessness

    Re drugs, yes of course. The UK must do everything it can to stop Fentanyl and Co getting on to our streets. We need Singapore-style punishments. Reading about it in the USA, it is brutally destructive, and I see no reason why someone won’t at least *try* and extend the market to Europe

    It is the perfect drug in a terrible way. Quite a good high, but cripplingly addictive, with a grotesquely painful withdrawal
    Perhaps £50 is a lot of money to them
    We are back to @Malmesbury 's point that most criminals would be better of working in McDonalds

    Although I suspect the one place where that isn't true is fraud as you only have to look at the African variations to see how profitable it can be. Once you've got a working scheme it's literally just a numbers game...
    That would mean getting up out their beds at reasonable hours and having to have a routine , accept someone telling them what to do etc.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,213
    edited February 2022
    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    Those who leave UK to a newly independent Scotland would have a preserved entitlement to the UK state pension up the point of the creation of the new Scottish state. Entitlement to future build-up would cease at this point (as they are no longer in the UK) which would mean a partial entitlement to the UK state pension - depending on each individual's number of years of UK NI contributions - payable when each person achieves UK state retirement age.

    At the same time each person would start to accrue brand new entitlement from a zero start to a Scottish state pension.

    So on retirement, each person would receive part preserved UK pension and part Scot pension. It is possible that these would start at different ages depending on whether the Scots have the same or a different state pension age.

    The part UK pension would be unlikely to index-linked each year - it would be a partial entitlement to the state pension at the monetary amount applicable when Scotland left the union. The reason for this is that leaving to another country only attracts indexation if there is a reciprocal agreement between the UK and the other country (e.g. USA). A reciprocal agreement with Scotland would be unlikely because Scotland would have nothing to reciprocate.

    I don't see why the UK would get out of funding the Scot's partial entitlements to our state pension - but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,319
    edited February 2022
    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    Yet I look in my wallet and there are Scottish banknotes.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,561
    FPT: LostPassword: "30 miles from Bees Head to Point of Ayr and a bit further the other side. I guess it's more feasible than going under the Beaufort Dyke, but the advantage of the Beaufort Dyke location is that it lies on the direct line between Glasgow and Belfast, and the Isle of Man link doesn't - it would most likely still be easier to take the ferry across the Northern Channel to travel between Belfast and Glasgow, so that reduces the utility of the link somewhat."

    But it would have no exposure to the vagueries of an independent Scotland. And a shorter route to London --> Dover --> Europe.

    And would do wonders for the IoM.....
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    Scott_xP said:
    It wasn't and isn't celebrity Government, Bozo promised to fix a problem that was unfixable and he did "fixed" the initial problem, some level of Brexit has occurred.

    The fact the fix has a fundamental flaw within it that utterly screws the Unionists in NI is something that will need to be dealt with later on (after Bozo has left)
  • Penddu2Penddu2 Posts: 689
    Leon said:

    I have ordered Sri Lankan oysters. EEEEK

    Premedicate...or buy a cork...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    I have ordered Sri Lankan oysters. EEEEK

    We had Northumberland Oysters yesterday having made the long trek to Fenwicks in Newcastle.

    Very nice too.
    Lindisfarne oysters are often superb

    Sri Lanka?!

    I just don’t trust wam water oysters. Instinctively. Doesn’t seem right. OTOH New Orleans does pretty good oysters from the Gulf of Mexico. And Sydney rocks are amazebombs (but is that due to the proximity of the Antarctic?)

    Namibian oysters in Luderitz (discussed the other day) are world class. But they have the freezing Benguela current
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    Yet I look in my wallet and there are Scottish banknotes.
    Notes printed by Banks in Scotland as demonstrated by the fact they have "Bank of Scotland" or "Royal Bank of Scotland" printed on them not just the word Scotland.
  • malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    Sindy will not have the BoE as it’s central bank and rUK will not enter into a currency union with it.

    the SNP's current currency position is to unofficially continue to use sterling outside the formal sterling area, much in the same way Montenegro uses the euro without the agreement of the eurozone or the European Central Bank. It is envisaged this 'sterlingisation' arrangement will last a considerable period. The SNP would then plan to launch a new Scottish currency if the economic conditions merited it.

    McCrone sees the danger in this. Figures show that an independent Scotland would start life with a classic twin deficits problem. The country would be importing more than it is exporting and spending more money than it is generating in tax. It would therefore have unsustainably large current account and budget deficits.

    'In the short term, even if taxes were raised or public expenditure cut, Scotland would have to borrow to finance both of these deficits,' notes McCrone. But as a new borrower with no long record of credibility like the UK, Scotland would 'have to pay considerably more on its borrowing'.

    'Interest rates would be in danger of constantly increasing in a vicious circle, resulting in eventual collapse,' he warns.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-book-that-shatters-the-snp-s-economic-myths
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    For comedy with European dimension. A friend tells me he was in a meeting (largish) with a variety of stakeholders in European rocket development.

    A Big Cheese announced that he was extremely tired of idiots who "demanded" that new launchers should not use solid boosters. Any Proper Rocket design had to have solid boosters, because of the political realities of launcher development in Europe.

    Shades of "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia."
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,839
    On topic: Eton again. To paraphrase, come friendly bombs...
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    edited February 2022
    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    Yet I look in my wallet and there are Scottish banknotes.
    No there are not. There are sterling bank notes, issued by banks in Scotland under licence. Rather beautiful ones (I love the Clydesdale fivers, so beautiful, although I gather that Virgin Money are phasing them out) but they are not Scottish pounds.

    Just as these are not a separate currency:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_Northern_Ireland

    As I said, they could conceivably be used as banknotes for a new Scottish currency, although a lot more would have to be printed. But they are at the moment sterling.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    Yet I look in my wallet and there are Scottish banknotes.
    UK banknotes.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582
    eek said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    Yet I look in my wallet and there are Scottish banknotes.
    Notes printed by Banks in Scotland as demonstrated by the fact they have "Bank of Scotland" or "Royal Bank of Scotland" printed on them not just the word Scotland.
    And underwritten by the Bank of England.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    Penddu2 said:

    Leon said:

    I have ordered Sri Lankan oysters. EEEEK

    Premedicate...or buy a cork...
    Weirdly, they are delicate, sweet and rather nice. But incredibly tiny

    A minuscule native species? Certainly not fat Pacific Rocks
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,133
    edited February 2022

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    If we gain independence, will there be a way of ensuring she is never allowed back?
    Hopefully.
    Who else is on the list? Lulu? Sheena Easton?
    Wasn't Sheena Easton responsible for "For Your Eyes Only" ? Thus forever associated in my mind with some lost feeling of turn-of-the-'80s cinematic glamour, and all those silhouettes of beautiful women diving in and out space in a James Bond trailer, to liven up grey but still hopeful times. Surely not the worst of Scotland's children.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    Applicant said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
    I hope you reported them for fraud.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    ydoethur said:

    Applicant said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
    I hope you reported them for fraud.
    IIRC UK merchants have to take all UK notes as legal tender at face value - is that right?

    But someone abroad, what is their legal situation, taking another countries legal tender?
  • Excellent piece, fraud seems to be everywhere.

    What is remarkable is the claim it isn't discussed on the doorstep. Fishing emails, strange phone calls seems to be a popular conversation with all the oldies in my life.

    The one that annoys me is how the landline is now 100% scam calls for me, how did operators allowed that to happen.

    MrB
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    Interesting fact given the topic above is about financial fraud

    https://web.archive.org/web/20171014174408/http://www.acbi.org.uk/legal_position.php

    In Scotland and Northern Ireland because there is no such thing as legal tender, technically a shop doesn't need to give you change so you should pay the exact amount displayed..
  • Stocky said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    I don't see why the UK would get out of funding the Scot's partial entitlements to our state pension - but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
    Because there isn’t a “fund” of National Insurance money like there is for a private pension (not strictly true, there’s enough to cover 2 weeks worth of pensions, but that’s it) so state pensions are paid out of current taxation.

    So the SNP are arguing that English tax payers would be paying for Scottish pensions.

    Why?
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    ydoethur said:

    Applicant said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
    I hope you reported them for fraud.
    Well, life's too short. I haven't taken cash abroad to exchange for maybe a decade, and now I get a decent rate for cash withdrawals abroad from my bank.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373

    ydoethur said:

    Applicant said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
    I hope you reported them for fraud.
    IIRC UK merchants have to take all UK notes as legal tender at face value - is that right?

    But someone abroad, what is their legal situation, taking another countries legal tender?
    Technically speaking, they are not legal tender anywhere as in Scotland notes are not legal tender and in England only Bank of England notes and coins are legal tender.

    https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/what-is-legal-tender

    I suspect however the real problem is that banks outside the UK are more reluctant to accept Scottish notes simply because they don't see them very often.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368

    ydoethur said:

    Applicant said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
    I hope you reported them for fraud.
    IIRC UK merchants have to take all UK notes as legal tender at face value - is that right?

    But someone abroad, what is their legal situation, taking another countries legal tender?
    Scottish / NI bank notes are not legal tender - but to get round that there is no such thing as legal tender in Scotland / NI...
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    Applicant said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
    I hope you reported them for fraud.
    IIRC UK merchants have to take all UK notes as legal tender at face value - is that right?

    But someone abroad, what is their legal situation, taking another countries legal tender?
    Scottish / NI bank notes are not legal tender - but to get round that there is no such thing as legal tender in Scotland / NI...
    Coins are still legal tender.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,375
    edited February 2022
    Perhaps the government wants to exclude fraud because it knows that, within a couple of years Covid frauds will have a large upward impact on crime data - if they've bothered to chase them down.

    Anyway, relatedly on both fraud and lies, they keep on coming. Gove claimed last week that "97% of the (PPE) equipment secured was ready. fit-for-purpose and on the front line." Apparently this is a whopper. By value (rather than item), around a third of PPE did not meet the criteria Gove set out. Full Fact has this, which seems plausible:

    https://fullfact.org/health/covid-ppe-procurement-use/

    (Of course, at the time the need for PPE was absolutely desperate, so we were quite justified in scouring every single Tory source and their mates to find somebody who wanted to make a bob or two).
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Applicant said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
    I hope you reported them for fraud.
    IIRC UK merchants have to take all UK notes as legal tender at face value - is that right?

    But someone abroad, what is their legal situation, taking another countries legal tender?
    Technically speaking, they are not legal tender anywhere as in Scotland notes are not legal tender and in England only Bank of England notes and coins are legal tender.

    https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/what-is-legal-tender

    I suspect however the real problem is that banks outside the UK are more reluctant to accept Scottish notes simply because they don't see them very often.
    See my story earlier about changing NI Danske Bank Notes at Danske Bank in Copenhagen.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,633
    Totally embarrassed by Leicesters defence!
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    eek said:

    Interesting fact given the topic above is about financial fraud

    https://web.archive.org/web/20171014174408/http://www.acbi.org.uk/legal_position.php

    In Scotland and Northern Ireland because there is no such thing as legal tender, technically a shop doesn't need to give you change so you should pay the exact amount displayed..

    "Legal tender" is a much misunderstood concept, as the quote from the Bank of England on that page shows: “The term legal tender does not in itself govern the acceptability of banknotes in transactions. Whether or not notes have legal tender status, their acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved. Legal tender has a very narrow technical meaning in relation to the settlement of debt. If a debtor pays in legal tender the exact amount he owes under the terms of a contract, he has good defence in law if he is subsequently sued for non-payment of the debt. In ordinary everyday transactions, the term ‘legal tender’ has very little practical application.”
    (Ref. www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/about/faqs.htm.)
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,175
    Some might argue that quantitative easing is the biggest fraud of all.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    Fascinating. Sri Lankan oysters are indeed a native subspecies which grows in the Negombo mangrove swamps.

    This is by turns brilliant and UGH. Negombo is by the airport and known for its dirty touristy beaches. Oyster report:

    https://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=NL19810668238

    But it looks like these grow slightly inland in the lagoons, so they are clean. They are delicious, albeit absurdly small

    If I haven’t commented again within fifteen hours I have succumbed to fatal food poisoning, please inform my kinfolk
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    Leon said:

    Fascinating. Sri Lankan oysters are indeed a native subspecies which grows in the Negombo mangrove swamps.

    This is by turns brilliant and UGH. Negombo is by the airport and known for its dirty touristy beaches. Oyster report:

    https://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=NL19810668238

    But it looks like these grow slightly inland in the lagoons, so they are clean. They are delicious, albeit absurdly small

    If I haven’t commented again within fifteen hours I have succumbed to fatal food poisoning, please inform my kinfolk

    By 'kinfolk' do you mean your daughters or should we contact Byronic, Eadric, LadyG, Fitz and the others?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    edited February 2022
    And for something different

    https://www.cityam.com/mark-zuckerberg-and-team-consider-shutting-down-facebook-and-instagram-in-europe-if-meta-can-not-process-europeans-data-on-us-servers/


    When contacted by City A.M. today, John Nolan, Meta’s London-based tech media and advertising communications leader, did not deny or play down the reports.

    Instead, he shared a statement from Nick Clegg, Meta’s VP of Global Affairs and Communications.

    Clegg warned that “a lack of safe, secure and legal international data transfers would damage the economy and hamper the growth of data-driven businesses in the EU, just as we seek a recovery from Covid-19.”

    “The impact would be felt by businesses large and small, across multiple sectors,” he continued.

    “Businesses need clear, global rules, underpinned by the strong rule of law, to protect transatlantic data flows over the long term.”

    “In the worst case scenario, this could mean that a small tech start up in Germany would no longer be able to use a US-based cloud provider. A Spanish product development company could no longer be able to run an operation across multiple time zones.”

    “A French retailer may find they can no longer maintain a call centre in Morocco,” Clegg stressed.
    He added: “While policymakers are working towards a sustainable, long-term solution, we urge regulators to adopt a proportionate and pragmatic approach to minimise disruption to the many thousands of businesses who, like Facebook, have been relying on these mechanisms in good faith to transfer data in a safe and secure way.”
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Stocky said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    I don't see why the UK would get out of funding the Scot's partial entitlements to our state pension - but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
    Because there isn’t a “fund” of National Insurance money like there is for a private pension (not strictly true, there’s enough to cover 2 weeks worth of pensions, but that’s it) so state pensions are paid out of current taxation.

    So the SNP are arguing that English tax payers would be paying for Scottish pensions.

    Why?
    The fund issue is a red herring. If I owe you money I owe you money, and it makes not the slightest difference whether I have a pot set aside to pay you or have to make the payment out of income. The one situation where it makes all the difference in the world is if I go bankrupt, because a simple debt gets pro rated down along with other debts whereas a specific fund may be earmarked for you in is entirety. Governments with their own currency cannot go bankrupt.

    Here is how absurd the fund argument is: you say there is no fund, only an unsecured promise by the government to pay. But if you have a pension fund which you want to be as secure as possible where do you invest it? You invest it in gilts. What are gilts? They are unsecured promises by the government to pay.

    Additionally it is misleading to say English taxpayers would be paying Scottish pensions. The government would be paying. The money might originate from English taxpayers, but so what? If I pay you a debt out of earned income the money originates with my employers. That doesn't mean they are paying you. I am.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,812
    Sir David added: “The Home Office news release in two places presented the statistics to give a positive picture of trends in crime in England and Wales, based on a fall in total crime excluding fraud and computer misuse of 17% between the year ending June 2019 and the year ending September 2021. The exclusion was stated.

    “However, in the title and in two other places the release refers to a fall in crime, without making clear that this is true only if fraud and computer misuse are excluded."

    Sir David is, I understand, the head of the UK Statistics Authority.

    The fact that it was stated once and that it is not unusual to exclude fraud and computer crime when looking at trends in crime seems to me to make this more of a misdemeanour than a crime on the part of the PM and the HS.

    None of that takes away from @Cyclefree's more fundamental point, however. I come across so many examples of blatant fraud that the police or prosecution service deem "civil matters". It is absurd.

    At the moment I am in the middle of a proof where a family who speak little to no English lost their deposit for their house (their life's savings) when someone sent a false email claiming the bank details of their solicitors had been changed. Neither the bank nor the police showed any interest. An IT investigator instructed by the solicitor made some progress but was hampered by the lack of warrants etc. He gave what he had to the police. They remained uninterested. In the witness box the wife was distraught and sobbed. It was painful to see. She had been let down so badly by a system that just doesn't seem to care.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    Applicant said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    FPT
    CarlottaVance said:

    » show previous quotes
    They don’t have a currency, central bank or reserves, for starters.

    You fool we have the Bank of England at present as Central bank , it stores our reserves at £ for £ for all Scottish pounds and we use pounds Sterling, what planet are you on.
    PS: It appears you have Borisitis, an inability to tell the truth.

    The Scottish pound was officially abolished in 1707 and converted to sterling on a 12;1 basis. In practice it was still used in Scotland for another 70 years, although by 1755 it was rated at the worth of a shilling in Sterling.
    Do we have Scottish pound notes at preset and do we have reserves lodged in our central bank at present though, no bollox squirrels about the Roman's will be accepted.
    No and no.

    I am assuming that in the event of independence there would need to be a central bank established and Scottish currency notes would be used as a new currency, on the basis that's the only logical thing to do. But at this moment there is no 'Scottish pound.'

    In fact on further checking it looks as though I may have been wrong in my estimate of when the pound Scots died out - it looks as though it was when coinage was standardised in 1816. So over a hundred years after the Act of Union.
    I was once on holiday and saw a bureau de change that had a separate (inferior) rate for Scottish notes.
    I hope you reported them for fraud.
    IIRC UK merchants have to take all UK notes as legal tender at face value - is that right?

    But someone abroad, what is their legal situation, taking another countries legal tender?
    Scottish / NI bank notes are not legal tender - but to get round that there is no such thing as legal tender in Scotland / NI...
    Coins are still legal tender.
    Only up to £20 or something I think? You cannot annoy your lender by paying off the mortgage in 5p pieces
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    IshmaelZ said:

    Stocky said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    I don't see why the UK would get out of funding the Scot's partial entitlements to our state pension - but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
    Because there isn’t a “fund” of National Insurance money like there is for a private pension (not strictly true, there’s enough to cover 2 weeks worth of pensions, but that’s it) so state pensions are paid out of current taxation.

    So the SNP are arguing that English tax payers would be paying for Scottish pensions.

    Why?
    The fund issue is a red herring. If I owe you money I owe you money, and it makes not the slightest difference whether I have a pot set aside to pay you or have to make the payment out of income. The one situation where it makes all the difference in the world is if I go bankrupt, because a simple debt gets pro rated down along with other debts whereas a specific fund may be earmarked for you in is entirety. Governments with their own currency cannot go bankrupt.

    Here is how absurd the fund argument is: you say there is no fund, only an unsecured promise by the government to pay. But if you have a pension fund which you want to be as secure as possible where do you invest it? You invest it in gilts. What are gilts? They are unsecured promises by the government to pay.

    Additionally it is misleading to say English taxpayers would be paying Scottish pensions. The government would be paying. The money might originate from English taxpayers, but so what? If I pay you a debt out of earned income the money originates with my employers. That doesn't mean they are paying you. I am.
    Why shouldn't the Scottish Taxpayers take responsibility to pay the state pensions of Scottish Pensioners.

    Would MalcolmG and co deem it fair if we offered the reverse terms to Scotland - you can have a referendum if you accept that on separation you pay the state pension of all rUK pensioners.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    DavidL said:

    Sir David added: “The Home Office news release in two places presented the statistics to give a positive picture of trends in crime in England and Wales, based on a fall in total crime excluding fraud and computer misuse of 17% between the year ending June 2019 and the year ending September 2021. The exclusion was stated.

    “However, in the title and in two other places the release refers to a fall in crime, without making clear that this is true only if fraud and computer misuse are excluded."

    Sir David is, I understand, the head of the UK Statistics Authority.

    The fact that it was stated once and that it is not unusual to exclude fraud and computer crime when looking at trends in crime seems to me to make this more of a misdemeanour than a crime on the part of the PM and the HS.

    None of that takes away from @Cyclefree's more fundamental point, however. I come across so many examples of blatant fraud that the police or prosecution service deem "civil matters". It is absurd.

    At the moment I am in the middle of a proof where a family who speak little to no English lost their deposit for their house (their life's savings) when someone sent a false email claiming the bank details of their solicitors had been changed. Neither the bank nor the police showed any interest. An IT investigator instructed by the solicitor made some progress but was hampered by the lack of warrants etc. He gave what he had to the police. They remained uninterested. In the witness box the wife was distraught and sobbed. It was painful to see. She had been let down so badly by a system that just doesn't seem to care.

    And of course, what is the next step when the legal system is not interested in righting wrongs?

    The same thing that has happened through out history, when the law won't make things right.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,812
    tlg86 said:

    Some might argue that quantitative easing is the biggest fraud of all.

    It is the modern equivalent of debasement of the coinage. We are all victims of it.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    eek said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Stocky said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    I don't see why the UK would get out of funding the Scot's partial entitlements to our state pension - but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
    Because there isn’t a “fund” of National Insurance money like there is for a private pension (not strictly true, there’s enough to cover 2 weeks worth of pensions, but that’s it) so state pensions are paid out of current taxation.

    So the SNP are arguing that English tax payers would be paying for Scottish pensions.

    Why?
    The fund issue is a red herring. If I owe you money I owe you money, and it makes not the slightest difference whether I have a pot set aside to pay you or have to make the payment out of income. The one situation where it makes all the difference in the world is if I go bankrupt, because a simple debt gets pro rated down along with other debts whereas a specific fund may be earmarked for you in is entirety. Governments with their own currency cannot go bankrupt.

    Here is how absurd the fund argument is: you say there is no fund, only an unsecured promise by the government to pay. But if you have a pension fund which you want to be as secure as possible where do you invest it? You invest it in gilts. What are gilts? They are unsecured promises by the government to pay.

    Additionally it is misleading to say English taxpayers would be paying Scottish pensions. The government would be paying. The money might originate from English taxpayers, but so what? If I pay you a debt out of earned income the money originates with my employers. That doesn't mean they are paying you. I am.
    Why shouldn't the Scottish Taxpayers take responsibility to pay the state pensions of Scottish Pensioners.

    Would MalcolmG and co deem it fair if we offered the reverse terms to Scotland - you can have a referendum if you accept that on separation you pay the state pension of all rUK pensioners.
    Because Scottish pensioners had a bargain with the UK government: they paid ni contributions in exchange for a future pension. If the UK splits and the obligation is split pro rata to size of country 95% of the obligation stays with rUK, and conversely iS is liable for 5% of e and w pensions.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    edited February 2022

    And for something different

    https://www.cityam.com/mark-zuckerberg-and-team-consider-shutting-down-facebook-and-instagram-in-europe-if-meta-can-not-process-europeans-data-on-us-servers/


    When contacted by City A.M. today, John Nolan, Meta’s London-based tech media and advertising communications leader, did not deny or play down the reports.

    Instead, he shared a statement from Nick Clegg, Meta’s VP of Global Affairs and Communications.

    Clegg warned that “a lack of safe, secure and legal international data transfers would damage the economy and hamper the growth of data-driven businesses in the EU, just as we seek a recovery from Covid-19.”

    “The impact would be felt by businesses large and small, across multiple sectors,” he continued.

    “Businesses need clear, global rules, underpinned by the strong rule of law, to protect transatlantic data flows over the long term.”

    “In the worst case scenario, this could mean that a small tech start up in Germany would no longer be able to use a US-based cloud provider. A Spanish product development company could no longer be able to run an operation across multiple time zones.”

    “A French retailer may find they can no longer maintain a call centre in Morocco,” Clegg stressed.
    He added: “While policymakers are working towards a sustainable, long-term solution, we urge regulators to adopt a proportionate and pragmatic approach to minimise disruption to the many thousands of businesses who, like Facebook, have been relying on these mechanisms in good faith to transfer data in a safe and secure way.”

    Um that's the case already. It's why both AWS and Azure have local regions so that data doesn't leave the country it's supposed to be in. After Brexit one of the first things both companies did was expand their UK offerings in case UK data had to be kept within the UK rather than the EU

    Azure Germany is great because of the way it needs to work to meet German security rules it has to have it's own set of German staff completely separate to other regions. So it's a great place to be if you don't want to be forced to get things early....

    If you are ever bored go and look at Adobe's US marketing tools and then ask Adobe EU why you can't have them (it's because the tricks they pull are as dodgy as F*** but Adobe EU can't quite say that out loud).
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    Some might argue that quantitative easing is the biggest fraud of all.

    It is the modern equivalent of debasement of the coinage. We are all victims of it.
    And then they watch in wonder at the asset price inflation..... NFTs, Tulips.....

    One of the reasons I like history so much, is that there is so very little that is fundamentally new. The mistakes the politicians make are like old friends.....
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,812
    edited February 2022
    MrBristol said:

    Excellent piece, fraud seems to be everywhere.

    What is remarkable is the claim it isn't discussed on the doorstep. Fishing emails, strange phone calls seems to be a popular conversation with all the oldies in my life.

    The one that annoys me is how the landline is now 100% scam calls for me, how did operators allowed that to happen.

    MrB

    Indeed, we are giving serious consideration to simply cancelling our land line. The only people who use it anymore are fraudsters. Quite of number of the calls, and calls increasingly to my mobile, seem to come from call centres in Cardiff and Liverpool. How on earth can these crooks be allowed to operate from call centres? Each time I get one of these calls I block that number on my phone but they seem to have a plethora of numbers. How hard can this be?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,401
    edited February 2022

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Not to mention no bugger carries cash anymore.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,249
    IshmaelZ said:

    eek said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Stocky said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    I don't see why the UK would get out of funding the Scot's partial entitlements to our state pension - but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
    Because there isn’t a “fund” of National Insurance money like there is for a private pension (not strictly true, there’s enough to cover 2 weeks worth of pensions, but that’s it) so state pensions are paid out of current taxation.

    So the SNP are arguing that English tax payers would be paying for Scottish pensions.

    Why?
    The fund issue is a red herring. If I owe you money I owe you money, and it makes not the slightest difference whether I have a pot set aside to pay you or have to make the payment out of income. The one situation where it makes all the difference in the world is if I go bankrupt, because a simple debt gets pro rated down along with other debts whereas a specific fund may be earmarked for you in is entirety. Governments with their own currency cannot go bankrupt.

    Here is how absurd the fund argument is: you say there is no fund, only an unsecured promise by the government to pay. But if you have a pension fund which you want to be as secure as possible where do you invest it? You invest it in gilts. What are gilts? They are unsecured promises by the government to pay.

    Additionally it is misleading to say English taxpayers would be paying Scottish pensions. The government would be paying. The money might originate from English taxpayers, but so what? If I pay you a debt out of earned income the money originates with my employers. That doesn't mean they are paying you. I am.
    Why shouldn't the Scottish Taxpayers take responsibility to pay the state pensions of Scottish Pensioners.

    Would MalcolmG and co deem it fair if we offered the reverse terms to Scotland - you can have a referendum if you accept that on separation you pay the state pension of all rUK pensioners.
    Because Scottish pensioners had a bargain with the UK government: they paid ni contributions in exchange for a future pension. If the UK splits and the obligation is split pro rata to size of country 95% of the obligation stays with rUK, and conversely iS is liable for 5% of e and w pensions.
    No - the rUK gets to pay 95% of the pensions - for 95% of the population. Scotland gets pay 5%, to pay the pensions for 5% of the population.

    Strangely symmetric, isn't it?
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,375
    dixiedean said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Not to mention no bugger carries cash anymore.
    You sound disappointed. Income from muggings not so good these days?
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    IshmaelZ said:

    eek said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Stocky said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    I don't see why the UK would get out of funding the Scot's partial entitlements to our state pension - but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
    Because there isn’t a “fund” of National Insurance money like there is for a private pension (not strictly true, there’s enough to cover 2 weeks worth of pensions, but that’s it) so state pensions are paid out of current taxation.

    So the SNP are arguing that English tax payers would be paying for Scottish pensions.

    Why?
    The fund issue is a red herring. If I owe you money I owe you money, and it makes not the slightest difference whether I have a pot set aside to pay you or have to make the payment out of income. The one situation where it makes all the difference in the world is if I go bankrupt, because a simple debt gets pro rated down along with other debts whereas a specific fund may be earmarked for you in is entirety. Governments with their own currency cannot go bankrupt.

    Here is how absurd the fund argument is: you say there is no fund, only an unsecured promise by the government to pay. But if you have a pension fund which you want to be as secure as possible where do you invest it? You invest it in gilts. What are gilts? They are unsecured promises by the government to pay.

    Additionally it is misleading to say English taxpayers would be paying Scottish pensions. The government would be paying. The money might originate from English taxpayers, but so what? If I pay you a debt out of earned income the money originates with my employers. That doesn't mean they are paying you. I am.
    Why shouldn't the Scottish Taxpayers take responsibility to pay the state pensions of Scottish Pensioners.

    Would MalcolmG and co deem it fair if we offered the reverse terms to Scotland - you can have a referendum if you accept that on separation you pay the state pension of all rUK pensioners.
    Because Scottish pensioners had a bargain with the UK government: they paid ni contributions in exchange for a future pension. If the UK splits and the obligation is split pro rata to size of country 95% of the obligation stays with rUK, and conversely iS is liable for 5% of e and w pensions.
    or you go for the sane approach and Scotland pay 100% of all their pensioners and E&W pay 100% of the pension for those in England and Wales.

    As I've pointed out before, any other solution that results in rUK tax payers sending money to Scottish Pensioners would last as far as the next election and then disappear in a Landslide.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,213

    Stocky said:

    malcolmg said:

    Applicant said:

    Reposting FPT, because this exquisite example of begging the question, in the traditional sense, deserves better than being left on the tail end of a dead thread.

    malcolmg said:

    Sandpit said:

    I'm really struggling to understand the viewpoint of those who think rump UK would retain a liability to pay Scottish State Pensions. Another poster made the point quite simply when they asked: "Who would set the rate at which the Scottish State Pension was paid?"

    Suppose that inflation was higher in Scotland than in the rump UK - would Scottish politicians really be happy with seeing pension payments to Scottish pensioners decline in real terms? What if Scottish politicians didn't want to increase the State Pension Retirement age as quickly as in the rump UK - would they really cede this area of policy-making to the rump UK Parliament?

    And there's no way that rump UK could sign a blank cheque to pay any level of increase to a Scottish State Pension - what if Scottish politicians wanted to increase it towards the Western European average?

    Scottish politicians would have to find the money for Scottish state pensions in the Scottish budget if they wanted the independence to make Scottish political decisions over what the level of the pension should be. That's the essence of the Nationalist argument for Independence anyway, so strange for them to try to argue otherwise.

    In what currency would the Scottish State Pension be paid?
    The currency of Scotland Doh!
    Well done, Malc!
    It is hard to believe how stupid these unionists get at times, makes you wonder if they are as bad as they make out or if they just get red rage when Scotland leaving is mentioned. They lose all sense of reality.
    Question from an emigrant as well who has no part to play in it.
    I don't see why the UK would get out of funding the Scot's partial entitlements to our state pension - but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
    Because there isn’t a “fund” of National Insurance money like there is for a private pension (not strictly true, there’s enough to cover 2 weeks worth of pensions, but that’s it) so state pensions are paid out of current taxation.

    So the SNP are arguing that English tax payers would be paying for Scottish pensions.

    Why?
    I know there is no fund.

    Why is this any different from someone who moves to, say, Spain or Australia receiving their partial pensions from UK coffers (as is the case now)?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    dixiedean said:

    tlg86 said:

    Fraud must have gone up a lot for everything else to be down 14%.

    The "value" of many other crimes has collapsed. Cars are harder and harder to steal, without the keys. Personal possessions have fallen massively, in terms of saleable value. Apart from phones and laptops, the contents of even a rich persons home isn't worth much on the second hand market. And even for phone and laptops it's a pittance.

    Jewellery of the kind that has major re-sale value has dropped out of fashion, for most people.

    The value is on your credit cards.
    Not to mention no bugger carries cash anymore.
    Good luck shopping round here if you don't have cash.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    It's almost remarkable how little general concern there is about some big things. I'm guilty of it myself.
This discussion has been closed.