Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

The Monday open thread – politicalbetting.com

12346»

Comments

  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 52,303

    The elderly will be dead soon, what on Earth is controversial about that?

    You will be elderly soon.
    And I will be dead one day. I’m not offended by that. We all die.
    Perhaps this scenario can help you understand how the cash-clingers feel: Imagine if by the time you are elderly, we'll have moved on from mobile devices and young people will all start kitting themselves out with Bill Gates-style chips with the ability to broadcast peer-to-peer, so the government starts ripping out the phone masts.
    No I’ll accept things change.

    I don’t know why you feel the need to take the piss unless you’ve lost the argument. Do you not agree that infrastructure like masts and FTTP is very important if the UK is to compete?
    I agree that we need to invest in infrastructure and shouldn't be afraid of innovation, but we don't need to have a totally Maoist attitude towards the old ways.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,277
    I tend to use cash very occasionally for small purchases and I always leave cash tips . I never leave home without some cash in my wallet.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,569

    The elderly will be dead soon, what on Earth is controversial about that?

    Part of the reason I am sat here debating cash is I have been awaiting news whether my elderly and frail dad has made it to hospital still alive on his blue light ambulance run. And I've just heard that he made it. Not remotely out of the woods, but if this is a Stage Gate process he just cleared a Stage...

    "People die, so what" is what BR was saying in the early days of Covid. Don't be Bart.
    Skimmed the thread this evening and saw umpteen posts angrily debating cash, meh, plus yours, with some important and potentially very good news. All the very best.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,961
    This is about as good an argument against capital punishment as one could hope for.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-65806606

    "A woman once branded "Australia's worst female serial killer" has been pardoned after new evidence suggested she did not kill her four infant children.

    Kathleen Folbigg spent 20 years in prison after a jury found she killed sons Caleb and Patrick and daughters Sarah and Laura over a decade.

    But a recent inquiry heard scientists believe they may have died naturally.

    The 55-year-old's case has been described as one of Australia's greatest miscarriages of justice.

    Ms Folbigg, who has always maintained her innocence, was jailed for 25 years in 2003 for the murders of three of the children, and the manslaughter of her first son, Caleb.

    Each child died suddenly between 1989 and 1999, aged between 19 days and 19 months, with prosecutors at her trial alleging she had smothered them.

    Previous appeals and a separate 2019 inquiry into the case found no grounds for reasonable doubt, and gave greater weight to circumstantial evidence in Ms Folbigg's original trial.

    But at the fresh inquiry, headed by retired judge Tom Bathurst, prosecutors accepted that research on gene mutations had changed their understanding of the children's deaths.

    On Monday, New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley said Mr Bathurst had concluded that there was reasonable doubt that Ms Folbigg was guilty.

    As a result, the NSW governor had signed a full pardon, and ordered Ms Folbigg's immediate release from prison."
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,929

    Foxy said:

    Businesses can refuse cash if they choose. Many in England refuse to take Scottish or NI banknotes, or even BoE notes over £20, and have done so all my life.

    They may lose custom by doing so, but such is their right.

    Scottish and NI banknotes (or technically banknotes of banks based in Scotland and Northern Ireland) aren't even legal tender. How often do you see a £50 note? Hardly ever I would say. Though I'm told they're popular among the Chinese community where I live.

    What is the point of central bank digital currencies? What problem are they solving?
    We have one already - the Pound Sterling. Most money exists as digital information in accounts rather than in physical notes and coins. It is virtual - fiat tokens. Especially in Scotland and NI where the banknotes are literally just tokens promising to move the face value digitally from your account to theirs.
    So.............

    Why is the Bank of England making a big thing of having a 'digital currency'? Reading the press release it seems like they want to expand into the customer payments arena.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,972

    The elderly will be dead soon, what on Earth is controversial about that?

    Part of the reason I am sat here debating cash is I have been awaiting news whether my elderly and frail dad has made it to hospital still alive on his blue light ambulance run. And I've just heard that he made it. Not remotely out of the woods, but if this is a Stage Gate process he just cleared a Stage...

    "People die, so what" is what BR was saying in the early days of Covid. Don't be Bart.
    Skimmed the thread this evening and saw umpteen posts angrily debating cash, meh, plus yours, with some important and potentially very good news. All the very best.
    Thanks Nick. Now waiting for x-ray and bloods results to come back. But if they're waiting for those, he's no longer seen as at immediate risk...
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,662

    The elderly will be dead soon, what on Earth is controversial about that?

    You will be elderly soon.
    And I will be dead one day. I’m not offended by that. We all die.
    Perhaps this scenario can help you understand how the cash-clingers feel: Imagine if by the time you are elderly, we'll have moved on from mobile devices and young people will all start kitting themselves out with Bill Gates-style chips with the ability to broadcast peer-to-peer, so the government starts ripping out the phone masts.
    No I’ll accept things change.

    I don’t know why you feel the need to take the piss unless you’ve lost the argument. Do you not agree that infrastructure like masts and FTTP is very important if the UK is to compete?
    I agree that we need to invest in infrastructure and shouldn't be afraid of innovation, but we don't need to have a totally Maoist attitude towards the old ways.
    If governments do not protect cash via legislation, it will largely die out.

    And by largely die out, I mean, it will be accepted by an ever diminishing number of places, which will have a negative impact on the poorest in society.

    No-one, I think, is proposing banning cash payments. The question is the extent to which we wish to protect it.

    In the US, the Payment Choice Act was proposed in the last Congress by Rep Donald Payne, and would require businesses to accept cash payments if the sum was less than $2,000. The new Republican Congress has let this wither on the vine, which is odd because Rep Payne is a Democrat, and I thought it was the Dems who were controlled by Davos, but that just shows how sneaky the damn Globalists are.

  • I'm discovering an increasing number of venues and vendors that refuse to take cash.

    Something really needs to be done about this. It's not legal tender if it can't be used and cash is starting to effectively become unusable and locking options and people out of the economy.

    Its fantastic news that more and more people are feeling free to move on from the deadly and violent problem that is cash. I once knew a pregnant woman in Liverpool who had a machete held to her throat by armed robbers to compel the manager of a store to open the safe.

    If people are locked out then what needs to be done is tackling that and ensuring that everyone has access to digital banking regardless of economic status.

    What does not need to be done is compel people to accept or carry cash against their interests and against their own wishes.
  • Ratters said:

    Ratters said:

    I'm discovering an increasing number of venues and vendors that refuse to take cash.

    Something really needs to be done about this. It's not legal tender if it can't be used and cash is starting to effectively become unusable and locking options and people out of the economy.

    Perhaps a reasonable compromise between the interests of businesses and 'left behind' consumers would be to mandate businesses over a certain size to accept cash payments. Before the trend spreads too far.

    I don't carry cash so it doesn't effect me, but the potential for locking people out of the economy is real.

    But I suspect the government would secretly like a society where all transactions are more easily monitored.
    The more people don't take cash the more I want to bloody well use it.

    Coins and notes are legal tender. You trade, you take it.

    No ifs, no buts.
    Still think below a certain size we should allow card only. Help small businesses reduce fixed costs.

    If we are going to go down mandating cash let's make cash more efficient. Remove 1p, 2p and 5p from circulation. They are all worth much less than 1p was back when decimalisation occured.
    I'm old enough to remember when businesses didn't take card transactions for less than £5 or £10 due to the bank charges.

    It was all the way back in 2017.
    Thank goodness we've had progress since then and now card transactions are considerably cheaper than cash ones.

    Let responsible traders make responsible choices.

    If they think that cash handling will give them more customers, that's their choice.
    If they don't want the burden of handling cash, then that's their choice too.

    If you're worried about people being left behind, then legislate to support people so that they're not. Don't try to roll back the clock to the past.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 22,415
    edited June 2023

    The elderly will be dead soon, what on Earth is controversial about that?

    Part of the reason I am sat here debating cash is I have been awaiting news whether my elderly and frail dad has made it to hospital still alive on his blue light ambulance run. And I've just heard that he made it. Not remotely out of the woods, but if this is a Stage Gate process he just cleared a Stage...

    "People die, so what" is what BR was saying in the early days of Covid. Don't be Bart.
    Hope your dad is OK.

    But for the rest of it: Huh?

    I've not even been on this site for a week or so and here you are talking about me behind my back. I must be living rent-free in your head.

    Its also not remotely true at all. I accepted the lockdown in the early days of Covid. I accepted mask mandates and other bullshit in the early days of Covid too.

    I had many arguments with @TOPPING and others about it in the early days of Covid.

    It was long after vaccines came out that I realised I was wrong and I have said that supporting lockdown was on of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. But that was years after Covid and after vaccines too. Not early days.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,961
    "More Ghanaian nurses in NHS than in Ghana
    Warnings of health worker shortage in Africa as UK seeks to plug vacancies
    By Micah McLean"

    https://www.voice-online.co.uk/news/exclusive-news/2023/03/30/more-ghanaian-nurses-in-nhs-than-in-ghana/
  • Makes you proud to be British, take note America.

    Successive British prime ministers — there have been three since the war started, all from the Conservative Party — have been of one mind on helping Kyiv claw back territory. The U.K. 's support for Ukraine is unusual in the fact that it transcends party lines in Britain, with the opposition Labour Party being as hawkish if not more so than the ruling Tories.

    British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is almost universally admired for his wartime stewardship of security assistance. In an interview for Yahoo News in May, Wallace’s Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov said that in the UK is the one country whose electoral outcome he doesn’t agonize over, as the “opposition is as strong as the current government in terms of supporting us.”


    https://news.yahoo.com/how-the-uk-helped-convince-the-us-and-its-allies-to-spend-big-to-help-ukraine-in-its-war-with-russia-193918302.html

    :innocent:


    Such a dodgy barchart it is a wonder it doesn't come from a Lib Dem.

    Israel doesn't occupy East Jerusalem, it is a part of Israel and has been for about fifty years now. East Jerusalem was part of Jordan, not "Palestine" before Jordan attempted to wipe Israel off the map and lost, and lost East Jerusalem in the process.

    A bit like how parts of modern day Poland used to be a part of Germany. Countries that attempt to wipe others off the map and lose may end up losing land.

    Perhaps Russia may end up losing Belgorod to Ukraine when all this is done and Crimea etc have been liberated. Would be karmic justice, a bit like Germany and Jordan losing land they once had.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,961
    "World has two years to protect human race from AI, says government adviser

    Rishi Sunak’s artificial intelligence chief compares situation to ‘January 2020 moment in Covid’ where ‘exponential’ threat builds suddenly"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/05/ai-threat-artificial-intelligence-rishi-sunak-adviser-warns/
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,281
    .
    Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    This report features a video of the incident which caused Tory MP Bob Stewart to be investigated.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/20/met-to-investigate-tory-mp-bob-stewart-over-alleged-racial-abuse

    So Stewart was at a reception hosted by the Bahraini Embassy when he was provoked by this anti Bahrain regime activist to say 'go back to Bahrain' and according to the Police he will thus be investigated for racist abuse
    He's been charged now. The attached article is old.
    The CPS authorised the police to charge him for this exchange apparently 'Alwadaei is heard asking Stewart about a trip paid for by the Bahraini government in the run-up to its elections, saying, “how much did you sell yourself to the Bahraini regime?”

    In response, the MP for Beckenham is heard saying: “Get stuffed. Bahrain’s a great place. End of.” And then he is heard saying: “Go away, I hate you.” Stewart then says: “Go back to Bahrain.” After another comment from Alwadaei, he adds: “Now you shut up you stupid man.” He then says: “You’re taking money off my country, go away.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/20/met-to-investigate-tory-mp-bob-stewart-over-alleged-racial-abuse
    I'm baffled how the decision was made, having watched the video.
    If that's the entire basis for the change, absurd.
    Being a rude pillock isn't yet a criminal offence - and even the prospect of locking up half of Tory MPs does not justify it being so.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,281
    rcs1000 said:

    ...

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Try teaching kids about the value of money, counting and savings without cash and places to spend it in.

    CASH.

    Nah, my eldest turned into Gordon Gekko when he turned 11 and I opened his first bank account and he can see his money on his phone app.
    That's summarises why the future is shit.

    I don't want my kids glued to their phone. And I also want them to develop good mental arithmetic and a feel for the real tangibility of money.
    You're turning into an old fogey pal - give it up, this is a battle you're never winning.
    I am not sure that's entirely true. A cashless society (with these Central Bank digital currencies that are cropping up everywhere) is a Davos-driven policy. It's not one of the more unpleasant ones on the face of it (it beats 15 minute cities and mass starvation), though its purpose is clearly an intrusive one - the power to monitor all spending. However, the Davos agenda has become very very exposed. It is entirely possible that in the next few years, public revulsion overturns the entire thing - retreat from cash included.
    "A cashless society (with these Central Bank digital currencies that are cropping up everywhere) is a Davos-driven policy"

    You got likes for this?

    It's a policy driven by the fact that (a) young people like to pay with their phones; (b) small merchants don't like paying big insurance premiums for carrying cash for a diminishing proportion of their sales.

    The idea that the people at Davos are conspiring to take your cash away is utterly absurd.

    As Mrs Thatcher said, "you can't buck the market", and it is the market that is putting cash out of business, not some globalist conspiracy.
    Well, I got no likes for when you said you knew someone senior at Disney who was going to be sacked, and I said I am sure they won't get rid of Mickey, and that was possibly the best thing I've ever said on PB, so just call it karmic justice.
    I apologize, but there is no conspiracy.

    Banks are profit maximising. Small merchants are profit maximising. That's what's driving cash out of our society, not some shadowy conspiracy.

    Now, sure, do some governments like the ability to track transactions - largely for the purposes of minimizing tax evasion? They sure do.

    But if tracking us was the sole goal, then Bitcoin and its ilk would have been crimalized on day one, instead of being largely supported by - yes - many of the people who go to Davos.
    You are right, there is no conspiracy, there is a highly promoted policy agenda, pushed by an organisation that actively publicises its own reach amongst those with power, particularly political power. That's great news, because public policy platforms and individuals promoting them publicly can be opposed.
    Have you actually read any of the World Economic Forum papers?

    It is laughable to think that they have one thousandth of one percent of the influence of the guy at Apple who said "You know what, if we put an NFC chip in the Apple watch..."

    The guy who runs Barclays bank, you know what he cares about? His stock options. The guy at Apple? His stock options.

    People are "pushing" digital payments, because that's how they make more money. Nobody needs a talking shop to be told that. There's no instructions eminating from Davos.

    How do you suppose this works? ...
    They meet up at Davos and say 'how do we make more money' ?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,281
    LOL
    Russian spin on the counter offensive us getting sillier.
    ...The statement said Russian forces had inflicted huge personnel losses on attacking Ukrainian forces and destroyed 28 tanks, including eight Leopard main battle tanks and 109 armoured vehicles. It said total Ukrainian losses amounted to 1,500 troops...
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 52,156

    Makes you proud to be British, take note America.

    Successive British prime ministers — there have been three since the war started, all from the Conservative Party — have been of one mind on helping Kyiv claw back territory. The U.K. 's support for Ukraine is unusual in the fact that it transcends party lines in Britain, with the opposition Labour Party being as hawkish if not more so than the ruling Tories.

    British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is almost universally admired for his wartime stewardship of security assistance. In an interview for Yahoo News in May, Wallace’s Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov said that in the UK is the one country whose electoral outcome he doesn’t agonize over, as the “opposition is as strong as the current government in terms of supporting us.”


    https://news.yahoo.com/how-the-uk-helped-convince-the-us-and-its-allies-to-spend-big-to-help-ukraine-in-its-war-with-russia-193918302.html

    :innocent:


    Such a dodgy barchart it is a wonder it doesn't come from a Lib Dem.

    Israel doesn't occupy East Jerusalem, it is a part of Israel and has been for about fifty years now. East Jerusalem was part of Jordan, not "Palestine" before Jordan attempted to wipe Israel off the map and lost, and lost East Jerusalem in the process.

    A bit like how parts of modern day Poland used to be a part of Germany. Countries that attempt to wipe others off the map and lose may end up losing land.

    Perhaps Russia may end up losing Belgorod to Ukraine when all this is done and Crimea etc have been liberated. Would be karmic justice, a bit like Germany and Jordan losing land they once had.
    I made those bar charts simply to wind up the PB Corbynistas and @Dura_Ace :)

    Just look at the "area" bar chart! More than 20 times as much territory illegally occupied by their Russian heroes!
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,281
    A decision to charge Trump might be made by next week.

    Trump lawyers meet with DoJ to stave off indictment in Mar-a-Lago case
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/05/donald-trump-prosecutor-mar-a-lago-classified-documents
    ...

    "DOJ is said to have found the meeting as rather unproductive"
    https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1665833453269417985
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504
    "A multi-hundred foot chunk of the Nova Kakhovka dam is gone, the Kakhovka Reservoir is quickly emptying out into the Dnipro."

    https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1665907948986458113

    Which means Kherson'll flood.

    My hot take: that length of damage was done purposefully by a demolition team, not by accident via random shelling. As for motive: Russia, to prevent any Dnipro crossing downstream. Another Russia war crime.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,952

    "A multi-hundred foot chunk of the Nova Kakhovka dam is gone, the Kakhovka Reservoir is quickly emptying out into the Dnipro."

    https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1665907948986458113

    Which means Kherson'll flood.

    My hot take: that length of damage was done purposefully by a demolition team, not by accident via random shelling. As for motive: Russia, to prevent any Dnipro crossing downstream. Another Russia war crime.

    It does rather indicate that Russia has given up on saving Crimea though.

    "Ukraine shut down the [North Crimea Canal] in 2014 soon after Russia annexed Crimea. Russia restored the flow of water in March 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    A 2015 study found that the canal had been providing 85% of Crimea's water prior to the 2014 shutdown. Of the water from the canal, 72% went to agriculture and 10% to industry, while water for drinking and other public uses made up 18%."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Crimean_Canal#:~:text=In Crimea, numerous smaller canals,to the city of Simferopol.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504
    edited June 2023

    "A multi-hundred foot chunk of the Nova Kakhovka dam is gone, the Kakhovka Reservoir is quickly emptying out into the Dnipro."

    https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1665907948986458113

    Which means Kherson'll flood.

    My hot take: that length of damage was done purposefully by a demolition team, not by accident via random shelling. As for motive: Russia, to prevent any Dnipro crossing downstream. Another Russia war crime.

    It does rather indicate that Russia has given up on saving Crimea though.

    "Ukraine shut down the [North Crimea Canal] in 2014 soon after Russia annexed Crimea. Russia restored the flow of water in March 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    A 2015 study found that the canal had been providing 85% of Crimea's water prior to the 2014 shutdown. Of the water from the canal, 72% went to agriculture and 10% to industry, while water for drinking and other public uses made up 18%."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Crimean_Canal#:~:text=In Crimea, numerous smaller canals,to the city of Simferopol.
    Strategically, yes. But if Russia win, they can rebuild - and Crimea did without that water for seven years anyway. And if they're losing, they've lost Crimea anyway.

    But tactically: if the Russians think that they've removed all chances of a Dnipro crossing, they can remove some of the troops guarding that area; it reduces the front line for them.

    It makes little sense for the Ukrainians to have done this, especially at this point.

    There's also a question about what it means for the nuclear power plant, which allegedly relies on the reservoir for cooling water...
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Well, they're called British Glass - what do you expect?

    Dear @HumzaYousaf, we refute the claim by @Circ_Scotland that it’s been clear from the start on any plans for a remelt target for glass in the Scottish DRS. Remelt targets are set through the UK-wide PRN system, and the current Scottish DRS is outside this system.🧵1/3

    https://twitter.com/BritGlass/status/1665675994139619329?s=20
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,981

    NEW THREAD

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,780
    Ratters said:

    Ratters said:

    I'm discovering an increasing number of venues and vendors that refuse to take cash.

    Something really needs to be done about this. It's not legal tender if it can't be used and cash is starting to effectively become unusable and locking options and people out of the economy.

    Perhaps a reasonable compromise between the interests of businesses and 'left behind' consumers would be to mandate businesses over a certain size to accept cash payments. Before the trend spreads too far.

    I don't carry cash so it doesn't effect me, but the potential for locking people out of the economy is real.

    But I suspect the government would secretly like a society where all transactions are more easily monitored.
    The more people don't take cash the more I want to bloody well use it.

    Coins and notes are legal tender. You trade, you take it.

    No ifs, no buts.
    Still think below a certain size we should allow card only. Help small businesses reduce fixed costs.

    If we are going to go down mandating cash let's make cash more efficient. Remove 1p, 2p and 5p from circulation. They are all worth much less than 1p was back when decimalisation occured.
    It’s the other way round! Because of the fixed charges for small businesses near a bank it isn’t worth taking card below a certain amount.
This discussion has been closed.