Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
This is all down to whether you appreciate something isn't it? I am a foodie so will pay for good quality so I agree with your stance on coffee. I however am not a coffee fan so I'm happy with instant, but appreciate some are and I'm rather jealous. The two of you are never going to agree because of your different priorities regarding coffee.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
The point of the backstop was not to get into it in the first place.
Meanwhile, as DUP big cheese Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said in the Commons yesterday:-
So the DUP are more important than anyone else? Damn stupid promise. They know they can throw their non-gay dinosaur stuffed toys out the pram and fill their nappies whenever they want and nanny will come running.
Current polls suggest a hung parliament, in which case to have any chance of surviving as PM Johnson would need DUP support, hence the new urgency in UK government moves to change the NI Protocol
You really think putting electoral calculations before resolving issues to mutual benefit is more important
Mutual benefit includes removing the Irish Sea border for Unionists as much as no hard border in Ireland for Nationalists. That is the only way there has been peace there since the GFA.
I have always seen instant and real coffee as two entirely different products. Both are very good in their contexts. It’s sort of like 20/20 internationals and test match cricket.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
The point of the backstop was not to get into it in the first place.
Meanwhile, as DUP big cheese Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said in the Commons yesterday:-
So the DUP are more important than anyone else? Damn stupid promise. They know they can throw their non-gay dinosaur stuffed toys out the pram and fill their nappies whenever they want and nanny will come running.
Current polls suggest a hung parliament, in which case to have any chance of surviving as PM Johnson would need DUP support, hence the new urgency in UK government moves to change the NI Protocol
You really think putting electoral calculations before resolving issues to mutual benefit is more important
Mutual benefit includes removing the Irish Sea border for Unionists as much as no hard border in Ireland for Nationalists. That is the only way there has been peace there since the GFA.
There is only one response to that - rejoin the EU otherwise it is impossible as you should know
I've seen the phrase ratioed and ratio used in this context. What does it mean?
"On the social media platform Twitter, a ratio, or getting ratioed, is when replies to a tweet vastly outnumber likes or retweets. This means people are objecting to the tweet and considering its content bad."
Apparently.
All the vacuity of twitter is right there. i am far more interested in whether people are interested enough in a post of mine to respond to it, than in zero-effort likes and retweetes.
Quick question to PB brains trust: can anyone recommend a green building forum?
I used to be on the Navitron forum when we were building our house but that's now closed. Looking for another forum now we're planning our next project. Thanks!
So why are you so infatuated with Oxbridge, public schools and grammar schools @HYUFD? You seem in awe of anyone who goes to these. You seem to treat these people as your betters. They aren't. You are just as worthy.
I went to private school, my sister went to grammar school, my wife has an Oxford degree.
I am not in awe of them, Churchill was a great PM despite being non Oxbridge, Hague would have been a good PM in my view and was comprehensive educated.
However it is no surprise the best schools and universities tend to produce the most PMs
Eton and Oxford are overrepresented. Kuper's book Chums has a go at explaining why in terms of early debate training at both establishments, and of course Oxford's PPE course is a magnet for political types.
OT from that book — I'd already known that Theresa May and Philip were introduced by Benazir Bhutto but not that Philip was encouraged to propose by Malcolm Turnbull. And that is the trouble with the book: more anecdotes than analysis.
We did not have an Etonian PM from 1964 until 2010 and we did not even have a public schools educated PM from 1964 until Blair's win in 1997.
Oxford has the advantage over Cambridge as its PPE course is seen as more prestigious than Cambridge's Social and Political science course. Though Cambridge has the edge over Oxford in science and arguably history
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
The point of the backstop was not to get into it in the first place.
Meanwhile, as DUP big cheese Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said in the Commons yesterday:-
So the DUP are more important than anyone else? Damn stupid promise. They know they can throw their non-gay dinosaur stuffed toys out the pram and fill their nappies whenever they want and nanny will come running.
Current polls suggest a hung parliament, in which case to have any chance of surviving as PM Johnson would need DUP support, hence the new urgency in UK government moves to change the NI Protocol
You really think putting electoral calculations before resolving issues to mutual benefit is more important
Mutual benefit includes removing the Irish Sea border for Unionists as much as no hard border in Ireland for Nationalists. That is the only way there has been peace there since the GFA.
There is only one response to that - rejoin the EU otherwise it is impossible as you should know
No there isn't, you could have had a technical solution but the EU refused or closer regulatory alignment as Starmer wants and May proposed
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
I've seen the phrase ratioed and ratio used in this context. What does it mean?
"On the social media platform Twitter, a ratio, or getting ratioed, is when replies to a tweet vastly outnumber likes or retweets. This means people are objecting to the tweet and considering its content bad."
Apparently.
All the vacuity of twitter is right there. i am far more interested in whether people are interested enough in a post of mine to respond to it, than in zero-effort likes and retweetes.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
We've just indefinitely delayed the imposition of the inbound checks mandated by the oven-ready deal. Which means for an indefinite period the EU are responsible for safety standards of goods coming into the UK.
In theory we can set our own standards. But as we're unable to enforce them...
Its gone over your head it seems that the ability to drop EU-mandated checks or rules is precisely a benefit won by not being aligned to the EU.
We don't need to enforce them, we can recognise the EU as a safe region and recognise their standards are equivalent to our own.
What purpose do those "checks" serve other than protectionist self-harm.
We should abolish such checks with any other nations, blocs or regions that have equivalent standards too. Protectionism is self-harming.
Good! So we recognise their standards as equivalent to our own. We should do as their standards are our standards. So we have maintained our alignment with EU standards - and have now made it clear we aren't changing those standards because we're functionally incapable of doing so.
You ask "what function do those checks serve" - a genuinely great question. Can I remind you though that said checks are a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded as part of its oven-ready deal?
What we need now is the EU to also drop its checks. Our standards are their standards are our standards. As we've now abandoned the ability to set different standards that is not going to change. So even if it is informally we can agree with the EU that we can mutually dismantle the need for checks. And having done that we can take the next step and dismantle the reams of Mogg-imposed red tape needed to show that our zero VAT zero tariff zero quota products are as stated.
A bright future is ahead, and its all thanks to Rees-Mogg saying that his version of brexit was an act of self-harm. Good for him.
The checks are not a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded, that is what you are failing to understand.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country. The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
For me Antrim, Inverness and Pembrokeshire are as much a part of my union as Surrey and Essex
Quick question to PB brains trust: can anyone recommend a green building forum?
I used to be on the Navitron forum when we were building our house but that's now closed. Looking for another forum now we're planning our next project. Thanks!
So why are you so infatuated with Oxbridge, public schools and grammar schools @HYUFD? You seem in awe of anyone who goes to these. You seem to treat these people as your betters. They aren't. You are just as worthy.
I went to private school, my sister went to grammar school, my wife has an Oxford degree.
I am not in awe of them, Churchill was a great PM despite being non Oxbridge, Hague would have been a good PM in my view and was comprehensive educated.
However it is no surprise the best schools and universities tend to produce the most PMs
I don't disagree with any of that (although we may disagree on the reason for the last para) and in particular I think Hague would have been a very interesting PM, but you definitely come over as in awe of your 'betters'. And the reason for the ' ' is that they definitely aren't better than you. And this isn't just education, but also with regard to class. You seem to look up to those who are better bred.
The reason I find it strange is I treat everyone equally. It might just be me, I don't know, but I express no deference to anyone and don't expect any myself.
Quite. When I want a surgeon I want a competent one. HYUFD wants a posh one from Clifton who might be sort of better educated and therefore perhaps better trained. Rather different logic.
No, I want someone with top grades in their medical exams and before. You are not bothered by their training as long as you have an excuse for your usual far left, inverse snobbery filled rant
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
The point of the backstop was not to get into it in the first place.
Meanwhile, as DUP big cheese Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said in the Commons yesterday:-
So the DUP are more important than anyone else? Damn stupid promise. They know they can throw their non-gay dinosaur stuffed toys out the pram and fill their nappies whenever they want and nanny will come running.
Current polls suggest a hung parliament, in which case to have any chance of surviving as PM Johnson would need DUP support, hence the new urgency in UK government moves to change the NI Protocol
You really think putting electoral calculations before resolving issues to mutual benefit is more important
Mutual benefit includes removing the Irish Sea border for Unionists as much as no hard border in Ireland for Nationalists. That is the only way there has been peace there since the GFA.
There is only one response to that - rejoin the EU otherwise it is impossible as you should know
No there isn't, you could have had a technical solution but the EU refused or closer regulatory alignment as Starmer wants and May proposed
I've seen the phrase ratioed and ratio used in this context. What does it mean?
"On the social media platform Twitter, a ratio, or getting ratioed, is when replies to a tweet vastly outnumber likes or retweets. This means people are objecting to the tweet and considering its content bad."
Apparently.
All the vacuity of twitter is right there. i am far more interested in whether people are interested enough in a post of mine to respond to it, than in zero-effort likes and retweetes.
Maybe people are replying to a tweet because they agree with it.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
We've just indefinitely delayed the imposition of the inbound checks mandated by the oven-ready deal. Which means for an indefinite period the EU are responsible for safety standards of goods coming into the UK.
In theory we can set our own standards. But as we're unable to enforce them...
Its gone over your head it seems that the ability to drop EU-mandated checks or rules is precisely a benefit won by not being aligned to the EU.
We don't need to enforce them, we can recognise the EU as a safe region and recognise their standards are equivalent to our own.
What purpose do those "checks" serve other than protectionist self-harm.
We should abolish such checks with any other nations, blocs or regions that have equivalent standards too. Protectionism is self-harming.
Good! So we recognise their standards as equivalent to our own. We should do as their standards are our standards. So we have maintained our alignment with EU standards - and have now made it clear we aren't changing those standards because we're functionally incapable of doing so.
You ask "what function do those checks serve" - a genuinely great question. Can I remind you though that said checks are a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded as part of its oven-ready deal?
What we need now is the EU to also drop its checks. Our standards are their standards are our standards. As we've now abandoned the ability to set different standards that is not going to change. So even if it is informally we can agree with the EU that we can mutually dismantle the need for checks. And having done that we can take the next step and dismantle the reams of Mogg-imposed red tape needed to show that our zero VAT zero tariff zero quota products are as stated.
A bright future is ahead, and its all thanks to Rees-Mogg saying that his version of brexit was an act of self-harm. Good for him.
The checks are not a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded, that is what you are failing to understand.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country. The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
You keep making the theoretical economist argument that UK to EU checks harm the EU. They do not - they harm the UK companies that rely on EU exports. They make us uncompetitive and our goods more expensive. EU consumers do not foot the bill, they largely just buy from someone else.
So it is in our interests to get these checks dropped - checks which we required as part of the TCA. Always happy to take your opinions on my intelligence and understanding of customs rules / realities under advisement.
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
The value of fiat currency is also backed up by the fact you can use it to pay your taxes. Buying into crypto means believing that governments will allow an alternative to their own currency to prosper. Given that this robs government's of seigniorage revenue while facilitating tax evasion and organised crime I don't think this is a plausible proposition. Personally I have no crypto in my portfolio.
You are quite correct, in that governments are doing what they can to stop it. Hence why it has been banned in China, and is now being regulated to death in America. The question is, can you stop it entirely (probably not in America, as it would be unconstitutional) and can individual countries banning it prevent it from continuing to be used, either in other countries, or underground, as dollars were in the USSR. The experience of trying to regulate / censor the internet, which also works on a distributed, censorship-resistant by design basis, suggests not. But you have a good point, and IMO the reason bitcoin is *only* worth what it's worth right now is the efforts China has made to ban it.
One might argue that Bitcoin is worth what it is worth, until it runs out of mugs to buy it at whatever rate it eventually reaches. Like any non-productive pyramid scheme, we know exactly where it ends up, sooner or later.
And that is leaving aside the gross immorality of burning real (scarce) resources to generate the "asset".
Agree - now substitute the word "bitcoin" for "dollar".
Apart from the other points people make above, the cost of creating dollars is infinitesimal by comparison with the cost of creating BTC. (You may raise the manufacturing cost of their physical avatars as an issue, but that is a different dimension of utility as real-world tokens of exchange; a diminishing cost and need. BTC would require similar for a similar purpose.)
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
For me Antrim, Inverness and Pembrokeshire are as much a part of my union as Surrey and Essex
Presumably it's Inverness's ferry services that really swings it for you.
Sovereignty means we can choose whether or not to check EU produce or not. We want them to accept that our standards are at least as high as theirs. Which of course they are, just as they were when we were members.
We kept the threat of checking their produce as a way of encouraging the EU to be sensible about this. They are not being sensible so we need to make a choice. jRM is not right about much but he is right that to impose these tests would be an act of self harm. So we have chosen not to. If EU standards change in the future in a way we don’t like we can change our position on this. The result of having no checks on EU produce should mean that we have no checks on UK produce going to NI too. That means the protocol becomes meaningless which is fine for us. Whether the EU are willing to let NI have free access to their market on that basis remains to be seen.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
There's no hope for you. Go get a flat white from Starbucks and compare it with your instant coffee. Different product entirely.
Have I said it isn't? But when I get up at four in the morning, the instant coffee does the job. Boil kettle. Put a spoon of granules in the cup. Add sweetener and milk. Drink. Wash up. Job done.
It's a pleasant little ritual, a little like washing the dishes (which I actually quite like doing, especially as I can watch the birds in our square metre of 'garden').
I thought it was Bart who was being the terrorist, but it's JJ.
Beyond all hope, and why on earth would you want a coffee at 4am?
I recommend you try the Happy Shopper brand
I want coffee at 4 am because I'm awake at 4am. One cup when I get up, another at 7am, and then another at about 10 or so, if I'm about. That's then done for the day.
Early morning is the best time of day; a couple of hours of work (even housework) can be done before everyone else is up and about. I then get the rest of the day to do other stuff (tm).
When I worked, I would often go into work for seven, and spend ninety minutes in an empty office answering emails and doing stuff I really needed to concentrate on. When working in London, it'd mean I could get a bacon buttie from a sandwich bar and miss the rush hour. Perfect.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
This is all down to whether you appreciate something isn't it? I am a foodie so will pay for good quality so I agree with your stance on coffee. I however am not a coffee fan so I'm happy with instant, but appreciate some are and I'm rather jealous. The two of you are never going to agree because of your different priorities regarding coffee.
Yes, I'm with Bart here. I always thought myself unenthusiastic about coffee, apart from the coffee which we got at Christmas, which was delicious, of coffee from one of those machines with the hot jugs. It took me over 30 years to realise that with the purchase of a £5 cafitiere (sp?) and a £3 bag of filter coffee I could have the same product, whenever I wanted. More expensive than instant, but hardly breaking the bank. I am always disappointed nowadays when offered coffee and given instant - it is, at best, a coffee flavoured drink. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about all the milky variations on coffee the coffee shops serve, and even an Americano isn't exactly what I'm after (a British version of an Italian version of an American version of coffee - though just an American version of coffee from a 1950s style diner in New Hampshire would be very acceptable). But it's worth me paying the extra to get more than just instant. Like Bart says, it's partly about the texture.
Spending money on certain other things would be wasted on me, though. Champagne, for example. I'm never going to enjoy an expensive bottle of champagne more than a glass of cava. But I don't mind that others, to whom champagne matters, do.
Quick question to PB brains trust: can anyone recommend a green building forum?
I used to be on the Navitron forum when we were building our house but that's now closed. Looking for another forum now we're planning our next project. Thanks!
So why are you so infatuated with Oxbridge, public schools and grammar schools @HYUFD? You seem in awe of anyone who goes to these. You seem to treat these people as your betters. They aren't. You are just as worthy.
I went to private school, my sister went to grammar school, my wife has an Oxford degree.
I am not in awe of them, Churchill was a great PM despite being non Oxbridge, Hague would have been a good PM in my view and was comprehensive educated.
However it is no surprise the best schools and universities tend to produce the most PMs
Eton and Oxford are overrepresented. Kuper's book Chums has a go at explaining why in terms of early debate training at both establishments, and of course Oxford's PPE course is a magnet for political types.
OT from that book — I'd already known that Theresa May and Philip were introduced by Benazir Bhutto but not that Philip was encouraged to propose by Malcolm Turnbull. And that is the trouble with the book: more anecdotes than analysis.
We did not have an Etonian PM from 1964 until 2010 and we did not even have a public schools educated PM from 1964 until Blair's win in 1997.
Oxford has the advantage over Cambridge as its PPE course is seen as more prestigious than Cambridge's Social and Political science course. Though Cambridge has the edge over Oxford in science and arguably history
Bundling economics into its politics degree means that Oxford doesn't have a standalone economics undergraduate course either, so Cambridge is better for economics. PPE=Piss-Poor Economics. My wife did SPS and really enjoyed it. I don't know if it is less prestigious than PPE or just a different course. The only intersection between the two is politics - SPS is politics, sociology and anthropology, essentially.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
We've just indefinitely delayed the imposition of the inbound checks mandated by the oven-ready deal. Which means for an indefinite period the EU are responsible for safety standards of goods coming into the UK.
In theory we can set our own standards. But as we're unable to enforce them...
Its gone over your head it seems that the ability to drop EU-mandated checks or rules is precisely a benefit won by not being aligned to the EU.
We don't need to enforce them, we can recognise the EU as a safe region and recognise their standards are equivalent to our own.
What purpose do those "checks" serve other than protectionist self-harm.
We should abolish such checks with any other nations, blocs or regions that have equivalent standards too. Protectionism is self-harming.
Good! So we recognise their standards as equivalent to our own. We should do as their standards are our standards. So we have maintained our alignment with EU standards - and have now made it clear we aren't changing those standards because we're functionally incapable of doing so.
You ask "what function do those checks serve" - a genuinely great question. Can I remind you though that said checks are a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded as part of its oven-ready deal?
What we need now is the EU to also drop its checks. Our standards are their standards are our standards. As we've now abandoned the ability to set different standards that is not going to change. So even if it is informally we can agree with the EU that we can mutually dismantle the need for checks. And having done that we can take the next step and dismantle the reams of Mogg-imposed red tape needed to show that our zero VAT zero tariff zero quota products are as stated.
A bright future is ahead, and its all thanks to Rees-Mogg saying that his version of brexit was an act of self-harm. Good for him.
The checks are not a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded, that is what you are failing to understand.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country. The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
You keep making the theoretical economist argument that UK to EU checks harm the EU. They do not - they harm the UK companies that rely on EU exports. They make us uncompetitive and our goods more expensive. EU consumers do not foot the bill, they largely just buy from someone else.
So it is in our interests to get these checks dropped - checks which we required as part of the TCA. Always happy to take your opinions on my intelligence and understanding of customs rules / realities under advisement.
EU checks do harm the EU.
If you wish to engage in protectionist bullshit then feel free, it is not in our interests as a nation though. If the EU's protectionism "hurts" our exporters then that's a shame for them, but that isn't a justification for protectionism or for joining a protectionist bloc, it should act as encouragement for our producers to either be more efficient or to find less protectionist nations to export to.
But now that we're out of the EU we can drop the EU's self-harming protectionism. Aligned to the EU we're obliged to do these checks because the EU requires them for non-EU trade. Now we're no longer aligned, we can drop them while they aren't doing so.
That is a real Brexit freedom won, being used. Your objections justify Brexit, you just fail to see it as in your heart, you think protectionism works. It doesn't.
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
The value of fiat currency is also backed up by the fact you can use it to pay your taxes. Buying into crypto means believing that governments will allow an alternative to their own currency to prosper. Given that this robs government's of seigniorage revenue while facilitating tax evasion and organised crime I don't think this is a plausible proposition. Personally I have no crypto in my portfolio.
You are quite correct, in that governments are doing what they can to stop it. Hence why it has been banned in China, and is now being regulated to death in America. The question is, can you stop it entirely (probably not in America, as it would be unconstitutional) and can individual countries banning it prevent it from continuing to be used, either in other countries, or underground, as dollars were in the USSR. The experience of trying to regulate / censor the internet, which also works on a distributed, censorship-resistant by design basis, suggests not. But you have a good point, and IMO the reason bitcoin is *only* worth what it's worth right now is the efforts China has made to ban it.
One might argue that Bitcoin is worth what it is worth, until it runs out of mugs to buy it at whatever rate it eventually reaches. Like any non-productive pyramid scheme, we know exactly where it ends up, sooner or later.
And that is leaving aside the gross immorality of burning real (scarce) resources to generate the "asset".
Agree - now substitute the word "bitcoin" for "dollar".
Apart from the other points people make above, the cost of creating dollars is infinitesimal by comparison with the cost of creating BTC. (You may raise the manufacturing cost of their physical avatars as an issue, but that is a different dimension of utility as real-world tokens of exchange; a diminishing cost and need. BTC would require similar for a similar purpose.)
The dollar is also, in a slightly nebulous way, a productive asset, the property in question being the efforts and ingenuity of the American people, present and future. It might take a leap of faith, and you might place a different value on that to what the markets do. But the leap of faith required is rather greater for Bitcoin.
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
As I said, it has /some/ value in sanctions avoidance. Just not $30,000 / BTC. (You don’t buy a currency to hold it, you buy it to spend it again. If you’re using it to fund (eg) the Ukraine war, then you’re exchanging it for weaponry (probably via other currencies) asap; every BTC buying for value transfer purposes has a matching sale in the near future, so the effect on the price is a very small uplift.)
The price is mostly driven by speculation & what goes up can come down again just as fast. As hodlers of GME & AMC have discovered.
You can (obviously) make money trading crytocurrencies - people have made fortunes & old hedge fund types are having a field day as they can use all the techniques that have been very effectively banned in mainstream financial markets in this new, unregulated space. But that’s different to buying it on an investment basis.
But the idea that crypto currencies represent some new paradigm of financial markets is hokum: It’s a story told to get people to buy in so that current holders can get exit liquidity.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
I'd enjoy driving a Ferrari rather than my Passat. It'd be great. But the Passat does the job, and I don't bankrupt myself in the process.
There's another point: I've had great coffees at coffee shops, and absolutely awful ones - even from the same shop. The variability of shop coffee is such that I generally avoid them. Hot chocolates tend to be better and more consistent.
I *enjoy* drinking my coffee. You *enjoy* drinking yours. Each to their own.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
No, I don't think so either - but it always seems that Wales gets overlooked in discussions of the union; I wanted to be fair.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
The point of the backstop was not to get into it in the first place.
Meanwhile, as DUP big cheese Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said in the Commons yesterday:-
jRM is not right about much but he is right that to impose these tests would be an act of self harm.
Yes, implementing a key component of Brexit is an act of self harm.
Doing these checks is not a key component of Brexit. 🤦♂️
I don't recall a single Brexiteer saying "vote Leave in order to get checks on EU produce" do you?
I do recall Brexiteers saying "we should leave the EU as it is too protectionist" and this whole argument just proves the point and is proof positive that leaving the EU was a good idea.
I'd enjoy driving a Ferrari rather than my Passat. It'd be great. But the Passat does the job, and I don't bankrupt myself in the process.
Ferraris are "cheap" to lease because of their phenomenal resale value. If you option it correctly (Retail Red/Crema is the safe choice) and don't go nuts with the mileage you can conceivably come out ahead by buying it out at the end of the lease.
Quick question to PB brains trust: can anyone recommend a green building forum?
I used to be on the Navitron forum when we were building our house but that's now closed. Looking for another forum now we're planning our next project. Thanks!
So why are you so infatuated with Oxbridge, public schools and grammar schools @HYUFD? You seem in awe of anyone who goes to these. You seem to treat these people as your betters. They aren't. You are just as worthy.
I went to private school, my sister went to grammar school, my wife has an Oxford degree.
I am not in awe of them, Churchill was a great PM despite being non Oxbridge, Hague would have been a good PM in my view and was comprehensive educated.
However it is no surprise the best schools and universities tend to produce the most PMs
I don't disagree with any of that (although we may disagree on the reason for the last para) and in particular I think Hague would have been a very interesting PM, but you definitely come over as in awe of your 'betters'. And the reason for the ' ' is that they definitely aren't better than you. And this isn't just education, but also with regard to class. You seem to look up to those who are better bred.
The reason I find it strange is I treat everyone equally. It might just be me, I don't know, but I express no deference to anyone and don't expect any myself.
Quite. When I want a surgeon I want a competent one. HYUFD wants a posh one from Clifton who might be sort of better educated and therefore perhaps better trained. Rather different logic.
No, I want someone with top grades in their medical exams and before. You are not bothered by their training as long as you have an excuse for your usual far left, inverse snobbery filled rant
Now that first sentence doesn't make complete sense. Yes I do want my surgeon to have passed his medical exam, but I don't give two hoots if he got an A in Geography (re your reference to their exams before). And actually if given a choice between someone who just passed their medical exam, but is a superb technician and a high flier who is ham fisted I would pick the former every day to operate on me.
Take me for example. Fairly academic, but totally incompetent with my hands. So although I might pass the exams I will kill the patients.
And similar things go for other professions: Anaesthetist and airline pilots need to be able to react quickly and not panic whereas in other professions you need to be considered rather than fast reacting. Once you are past the level of knowledge required it is down to other skills
Do I take it that this morning's intense discussion about coffee (and you all know my views on that) is because there was absolutely nothing of any interest in the Queen's Speech bar the fact that HMQ was not there to give it?
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
As I said, it has /some/ value in sanctions avoidance. Just not $30,000 / BTC. (You don’t buy a currency to hold it, you buy it to spend it again. If you’re using it to fund (eg) the Ukraine war, then you’re exchanging it for weaponry (probably via other currencies) asap; every BTC buying for value transfer purposes has a matching sale in the near future, so the effect on the price is a very small uplift.)
The price is mostly driven by speculation & what goes up can come down again just as fast. As hodlers of GME & AMC have discovered.
You can (obviously) make money trading crytocurrencies - people have made fortunes & old hedge fund types are having a field day as they can use all the techniques that have been very effectively banned in mainstream financial markets in this new, unregulated space. But that’s different to buying it on an investment basis.
But the idea that crypto currencies represent some new paradigm of financial markets is hokum: It’s a story told to get people to buy in so that current holders can get exit liquidity.
I actually think that's a fair evaluation, my only point would be unit bias.
$30,000 per "coin" sounds expensive simply because there are so few of them - only about 19m in existence, compared to however many trillions of dollars floating about. The same way a gold bar sounds expensive at $10,000 for a tiny little thing you can hold in the palm of your hand.
If the supply of bitcoin was circulating at 1000x what is now and a bitcoin was $30, I don't think many people would be saying it is over-valued, even if the market cap remained the same in dollar terms. But the point of bitcoin is you can't change the amount in circulation, and it has become wildly more successful than was ever predicted, hence the high unit price. A single unit of berkshire hathaway stock trades at almost half a million dollars for the same reason.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
There's no hope for you. Go get a flat white from Starbucks and compare it with your instant coffee. Different product entirely.
PB is full of people who have no discernible taste or interest in food. It really is quite a depressing place to be at times.
Anyway, off to brew a decent coffee.
I lovs a good coffee, but at home, I only have a cafetiere, and most of the time I can't be bothered and have Kenco Millicano (the whole bean instant). It's not bad.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
To be fair, Mr G, one would have said much the same about Scotland 50 years ago. I can recall the surprise when the first Plaid Cymru MP was elected.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
For me Antrim, Inverness and Pembrokeshire are as much a part of my union as Surrey and Essex
Fair enough. We all have our own views of how we define our home, our territory, our nation, our gwlad - concepts which may or may not overlap. For you, the UK as a concept is clearly a strong part of your identity, giving you emotional investment in relatively distant and quite different parts of the British Isles. For me, some parts of the British Isles elicit much stronger emotional pulls than others.
jRM is not right about much but he is right that to impose these tests would be an act of self harm.
Yes, implementing a key component of Brexit is an act of self harm.
Doing these checks is not a key component of Brexit. 🤦♂️
I don't recall a single Brexiteer saying "vote Leave in order to get checks on EU produce" do you?
I do recall Brexiteers saying "we should leave the EU as it is too protectionist" and this whole argument just proves the point and is proof positive that leaving the EU was a good idea.
What most Brexiteers wanted, including me, was a FTA with the EU. They now effectively have free trade with us but are still refusing to let us have free trade with them. As others point out this is harmful to them but that is the nature of the ( protectionist) beast.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
I'd enjoy driving a Ferrari rather than my Passat. It'd be great. But the Passat does the job, and I don't bankrupt myself in the process.
There's another point: I've had great coffees at coffee shops, and absolutely awful ones - even from the same shop. The variability of shop coffee is such that I generally avoid them. Hot chocolates tend to be better and more consistent.
I *enjoy* drinking my coffee. You *enjoy* drinking yours. Each to their own.
Your OP on this subject channelled a Viz Top Tip, but without the self-awareness or satire.
Gentlemen, why bother grinding coffee beans? Simply buy a bargain jar of instant coffee and add hot water. Job done.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
I'd enjoy driving a Ferrari rather than my Passat. It'd be great. But the Passat does the job, and I don't bankrupt myself in the process.
There's another point: I've had great coffees at coffee shops, and absolutely awful ones - even from the same shop. The variability of shop coffee is such that I generally avoid them. Hot chocolates tend to be better and more consistent.
I *enjoy* drinking my coffee. You *enjoy* drinking yours. Each to their own.
I agree. And actually, though it was an attempt at mockery, the same *can* be said of a Playstation vs. a crossword puzzle, if the enjoyment, challenge, reward, etc. derived from each is the same.
Do I take it that this morning's intense discussion about coffee (and you all know my views on that) is because there was absolutely nothing of any interest in the Queen's Speech bar the fact that HMQ was not there to give it?
I think you are right. I'm finding the coffee discussion way more interesting than anything in Charles's speech. And I don't even drink coffee.
When we were in the EU there were no checks on food imports, so why is not having them now a problem? Has the EU dropped food standards?
Its only a problem because they are still checking our products at our request. We still have the TCA - Boris's oven-ready deal - in place but have abandoned our side of it. So our goods cost more to export to the EU than the goods being imported from the EU.
It is quite an obvious Brexit benifit for the EU. They can export to us without hindrance, but the reverse is not true. As JRM says, an act of self harm.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
We've just indefinitely delayed the imposition of the inbound checks mandated by the oven-ready deal. Which means for an indefinite period the EU are responsible for safety standards of goods coming into the UK.
In theory we can set our own standards. But as we're unable to enforce them...
Its gone over your head it seems that the ability to drop EU-mandated checks or rules is precisely a benefit won by not being aligned to the EU.
We don't need to enforce them, we can recognise the EU as a safe region and recognise their standards are equivalent to our own.
What purpose do those "checks" serve other than protectionist self-harm.
We should abolish such checks with any other nations, blocs or regions that have equivalent standards too. Protectionism is self-harming.
Good! So we recognise their standards as equivalent to our own. We should do as their standards are our standards. So we have maintained our alignment with EU standards - and have now made it clear we aren't changing those standards because we're functionally incapable of doing so.
You ask "what function do those checks serve" - a genuinely great question. Can I remind you though that said checks are a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded as part of its oven-ready deal?
What we need now is the EU to also drop its checks. Our standards are their standards are our standards. As we've now abandoned the ability to set different standards that is not going to change. So even if it is informally we can agree with the EU that we can mutually dismantle the need for checks. And having done that we can take the next step and dismantle the reams of Mogg-imposed red tape needed to show that our zero VAT zero tariff zero quota products are as stated.
A bright future is ahead, and its all thanks to Rees-Mogg saying that his version of brexit was an act of self-harm. Good for him.
The checks are not a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded, that is what you are failing to understand.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country. The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
Well, if the EU checks our goods, that is a barrier to our exports, and that harms our jobs and income.
And note there is another problem with what you suggest. If we drop all our checks, including from outside the EU, then the EU will need to check imports from Britain in case we are reexporting goods that do not meet EU standards.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
We've just indefinitely delayed the imposition of the inbound checks mandated by the oven-ready deal. Which means for an indefinite period the EU are responsible for safety standards of goods coming into the UK.
In theory we can set our own standards. But as we're unable to enforce them...
Its gone over your head it seems that the ability to drop EU-mandated checks or rules is precisely a benefit won by not being aligned to the EU.
We don't need to enforce them, we can recognise the EU as a safe region and recognise their standards are equivalent to our own.
What purpose do those "checks" serve other than protectionist self-harm.
We should abolish such checks with any other nations, blocs or regions that have equivalent standards too. Protectionism is self-harming.
Good! So we recognise their standards as equivalent to our own. We should do as their standards are our standards. So we have maintained our alignment with EU standards - and have now made it clear we aren't changing those standards because we're functionally incapable of doing so.
You ask "what function do those checks serve" - a genuinely great question. Can I remind you though that said checks are a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded as part of its oven-ready deal?
What we need now is the EU to also drop its checks. Our standards are their standards are our standards. As we've now abandoned the ability to set different standards that is not going to change. So even if it is informally we can agree with the EU that we can mutually dismantle the need for checks. And having done that we can take the next step and dismantle the reams of Mogg-imposed red tape needed to show that our zero VAT zero tariff zero quota products are as stated.
A bright future is ahead, and its all thanks to Rees-Mogg saying that his version of brexit was an act of self-harm. Good for him.
The checks are not a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded, that is what you are failing to understand.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country. The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
You keep making the theoretical economist argument that UK to EU checks harm the EU. They do not - they harm the UK companies that rely on EU exports. They make us uncompetitive and our goods more expensive. EU consumers do not foot the bill, they largely just buy from someone else.
So it is in our interests to get these checks dropped - checks which we required as part of the TCA. Always happy to take your opinions on my intelligence and understanding of customs rules / realities under advisement.
EU checks do harm the EU.
If you wish to engage in protectionist bullshit then feel free, it is not in our interests as a nation though. If the EU's protectionism "hurts" our exporters then that's a shame for them, but that isn't a justification for protectionism or for joining a protectionist bloc, it should act as encouragement for our producers to either be more efficient or to find less protectionist nations to export to.
But now that we're out of the EU we can drop the EU's self-harming protectionism. Aligned to the EU we're obliged to do these checks because the EU requires them for non-EU trade. Now we're no longer aligned, we can drop them while they aren't doing so.
That is a real Brexit freedom won, being used. Your objections justify Brexit, you just fail to see it as in your heart, you think protectionism works. It doesn't.
What have I posted that makes you think I want to engage in "protectionist bullshit"? I am arguing that *both sides* can drop their checks.
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
I wonder if we're not going to see "can't be censored" tested in the next couple of years.
Looking at these hashrate numbers, you have US: 35% Canada 10% Ireland 5% Germany 5% ...so easily 55% for countries currently sanctioning Russia, more if you add in a bunch of little ones. https://chainbulletin.com/bitcoin-mining-map/
These mining operations are nearly all known to their governments: You can't compete without scale, and you can't have scale without being known to your local utility or local government.
Russia is obviously trying to avoid sanctions. Currently you can send bitcoins without restriction, but they're mostly pretty easy to trace.
With 55% of hashrate you can blacklist an address. If anyone tries to spend from it, you orphan their blocks.
If these governments can identify funds belonging to sanctioned companies and individuals, and they're being used to avoid sanctions, why wouldn't they use their power to block them?
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
For me Antrim, Inverness and Pembrokeshire are as much a part of my union as Surrey and Essex
To me the area people live in belongs to them not me so it is up to them what they do. Re Scotland therefore I have no firm views, it is up to the Scots. In practice however now we have Brexited it is much harder to justify Independence in my view as it will make life much harder for the Scots to do so.
jRM is not right about much but he is right that to impose these tests would be an act of self harm.
Yes, implementing a key component of Brexit is an act of self harm.
Doing these checks is not a key component of Brexit. 🤦♂️
I don't recall a single Brexiteer saying "vote Leave in order to get checks on EU produce" do you?
I do recall Brexiteers saying "we should leave the EU as it is too protectionist" and this whole argument just proves the point and is proof positive that leaving the EU was a good idea.
What most Brexiteers wanted, including me, was a FTA with the EU. They now effectively have free trade with us but are still refusing to let us have free trade with them. As others point out this is harmful to them but that is the nature of the ( protectionist) beast.
So lets agree to dismantle the trade border. We demanded 3rd country status which means checks. We're so incompetent that we've been unable to build the infrastructure to do inbound checks so we have dropped them. Which means we're recognising EU standards as compatible with (the very same) UK standards.
Great! So we can dismantle much of the TCA and thus fix the NI border fiasco.
Do I take it that this morning's intense discussion about coffee (and you all know my views on that) is because there was absolutely nothing of any interest in the Queen's Speech bar the fact that HMQ was not there to give it?
That is right, although the Queen's Speech debate continues in the House of Commons today and tomorrow so there is still time for something interesting to happen.
jRM is not right about much but he is right that to impose these tests would be an act of self harm.
Yes, implementing a key component of Brexit is an act of self harm.
Doing these checks is not a key component of Brexit. 🤦♂️
I don't recall a single Brexiteer saying "vote Leave in order to get checks on EU produce" do you?
I do recall Brexiteers saying "we should leave the EU as it is too protectionist" and this whole argument just proves the point and is proof positive that leaving the EU was a good idea.
What most Brexiteers wanted, including me, was a FTA with the EU. They now effectively have free trade with us but are still refusing to let us have free trade with them. As others point out this is harmful to them but that is the nature of the ( protectionist) beast.
This is laughable . You’re moaning at the EU for enforcing the terms of the FTA which was agreed with the UK.
If the UK can’t do border checks because of the lack of infrastructure and knock on effect on supply chains it’s their problem not the EUs .
Do I take it that this morning's intense discussion about coffee (and you all know my views on that) is because there was absolutely nothing of any interest in the Queen's Speech bar the fact that HMQ was not there to give it?
I thought it was because my cafe investee had bought a coffee machine, and then all these other people dived in.
Including someone promoting INSTANT.
Personally I have not got to grips with the QS yet.
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
As I said, it has /some/ value in sanctions avoidance. Just not $30,000 / BTC. (You don’t buy a currency to hold it, you buy it to spend it again. If you’re using it to fund (eg) the Ukraine war, then you’re exchanging it for weaponry (probably via other currencies) asap; every BTC buying for value transfer purposes has a matching sale in the near future, so the effect on the price is a very small uplift.)
The price is mostly driven by speculation & what goes up can come down again just as fast. As hodlers of GME & AMC have discovered.
You can (obviously) make money trading crytocurrencies - people have made fortunes & old hedge fund types are having a field day as they can use all the techniques that have been very effectively banned in mainstream financial markets in this new, unregulated space. But that’s different to buying it on an investment basis.
But the idea that crypto currencies represent some new paradigm of financial markets is hokum: It’s a story told to get people to buy in so that current holders can get exit liquidity.
I actually think that's a fair evaluation, my only point would be unit bias.
$30,000 per "coin" sounds expensive simply because there are so few of them - only about 19m in existence, compared to however many trillions of dollars floating about. The same way a gold bar sounds expensive at $10,000 for a tiny little thing you can hold in the palm of your hand.
If the supply of bitcoin was circulating at 1000x what is now and a bitcoin was $30, I don't think many people would be saying it is over-valued, even if the market cap remained the same in dollar terms. But the point of bitcoin is you can't change the amount in circulation, and it has become wildly more successful than was ever predicted, hence the high unit price. A single unit of berkshire hathaway stock trades at almost half a million dollars for the same reason.
I note in passing that there’s so little real world available liquidity in BTC transactions that the Russians didn’t even try using it as an alternate payment method when the Ukraine war started.
If you base your BTC valuation on real world liquidity then the BTC value you obtain is much, much lower that the current capitalisation. Given that much of that liquidity is available purely in order to fleece those “investing” in cryptocurrencies, a fall in the value of the currency will drive out liquidity, driving down this base source of value even further.
There’s no there there with cryptocurrencies. It’s all (very effective) smoke and mirrors.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
We've just indefinitely delayed the imposition of the inbound checks mandated by the oven-ready deal. Which means for an indefinite period the EU are responsible for safety standards of goods coming into the UK.
In theory we can set our own standards. But as we're unable to enforce them...
Its gone over your head it seems that the ability to drop EU-mandated checks or rules is precisely a benefit won by not being aligned to the EU.
We don't need to enforce them, we can recognise the EU as a safe region and recognise their standards are equivalent to our own.
What purpose do those "checks" serve other than protectionist self-harm.
We should abolish such checks with any other nations, blocs or regions that have equivalent standards too. Protectionism is self-harming.
Good! So we recognise their standards as equivalent to our own. We should do as their standards are our standards. So we have maintained our alignment with EU standards - and have now made it clear we aren't changing those standards because we're functionally incapable of doing so.
You ask "what function do those checks serve" - a genuinely great question. Can I remind you though that said checks are a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded as part of its oven-ready deal?
What we need now is the EU to also drop its checks. Our standards are their standards are our standards. As we've now abandoned the ability to set different standards that is not going to change. So even if it is informally we can agree with the EU that we can mutually dismantle the need for checks. And having done that we can take the next step and dismantle the reams of Mogg-imposed red tape needed to show that our zero VAT zero tariff zero quota products are as stated.
A bright future is ahead, and its all thanks to Rees-Mogg saying that his version of brexit was an act of self-harm. Good for him.
The checks are not a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded, that is what you are failing to understand.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country. The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
Well, if the EU checks our goods, that is a barrier to our exports, and that harms our jobs and income.
And note there is another problem with what you suggest. If we drop all our checks, including from outside the EU, then the EU will need to check imports from Britain in case we are reexporting goods that do not meet EU standards.
Its a barrier to their consumers. Their consumers suffer and their economy suffers as a result.
Some of our producers may get caught up in that, but they can then export to less protectionist nations, trade more with the UK or be more productive or have other alternatives. That is why protectionism is almost always ultimately more self-harming.
I don't propose we drop all checks, just all unnecessary ones. We should drop checks with any nations that we recognise as equivalents, wherever they are on the planet. EU, non-EU, African, Asian or anyone else, so long as they are equivalents.
If any nations aren't equivalent to our standards, then we should impose checks if they are reasonably necessary. Not simply for protectionism. If only doing necessary checks rather than protectionist checks results in the EU ratchetting up to have even more self-harming restrictions imposed on their side then more fool them and thank goodness we're not aligned with such a self-harming institution.
PM: ‘we must grow our way out of cost of living crisis’
But at every turn the gov is sabotaging growth. Against this dreadful econ outlook they’ve announced a legislative agenda that raises more trade barriers with EU *and* plan to start an unwinnable trade war over NI Protoco https://twitter.com/ianmulheirn/status/1524314580285067266/photo/1
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
To be fair, Mr G, one would have said much the same about Scotland 50 years ago. I can recall the surprise when the first Plaid Cymru MP was elected.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
To be fair, Mr G, one would have said much the same about Scotland 50 years ago. I can recall the surprise when the first Plaid Cymru MP was elected.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
To be fair, Mr G, one would have said much the same about Scotland 50 years ago. I can recall the surprise when the first Plaid Cymru MP was elected.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
To be fair, Mr G, one would have said much the same about Scotland 50 years ago. I can recall the surprise when the first Plaid Cymru MP was elected.
Not really. According to this article the SNP could, judging by opinion polling, have won a plurality of MPs in Scotland as far back as the late 70s. Certainly Scottish Labour have been worried about Scottish nationalism for decades. Not so about Plaid Cymru which has always struggled outside the Welsh-speaking areas.
Quick question to PB brains trust: can anyone recommend a green building forum?
I used to be on the Navitron forum when we were building our house but that's now closed. Looking for another forum now we're planning our next project. Thanks!
So why are you so infatuated with Oxbridge, public schools and grammar schools @HYUFD? You seem in awe of anyone who goes to these. You seem to treat these people as your betters. They aren't. You are just as worthy.
I went to private school, my sister went to grammar school, my wife has an Oxford degree.
I am not in awe of them, Churchill was a great PM despite being non Oxbridge, Hague would have been a good PM in my view and was comprehensive educated.
However it is no surprise the best schools and universities tend to produce the most PMs
I don't disagree with any of that (although we may disagree on the reason for the last para) and in particular I think Hague would have been a very interesting PM, but you definitely come over as in awe of your 'betters'. And the reason for the ' ' is that they definitely aren't better than you. And this isn't just education, but also with regard to class. You seem to look up to those who are better bred.
The reason I find it strange is I treat everyone equally. It might just be me, I don't know, but I express no deference to anyone and don't expect any myself.
Quite. When I want a surgeon I want a competent one. HYUFD wants a posh one from Clifton who might be sort of better educated and therefore perhaps better trained. Rather different logic.
No, I want someone with top grades in their medical exams and before. You are not bothered by their training as long as you have an excuse for your usual far left, inverse snobbery filled rant
Now that first sentence doesn't make complete sense. Yes I do want my surgeon to have passed his medical exam, but I don't give two hoots if he got an A in Geography (re your reference to their exams before). And actually if given a choice between someone who just passed their medical exam, but is a superb technician and a high flier who is ham fisted I would pick the former every day to operate on me.
Take me for example. Fairly academic, but totally incompetent with my hands. So although I might pass the exams I will kill the patients.
And similar things go for other professions: Anaesthetist and airline pilots need to be able to react quickly and not panic whereas in other professions you need to be considered rather than fast reacting. Once you are past the level of knowledge required it is down to other skills
First of all, you will probably get whichever surgeon your GP referred you to, or a member of their team. Second, even if you go private and exercise your choice, what determines your choice? A headshot and two-paragraph biography on a Bupa website?
But more interestingly, there was research which found that the top-rated doctors were not technically the best. Patients rate bedside manner. They prefer Dr Wilson to Dr House.
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
I only realised a week ago that Laurence Fishburne is the machine gunner on the boat in Apocalypse Now
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
I'd enjoy driving a Ferrari rather than my Passat. It'd be great. But the Passat does the job, and I don't bankrupt myself in the process.
There's another point: I've had great coffees at coffee shops, and absolutely awful ones - even from the same shop. The variability of shop coffee is such that I generally avoid them. Hot chocolates tend to be better and more consistent.
I *enjoy* drinking my coffee. You *enjoy* drinking yours. Each to their own.
I agree. And actually, though it was an attempt at mockery, the same *can* be said of a Playstation vs. a crossword puzzle, if the enjoyment, challenge, reward, etc. derived from each is the same.
It wasn't meant as mockery.
It is about getting what you enjoy. I am a gamer so I have a gaming Laptop and a Playstation and I know there's many other gamers on this site who have Playstations etc.
I also know there are many non-gamers on this site. My grandad would be more comfortable with a crossword puzzle than a Playstation, I would never suggest he is wrong for not having a Playstation as it clearly isn't appropriate for him. A good coffee machine would similarly not be appropriate for anyone who doesn't appreciate good coffee.
But for those who do appreciate good coffee/games getting the appropriate device while expensive initially is well worth it for the enjoyment it brings.
Do I take it that this morning's intense discussion about coffee (and you all know my views on that) is because there was absolutely nothing of any interest in the Queen's Speech bar the fact that HMQ was not there to give it?
That is right, although the Queen's Speech debate continues in the House of Commons today and tomorrow so there is still time for something interesting to happen.
I've listened to it a couple of times, and I still can't pan any nuggets of gold out of the stream.
I also note that HRH barely disguised his contempt for the platitudes he was spouting, which was interesting. (ETA: HMQ was a past-master at the deadpan.)
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
We've just indefinitely delayed the imposition of the inbound checks mandated by the oven-ready deal. Which means for an indefinite period the EU are responsible for safety standards of goods coming into the UK.
In theory we can set our own standards. But as we're unable to enforce them...
Its gone over your head it seems that the ability to drop EU-mandated checks or rules is precisely a benefit won by not being aligned to the EU.
We don't need to enforce them, we can recognise the EU as a safe region and recognise their standards are equivalent to our own.
What purpose do those "checks" serve other than protectionist self-harm.
We should abolish such checks with any other nations, blocs or regions that have equivalent standards too. Protectionism is self-harming.
Good! So we recognise their standards as equivalent to our own. We should do as their standards are our standards. So we have maintained our alignment with EU standards - and have now made it clear we aren't changing those standards because we're functionally incapable of doing so.
You ask "what function do those checks serve" - a genuinely great question. Can I remind you though that said checks are a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded as part of its oven-ready deal?
What we need now is the EU to also drop its checks. Our standards are their standards are our standards. As we've now abandoned the ability to set different standards that is not going to change. So even if it is informally we can agree with the EU that we can mutually dismantle the need for checks. And having done that we can take the next step and dismantle the reams of Mogg-imposed red tape needed to show that our zero VAT zero tariff zero quota products are as stated.
A bright future is ahead, and its all thanks to Rees-Mogg saying that his version of brexit was an act of self-harm. Good for him.
The checks are not a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded, that is what you are failing to understand.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country. The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
You keep making the theoretical economist argument that UK to EU checks harm the EU. They do not - they harm the UK companies that rely on EU exports. They make us uncompetitive and our goods more expensive. EU consumers do not foot the bill, they largely just buy from someone else.
So it is in our interests to get these checks dropped - checks which we required as part of the TCA. Always happy to take your opinions on my intelligence and understanding of customs rules / realities under advisement.
EU checks do harm the EU.
If you wish to engage in protectionist bullshit then feel free, it is not in our interests as a nation though. If the EU's protectionism "hurts" our exporters then that's a shame for them, but that isn't a justification for protectionism or for joining a protectionist bloc, it should act as encouragement for our producers to either be more efficient or to find less protectionist nations to export to.
But now that we're out of the EU we can drop the EU's self-harming protectionism. Aligned to the EU we're obliged to do these checks because the EU requires them for non-EU trade. Now we're no longer aligned, we can drop them while they aren't doing so.
That is a real Brexit freedom won, being used. Your objections justify Brexit, you just fail to see it as in your heart, you think protectionism works. It doesn't.
What have I posted that makes you think I want to engage in "protectionist bullshit"? I am arguing that *both sides* can drop their checks.
Not possible.
How do we get both sides to drop their checks on non-EU non-aligned produce?
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
This is all down to whether you appreciate something isn't it? I am a foodie so will pay for good quality so I agree with your stance on coffee. I however am not a coffee fan so I'm happy with instant, but appreciate some are and I'm rather jealous. The two of you are never going to agree because of your different priorities regarding coffee.
Yes, I'm with Bart here. I always thought myself unenthusiastic about coffee, apart from the coffee which we got at Christmas, which was delicious, of coffee from one of those machines with the hot jugs. It took me over 30 years to realise that with the purchase of a £5 cafitiere (sp?) and a £3 bag of filter coffee I could have the same product, whenever I wanted. More expensive than instant, but hardly breaking the bank. I am always disappointed nowadays when offered coffee and given instant - it is, at best, a coffee flavoured drink. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about all the milky variations on coffee the coffee shops serve, and even an Americano isn't exactly what I'm after (a British version of an Italian version of an American version of coffee - though just an American version of coffee from a 1950s style diner in New Hampshire would be very acceptable). But it's worth me paying the extra to get more than just instant. Like Bart says, it's partly about the texture.
Spending money on certain other things would be wasted on me, though. Champagne, for example. I'm never going to enjoy an expensive bottle of champagne more than a glass of cava. But I don't mind that others, to whom champagne matters, do.
I agree - although I do enjoy a (good) Americano as the flavour profile and mouthfeel is different, and more to my taste. I also enjoy a flat white with *really* good milk, and they are much harder to make with inexpensive home equipment. But I supposed that is a flavoured/textured milk drink, not a "coffee".
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
As I said, it has /some/ value in sanctions avoidance. Just not $30,000 / BTC. (You don’t buy a currency to hold it, you buy it to spend it again. If you’re using it to fund (eg) the Ukraine war, then you’re exchanging it for weaponry (probably via other currencies) asap; every BTC buying for value transfer purposes has a matching sale in the near future, so the effect on the price is a very small uplift.)
The price is mostly driven by speculation & what goes up can come down again just as fast. As hodlers of GME & AMC have discovered.
You can (obviously) make money trading crytocurrencies - people have made fortunes & old hedge fund types are having a field day as they can use all the techniques that have been very effectively banned in mainstream financial markets in this new, unregulated space. But that’s different to buying it on an investment basis.
But the idea that crypto currencies represent some new paradigm of financial markets is hokum: It’s a story told to get people to buy in so that current holders can get exit liquidity.
There was a story a couple of months ago, of a Russian guy who turned up in Dubai trying to liquidate 125,000 Bitcoin.
Which part of "control our borders" included "zero border checks" ?
Brexit is a shitshow, and will remain so long after those who voted for it are dead.
“Control our borders” including having “zero border checks” is by definition controlling our borders.
We control whether we check or don’t. Not a complicated concept.
You control your front door - you can choose to lock it or leave the door swinging open - whatever option you choose based on what’s best for your family - you are controlling it - your neighbour isn’t.
This is starting to feel like 1994 all over again - Tories in meltdown with a tired, old government out of ideas and a weak leader. A sudden change of Labour leader if anything improves their chances, and they enter No10 fairly soon after.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
No, I don't think so either - but it always seems that Wales gets overlooked in discussions of the union; I wanted to be fair.
It is not likely anytime soon but then I do not see Scotland winning indyref 2 if it is held either
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
I only realised a week ago that Laurence Fishburne is the machine gunner on the boat in Apocalypse Now
It's not about arguing for the status quo - it's arguing that the downside of the BTC solution to those problems is huge! 24x7 global FX and money transfer is a problem that doesn't require "banks to be open", and can cost "mere cents"; legitimate large-value transfers happen all the time, at minuscule cost. And for every Ukrainian refugee who brings $2,000 of bitcoin on a USB drive, there are 10 organized criminals laundering $2,000,000.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
I'd enjoy driving a Ferrari rather than my Passat. It'd be great. But the Passat does the job, and I don't bankrupt myself in the process.
There's another point: I've had great coffees at coffee shops, and absolutely awful ones - even from the same shop. The variability of shop coffee is such that I generally avoid them. Hot chocolates tend to be better and more consistent.
I *enjoy* drinking my coffee. You *enjoy* drinking yours. Each to their own.
I agree. And actually, though it was an attempt at mockery, the same *can* be said of a Playstation vs. a crossword puzzle, if the enjoyment, challenge, reward, etc. derived from each is the same.
It wasn't meant as mockery.
It is about getting what you enjoy. I am a gamer so I have a gaming Laptop and a Playstation and I know there's many other gamers on this site who have Playstations etc.
I also know there are many non-gamers on this site. My grandad would be more comfortable with a crossword puzzle than a Playstation, I would never suggest he is wrong for not having a Playstation as it clearly isn't appropriate for him. A good coffee machine would similarly not be appropriate for anyone who doesn't appreciate good coffee.
But for those who do appreciate good coffee/games getting the appropriate device while expensive initially is well worth it for the enjoyment it brings.
Your crossword example is poor IMO. Taking your PS one: I'm about to buy a new PC for gaming. I am going to spend a little over £2k on it.
The games I play will very probably look 'better' than on your PS or gaming laptop. It will probably have a higher max res and framerate than either (unless you have a *really* high-spec laptop or I'm incompetent in choosing my PC). Does my having a 'better' PC mean I'll enjoy the games more? Probably not.
Well, as Mrs May was gleefully saying yesterday, they were warned!
I can see why she stayed on the backbenches. She is having a great time with the schadenfreude.
If she’d got her way, we’d be stuck indefinitely in the Backstop, eating yet another of Macron’s “Screw the British” pieces of EU legislation over which we had no say.
The issue with the Protocol was always the sequencing, it was destined to be revisited in light of the later trade agreement. That the EU have no intention of doing this, and refuse to implement the trusted trader scheme or the electronic border, is a show of bad faith on their part.
A16 is the mechanism by which they can be forced to actually negotiate on the stalled points, and a lack of agreement acceptable to all comunities in NI exacerbates political tensions there.
We've just indefinitely delayed the imposition of the inbound checks mandated by the oven-ready deal. Which means for an indefinite period the EU are responsible for safety standards of goods coming into the UK.
In theory we can set our own standards. But as we're unable to enforce them...
Its gone over your head it seems that the ability to drop EU-mandated checks or rules is precisely a benefit won by not being aligned to the EU.
We don't need to enforce them, we can recognise the EU as a safe region and recognise their standards are equivalent to our own.
What purpose do those "checks" serve other than protectionist self-harm.
We should abolish such checks with any other nations, blocs or regions that have equivalent standards too. Protectionism is self-harming.
Good! So we recognise their standards as equivalent to our own. We should do as their standards are our standards. So we have maintained our alignment with EU standards - and have now made it clear we aren't changing those standards because we're functionally incapable of doing so.
You ask "what function do those checks serve" - a genuinely great question. Can I remind you though that said checks are a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded as part of its oven-ready deal?
What we need now is the EU to also drop its checks. Our standards are their standards are our standards. As we've now abandoned the ability to set different standards that is not going to change. So even if it is informally we can agree with the EU that we can mutually dismantle the need for checks. And having done that we can take the next step and dismantle the reams of Mogg-imposed red tape needed to show that our zero VAT zero tariff zero quota products are as stated.
A bright future is ahead, and its all thanks to Rees-Mogg saying that his version of brexit was an act of self-harm. Good for him.
The checks are not a key component of the 3rd country status this government demanded, that is what you are failing to understand.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country. The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
You keep making the theoretical economist argument that UK to EU checks harm the EU. They do not - they harm the UK companies that rely on EU exports. They make us uncompetitive and our goods more expensive. EU consumers do not foot the bill, they largely just buy from someone else.
So it is in our interests to get these checks dropped - checks which we required as part of the TCA. Always happy to take your opinions on my intelligence and understanding of customs rules / realities under advisement.
EU checks do harm the EU.
If you wish to engage in protectionist bullshit then feel free, it is not in our interests as a nation though. If the EU's protectionism "hurts" our exporters then that's a shame for them, but that isn't a justification for protectionism or for joining a protectionist bloc, it should act as encouragement for our producers to either be more efficient or to find less protectionist nations to export to.
But now that we're out of the EU we can drop the EU's self-harming protectionism. Aligned to the EU we're obliged to do these checks because the EU requires them for non-EU trade. Now we're no longer aligned, we can drop them while they aren't doing so.
That is a real Brexit freedom won, being used. Your objections justify Brexit, you just fail to see it as in your heart, you think protectionism works. It doesn't.
What have I posted that makes you think I want to engage in "protectionist bullshit"? I am arguing that *both sides* can drop their checks.
Not possible.
How do we get both sides to drop their checks on non-EU non-aligned produce?
If its non-EU/UK produce then we both check it at port of entry to the same standards (which we have now).
Which part of "control our borders" included "zero border checks" ?
Brexit is a shitshow, and will remain so long after those who voted for it are dead.
“Control our borders” including having “zero border checks” is by definition controlling our borders.
We control whether we check or don’t. Not a complicated concept.
You control your front door - you can choose to lock it or leave the door swinging open - whatever option you choose based on what’s best for your family - you are controlling it - your neighbour isn’t.
The local shopping mall has border checks at it’s doors. It’s just that the vast majority of the people going there never notice, because they’re behaving well. But the kids with scooters and the drunk vagrants shouting at people, they see the checks, and get told not to come in.
jRM is not right about much but he is right that to impose these tests would be an act of self harm.
Yes, implementing a key component of Brexit is an act of self harm.
Doing these checks is not a key component of Brexit. 🤦♂️
I don't recall a single Brexiteer saying "vote Leave in order to get checks on EU produce" do you?
I do recall Brexiteers saying "we should leave the EU as it is too protectionist" and this whole argument just proves the point and is proof positive that leaving the EU was a good idea.
What most Brexiteers wanted, including me, was a FTA with the EU. They now effectively have free trade with us but are still refusing to let us have free trade with them. As others point out this is harmful to them but that is the nature of the ( protectionist) beast.
This is laughable . You’re moaning at the EU for enforcing the terms of the FTA which was agreed with the UK.
If the UK can’t do border checks because of the lack of infrastructure and knock on effect on supply chains it’s their problem not the EUs .
The ability to do checks is not a requirement to do them.
"Enforcing checks" and "not enforcing checks" are both following the terms of the FTA, just one (the latter) is sensible, while the other (the former) is not.
All that is not forbidden, is possible - not all that is not forbidden, is compulsory.
Which part of "control our borders" included "zero border checks" ?
Brexit is a shitshow, and will remain so long after those who voted for it are dead.
“Control our borders” including having “zero border checks” is by definition controlling our borders.
We control whether we check or don’t. Not a complicated concept.
You control your front door - you can choose to lock it or leave the door swinging open - whatever option you choose based on what’s best for your family - you are controlling it - your neighbour isn’t.
This is true enough. However, I am pretty sure that "wide open with no checks" was neither what the Vote Leave campaign were proposing nor what leave voters believed they would get.
If we choose to maintain the same control of our borders (none) but suffer greatly from the other side controlling their border (goods and people) then what have we gained? Brexit was supposed to make people's lived experience better, not worse.
I see the zerocovidians have doubled down in Shanghai. Don’t they think the Chinese have noticed that everyone else is pretty much getting on with their lives?
I think it might have something to do with the leader of China wanting to assert his authority over the population, no matter what the cost. He's hosting a conference later this year where he intends to effectively appoint himself as leader for life.
I'm getting the feeling that it's because they've utterly screwed up and they're stuck in a cleft stick. Arguably, as covered earlier, it underlines the limits of authoritarian government: you can force people to comply with some things, but you can't make them trust you. And vaccine takeup is very much linked to trusting authorities.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01855-7 ... covers what would happen if they dropped the restrictions right now. In essence, they've failed to get anywhere near the level of immunity needed. They're looking at swamping intensive care capacity by a factor of over 15 times, and over 1.5 million deaths.
They could avert all of that and progressively drop restrictions by ensuring vaccination of the more vulnerable and accessing anti-viral therapies.
I did see a thread covering their exit strategy which did seem reliant on improving vaccine takeup and rolling out antivirals, but they seem to have badly stalled. Quite possibly thanks to the failure of getting trust.
Shares in Tesla or Amazon or Tesco are productive assets. Property is a productive asset.
Basically, you get paid to own them (most of the time).
Bitcoin is not a productive asset.
Bitcoin is a currency, plain and simple. It's something you can, in theory, exchange for goods and services (though not many people do, a bit like gold).
Its value derives from its hardness, a bit like gold. You can't just print more of it, therefore the supply is controlled and predictable.
A bet on bitcoin is effectively a bet against fiat currencies, against inflation, against central banks trying to maintain control.
Placing bitcoin in the same category as a tesla share is fundamentally mis-labelling it. What gives the dollar value? People believe it has value. What gives bitcoin value? People believe it has value.
The value of a $10 note is about .02 in paper and ink, backed by people's belief in it. The value of a bitcoin is the power used to generate it, backed by people's belief in it.
As Morpheus says, "you think that's air you're breathing?"
Bitcoin is gold stripped of all use value & made electronically transferrable at significant per transaction expense. Financially it’s a perpetual bearer bond that generates no interest.
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
I can think of absolutely no value for a decentralised, permissionless currency that can be transported easily across borders, cannot be censored, costs mere cents to send millions (or billions) in value to another person, and works when the banks are shut.
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
I only realised a week ago that Laurence Fishburne is the machine gunner on the boat in Apocalypse Now
Gove is one of the few intelligent people in the Cabinet. I suspect that the cognitive dissonance involved in being part of Johnson's freakshow has pushed him over the edge.
I asked for thoughts on coffee machines for a small cafe the other week.
We ended up going for a consumer bean-to-cup on the basis that it does make a nice coffee, but is also inexpensive enough that it will do the job whilst trade is low and starts to build, and we can either take it home and buy a larger machine if required, or just get another one to go next to it.
Simple, and makes a very nice cup off coffee, but is quite customisable. A slight annoyance is that it works in "low medium high" rather than grams of coffee per shot.
But DeLonghi need some serious attention to their incomprehensible model numbers.
I missed your original post - I would have suggested the Gaggia Velasca (£499 Caffe Italia). We have one and it is excellent.
I have a jar of Kenco Smooth. A £5 jar lasts for a couple of months.
Job done.
That's like saying to someone who buys a PS5 that you have a crossword book and job done.
Not really. It's still coffee. It does the same job.
I wonder if there's a correlation between people who overpay for 'luxury' coffee and those who overpay by worshipping at the altar of Apple?
(Runs for cover...)
Its not the same coffee at all.
You need decent pressure to make coffee properly and get a decent crema on your espresso. That doesn't happen with any instant coffee I've ever seen.
Its like saying there's no difference between an old-fashioned landline and an iPhone. The branding doesn't matter, they're completely different products.
Espresso? What's that?
Instant coffee is coffee. The coffee you drink is coffee. I drink it to get a little caffeine hit and to quench my thirst. It does the job.
Why do you drink your very expensive coffee? The same reasons?
It's like someone drinking a £10 bottle of wine from Mozzies and someone else drinking a £100 bottle. Probably worse, in terms of cost...
I no more drink coffee to get a caffeine hit than I would eat chocolate to get a calorie hit.
I drink coffee because I enjoy it and I enjoy a good coffee more than a crap one, just as I enjoy chocolate more than Brussel Sprouts.
A good coffee has a different texture and taste to a bad one, and you can't get the texture of a proper espresso from instant coffee. Even if it's "the same beans" you can't bottle the pressure needed to make it properly in a jar, you need a machine for that.
I'd enjoy driving a Ferrari rather than my Passat. It'd be great. But the Passat does the job, and I don't bankrupt myself in the process.
There's another point: I've had great coffees at coffee shops, and absolutely awful ones - even from the same shop. The variability of shop coffee is such that I generally avoid them. Hot chocolates tend to be better and more consistent.
I *enjoy* drinking my coffee. You *enjoy* drinking yours. Each to their own.
I agree. And actually, though it was an attempt at mockery, the same *can* be said of a Playstation vs. a crossword puzzle, if the enjoyment, challenge, reward, etc. derived from each is the same.
It wasn't meant as mockery.
It is about getting what you enjoy. I am a gamer so I have a gaming Laptop and a Playstation and I know there's many other gamers on this site who have Playstations etc.
I also know there are many non-gamers on this site. My grandad would be more comfortable with a crossword puzzle than a Playstation, I would never suggest he is wrong for not having a Playstation as it clearly isn't appropriate for him. A good coffee machine would similarly not be appropriate for anyone who doesn't appreciate good coffee.
But for those who do appreciate good coffee/games getting the appropriate device while expensive initially is well worth it for the enjoyment it brings.
Your crossword example is poor IMO. Taking your PS one: I'm about to buy a new PC for gaming. I am going to spend a little over £2k on it.
The games I play will very probably look 'better' than on your PS or gaming laptop. It will probably have a higher max res and framerate than either (unless you have a *really* high-spec laptop or I'm incompetent in choosing my PC). Does my having a 'better' PC mean I'll enjoy the games more? Probably not.
Its not a poor example, the crossword is a game just as the PC, Playstation and Laptop allow.
The latter three are like comparing across different types of coffee machines, while the former or a deck of cards is like instant with a kettle instead of having a machine.
While my Laptop is a relatively new gaming laptop, it can't handle all new games which is fine for me. There are games that will be able to be played using your machine that my Laptop can't handle - if you really want to play those games then yes your PC will be good for you. If you're not bothered, then a cheaper machine, or even no machine at all and just a pack of cards may be fine for you.
I posted this near the end of the last thread; since I got no response, I thought I'd try again:
Okay, so Brexit is done. I'm putting my 'bloke on the Clapham omnibus who voted for Brexit' hat on and asking - what difference has it made to my life? I'm struggling. I'm aware of some downsides, though they don't affect me much. But what are the upsides? Okay, I hear that wages have risen in some, but not that many, low-skilled sectors, but that may be as much due to Covid as Brexit, and anyway I don't work in a low-skilled sector.
So a serious, genuine question. How has Brexit benefitted me, who voted for it? How has my government used these new freedoms/sovereignty to improve my life? If it was such a good idea, people ought to be able to answer this by now, with specific, tangible examples that affect me - but I'm struggling. Help.
Did you get your vaccine? Brexit benefitted you from not being locked into some half-arsed Euro arrangement. It quite possibly saved the life of a friend or family member.
Our being outside was also a spur to the EU to get their shit together. Having Brexit Britain jabbed up whilst the EU's citizens died created a political imperative to shift their arses.
If the Referendum had locked us into ever closer union, I strongly suspect the UK would have been closed down from helping Ukraine to the level we have. We would have been trapped into some EU-wide foot-dragging whilst Kyiv fell.
Plus - Nigel Farage is out of a job. His soap box taken away. Surely that counts for something?
1. I'd have got my vaccine if we'd still been in the EU.
2. Well done! Getting rid of Nigel Farage is a definite plus plus plus. Whether Brexit is worth it...
I think you need to go back and re-remember how the EU tried to fuck us over on vaccines.... Because we were making them look bad.
Macron commenting on the quality of our vaccine ring any bells?
Sure Macron's a bellend (something we all know).
I actually think that Brexit benefitted both the EU and the UK wrt vaccines. Our early outperformance led them to throw caution to the wind and make a massive Pfizer order. The consequence of which is that - after a rocky couple of initial months - the EU ended up performing quite well with vaccines.
In 'Guns, Germs and Steel', Jared Diamond argues (slightly speculatively, it feels, in contrast to the other far more convincing arguments about other geographies) that the reason why Europe has outperformed China over the last 500 years is due to Europe splintering into competing states and statelets. Unity is therefore not strength, but weakness, for unity leads to complacency and stagnation, while separation leads to competition. This would be an example of that.
And yet you’re a Unionist.
Well yes and no. I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't. But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor. I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well. NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea. So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one. The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
There is not likelihood of Wales going independent
No, I don't think so either - but it always seems that Wales gets overlooked in discussions of the union; I wanted to be fair.
It is not likely anytime soon but then I do not see Scotland winning indyref 2 if it is held either
Scotland will vote no if a referendum is held during the current Scottish parliamentary term. Which will be 15 years-ish since the last one. And we can formalise the timings of another one if the people of Scotland follow their no vote with another majority of parties pledged to hold a 3rd vote.
But that only works if we respect the democratic mandate and hold a 2rd referendum. If we say no, then I can only see the support for independence growing. "You can vote for whatever you want but we won't let you have it" isn't a persuasive argument to maintain the Union.
Really interesting, thanks. Personally have been wondering about swings to the Tories in the Kingdom of Mercia.
I was driving through some of the villages on the karst above Trieste yesterday, and it was striking how many of them had red flags hung out for May Day. Not just from individual windows or balconies, but some of them on large poles high above houses, so they could be seen from a distance on approaching the village, or hung above the main road from trees. A lot of trouble has been gone to hanging all those flags, and there must be a good degree of support given the number of buildings involved.
Most of them were the plain red workers’ flag but one or two carried a symbol on them, which a bit of research later found to be the flag of Trieste when it was briefly an independent free republic (if non functioning) in the late 40s and early 50s.
An interesting hangover from the past.
Trieste is fabulous. Have you had the mad boiled meats yet?
You can also see the site of the brothel visited by Joyce when he was writing Ulysses (and his favourite cafes). And take his favourite tram up to the Karst
Which part of "control our borders" included "zero border checks" ?
Brexit is a shitshow, and will remain so long after those who voted for it are dead.
“Control our borders” including having “zero border checks” is by definition controlling our borders.
We control whether we check or don’t. Not a complicated concept.
You control your front door - you can choose to lock it or leave the door swinging open - whatever option you choose based on what’s best for your family - you are controlling it - your neighbour isn’t.
This is true enough. However, I am pretty sure that "wide open with no checks" was neither what the Vote Leave campaign were proposing nor what leave voters believed they would get.
If we choose to maintain the same control of our borders (none) but suffer greatly from the other side controlling their border (goods and people) then what have we gained? Brexit was supposed to make people's lived experience better, not worse.
I’m sure you are correct that most people thought of “controlling borders” skewed to the “closing borders” angle however it’s dumb to say that choosing to not check is not controlling our own borders.
Comments
The only value it has is the speculative value that lies in your belief that someone else will pay you more for it that you yourself paid. Hence the wild swings in valuation that make it useless as a currency for individuals.
A commodity is terrible as a national currency for a variety of reasons, most of which were discovered by experience during the C19th, when we forced several recessions on ourselves purely because of a shortage of gold & not for any actual economic reason. Tying growth in our economy to the supply of gold was a terrible, no good, very bad idea & we abandoned it eventually, to much howling from gold devotees.
A $ on the other hand has use value: you can pay your taxes with it & because US citizens need $ to pay taxes, if we have $ we can exchange them for services from US citizens & that ground value means they can be exchanged pretty much anywhere, because the recipient has a well founded belief that they will be able to exchange that $ in the future. If that belief fails, then the $ will fail, but that has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of a $ bill & everything to do with the strenght of the US economy.
What drives the valuation of BTC? Well, you used to be able to use it to buy drugs, but now that chain analysis is well established & the authorities treat BTC that has uncertain provenance as being radioactive that use case is falling away. Apart from that it’s pretty good for sanctions avoidance so long as there’s sufficient speculative liquidity. Otherwise, use cases seem to be few and far between & suggest an exchange valuation far below the current market price, which is driven by speculation & little else.
The market for BTC is also one of the most incredibly rigged markets out there. The largest exchanges are effectively offshore gambling companies with completely opaque books who actively trade against their own customers. Market making is carried out using tradeable tokens that claim to be dollars but whose backing is opaque & probably consists of ponzi-like investments in crypto-currency & sub-par Chinese credit. These tokens, which the originators can freely print almost without limit, have been used to bid up the prices of crypto currencies to huge levels, driving speculative FOMO investment. For crypto buyers & dollar-tracking token holders a central risk is that this ponzi-like mechansim unwinds completely at some point.
Very sad to learn of the death of American and Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh of @AJArabic
@AJEnglish. I encourage a thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death and the injury of at least one other journalist today in Jenin.
https://twitter.com/USAmbIsrael/status/1524286802135339008
Apparently.
All the vacuity of twitter is right there. i am far more interested in whether people are interested enough in a post of mine to respond to it, than in zero-effort likes and retweetes.
Oxford has the advantage over Cambridge as its PPE course is seen as more prestigious than Cambridge's Social and Political science course. Though Cambridge has the edge over Oxford in science and arguably history
I like Scotland. Emotionally, I like the idea of the Cairngorms, the Trossachs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, being part of the country that I live in. My early childhood holidays were on the Isle of Arran. And I have Anglo-Scottish ancestry. My great grandfather owned the first electric hoover in Edinburgh. Scotland is part of my hinterland in a way that, say, East Anglia or Oxfordshire - or, indeed, Wales - isn't.
But rationally I'm a transactionalist, and the costs and benefits of the union are not entirely one way for either party. The biggest argument in favour I see is defence - Scotland's territory and England's money is a powerful combination and both would be substantially weaker against foreign (Russian) threats apart. But take that large but single element out and I think on balance England and Scotland could well both be better off apart, for the reasons we are discussing. I sometimes wish some parts of history had gone differently (The Act of Union? The reformation? The 13th century? The reign of Athelstan?) and the whole of Britain had genuinely evolved into one nation. But it didn't. Devolution is an untidy and unsatisfactory constitutional arrangement, but so was its immediate predecessor.
I don't know how Wales fits into this. I find it hard to make an argument that Wales would be better off independent. And it would be untidy - despite the politics, North Wales is much better tied to the North West of England than to South Wales. But if the Welsh were minded to go it alone then I'd happily wish them good luck - the current arrangements certainly don't seem to to be working out too well.
NI wouldn't be massively missed this side of the Irish Sea.
So if I am a unionist I'm a fairly half-hearted and conditional one.
The SNP isn't much to my taste. But its position on independence is pretty tangential to that.
The ability to do checks, if you want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
The ability not to do checks, if you don't want to, is part and parcel of being a 3rd country.
Within the EU we were obliged to do checks on non-EU food, even if we didn't want to, because the EU is a protectionist self-harming bloc. Now that we're out of it, we're no longer obliged to do so. Getting rid of the EU's protectionism is a benefit of Brexit.
Only the hard of understanding think Rees Mogg said Brexit was self-harm, what he actually said was that protectionism is self-harming and that's true. Now we're free from the EU's rules, we no longer are obliged to engage in the EU's protectionism.
Why do we need the EU to also drop its checks? They're not going to, if they wish to harm themselves then that's their choice and its none of our business. We don't need to though.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/ukrainian-flees-to-poland-with-2000-in-bitcoin-on-usb-drive.html
But I have argued with boomers on this enough - it's really fascinating to see just how invested you are in the status quo. Morpheus was right - some people can't be unplugged...
So it is in our interests to get these checks dropped - checks which we required as part of the TCA. Always happy to take your opinions on my intelligence and understanding of customs rules / realities under advisement.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/05/britain-liz-truss-russia-invasion/629750/
We kept the threat of checking their produce as a way of encouraging the EU to be sensible about this. They are not being sensible so we need to make a choice. jRM is not right about much but he is right that to impose these tests would be an act of self harm. So we have chosen not to. If EU standards change in the future in a way we don’t like we can change our position on this.
The result of having no checks on EU produce should mean that we have no checks on UK produce going to NI too. That means the protocol becomes meaningless which is fine for us. Whether the EU are willing to let NI have free access to their market on that basis remains to be seen.
Early morning is the best time of day; a couple of hours of work (even housework) can be done before everyone else is up and about. I then get the rest of the day to do other stuff (tm).
When I worked, I would often go into work for seven, and spend ninety minutes in an empty office answering emails and doing stuff I really needed to concentrate on. When working in London, it'd mean I could get a bacon buttie from a sandwich bar and miss the rush hour. Perfect.
Spending money on certain other things would be wasted on me, though. Champagne, for example. I'm never going to enjoy an expensive bottle of champagne more than a glass of cava. But I don't mind that others, to whom champagne matters, do.
If you wish to engage in protectionist bullshit then feel free, it is not in our interests as a nation though. If the EU's protectionism "hurts" our exporters then that's a shame for them, but that isn't a justification for protectionism or for joining a protectionist bloc, it should act as encouragement for our producers to either be more efficient or to find less protectionist nations to export to.
But now that we're out of the EU we can drop the EU's self-harming protectionism. Aligned to the EU we're obliged to do these checks because the EU requires them for non-EU trade. Now we're no longer aligned, we can drop them while they aren't doing so.
That is a real Brexit freedom won, being used. Your objections justify Brexit, you just fail to see it as in your heart, you think protectionism works. It doesn't.
But you'll be a lesser human being for doing so
It's like eating Golden Delicious apples rather than growing your own.
It might take a leap of faith, and you might place a different value on that to what the markets do. But the leap of faith required is rather greater for Bitcoin.
The price is mostly driven by speculation & what goes up can come down again just as fast. As hodlers of GME & AMC have discovered.
You can (obviously) make money trading crytocurrencies - people have made fortunes & old hedge fund types are having a field day as they can use all the techniques that have been very effectively banned in mainstream financial markets in this new, unregulated space. But that’s different to buying it on an investment basis.
But the idea that crypto currencies represent some new paradigm of financial markets is hokum: It’s a story told to get people to buy in so that current holders can get exit liquidity.
There's another point: I've had great coffees at coffee shops, and absolutely awful ones - even from the same shop. The variability of shop coffee is such that I generally avoid them. Hot chocolates tend to be better and more consistent.
I *enjoy* drinking my coffee. You *enjoy* drinking yours. Each to their own.
Ye effing Gods.
Very soon to file with the colour mes; of these parishes; not lawyers; not experts; features; bugs; ad homs; heavy liftings and it’s a views.
I don't recall a single Brexiteer saying "vote Leave in order to get checks on EU produce" do you?
I do recall Brexiteers saying "we should leave the EU as it is too protectionist" and this whole argument just proves the point and is proof positive that leaving the EU was a good idea.
Take me for example. Fairly academic, but totally incompetent with my hands. So although I might pass the exams I will kill the patients.
And similar things go for other professions: Anaesthetist and airline pilots need to be able to react quickly and not panic whereas in other professions you need to be considered rather than fast reacting. Once you are past the level of knowledge required it is down to other skills
$30,000 per "coin" sounds expensive simply because there are so few of them - only about 19m in existence, compared to however many trillions of dollars floating about. The same way a gold bar sounds expensive at $10,000 for a tiny little thing you can hold in the palm of your hand.
If the supply of bitcoin was circulating at 1000x what is now and a bitcoin was $30, I don't think many people would be saying it is over-valued, even if the market cap remained the same in dollar terms. But the point of bitcoin is you can't change the amount in circulation, and it has become wildly more successful than was ever predicted, hence the high unit price. A single unit of berkshire hathaway stock trades at almost half a million dollars for the same reason.
Gentlemen, why bother grinding coffee beans? Simply buy a bargain jar of instant coffee and add hot water. Job done.
“The message we’re getting for people is that they regret their Brexit vote.” ~AA
(Thanks for the video @VoodooBollocks.) https://twitter.com/VoodooBollocks/status/1524072795621281792/video/1
And note there is another problem with what you suggest. If we drop all our checks, including from outside the EU, then the EU will need to check imports from Britain in case we are reexporting goods that do not meet EU standards.
Brexit is a shitshow, and will remain so long after those who voted for it are dead.
Looking at these hashrate numbers, you have
US: 35%
Canada 10%
Ireland 5%
Germany 5%
...so easily 55% for countries currently sanctioning Russia, more if you add in a bunch of little ones.
https://chainbulletin.com/bitcoin-mining-map/
These mining operations are nearly all known to their governments: You can't compete without scale, and you can't have scale without being known to your local utility or local government.
Russia is obviously trying to avoid sanctions. Currently you can send bitcoins without restriction, but they're mostly pretty easy to trace.
With 55% of hashrate you can blacklist an address. If anyone tries to spend from it, you orphan their blocks.
If these governments can identify funds belonging to sanctioned companies and individuals, and they're being used to avoid sanctions, why wouldn't they use their power to block them?
Great! So we can dismantle much of the TCA and thus fix the NI border fiasco.
If the UK can’t do border checks because of the lack of infrastructure and knock on effect on supply chains it’s their problem not the EUs .
Including someone promoting INSTANT.
Personally I have not got to grips with the QS yet.
If you base your BTC valuation on real world liquidity then the BTC value you obtain is much, much lower that the current capitalisation. Given that much of that liquidity is available purely in order to fleece those “investing” in cryptocurrencies, a fall in the value of the currency will drive out liquidity, driving down this base source of value even further.
There’s no there there with cryptocurrencies. It’s all (very effective) smoke and mirrors.
Some of our producers may get caught up in that, but they can then export to less protectionist nations, trade more with the UK or be more productive or have other alternatives. That is why protectionism is almost always ultimately more self-harming.
I don't propose we drop all checks, just all unnecessary ones. We should drop checks with any nations that we recognise as equivalents, wherever they are on the planet. EU, non-EU, African, Asian or anyone else, so long as they are equivalents.
If any nations aren't equivalent to our standards, then we should impose checks if they are reasonably necessary. Not simply for protectionism. If only doing necessary checks rather than protectionist checks results in the EU ratchetting up to have even more self-harming restrictions imposed on their side then more fool them and thank goodness we're not aligned with such a self-harming institution.
(Did I mention that I have two?)
Suits me. I like plenty of milk in my coffee.
The machines in our offices are bean to cup. However, the coffee is not very good. Another reason to WFH.
But at every turn the gov is sabotaging growth. Against this dreadful econ outlook they’ve announced a legislative agenda that raises more trade barriers with EU *and* plan to start an unwinnable trade war over NI Protoco https://twitter.com/ianmulheirn/status/1524314580285067266/photo/1
https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2022/05/ian-smart-scotland-the-tory-trap-johnson-is-laying-for-starmer-may-not-work.html
But more interestingly, there was research which found that the top-rated doctors were not technically the best. Patients rate bedside manner. They prefer Dr Wilson to Dr House.
Ignoring Govey's own strangled fart in a Morningside cushion of course.
https://twitter.com/RosieisaHolt/status/1524298053645185033?s=20&t=ksdxahd3BMKE233bBYVHcA
It is about getting what you enjoy. I am a gamer so I have a gaming Laptop and a Playstation and I know there's many other gamers on this site who have Playstations etc.
I also know there are many non-gamers on this site. My grandad would be more comfortable with a crossword puzzle than a Playstation, I would never suggest he is wrong for not having a Playstation as it clearly isn't appropriate for him. A good coffee machine would similarly not be appropriate for anyone who doesn't appreciate good coffee.
But for those who do appreciate good coffee/games getting the appropriate device while expensive initially is well worth it for the enjoyment it brings.
I also note that HRH barely disguised his contempt for the platitudes he was spouting, which was interesting. (ETA: HMQ was a past-master at the deadpan.)
How do we get both sides to drop their checks on non-EU non-aligned produce?
https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-russians-liquidating-crypto-uae-seek-safe-havens-2022-03-11/
Funnily enough, that’s not as easy with virtual currencies, as it is with actual currencies!
We control whether we check or don’t. Not a complicated concept.
You control your front door - you can choose to lock it or leave the door swinging open - whatever option you choose based on what’s best for your family - you are controlling it - your neighbour isn’t.
This is starting to feel like 1994 all over again - Tories in meltdown with a tired, old government out of ideas and a weak leader. A sudden change of Labour leader if anything improves their chances, and they enter No10 fairly soon after.
Perhaps...
The games I play will very probably look 'better' than on your PS or gaming laptop. It will probably have a higher max res and framerate than either (unless you have a *really* high-spec laptop or I'm incompetent in choosing my PC). Does my having a 'better' PC mean I'll enjoy the games more? Probably not.
"Enforcing checks" and "not enforcing checks" are both following the terms of the FTA, just one (the latter) is sensible, while the other (the former) is not.
All that is not forbidden, is possible - not all that is not forbidden, is compulsory.
If we choose to maintain the same control of our borders (none) but suffer greatly from the other side controlling their border (goods and people) then what have we gained? Brexit was supposed to make people's lived experience better, not worse.
Arguably, as covered earlier, it underlines the limits of authoritarian government: you can force people to comply with some things, but you can't make them trust you. And vaccine takeup is very much linked to trusting authorities.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01855-7
... covers what would happen if they dropped the restrictions right now. In essence, they've failed to get anywhere near the level of immunity needed. They're looking at swamping intensive care capacity by a factor of over 15 times, and over 1.5 million deaths.
They could avert all of that and progressively drop restrictions by ensuring vaccination of the more vulnerable and accessing anti-viral therapies.
I did see a thread covering their exit strategy which did seem reliant on improving vaccine takeup and rolling out antivirals, but they seem to have badly stalled. Quite possibly thanks to the failure of getting trust.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/local-elections-2022-the-media-got-it-wrong-labour-did-make-real-progress
The latter three are like comparing across different types of coffee machines, while the former or a deck of cards is like instant with a kettle instead of having a machine.
While my Laptop is a relatively new gaming laptop, it can't handle all new games which is fine for me. There are games that will be able to be played using your machine that my Laptop can't handle - if you really want to play those games then yes your PC will be good for you. If you're not bothered, then a cheaper machine, or even no machine at all and just a pack of cards may be fine for you.
But that only works if we respect the democratic mandate and hold a 2rd referendum. If we say no, then I can only see the support for independence growing. "You can vote for whatever you want but we won't let you have it" isn't a persuasive argument to maintain the Union.
You can also see the site of the brothel visited by Joyce when he was writing Ulysses (and his favourite cafes). And take his favourite tram up to the Karst