SF topped the poll within Ballymena and Lisburn which is close to a miracle.
SDLP and UUP losing seats across the province and are now close to irrelevant within local politics.
Early reports suggest Mal O'Hara (GP LEADER) could lose the seat in which he won in 2019. It was always going to be extremely difficult for the Greens.
Every time this cash debate comes up on PB I get people telling me that living without cash is impossible because of the need to use it for a, b, c...
I haven't used cash for five years and very little for ten years, so I know what I am talking about.
Again, I never use cash. I never need cash. If you need to pay someone you can just transfer it.
It really is that simple.
And you are one person - and one extreme example - out of millions. To extrapolate your very unusual and limited experience to the rest of the world is stunningly ignorant.
Not that extreme. Lots of people I know either rarely or never use cash. Cash is dying in London. In fact, to many it's already dead.
What UKers may be missing, is the fact that in the American national psyche "Florida" conjures up strong mental images and emotional signals that are NOT at all what Englanders (Big or Little) feel in relation to "Teeside" or "Norfolk".
To Americans, Florida = fun in the sun, endless summer, frolicking on the beach, etc., etc.
Even as the Sunshine State has morphed from "Flipper" to "Miami Vice"!
Only other US state that has similar psychological impact upon US is . . . wait for it . . . California.
So it's like Devon or Cornwall. What's the Floridian view on the "jam or cream first" debate? That's the only way to settle it.
No, Florida for Americans is NOT what Devon or Cornwall are for Britons. Not even close.
Perhaps UK equivalent is Costa del Sol? Certainly NO place in the UK.
I'm not so sure. As I say, the only way to determine is whether they put the jam or the cream first on their scones at tea.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
I'm not saying that's not your experience. I'm saying that your experience is not universal.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
How do you help homeless beggars, Big Issue sellers etc.
"The number of visits made by residents of the United Kingdom to the European Union was significantly lower in 2021 than in the previous years due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Overall, EU member countries recorded around 14.6 million visits from the UK in 2021, while they reported nearly 67 million UK visits in 2019. Meanwhile, the number of visits from the European Union to the UK also declined sharply during the health crisis".
1. In 538's polling average for the Republican primary: Trump: 53% DeSantis: 21% All others under 6%
2. DeSantis was at 30% on March 1st and has fallen continuously since.
3. Everyone who meets Ron, hates him. When he was a congressmen, the other Representatives hated him, including the Republicans. As a governor, the Republican Governors' Association hate him. His staff hate him (see the leaks, especially the chocolate pudding story). The public who meet him, hate him
4. Endorsements. Trump has 11 Senators, DeSantis 0. Trump has 53 Representatives, DeSantis has 4. Trump has 2 governors, DeSantis has 0.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
London generally. And from what I see most other cities. Cash is utterly pointless in day to day use. I wouldn't ban it. It could potentially play its part in a cyberattack apocalypse. But hauling around silly bits of paper and a pockets full of near-worthless metal is stupid. There is no need, hence why, increasingly, people avoid doing so.
I make a point of actively avoiding any shops, restaurants etc who don't take both cash and cards. If they are not willing to provide a reasonable level of service for all their customers then I am not willing to support them.
You'd struggle down here. Wouldn't be able to catch a bus, for starters.
I wouldn't struggle at all. The number of establishments not taking cash is vanishingly small in the grand scheme of things.
Well the entire bus network (daily ridership approx THREE MILLION) doesn't take cash...
I don't take the bus
Would you refuse to take a London bus because they don't accept cash?
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
I have several hundred thousand dollars in various denominations of a number of currencies as well as a firearm and a number of passports in a Zurich safe deposit box to be on the safe side.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
What use is a sheaf of £20, for paying people? I myself carry a couple of bearer bonds for half a million each*, to manage the small expenses of life.
*Fiver to the charity of choice for a correct guess as to the reference.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
I have several hundred thousand dollars in various denominations of a number of currencies as well as a firearm and a number of passports in a Zurich safe deposit box to be on the safe side.
Jason Bourne walt.
EDIT: I like the idea of banks so posh that their bin liners double as respectable shoulder bags.
Every time this cash debate comes up on PB I get people telling me that living without cash is impossible because of the need to use it for a, b, c...
I haven't used cash for five years and very little for ten years, so I know what I am talking about.
Again, I never use cash. I never need cash. If you need to pay someone you can just transfer it.
It really is that simple.
And you are one person - and one extreme example - out of millions. To extrapolate your very unusual and limited experience to the rest of the world is stunningly ignorant.
Not that extreme. Lots of people I know either rarely or never use cash. Cash is dying in London. In fact, to many it's already dead.
See also: 'nobody watches TV', 'nobody uses Facebook', even 'nobody buys CDs'.
Long tail decline =/= dead (thankfully, or I'd already be worm food and not having daft arguments on the internet)
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
I'm not saying that's not your experience. I'm saying that your experience is not universal.
Well you wrote this:
"And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for."
(my emphasis)
Which suggests you thought that your experience was universal, so I challenged it.
I thought Single Transferable vote would have encouraged a greater number of candidates. What's the slogan about no wasted votes?
Yet, the BBC report "a total of 807 people are competing for 462 seats in council chambers across Northern Ireland". At fewer than 2 candidates per seat that seems somewhat sparse a choice. Anyone want to suggest an explanation? Is it to do with NI's unique political geography?
I imagine it has a lot to do with likely strengths being pretty well known in multi-member wards with STV.
So, in a 6 seat ward, SF might not put up more than 2, if they think they'll win 1 seat or 2 at a stretch. Likewise, if the DUP is likely to get 3 of those seats, they'll likely only put up 4 candidates.
I think those low multipliers, i.e. candidates per existing councillor, for the main parties in particular, drives a lower number of candidates overall.
I think the NI assembly elections are instructive in this regard:
DUP stood 30 candidates for 90 seats and got 25 elected. SF stood 34 candidates and got 27 elected Alliance 17/24 candidates returned UUP 9/26 candidates returned SDLP 8/22 candidates returned
It was only the extensive presence of smaller parties beyond these in every constituency that bolstered the candidates/seats ratio.
Final nesting: other parties contributed 102 candidates, 4 of whom were elected, so an average of under 6 minor parties per constituency.
Overall candidate:seat ratio in assembly elections was therefore 238 candidates for 90 seats = only 2.64.
Courthouse News Service - Judge stops DeSantis supporters from sending petition urging him to run for president The Wednesday evening ruling comes ahead of an expected campaign announcement in the coming days.
Amid reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis plans to officially enter the race for president next week, a federal judge ruled supporters cannot send him a petition urging him to run because it would violate campaign finance laws.
Ready for Ron, a political action committee that considers DeSantis the “Next Great American President,” asked the judge for an injunction allowing them to send the petition, including the names and contact information of those who signed, after the Federal Election Commission blocked it.
U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed with the FEC Wednesday evening that the petition was effectively a contact list, “something of value,” and would therefore exceed campaign contribution limits.
“The FEC’s conclusion that RFR’s contact list constitutes a ‘contribution’ under [the Federal Election Campaign Act] is ‘not only reasonable but also the best interpretation of the statute,’” Moss wrote in his 60-page opinion.
Attorneys for Ready for Ron disagreed with the decision and said it was “certainly not the end” of the litigation. They said the ruling denied the signatories their right to express their political views.
“Speech is not money, and should not be regulated as such,” said Dan Backer, an attorney with Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman. . . .
The petition’s website warns visitors that “America is in grave danger from the Radical Left and their failed, socialist, woke policies,” calling on them to sign and “let Ron know [you’re] behind him and want to join his team.”
According to court documents, each signature has a market value of 5 cents, and with over 200,000 signatures thus far, the petition is worth over $10,000, well beyond contribution limits.
The FECA limits campaign contributions at $3,300 per individual – which includes political committees – when the recipient is officially a candidate. The law makes a slight exception when the recipient is still “testing the waters,” allowing contributions up to $5,000.
Court documents show that the committee has said it expects to garner over a million signatures, which would inflate the value of the petition to approximately $50,000. . . .
The committee has refused to cut the contact information from the petition – which both the FEC and Moss said would allow them to send it to the governor – arguing that the information was necessary in order to “demonstrate to Gov. DeSantis the signatures are authentic,” an apparent reference to debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen using fraudulent votes.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
And the 14 million* people who have very limited or no access to online services? How do they do that?
Stat from the Digital Poverty lady being interviewed by v the BBC yesterday.
See above – 'electronic cash' cards are relatively commonplace in the US – several providers offer them.
You have to ask yourself whether we are really going to be lugging silly scraps of paper and near-worthless shards of metal around with us in ten years?
Unless you are talking about a regular bank debit card, the "electronic cash" cards are a fucking ripoff, as I found out several months ago.
Easy to pooh pooh when overstating benefits and understating downsides of cashlessness.
There are quite a few that have no charges according to this...
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
What use is a sheaf of £20, for paying people? I myself carry a couple of bearer bonds for half a million each*, to manage the small expenses of life.
*Fiver to the charity of choice for a correct guess as to the reference.
Die Hard? It's the only film I know that references bearer bonds.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
What use is a sheaf of £20, for paying people? I myself carry a couple of bearer bonds for half a million each*, to manage the small expenses of life.
*Fiver to the charity of choice for a correct guess as to the reference.
Die Hard? It's the only film I know that references bearer bonds.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
I'm not saying that's not your experience. I'm saying that your experience is not universal.
Well you wrote this:
"And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for."
(my emphasis)
Which suggests you thought that your experience was universal, so I challenged it.
'As anyone...knows' is just idiomatic English. You know I didn't mean literally a drawer-full as well?
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
London generally. And from what I see most other cities. Cash is utterly pointless in day to day use. I wouldn't ban it. It could potentially play its part in a cyberattack apocalypse. But hauling around silly bits of paper and a pockets full of near-worthless metal is stupid. There is no need, hence why, increasingly, people avoid doing so.
I make a point of actively avoiding any shops, restaurants etc who don't take both cash and cards. If they are not willing to provide a reasonable level of service for all their customers then I am not willing to support them.
You'd struggle down here. Wouldn't be able to catch a bus, for starters.
I wouldn't struggle at all. The number of establishments not taking cash is vanishingly small in the grand scheme of things.
Well the entire bus network (daily ridership approx THREE MILLION) doesn't take cash...
I don't take the bus
Would you refuse to take a London bus because they don't accept cash?
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
I'm not saying that's not your experience. I'm saying that your experience is not universal.
Well you wrote this:
"And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for."
(my emphasis)
Which suggests you thought that your experience was universal, so I challenged it.
'As anyone...knows' is just idiomatic English. You know I didn't mean literally a drawer-full as well?
Well, to listen to some people on this forum, the use of groats and bartering with head of cattle is still en vogue, so apologies if I took your post too literally!
"The number of visits made by residents of the United Kingdom to the European Union was significantly lower in 2021 than in the previous years due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Overall, EU member countries recorded around 14.6 million visits from the UK in 2021, while they reported nearly 67 million UK visits in 2019. Meanwhile, the number of visits from the European Union to the UK also declined sharply during the health crisis".
Lovely, but that's not what your words implied. Read it again.
Mrs Rata had a card integration failure with ParentPay (from my experience across 5 schools a near monopoly provider) a few weeks ago which their Indian help desk denied flatly and the bank had to badger them to sort. Deadlines for school trip payment imminent, much hassle.
And a few things that merely go via the school (sports clubs one offs, small change charity) still run via cash rather than long distance to and fro over account details.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
Before covid, I would always grab a handful of coins before I left the house. I must admit, I rarely do automatically now. But if I know I'm going to be somewhere coins might be needed - gym, supermarket, car park - I generally remember to do so.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
And the 14 million* people who have very limited or no access to online services? How do they do that?
Stat from the Digital Poverty lady being interviewed by v the BBC yesterday.
See above – 'electronic cash' cards are relatively commonplace in the US – several providers offer them.
You have to ask yourself whether we are really going to be lugging silly scraps of paper and near-worthless shards of metal around with us in ten years?
Unless you are talking about a regular bank debit card, the "electronic cash" cards are a fucking ripoff, as I found out several months ago.
Easy to pooh pooh when overstating benefits and understating downsides of cashlessness.
There are quite a few that have no charges according to this...
I have a young friend who is very enamoured of the cashless society etc, or at least was.
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
First photoshoot and meetings begun for G7 leaders in Japan. This is Sunak and Meloni's first G7 summit as they join Biden, Macron, Trudeau, Scholz and Kishida (plus EU leaders Von Der Leyen and Michel).
Poor Liz never got to attend even 1 G7 or G20 summit as PM. I believe the first UK PM never to attend either since they were established
First photoshoot and meetings begun for G7 leaders in Japan. This is Sunak and Meloni's first G7 summit as they join Biden, Macron, Trudeau, Scholz and Kishida (plus EU leaders Von Der Leyen and Michel).
Poor Liz never got to attend even 1 G7 or G20 summit as PM. I believe the first UK PM never to attend either since they were established
I have a young friend who is very enamoured of the cashless society etc, or at least was.
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
I advise both my kids to always have a tenner or twenty on them. Tucked into their phone or pocket. Never use it unless it is an emergency. It is basic common sense.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
I have several hundred thousand dollars in various denominations of a number of currencies as well as a firearm and a number of passports in a Zurich safe deposit box to be on the safe side.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
And the 14 million* people who have very limited or no access to online services? How do they do that?
Stat from the Digital Poverty lady being interviewed by v the BBC yesterday.
See above – 'electronic cash' cards are relatively commonplace in the US – several providers offer them.
You have to ask yourself whether we are really going to be lugging silly scraps of paper and near-worthless shards of metal around with us in ten years?
Unless you are talking about a regular bank debit card, the "electronic cash" cards are a fucking ripoff, as I found out several months ago.
Easy to pooh pooh when overstating benefits and understating downsides of cashlessness.
There are quite a few that have no charges according to this...
I have a young friend who is very enamoured of the cashless society etc, or at least was.
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
One would hope that bus drivers are trained to let a woman in danger on without paying. That is common sense. Not insisting people pay (by any means – cash or card). I mean the buses in London have been cashless for YEARS. So presumably this has been encountered and addressed?
SF topped the poll within Ballymena and Lisburn which is close to a miracle.
SDLP and UUP losing seats across the province and are now close to irrelevant within local politics.
Early reports suggest Mal O'Hara (GP LEADER) could lose the seat in which he won in 2019. It was always going to be extremely difficult for the Greens.
More to follow..
Welcome back. We need more contributions from Northern Ireland on this site.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
I'm not saying that's not your experience. I'm saying that your experience is not universal.
Well you wrote this:
"And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for."
(my emphasis)
Which suggests you thought that your experience was universal, so I challenged it.
'As anyone...knows' is just idiomatic English. You know I didn't mean literally a drawer-full as well?
Well, to listen to some people on this forum, the use of groats and bartering with head of cattle is still en vogue, so apologies if I took your post too literally!
You seem to have got embroiled in the 'cash' debate again and I fear it was my fault this time for 1st mentioning it. Apols to you, apols to all.
I have a young friend who is very enamoured of the cashless society etc, or at least was.
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
SF topped the poll within Ballymena and Lisburn which is close to a miracle.
SDLP and UUP losing seats across the province and are now close to irrelevant within local politics.
Early reports suggest Mal O'Hara (GP LEADER) could lose the seat in which he won in 2019. It was always going to be extremely difficult for the Greens.
More to follow..
Do we have a final tally of the first preference votes?
I have a young friend who is very enamoured of the cashless society etc, or at least was.
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
I advise both my kids to always have a tenner or twenty on them. Tucked into their phone or pocket. Never use it unless it is an emergency. It is basic common sense.
Belonging to a different generation, and living in a small northern town where cash is still accepted everywhere, I always like to have enough cash to get home. Though getting home with cash won't work in London or no doubt loads of other systems.
On a London - Glasgow train In was on last week it was announced that the buffet/bar was 'cash only'.(!)
I had always assumed that the world of on course betting, drugs, off books bits of work out of sight of the revenue, car boot sales, church bazaars, old people, children and the eternal possibility of electronic systems failures there would always be cash as a back up. I still think it would be a good thing for it to endure and be always an acceptable form of payment for everyday transactions.
Does Starmer get to decide whether EU trade barriers get relaxed, UK joins the Dublin Agreement and there's a security pact with the EU?
I suspect the EU would be interested in the third, but not the first two. Maybe there could be some haggling, but I doubt it will be a huge transformation.
DeSantis is what you get when you go all in on the culture war.
I have often sounded a cautionary note on these topics on here: that I think people too readily dismiss these topics as unimportant to voters. But there is a limit. Someone might for the sake of argument disagree with “woke” ideology but it is not for most people their main point of obsession. DeSantis gives the impression he is absolutely consumed by it. He lives and breathes it.
I get that taking on Disney for being too woke -might- be popular with some of his voter coalition. But is driving business away from investing in the state a good look really, when it comes down to the fundamentals?
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
I'm not saying that's not your experience. I'm saying that your experience is not universal.
Well you wrote this:
"And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for."
(my emphasis)
Which suggests you thought that your experience was universal, so I challenged it.
'As anyone...knows' is just idiomatic English. You know I didn't mean literally a drawer-full as well?
Well, to listen to some people on this forum, the use of groats and bartering with head of cattle is still en vogue, so apologies if I took your post too literally!
You seem to have got embroiled in the 'cash' debate again and I fear it was my fault this time for 1st mentioning it. Apols to you, apols to all.
Perhaps instead we could talk about Brexit or county boundary changes for a completely novel change of subject.
I have a young friend who is very enamoured of the cashless society etc, or at least was.
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
I advise both my kids to always have a tenner or twenty on them. Tucked into their phone or pocket. Never use it unless it is an emergency. It is basic common sense.
Pocket better than phone (I'm thinking) since loss of phone is one of the contingencies that could trigger a need for cash?
I have a young friend who is very enamoured of the cashless society etc, or at least was.
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
Cash will always be king for me 💰
Good tennis player in his day, but not sure he ever had a coronation?
He acted like a cock, not for the first time, and because referees are not as important as him he thinks and knows that he can refuse to just say sorry for being a cock. That he is fun and charming when he wants to be makes it worse, not better, since it's a choice.
It'd be nice for managers to actually set examples and not indulge in petty whinging bollocks, but few of them see any need.
Described at the National Conservatives shindig as Germany "mucking up" nationalism. There was a time when proper Conservatives did not describe evil in such frivolous terms. There was also a time when proper Conservatives understood that no country was immune from behaving like savages and that one way of preventing this was to have strong institutions and a respect for the rule of law. That time is not now and it is one reason (of many) why the current lot masquerading as Conservatives need to bugger off and rediscover their moral compass.
DeSantis is what you get when you go all in on the culture war.
I have often sounded a cautionary note on these topics on here: that I think people too readily dismiss these topics as unimportant to voters. But there is a limit. Someone might for the sake of argument disagree with “woke” ideology but it is not for most people their main point of obsession. DeSantis gives the impression he is absolutely consumed by it. He lives and breathes it.
I get that taking on Disney for being too woke -might- be popular with some of his voter coalition. But is driving business away from investing in the state a good look really, when it comes down to the fundamentals?
People dismiss the issues as unimportant too readily because it is rarely the most important issue for people, they will not generally flag it up as one of their key concerns next to, say, the economy. But that disguises that if the issue becomes relevant on a topic, people may have pretty strong views about it.
As you say, those for whom it is the main point of obsession are easy to spot, and DeSantis, who already won re-election handily, didn't need to go so heavy handed on all this.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
How do you help homeless beggars, Big Issue sellers etc.
All big issue sellers were expected to accept card payments by end of 2022.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
And the 14 million* people who have very limited or no access to online services? How do they do that?
Stat from the Digital Poverty lady being interviewed by v the BBC yesterday.
See above – 'electronic cash' cards are relatively commonplace in the US – several providers offer them.
You have to ask yourself whether we are really going to be lugging silly scraps of paper and near-worthless shards of metal around with us in ten years?
Unless you are talking about a regular bank debit card, the "electronic cash" cards are a fucking ripoff, as I found out several months ago.
Easy to pooh pooh when overstating benefits and understating downsides of cashlessness.
There are quite a few that have no charges according to this...
Courthouse News Service - Judge stops DeSantis supporters from sending petition urging him to run for president The Wednesday evening ruling comes ahead of an expected campaign announcement in the coming days.
Amid reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis plans to officially enter the race for president next week, a federal judge ruled supporters cannot send him a petition urging him to run because it would violate campaign finance laws.
Ready for Ron, a political action committee that considers DeSantis the “Next Great American President,” asked the judge for an injunction allowing them to send the petition, including the names and contact information of those who signed, after the Federal Election Commission blocked it.
U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed with the FEC Wednesday evening that the petition was effectively a contact list, “something of value,” and would therefore exceed campaign contribution limits.
“The FEC’s conclusion that RFR’s contact list constitutes a ‘contribution’ under [the Federal Election Campaign Act] is ‘not only reasonable but also the best interpretation of the statute,’” Moss wrote in his 60-page opinion.
Attorneys for Ready for Ron disagreed with the decision and said it was “certainly not the end” of the litigation. They said the ruling denied the signatories their right to express their political views.
“Speech is not money, and should not be regulated as such,” said Dan Backer, an attorney with Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman. . . .
The petition’s website warns visitors that “America is in grave danger from the Radical Left and their failed, socialist, woke policies,” calling on them to sign and “let Ron know [you’re] behind him and want to join his team.”
According to court documents, each signature has a market value of 5 cents, and with over 200,000 signatures thus far, the petition is worth over $10,000, well beyond contribution limits.
The FECA limits campaign contributions at $3,300 per individual – which includes political committees – when the recipient is officially a candidate. The law makes a slight exception when the recipient is still “testing the waters,” allowing contributions up to $5,000.
Court documents show that the committee has said it expects to garner over a million signatures, which would inflate the value of the petition to approximately $50,000. . . .
The committee has refused to cut the contact information from the petition – which both the FEC and Moss said would allow them to send it to the governor – arguing that the information was necessary in order to “demonstrate to Gov. DeSantis the signatures are authentic,” an apparent reference to debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen using fraudulent votes.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
I have several hundred thousand dollars in various denominations of a number of currencies as well as a firearm and a number of passports in a Zurich safe deposit box to be on the safe side.
And a fresh pair of boxers.
I've been carrying a fresh pair of boxers around for weeks. They are still in my coat pocket after a colonoscopy.
Courthouse News Service - Judge stops DeSantis supporters from sending petition urging him to run for president The Wednesday evening ruling comes ahead of an expected campaign announcement in the coming days.
Amid reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis plans to officially enter the race for president next week, a federal judge ruled supporters cannot send him a petition urging him to run because it would violate campaign finance laws.
Ready for Ron, a political action committee that considers DeSantis the “Next Great American President,” asked the judge for an injunction allowing them to send the petition, including the names and contact information of those who signed, after the Federal Election Commission blocked it.
U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed with the FEC Wednesday evening that the petition was effectively a contact list, “something of value,” and would therefore exceed campaign contribution limits.
“The FEC’s conclusion that RFR’s contact list constitutes a ‘contribution’ under [the Federal Election Campaign Act] is ‘not only reasonable but also the best interpretation of the statute,’” Moss wrote in his 60-page opinion.
Attorneys for Ready for Ron disagreed with the decision and said it was “certainly not the end” of the litigation. They said the ruling denied the signatories their right to express their political views.
“Speech is not money, and should not be regulated as such,” said Dan Backer, an attorney with Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman. . . .
The petition’s website warns visitors that “America is in grave danger from the Radical Left and their failed, socialist, woke policies,” calling on them to sign and “let Ron know [you’re] behind him and want to join his team.”
According to court documents, each signature has a market value of 5 cents, and with over 200,000 signatures thus far, the petition is worth over $10,000, well beyond contribution limits.
The FECA limits campaign contributions at $3,300 per individual – which includes political committees – when the recipient is officially a candidate. The law makes a slight exception when the recipient is still “testing the waters,” allowing contributions up to $5,000.
Court documents show that the committee has said it expects to garner over a million signatures, which would inflate the value of the petition to approximately $50,000. . . .
The committee has refused to cut the contact information from the petition – which both the FEC and Moss said would allow them to send it to the governor – arguing that the information was necessary in order to “demonstrate to Gov. DeSantis the signatures are authentic,” an apparent reference to debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen using fraudulent votes.
There are still campaign finance laws? How has this Supreme Court not gotten around to (in effect) legislating on that?
Actually on the face of it I do kind of get the reaction to this one.
"Attorneys for Ready for Ron disagreed with the decision and said it was “certainly not the end” of the litigation."
Which in theory could go all the way to SCOTUS . . . though whether Supremes would wish to consider the matter is debatable.
My guess is NOT. Seeing as how the contact info connected with individual petition signers is clearly an in-kind contribution under plain language of law; THAT is the legal issue, not names themselves.
Barring disasters that would appear to make things fairly safe for Biden. He has a year and a half of mid-term unwind, swingback and Trump being a dick to help see him home.
Courthouse News Service - Judge stops DeSantis supporters from sending petition urging him to run for president The Wednesday evening ruling comes ahead of an expected campaign announcement in the coming days.
Amid reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis plans to officially enter the race for president next week, a federal judge ruled supporters cannot send him a petition urging him to run because it would violate campaign finance laws.
Ready for Ron, a political action committee that considers DeSantis the “Next Great American President,” asked the judge for an injunction allowing them to send the petition, including the names and contact information of those who signed, after the Federal Election Commission blocked it.
U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed with the FEC Wednesday evening that the petition was effectively a contact list, “something of value,” and would therefore exceed campaign contribution limits.
“The FEC’s conclusion that RFR’s contact list constitutes a ‘contribution’ under [the Federal Election Campaign Act] is ‘not only reasonable but also the best interpretation of the statute,’” Moss wrote in his 60-page opinion.
Attorneys for Ready for Ron disagreed with the decision and said it was “certainly not the end” of the litigation. They said the ruling denied the signatories their right to express their political views.
“Speech is not money, and should not be regulated as such,” said Dan Backer, an attorney with Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman. . . .
The petition’s website warns visitors that “America is in grave danger from the Radical Left and their failed, socialist, woke policies,” calling on them to sign and “let Ron know [you’re] behind him and want to join his team.”
According to court documents, each signature has a market value of 5 cents, and with over 200,000 signatures thus far, the petition is worth over $10,000, well beyond contribution limits.
The FECA limits campaign contributions at $3,300 per individual – which includes political committees – when the recipient is officially a candidate. The law makes a slight exception when the recipient is still “testing the waters,” allowing contributions up to $5,000.
Court documents show that the committee has said it expects to garner over a million signatures, which would inflate the value of the petition to approximately $50,000. . . .
The committee has refused to cut the contact information from the petition – which both the FEC and Moss said would allow them to send it to the governor – arguing that the information was necessary in order to “demonstrate to Gov. DeSantis the signatures are authentic,” an apparent reference to debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen using fraudulent votes.
There are still campaign finance laws? How has this Supreme Court not gotten around to (in effect) legislating on that?
Actually on the face of it I do kind of get the reaction to this one.
"Attorneys for Ready for Ron disagreed with the decision and said it was “certainly not the end” of the litigation."
Which in theory could go all the way to SCOTUS . . . though whether Supremes would wish to consider the matter is debatable.
My guess is NOT. Seeing as how the contact info connected with individual petition signers is clearly an in-kind contribution under plain language of law; THAT is the legal issue, not names themselves.
Given how Thomas seems to operate whether they'd take up a case presumably depends on if it would benefit a rich mate of theirs*
*this statement is satire and not in any way to be taken as a literal allegation regarding any past, present or future Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Described at the National Conservatives shindig as Germany "mucking up" nationalism. There was a time when proper Conservatives did not describe evil in such frivolous terms. There was also a time when proper Conservatives understood that no country was immune from behaving like savages and that one way of preventing this was to have strong institutions and a respect for the rule of law. That time is not now and it is one reason (of many) why the current lot masquerading as Conservatives need to bugger off and rediscover their moral compass.
It reminds me of the communists who insist that true communism has never been achieved and would be totally different to all those communist countries that existed. If the ideology reduces to "NSDAP but done better", not for me!
Not a lot of movement from Omnisis and Techne this week. The former does see Labour drop a little from its "frothy" 51%.
Techne is virtually the same as last week - the 2019 Conservative vote splits 55% Conservative, 16% Labour, 12% Don't Know, 7% Reform and 6% LD.
As said, Omnisis has Labour down four but changes elsewhere are well within margin of error and the lead remains at 22 points. Not such good news for Starmer on the "best PM" tracker where's he down seven and Sunak is up four but again that brings the numbers more into line with other pollsters.
The swing from Conservative to Labour is 14% with Techne and 17% with Omnisis.
Barring disasters that would appear to make things fairly safe for Biden. He has a year and a half of mid-term unwind, swingback and Trump being a dick to help see him home.
I would draw precisely the opposite conclusion. Namely 43% of those polled would vote for Trump when in a world with a scintilla of integrity and sense the % would be approaching zero. So it follows that this group is large enough and the USA crazy enough that Trump could well win. When Trump won in 2016 it was Trump 46%, Clinton 48%.
He can win. I put it at 30-35% chance. Bet accordingly. But for the free world it is deadly dangerous.
I have a young friend who is very enamoured of the cashless society etc, or at least was.
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
The total reliance of many people on their phones is just silly. A single point of failure, which can easily be dropped and smashed, or run out of battery, or be nicked or lost. The most extraordinary thing is seeing people travelling abroad totally dependent on their phones - not a good idea!
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
I have several hundred thousand dollars in various denominations of a number of currencies as well as a firearm and a number of passports in a Zurich safe deposit box to be on the safe side.
And a fresh pair of boxers.
I've been carrying a fresh pair of boxers around for weeks. They are still in my coat pocket after a colonoscopy.
The above post deserves a prize or award, though I am not sure what for.
As we know, such polls aren't as significant as the numbers in the key states. In 2016, Clinton beat Trump 48-46 for all the good it did her in the Electoral College which she lost 306-232 due to narrow states in key states.
Biden's win over Trump in 2020 reversed that exactly on a 51-47 popular vote win.
We've had the same here - Labour polled more votes than the Conservatives in 1951 but lost while in February 1974 the Conservatives won the national vote but Labour won more seats.
We need to see polls from states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin and of course the primary process.
'Ready for Ron' is a bad slogan to me because I worry that any slogan should not sound like it could be a question to which the answer is No.
Make America Great Again? Well, who'd say no to that?
Believe that "Ready for Ron" is some kind of exploratory superPAC, certainly NOT the RDS campaign which of course does NOT yet exist, officially.
PBers may be reading bit toooooo much into early tea leaves.
Sure, it may not be his official campaign slogan (yet), but we all know these groups coordinate closely with candidates whatever the rules might say, and someone close to him could have suggested to the aether what might make a decent name if they wanted.
Barring disasters that would appear to make things fairly safe for Biden. He has a year and a half of mid-term unwind, swingback and Trump being a dick to help see him home.
I would draw precisely the opposite conclusion. Namely 43% of those polled would vote for Trump when in a world with a scintilla of integrity and sense the % would be approaching zero. So it follows that this group is large enough and the USA crazy enough that Trump could well win. When Trump won in 2016 it was Trump 46%, Clinton 48%.
He can win. I put it at 30-35% chance. Bet accordingly. But for the free world it is deadly dangerous.
Or, Trump’s supporters are going to be convinced and pledging support already, whereas people will be non commital on the incumbent before coming home at the election. I really can’t see many floating voters thinking “oh all right then, I’ll give Trump a go” after last time.
If Sunak’s Tories were 1% ahead of Starmer’s Labour now we’d be pencilling in another Tory majority.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
London generally. And from what I see most other cities. Cash is utterly pointless in day to day use. I wouldn't ban it. It could potentially play its part in a cyberattack apocalypse. But hauling around silly bits of paper and a pockets full of near-worthless metal is stupid. There is no need, hence why, increasingly, people avoid doing so.
I make a point of actively avoiding any shops, restaurants etc who don't take both cash and cards. If they are not willing to provide a reasonable level of service for all their customers then I am not willing to support them.
You'd struggle down here. Wouldn't be able to catch a bus, for starters.
I wouldn't struggle at all. The number of establishments not taking cash is vanishingly small in the grand scheme of things.
Well the entire bus network (daily ridership approx THREE MILLION) doesn't take cash...
You can buy paper bus passes or travelcards with cash. Day, 7-day, monthly etc.
As we know, such polls aren't as significant as the numbers in the key states. In 2016, Clinton beat Trump 48-46 for all the good it did her in the Electoral College which she lost 306-232 due to narrow states in key states.
Biden's win over Trump in 2020 reversed that exactly on a 51-47 popular vote win.
We've had the same here - Labour polled more votes than the Conservatives in 1951 but lost while in February 1974 the Conservatives won the national vote but Labour won more seats.
We need to see polls from states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin and of course the primary process.
And then try to factor in how much voter suppression/boosting each state will be able to manage, according to its preferences, which may impact the margins.
Barring disasters that would appear to make things fairly safe for Biden. He has a year and a half of mid-term unwind, swingback and Trump being a dick to help see him home.
I would draw precisely the opposite conclusion. Namely 43% of those polled would vote for Trump when in a world with a scintilla of integrity and sense the % would be approaching zero. So it follows that this group is large enough and the USA crazy enough that Trump could well win. When Trump won in 2016 it was Trump 46%, Clinton 48%.
He can win. I put it at 30-35% chance. Bet accordingly. But for the free world it is deadly dangerous.
Or, Trump’s supporters are going to be convinced and pledging support already, whereas people will be non commital on the incumbent before coming home at the election. I really can’t see many floating voters thinking “oh all right then, I’ll give Trump a go” after last time.
If Sunak’s Tories were 1% ahead of Starmer’s Labour now we’d be pencilling in another Tory majority.
Heart and hope says agree. Head says Trump is a fantastic campaigner and could do it.
Barring disasters that would appear to make things fairly safe for Biden. He has a year and a half of mid-term unwind, swingback and Trump being a dick to help see him home.
The GOP will find a way not to choose an unelectable like Trump as their candidate. That's what I think.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
I used cash yesterday. Some of my other anecdotes are available for a reasonable fee should one wish to book me.
If I look in my wallet I have no UK notes. However I still have some notes from my holidays over the past 12 months.
That right there is another big flaw with cash – latency. Money unspent in foreign currency that you could have in your current account.
I have been to France, Spain, Austria and the US in the last few years. I have never needed cash in any other them. I did withdraw €10 because I assumed the bus in Spain would require cash. The driver looked at me like I was mad and pointed to a sign that revealed it was 30% cheaper to pay by card...
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
Incomplete evidence fallacy though.
I still use cash myself. Mostly card, but still - sometimes cash. And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for.
My son is just out of primary school (two years). Haven't used cash for nearly ten years. I just use a bank app to cash transfer peer-to-peer (including schools). Takes two minutes.
I used cash yesterday. Some of my other anecdotes are available for a reasonable fee should one wish to book me.
If I look in my wallet I have no UK notes. However I still have some notes from my holidays over the past 12 months.
That right there is another big flaw with cash – latency. Money unspent in foreign currency that you could have in your current account.
I have been to France, Spain, Austria and the US in the last few years. I have never needed cash in any other them. I did withdraw €10 because I assumed the bus in Spain would require cash. The driver looked at me like I was mad and pointed to a sign that revealed it was 30% cheaper to pay by card...
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
I have several hundred thousand dollars in various denominations of a number of currencies as well as a firearm and a number of passports in a Zurich safe deposit box to be on the safe side.
And a fresh pair of boxers.
I've been carrying a fresh pair of boxers around for weeks. They are still in my coat pocket after a colonoscopy.
As we know, such polls aren't as significant as the numbers in the key states. In 2016, Clinton beat Trump 48-46 for all the good it did her in the Electoral College which she lost 306-232 due to narrow states in key states.
Biden's win over Trump in 2020 reversed that exactly on a 51-47 popular vote win.
We've had the same here - Labour polled more votes than the Conservatives in 1951 but lost while in February 1974 the Conservatives won the national vote but Labour won more seats.
We need to see polls from states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin and of course the primary process.
(And Pennsylvania)
The midterms give us a hint: Trump backed candidates - Lake in Arizona, Walker in Georgia, and Mastriano/Oz in Pennsylvania - all lost. In the mid-terms. With a historically unpopular President.
By contrast, Republicans who were less aligned with Trump - like DeSantis in Florida or Kemp in Georgia - walked their reelection.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Well a whole new set of coins with the King's head on have been announced today
May the force be worth you and long live the Emperor...
Great, more wasteful shrapnel that is almost worthless.
What is the bloody point of it?
Any coins you don't want, feel free to send my way.
I don't have any ever, so you'll be waiting until the 12th of Never.
I haven't even set eyes on most denominations for several years – for the simple reason that neither me nor virtually anyone else down here ever seems to use them!
Down here being Hoxton I assume. 😊
Much of London runs cashless - as an option. As does Hamburg - was there 2 weeks ago.
There are occasional small stores with a minimum spend.
I keep a couple of pound coins in my pocket. Mostly get used in supermarket trolleys…
I went to a swimming pool / spa / gym the other day in a hotel just outside London. The hotel itself was very nice but the pool / spa had seen better days. The lockers required a pound coin – which not a single person there had. So everyone took their stuff out into the pool area wrapped in a towel. Cash is dead.
"Not a single person" had a pound coin?
Not when I was in the changing room (and there were a few blokes in there). I'm sure at some point in the history of the spa someone might have had one on them.
I always carry at least one pound coin for just such an occasion , especially supermarkets. Most coins I keep in tins at home but always have a sheaf of £20 notes in my pocket in case of emergency. Of a generation who baulk at using a card for 50p or a quid etc, makes you look like a loser big time.
What use is a sheaf of £20, for paying people? I myself carry a couple of bearer bonds for half a million each*, to manage the small expenses of life.
*Fiver to the charity of choice for a correct guess as to the reference.
Die Hard? It's the only film I know that references bearer bonds.
Comments
SF 38
DUP 28
ALLIANCE 12
SF topped the poll within Ballymena and Lisburn which is close to a miracle.
SDLP and UUP losing seats across the province and are now close to irrelevant within local politics.
Early reports suggest Mal O'Hara (GP LEADER) could lose the seat in which he won in 2019. It was always going to be extremely difficult for the Greens.
More to follow..
FPT
"Yes Rog, out of a population of 68 million, 60 million of us go to europe each year."
https://www.statista.com/statistics/569263/visits-to-the-eu-by-united-kingdom-uk-residents/
"The number of visits made by residents of the United Kingdom to the European Union was significantly lower in 2021 than in the previous years due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Overall, EU member countries recorded around 14.6 million visits from the UK in 2021, while they reported nearly 67 million UK visits in 2019. Meanwhile, the number of visits from the European Union to the UK also declined sharply during the health crisis".
*Fiver to the charity of choice for a correct guess as to the reference.
EDIT: I like the idea of banks so posh that their bin liners double as respectable shoulder bags.
Long tail decline =/= dead (thankfully, or I'd already be worm food and not having daft arguments on the internet)
"And anyone with primary age kids knows you need a drawer-full of pound coins and fifty-pees for the various random stuff you end up having to pay for."
(my emphasis)
Which suggests you thought that your experience was universal, so I challenged it.
Overall candidate:seat ratio in assembly elections was therefore 238 candidates for 90 seats = only 2.64.
The Wednesday evening ruling comes ahead of an expected campaign announcement in the coming days.
Amid reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis plans to officially enter the race for president next week, a federal judge ruled supporters cannot send him a petition urging him to run because it would violate campaign finance laws.
Ready for Ron, a political action committee that considers DeSantis the “Next Great American President,” asked the judge for an injunction allowing them to send the petition, including the names and contact information of those who signed, after the Federal Election Commission blocked it.
U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed with the FEC Wednesday evening that the petition was effectively a contact list, “something of value,” and would therefore exceed campaign contribution limits.
“The FEC’s conclusion that RFR’s contact list constitutes a ‘contribution’ under [the Federal Election Campaign Act] is ‘not only reasonable but also the best interpretation of the statute,’” Moss wrote in his 60-page opinion.
Attorneys for Ready for Ron disagreed with the decision and said it was “certainly not the end” of the litigation. They said the ruling denied the signatories their right to express their political views.
“Speech is not money, and should not be regulated as such,” said Dan Backer, an attorney with Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman. . . .
The petition’s website warns visitors that “America is in grave danger from the Radical Left and their failed, socialist, woke policies,” calling on them to sign and “let Ron know [you’re] behind him and want to join his team.”
According to court documents, each signature has a market value of 5 cents, and with over 200,000 signatures thus far, the petition is worth over $10,000, well beyond contribution limits.
The FECA limits campaign contributions at $3,300 per individual – which includes political committees – when the recipient is officially a candidate. The law makes a slight exception when the recipient is still “testing the waters,” allowing contributions up to $5,000.
Court documents show that the committee has said it expects to garner over a million signatures, which would inflate the value of the petition to approximately $50,000. . . .
The committee has refused to cut the contact information from the petition – which both the FEC and Moss said would allow them to send it to the governor – arguing that the information was necessary in order to “demonstrate to Gov. DeSantis the signatures are authentic,” an apparent reference to debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen using fraudulent votes.
https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-stops-desantis-supporters-from-sending-petition-urging-him-to-run-for-president/
Doing his bit to keep birth rates up, etc.
weeks ago which their Indian help desk denied flatly and the bank had to badger them to sort. Deadlines for school trip payment imminent, much hassle.
And a few things that merely go via the school (sports clubs one offs, small change charity) still run via cash rather than long distance to and fro over account details.
I must admit, I rarely do automatically now. But if I know I'm going to be somewhere coins might be needed - gym, supermarket, car park - I generally remember to do so.
Reckon I am NOT as intelligent, organized, prosperous, hip, up-to-date, tuned-in, etc., etc. as you. A pity, but there you have it!
A few weeks ago she was stuck in a dodgy area and her phone went wrong; and since her card was on her phone she couldn't get out of the slightly sketchy area, in the rain. No longer a fan of the cashless society, although in this case she should also have carried a card for the bus. I personally don't like that London buses no longer will take cash, for the kind of scenario given above. And what if the need is more urgent than a bus, in that situation ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/triathlon/65651064
SF 30% 45 councillors
DUP 23% 35 councillors
Alliance 12% 13 councillors
UUP 12% 11 councillors
SDLP 8% 6 councillors
TUV 2% 1 councillor
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2023/northern-ireland/results
On a London - Glasgow train In was on last week it was announced that the buffet/bar was 'cash only'.(!)
I had always assumed that the world of on course betting, drugs, off books bits of work out of sight of the revenue, car boot sales, church bazaars, old people, children and the eternal possibility of electronic systems failures there would always be cash as a back up. I still think it would be a good thing for it to endure and be always an acceptable form of payment for everyday transactions.
I suspect the EU would be interested in the third, but not the first two. Maybe there could be some haggling, but I doubt it will be a huge transformation.
I have often sounded a cautionary note on these topics on here: that I think people too readily dismiss these topics as unimportant to voters. But there is a limit. Someone might for the sake of argument disagree with “woke” ideology but it is not for most people their main point of obsession. DeSantis gives the impression he is absolutely consumed by it. He lives and breathes it.
I get that taking on Disney for being too woke -might- be popular with some of his voter coalition. But is driving business away from investing in the state a good look really, when it comes down to the fundamentals?
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has suggested he will only pay his £75,000 Football Association fine if the money goes to "a good cause".
The German said he would "like to know" and "if it does, I'm happy to pay it. If it doesn't, we need to talk again".
Klopp received the fine and a two-match ban for comments about referee Paul Tierney after a 4-3 win over Tottenham.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65650176
He acted like a cock, not for the first time, and because referees are not as important as him he thinks and knows that he can refuse to just say sorry for being a cock. That he is fun and charming when he wants to be makes it worse, not better, since it's a choice.
It'd be nice for managers to actually set examples and not indulge in petty whinging bollocks, but few of them see any need.
As you say, those for whom it is the main point of obsession are easy to spot, and DeSantis, who already won re-election handily, didn't need to go so heavy handed on all this.
https://www.bigissue.com/news/no-spare-change-two-thirds-of-big-issue-sellers-now-accept-contactless-payments/
Supporting homeless best done by donating to homeless charities and putting pressure on govt imo.
In your favor, you've certainly decreased odds, of being personally victimized by taking wooden nickels.
Actually on the face of it I do kind of get the reaction to this one.
Dun-Dun-Dun-Dun...
Which makes Birmingham, Chicago.
And Leicester somewhere like Kansas City.
2024 Presidential Election Hypothetical Voting Intention (17 May):
Joe Biden: 44% (-1)
Donald Trump: 43% (-1)
Don't Know: 5% (-1)
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1659589740268601347?s=20
Which in theory could go all the way to SCOTUS . . . though whether Supremes would wish to consider the matter is debatable.
My guess is NOT. Seeing as how the contact info connected with individual petition signers is clearly an in-kind contribution under plain language of law; THAT is the legal issue, not names themselves.
*this statement is satire and not in any way to be taken as a literal allegation regarding any past, present or future Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Make America Great Again? Well, who'd say no to that?
Not a lot of movement from Omnisis and Techne this week. The former does see Labour drop a little from its "frothy" 51%.
Techne is virtually the same as last week - the 2019 Conservative vote splits 55% Conservative, 16% Labour, 12% Don't Know, 7% Reform and 6% LD.
As said, Omnisis has Labour down four but changes elsewhere are well within margin of error and the lead remains at 22 points. Not such good news for Starmer on the "best PM" tracker where's he down seven and Sunak is up four but again that brings the numbers more into line with other pollsters.
The swing from Conservative to Labour is 14% with Techne and 17% with Omnisis.
Trump beats Harris clearly on the other hand 42% to 39%
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/joe-biden-administration-approval-ratings-and-hypothetical-voting-intention-17-may-2023/
He can win. I put it at 30-35% chance. Bet accordingly. But for the free world it is deadly dangerous.
PBers may be reading bit toooooo much into early tea leaves.
Biden's win over Trump in 2020 reversed that exactly on a 51-47 popular vote win.
We've had the same here - Labour polled more votes than the Conservatives in 1951 but lost while in February 1974 the Conservatives won the national vote but Labour won more seats.
We need to see polls from states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin and of course the primary process.
If Sunak’s Tories were 1% ahead of Starmer’s Labour now we’d be pencilling in another Tory majority.
Although weirdly the answer still seems to be no however many Rons you try.
Now he can only screw Carrie I'm not surprised she's getting into trouble.
Hope your procedure had a positive outcome.
The midterms give us a hint: Trump backed candidates - Lake in Arizona, Walker in Georgia, and Mastriano/Oz in Pennsylvania - all lost. In the mid-terms. With a historically unpopular President.
By contrast, Republicans who were less aligned with Trump - like DeSantis in Florida or Kemp in Georgia - walked their reelection.
https://www.ft.com/content/7b737c9e-ff5b-42ce-9f27-6b35cd9b95b4
Extorting money from us via our energy bills?