Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
Not really wanting to defend Neil in general, but surely he's right here. As on that logic, everything that's not a pure commodity is a monopoly. Gail's are using monopoly power to price artisanal sourdough bread expensively - I'm not going to be satisfied with Coop sliced white?
Oasis and their agents are being attacked for bad practice when they could just have sold tickets to the highest bidders and made more money instead of underpricing. The high resale price shows that the market price is higher than Oasis are asking.
Better bargains elsewhere. Figaro and La Traviata are on at Covent Garden at £12-£200.
The problem is that your average Oasis fan can’t afford several hundred quid, the band don’t want to give the impression to their fans that they’re pricing the people out, and the venues want to come across as being accessible to all.
Which is pretty much why the events industry came up with Ticketmaster. They were set up to take the crap away from artists and venues, by keeping all the shady business practices under one branded entity - so the fans are having a go at TM rather than the band or the venue.
Watching PMQs, thinking Rishi is doing a pretty good job. SKS good bat back at Kemi, but other than that he just looks a bit flappy and snarly. Certainly not someone who has just won a 200 seat majority and should be commanding all he can see.
To be fair to Starmer, I thought he was trying quite hard to answer the questions (that will not last, I suspect).
There is a somewhat prickly defensiveness to him though, that I think he has to try and avoid. It does make him look somewhat haughty, and it could become a bit of a weak point opponents could exploit.
Can I risk a summary of Moore-Bick? Competence, the rule of law, good faith and honesty are of much greater importance than all other factors in running the world and are very hard to achieve.
And UKplc and UK governance are worse than you can imagine.
The most damning thing from that report, all the deaths were avoidable.
It is, although that's pretty common.
Can someone please invite @Cyclefree to write another header?
“I Told You So, You Fucking Fools” - R Conquest
Also, Lesson Will Be Learned*.
*No actual Lessons included. Or Learning. Or Will. Or Bees, for that matter. All Wrong Reserved. May contain nuts, May contain nutters.
Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
Not really wanting to defend Neil in general, but surely he's right here. As on that logic, everything that's not a pure commodity is a monopoly. Gail's are using monopoly power to price artisanal sourdough bread expensively - I'm not going to be satisfied with Coop sliced white?
Oasis and their agents are being attacked for bad practice when they could just have sold tickets to the highest bidders and made more money instead of underpricing. The high resale price shows that the market price is higher than Oasis are asking.
Better bargains elsewhere. Figaro and La Traviata are on at Covent Garden at £12-£200.
The problem is that your average Oasis fan can’t afford several hundred quid, the band don’t want to give the impression to their fans that they’re pricing the people out, and the venues want to come across as being accessible to all.
Which is pretty much why the events industry came up with Ticketmaster. They were set up to take the crap away from artists and venues, by keeping all the shady business practices under one branded entity - so the fans are having a go at TM rather than the band or the venue.
Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
It's only a monopoly in the relevant sense if Oasis are putting unfair obstacles in the way of you or me booking Wembley and selling tickets to a boringly derivative rock and roll concert. Actually the music business is remarkably unmonopolistic - Oasis can't even stop you doing a covers concert as Quoasis or whatever because of the odd copyright rules. So strap on your guitar and play.
The best way of selling tickets to real fans without too much regard for wealth is to sell them at a physical ticket office (in winter in Manchester), max 2 per person, with a carefully curated and supervised queue. Bring your own tent. (I'm not joking).
Which of course is exactly what Oasis fans in the ‘90s would have done!
Many fun mornings were spent queuing outside record shops and theatres, waiting for the latest gig to go on sale. Something that generated a sense of camaraderie, rather than the tout-dominated online bunfight that’s today’s ticketing market.
Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
Not really wanting to defend Neil in general, but surely he's right here. As on that logic, everything that's not a pure commodity is a monopoly. Gail's are using monopoly power to price artisanal sourdough bread expensively - I'm not going to be satisfied with Coop sliced white?
Oasis and their agents are being attacked for bad practice when they could just have sold tickets to the highest bidders and made more money instead of underpricing. The high resale price shows that the market price is higher than Oasis are asking.
Better bargains elsewhere. Figaro and La Traviata are on at Covent Garden at £12-£200.
Watching Oasis in 2025 would just make me poor. Watching Figaro or La Traviata would result in PTSD
But we assured repeatedly on here by the PB Trump Arse Lickers / Bedwetters that RFK quitting would be good for their man.
Any sign of this? No.
As many of us said at the time, it appears to have made sod all difference.
Funny old world.
You were also repeatedly assured, and not just by me, that Pennsylvania remains the key. Tied there is not good news.
What I think is tolerably clear is that very substantial momentum Harris got when selected has somewhat run its course. She is not falling back but she is not continuing to gain either. It's put her fractionally in the lead but the deal is not sealed. The debate is going to be a high risk event for both of them.
I agree, but I was saying that the sky was blue, and you are now telling me that the sea is green. My point was about the RFK Jr effect (or lack of) – nothing to do with the race in PA.
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
I’ve been travelling the world doing this job for almost FORTY YEARS and I still get excited by road tunnels. There is something intrinsically sexy and glamorous about them. The exotic lights everywhere and the big whirring fans and the speeding cars and trucks making that ripply sound in the dark and you wait for the sign of daylight at the end and then wow the sun and it’s all futuristic
I hate road tunnels WITHOUT lights. They are just terrifying
One of the benefits, alongside the problems, of the UK having moved heavily away from state and into personal pension provision is that we don't have this sort of liability on our public balance sheet. The trouble is everything sort of fits together in different ways as a result. Our pensioners get nowhere near as much from the state as in many European countries, even after the triple lock, but personal pensions don't provide anywhere near that level of income either. Instead, our retired population own vast wealth in the form of housing, most of which is owned outright with no mortgage. Housing wealth has taken the place of state pensions in providing for the elderly.
Future generations won't have the same levels of housing equity as the current retired population. I expect house prices to track inflation or earnings for the foreseeable future. So the gap will need to be filled somehow.
"Generation Rent" is a retirement disaster waiting to happen.
Unless the plan is to end the concept of retirement.
Retirement is not finished as a concept. The new version is retirement early fifties for half the country and late seventies/body gives up for the other half.
Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
It's only a monopoly in the relevant sense if Oasis are putting unfair obstacles in the way of you or me booking Wembley and selling tickets to a boringly derivative rock and roll concert. Actually the music business is remarkably unmonopolistic - Oasis can't even stop you doing a covers concert as Quoasis or whatever because of the odd copyright rules. So strap on your guitar and play.
The best way of selling tickets to real fans without too much regard for wealth is to sell them at a physical ticket office (in winter in Manchester), max 2 per person, with a carefully curated and supervised queue. Bring your own tent. (I'm not joking).
Which of course is exactly what Oasis fans in the ‘90s would have done!
Many fun mornings were spent queuing outside record shops and theatres, waiting for the latest gig to go on sale. Something that generated a sense of camaraderie, rather than the tout-dominated online bunfight that’s today’s ticketing market.
When I saw Oasis, I went to a record shop that was selling Glastonbury Tickets. No queuing, .. and tickets available for over a month. Mind you that was back when lots of people didn't bother buying Glastonbury tickets, but just found a hole in the fence.
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
Isn't that the fault of the EU enforced tender process that obliged the government to pick the cheaper, shittier option from the French/Polish bid rather than the UK incumbent?
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
Isn't that the fault of the EU enforced tender process that obliged the government to pick the cheaper, shittier option from the French/Polish bid rather than the UK incumbent?
Watching PMQs, thinking Rishi is doing a pretty good job. SKS good bat back at Kemi, but other than that he just looks a bit flappy and snarly. Certainly not someone who has just won a 200 seat majority and should be commanding all he can see.
I'm quite enjoying some of these new MP names.
Emma Foody MP, initials ELF.
Talking of Ms Foody, this mornig I heard a radio discussion on the history of the Currywurst. One of the contributors was called Tim Koch (Cook) who is a chef in the city of Essen (food).
Wasn't it the Brits to blame, adding to our immaculate record on terrible food?
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
Isn't that the fault of the EU enforced tender process that obliged the government to pick the cheaper, shittier option from the French/Polish bid rather than the UK incumbent?
Probably.
Actually, the UK incumbent quoted an insane number. One of those "This government contract will put my company back into profit, build a new factory and fill the pension plan deficit. In one go." things.
Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
It's only a monopoly in the relevant sense if Oasis are putting unfair obstacles in the way of you or me booking Wembley and selling tickets to a boringly derivative rock and roll concert. Actually the music business is remarkably unmonopolistic - Oasis can't even stop you doing a covers concert as Quoasis or whatever because of the odd copyright rules. So strap on your guitar and play.
I just got an email from a ticketing agency offering tickets to multiple oasis tribute bands next summer...
Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
It's only a monopoly in the relevant sense if Oasis are putting unfair obstacles in the way of you or me booking Wembley and selling tickets to a boringly derivative rock and roll concert. Actually the music business is remarkably unmonopolistic - Oasis can't even stop you doing a covers concert as Quoasis or whatever because of the odd copyright rules. So strap on your guitar and play.
I just got an email from a ticketing agency offering tickets to multiple oasis tribute bands next summer...
Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
It's only a monopoly in the relevant sense if Oasis are putting unfair obstacles in the way of you or me booking Wembley and selling tickets to a boringly derivative rock and roll concert. Actually the music business is remarkably unmonopolistic - Oasis can't even stop you doing a covers concert as Quoasis or whatever because of the odd copyright rules. So strap on your guitar and play.
The best way of selling tickets to real fans without too much regard for wealth is to sell them at a physical ticket office (in winter in Manchester), max 2 per person, with a carefully curated and supervised queue. Bring your own tent. (I'm not joking).
Which of course is exactly what Oasis fans in the ‘90s would have done!
Many fun mornings were spent queuing outside record shops and theatres, waiting for the latest gig to go on sale. Something that generated a sense of camaraderie, rather than the tout-dominated online bunfight that’s today’s ticketing market.
In the early 90s Genesis did a tour of 'town halls' at the end of one of their massive stadium tours. I only found out about it when i saw the queue outside the box office...
Can I risk a summary of Moore-Bick? Competence, the rule of law, good faith and honesty are of much greater importance than all other factors in running the world and are very hard to achieve.
And UKplc and UK governance are worse than you can imagine.
The most damning thing from that report, all the deaths were avoidable.
It is, although that's pretty common.
Can someone please invite @Cyclefree to write another header?
“I Told You So, You Fucking Fools” - R Conquest
Also, Lesson Will Be Learned*.
*No actual Lessons included. Or Learning. Or Will. Or Bees, for that matter. All Wrong Reserved. May contain nuts, May contain nutters.
She’s gone - as she told me - because all the Woke centrist dads on here drove her nuts
Perhaps reflect on that. All of you PB Woke Centrist Dads. You are not just MONUMENTALLY boring you drive people off the site with your fucking tedious and predictable Wokeness. And your boring-ness
You say eye watering, I say fair market rate for the best of humanity.
The Premier League failed in an attempt to make Everton pick up its full £4.9million legal costs for last season’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules case.
A commission and appeal board instead ruled that Everton should only pay £1.7million, about a third of the total amount, with the Premier League covering the remaining £3.2million for the PSR case which resulted in Everton being deducted ten points, reduced to six on appeal.
Everton had challenged the league’s costs, with their lawyer Celia Rooney telling the appeal that the figures submitted were “frankly eye-watering”. The full findings of the costs appeal are revealed in a judgment made on July 5, which is now available on the Premier League’s website...
...Legal experts have told The Times that given the costs disclosed for Everton, the costs of the Manchester City cases will be many tens of millions of pounds.
The appeal board’s judgment shows that the Premier League paid its lawyers Linklaters much higher fees than Everton paid their law firm Pinsent Masons for similar work. Everton claimed the costs sought as recoverable by the Premier League were “both unexplained and inexplicable” and “grossly excessive”.
The club stated that the cost per witness statement was more than five times higher for the league (£148,668 for the Premier League, compared with £26,637 for the club), and cost per document disclosed was 19 times higher (£9,773 compared with £515).
The hourly rate charged by the Premier League’s lawyers of £940 was “nearly double” the then guideline rate of £512 and the £550 charged by Pinsent Masons, Everton argued.
@stephenkb The second is that 137 Conservative MPs ignored the huge amount of evidence that Rishi Sunak could not become Tory leader in the summer of 2022, passing over two candidates who could have beaten Liz Truss while doing so.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
I’ve been travelling the world doing this job for almost FORTY YEARS and I still get excited by road tunnels. There is something intrinsically sexy and glamorous about them. The exotic lights everywhere and the big whirring fans and the speeding cars and trucks making that ripply sound in the dark and you wait for the sign of daylight at the end and then wow the sun and it’s all futuristic
I hate road tunnels WITHOUT lights. They are just terrifying
Thanks. Had to get that off my chest
Freudian.
You should try S Korea, btw. They have some doozies.
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
Isn't that the fault of the EU enforced tender process that obliged the government to pick the cheaper, shittier option from the French/Polish bid rather than the UK incumbent?
Didn't the UK incumbent try and put the price up 3x compared to their previous bid?
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
It pains me to admit it, but I prefer the dark blue passports to the old maroon/burgundy ones (I still have an old one and it's rapidly running out of pages for stamps). Of course would could have had blue ones during our time in the EU anyway, but the fact remains blue is a more aesthetically pleasing shade than burgundy.
Hopefully soon we can ditch the whole passport nonsense and just have a card or an app on our phone, or even a chip in our forearm, with all our travel and visa data digitised.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It would be an interesting to see what happened if they set up a system where the tickets started at £5k a pop and the price dropped by £5 every ten minutes until they were all gone. Ideally with a tool which let you put in a price point, and if the tickets got down to your price point it sold you a ticket.
Doubtless it would cause outrage, but it's probably fairer than the current arrangement where the main benificaries appear to be ticket touts.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
And I thought you were a Green Party cabinet member for Bartestree Parish Council.
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
New passports were tendered entirely under OJEU single market tendering rules.
I’ve been travelling the world doing this job for almost FORTY YEARS and I still get excited by road tunnels. There is something intrinsically sexy and glamorous about them. The exotic lights everywhere and the big whirring fans and the speeding cars and trucks making that ripply sound in the dark and you wait for the sign of daylight at the end and then wow the sun and it’s all futuristic
I hate road tunnels WITHOUT lights. They are just terrifying
Thanks. Had to get that off my chest
Freudian.
You should try S Korea, btw. They have some doozies.
I really do love them. And yes perhaps it is a sexual thing. You go down to this dark but erotic place with a hint of danger. Like driving turned into cunnilingus
Too early? Sorry. I’m having a beer in old royal Cetinje in the serious heat
I’ve been travelling the world doing this job for almost FORTY YEARS and I still get excited by road tunnels. There is something intrinsically sexy and glamorous about them. The exotic lights everywhere and the big whirring fans and the speeding cars and trucks making that ripply sound in the dark and you wait for the sign of daylight at the end and then wow the sun and it’s all futuristic
I hate road tunnels WITHOUT lights. They are just terrifying
Thanks. Had to get that off my chest
Freudian.
You should try S Korea, btw. They have some doozies.
Nothing in this wide world, not the doozies of Korea, the great Alpine tunnels nor the coastal engineering wonders of Italy can hold a candle to the Rotherhithe.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
It feels a lot freer to me. You now get all shades of partisan nonsense whereas before anything right wing was brutally censored whereas the most lunatic lefty was allowed to rant
An awful lot people have right wing opinions. A large minority of people have really strident right wing opinions - cf the success of AfD in Germany this week gone
TwiX no longer represses the right. That’s all that’s changed, to my mind
I’ve been travelling the world doing this job for almost FORTY YEARS and I still get excited by road tunnels. There is something intrinsically sexy and glamorous about them. The exotic lights everywhere and the big whirring fans and the speeding cars and trucks making that ripply sound in the dark and you wait for the sign of daylight at the end and then wow the sun and it’s all futuristic
I hate road tunnels WITHOUT lights. They are just terrifying
Thanks. Had to get that off my chest
Freudian.
You should try S Korea, btw. They have some doozies.
Nothing in this wide world, not the doozies of Korea, the great Alpine tunnels nor the coastal engineering wonders of Italy can hold a candle to the Rotherhithe.
Is that the one built by Brunel? If so yes it’s a wonder. Its a mix of medieval and steampunk
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Andrew Neil is engaged in some TwiX spats over this
Someone said this is "monopoly" price gouging, and Neil replied that is not a monopoly. Other gigs are available...
I don't think Neil is right.
If you want to see Oasis at Wembley you are not going to be satisfied with Coldplay in Cardiff
Not really wanting to defend Neil in general, but surely he's right here. As on that logic, everything that's not a pure commodity is a monopoly. Gail's are using monopoly power to price artisanal sourdough bread expensively - I'm not going to be satisfied with Coop sliced white?
Oasis and their agents are being attacked for bad practice when they could just have sold tickets to the highest bidders and made more money instead of underpricing. The high resale price shows that the market price is higher than Oasis are asking.
Better bargains elsewhere. Figaro and La Traviata are on at Covent Garden at £12-£200.
The problem is that your average Oasis fan can’t afford several hundred quid, the band don’t want to give the impression to their fans that they’re pricing the people out, and the venues want to come across as being accessible to all.
Which is pretty much why the events industry came up with Ticketmaster. They were set up to take the crap away from artists and venues, by keeping all the shady business practices under one branded entity - so the fans are having a go at TM rather than the band or the venue.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
The main thing that needs some sort of regulation, and which is a feature of both left and right, is disinformation and lies. Legacy media are accountable for the veracity of statements on their platforms, but social media are not.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
It’s interesting how we completely accept this on certain contexts, notably travel and hospitality, but not others.
We see it happening in real time on flight booking websites.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
It’s interesting how we completely accept this on certain contexts, notably travel and hospitality, but not others.
We see it happening in real time on flight booking websites.
I had a Bosnian canoeing guide quizzing me the other day. “Is it true oasis are reforming? Have Liam and Noel made up??”
Which just goes to show how much interest this is generating. Oasis could and probably should have charged five times as much - but kept some tickets back to be sold on the day at a vastly lower price, and given a fifth away to charities etc
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
It’s interesting how we completely accept this on certain contexts, notably travel and hospitality, but not others.
We see it happening in real time on flight booking websites.
It's interesting to compare to flying. Overall, over the last three decades, flying has become much less expensive. Even in nominal terms, let alone inflation-adjusted, I'd expect that air fares are lower now than in the early 90s. So that context makes people think they are getting the good end of the deal most of the time on dynamic pricing - the cheap tickets when demand is low, or they can book ahead.
But for gigs, prices for these have rocketed. Demand is up, and supply is necessarily constrained. So the dynamic pricing acts to increase prices further in a context when people already feel that prices have increased unreasonably - and that's why it's being complained about.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
Isn't that the fault of the EU enforced tender process that obliged the government to pick the cheaper, shittier option from the French/Polish bid rather than the UK incumbent?
Didn't the UK incumbent try and put the price up 3x compared to their previous bid?
I don't think it was as much as that and the option that was chosen was only very slightly lower, I think it was something to do with all of the tech that was being added to the next generation of passports which warranted the higher contract value. Either way, the government was forced into making a poor choice.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
I don't think there is a way of doing this online/digitally. The best method depends on what single thing you, the provider, value most.
If it is money, then very simple price mechanisms, well understood, are the time honoured way of maximising the take.
If it is gratifying the fan base, you have to do something different. The best choices are: the old fashioned queue in the rain, and a ballot, 2 tickets max in each case.
The worst way: 4 million people+ touts+bots all logging on at 9 am and then attempting to satisfy the fan base + maximise the take. Guess which one they chose......
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
So your problem isn't the absolute price you pay for your ticket, but the price relative to other people?
Would you be happier if you (and everyone) pays £300, or you pay £200 and everyone else pays £100?
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
The known problem with that approach is that it leads to ticket touts acting as the middleman, so you still have rationing based on price, but the touts take a huge cut.
If the tickets are sold via an auction mechanism it would greatly lessen the impact of touts, and it would ensure that the people putting on the show benefit in full from the demand for the show - the outcome most likely to lead to an increase in supply.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
I don't think there is a way of doing this online/digitally. The best method depends on what single thing you, the provider, value most.
If it is money, then very simple price mechanisms, well understood, are the time honoured way of maximising the take.
If it is gratifying the fan base, you have to do something different. The best choices are: the old fashioned queue in the rain, and a ballot, 2 tickets max in each case.
The worst way: 4 million people+ touts+bots all logging on at 9 am and then attempting to satisfy the fan base + maximise the take. Guess which one they chose......
There’s also pre-sale sales to fan club members.
Often limited to those who were member of the relevant fan club before a gig was announced.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
The known problem with that approach is that it leads to ticket touts acting as the middleman, so you still have rationing based on price, but the touts take a huge cut.
If the tickets are sold via an auction mechanism it would greatly lessen the impact of touts, and it would ensure that the people putting on the show benefit in full from the demand for the show - the outcome most likely to lead to an increase in supply.
Starting very high and slowly reducing the prices until all tickets are sold seems like the fairest route - avoids touts too. However it does mean that only the rich get to go, and they might not collectively make the best audience.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
So your problem isn't the absolute price you pay for your ticket, but the price relative to other people?
Would you be happier if you (and everyone) pays £300, or you pay £200 and everyone else pays £100?
Pricing behaviour is increasingly complex. I recently bought some shirts from a medium to high end high street gents' clothing store whose sticker price was £75 but which, with various multi buy and other promotions applied, cost me £26 each. If I had known they were also paying £5 for each old shirt I could have got them for £21. This kind of thing makes the job of the ONS very difficult.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
The issue in this specific case is that they set the initial advertised price well below market value, so when it inevitably got bid up, people felt conned. They could have advertised much higher prices to start with, but it would have been bad PR.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
He's a remarkably limited individual.
A retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is daring
His horizons are some of the narrowest I’ve ever encountered. Like meeting someone who can only see nine inches in front of his face - and has no curiosity as to what lies ten inches further on, especially if it might upset him
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
So your problem isn't the absolute price you pay for your ticket, but the price relative to other people?
Would you be happier if you (and everyone) pays £300, or you pay £200 and everyone else pays £100?
Pricing behaviour is increasingly complex. I recently bought some shirts from a medium to high end high street gents' clothing store whose sticker price was £75 but which, with various multi buy and other promotions applied, cost me £26 each. If I had known they were also paying £5 for each old shirt I could have got them for £21. This kind of thing makes the job of the ONS very difficult.
I must tell that to my bro-in-law. He, seemingly, can go past a menswear shop without buying a shirt, most of which he never wears. Personally, I don't understand it. What's more, having been brought up over a pharmacy and later run one for several years I have no desire to go into a shop again.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
So your problem isn't the absolute price you pay for your ticket, but the price relative to other people?
Would you be happier if you (and everyone) pays £300, or you pay £200 and everyone else pays £100?
Pricing behaviour is increasingly complex. I recently bought some shirts from a medium to high end high street gents' clothing store whose sticker price was £75 but which, with various multi buy and other promotions applied, cost me £26 each. If I had known they were also paying £5 for each old shirt I could have got them for £21. This kind of thing makes the job of the ONS very difficult.
I must tell that to my bro-in-law. He, seemingly, can go past a menswear shop without buying a shirt, most of which he never wears. Personally, I don't understand it. What's more, having been brought up over a pharmacy and later run one for several years I have no desire to go into a shop again.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
So your problem isn't the absolute price you pay for your ticket, but the price relative to other people?
Would you be happier if you (and everyone) pays £300, or you pay £200 and everyone else pays £100?
Pricing behaviour is increasingly complex. I recently bought some shirts from a medium to high end high street gents' clothing store whose sticker price was £75 but which, with various multi buy and other promotions applied, cost me £26 each. If I had known they were also paying £5 for each old shirt I could have got them for £21. This kind of thing makes the job of the ONS very difficult.
I must tell that to my bro-in-law. He, seemingly, can go past a menswear shop without buying a shirt, most of which he never wears. Personally, I don't understand it. What's more, having been brought up over a pharmacy and later run one for several years I have no desire to go into a shop again.
In random gaming news I think @Casino_Royale is right and we've passed peak woke. Sony unceremoniously shut down a $200m budget game yesterday because it was so poorly received by players due to poor design choices with the characters in the game and that all of the characters (including robots) had pronouns in their profiles.
I've heard from my old colleagues that management are furious and all games are being put into a review process to dump all of the shite that people are rejecting. You can't lose a big company $200m to push an agenda no one wants and escape consequences.
Very quietly companies are realising that customers have begun to vote with their wallets. Movies that push the woke agenda are failing, games that do it are failing and after the backlash against Bud Light consumer products companies are rowing it all back. Consumers had enough of being force fed an agenda with everything they watch, play or buy and have adjusted their purchasing habits accordingly, it's taken a few years to get there but we're now at the point where companies can't shove a bunch of nonsense into the products and expect people to just live with it.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
So your problem isn't the absolute price you pay for your ticket, but the price relative to other people?
Would you be happier if you (and everyone) pays £300, or you pay £200 and everyone else pays £100?
Pricing behaviour is increasingly complex. I recently bought some shirts from a medium to high end high street gents' clothing store whose sticker price was £75 but which, with various multi buy and other promotions applied, cost me £26 each. If I had known they were also paying £5 for each old shirt I could have got them for £21. This kind of thing makes the job of the ONS very difficult.
I must tell that to my bro-in-law. He, seemingly, can go past a menswear shop without buying a shirt, most of which he never wears. Personally, I don't understand it. What's more, having been brought up over a pharmacy and later run one for several years I have no desire to go into a shop again.
My strategy with this particular shop is to not buy anything from them until they've sent me a discount card offering at least 25% off, which they do eventually if you spurn them for long enough. If you also buy in bulk then you get further discounts and that facilitates you ignoring them for a couple of years afterwards. Their profit margin on people who buy at sticker price must be off the scale as presumably they are not selling to me at a loss.
Wait until Tucker and this 'historian' hear about the other guy.
Liberals and conservatives alike have turned on Tucker Carlson after controversial podcaster and self-proclaimed historian Darryl Cooper claimed on Carlson’s show that “millions of people ended up dead” in Nazi concentration camps.
Cooper also painted U.K. prime minister Winston Churchill as the “chief villain” of World War II.
Carlson said on X that Cooper “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States” when posting The Tucker Carlson Show Monday episode, which featured topics like Christianity and authoritarians like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin.
I can see a case of depicting Winston Churchill as villain from the American isolationist perspective. It hinges on what date you consider the start of WW2:
1937 for China and Japan 1939 for Britain, Germany, France, Italy 1941 for Russia and the USA
Churchill made great efforts to involve America in the European War, and in pushing for a Germany first policy, rather than a Pacific war against Japan.
The argument rather falls down as it was Hitler that declared war on the USA, not vice versa.
Germany was the most dangerous enemy, so that made sense even if it was Japan that actually hit America first.
Certainly from our perspective, less so from the American, and even less so from the Australian.
The Pacific War had to wait more for logistic reasons. It takes a while to build all those ships
I only found out recently that the Royal Navy took part in the Battle of Okinawa. In fact, by the end of the war, the British Pacific Fleet was immense. Over a million British, Empire and Commonwealth soldiers were set to invade Japan.
I'd like to read more about it, it's been hardly written about.
I’d also like to know how this country has gone from being the greatest empire on earth, with an “immense Pacific fleet” and a million men under arms in the Far East, to being so spineless and craven we cannot even defend the English Channel AND ALL WITHIN LIVING MEMORY
It must be the greatest and fastest decline in human history?
The Royal Navy, at its zenith was unable to stop small boats crossing the channel.
Not just brandy and tobacco. Read up on the death-or-money boats.
I think the England of 1600-1950 would have found a way to stop tens of thousands of fighting age young men, often quite hostile in outlook, from simply walking in to our country, via the beach, every year
If you are ok with killing them, then stopping them is trivial.
A single helicopter with a light cannon could destroy all of them. To keep one on station, you’d need a total of 4, probably. One in maintenance, one getting ready, one in transit, one on station.
You’d just leave the survivors to drown. No need to go all Imperial Japanese Navy and murder them.
There is a slight flaw in the above. I wonder if you spot what that is?
You’re still putting full stops at the end of sentences?
Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats...
Wait until Tucker and this 'historian' hear about the other guy.
Liberals and conservatives alike have turned on Tucker Carlson after controversial podcaster and self-proclaimed historian Darryl Cooper claimed on Carlson’s show that “millions of people ended up dead” in Nazi concentration camps.
Cooper also painted U.K. prime minister Winston Churchill as the “chief villain” of World War II.
Carlson said on X that Cooper “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States” when posting The Tucker Carlson Show Monday episode, which featured topics like Christianity and authoritarians like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin.
I can see a case of depicting Winston Churchill as villain from the American isolationist perspective. It hinges on what date you consider the start of WW2:
1937 for China and Japan 1939 for Britain, Germany, France, Italy 1941 for Russia and the USA
Churchill made great efforts to involve America in the European War, and in pushing for a Germany first policy, rather than a Pacific war against Japan.
The argument rather falls down as it was Hitler that declared war on the USA, not vice versa.
Germany was the most dangerous enemy, so that made sense even if it was Japan that actually hit America first.
Certainly from our perspective, less so from the American, and even less so from the Australian.
The Pacific War had to wait more for logistic reasons. It takes a while to build all those ships
I only found out recently that the Royal Navy took part in the Battle of Okinawa. In fact, by the end of the war, the British Pacific Fleet was immense. Over a million British, Empire and Commonwealth soldiers were set to invade Japan.
I'd like to read more about it, it's been hardly written about.
I’d also like to know how this country has gone from being the greatest empire on earth, with an “immense Pacific fleet” and a million men under arms in the Far East, to being so spineless and craven we cannot even defend the English Channel AND ALL WITHIN LIVING MEMORY
It must be the greatest and fastest decline in human history?
The Royal Navy, at its zenith was unable to stop small boats crossing the channel.
Not just brandy and tobacco. Read up on the death-or-money boats.
I think the England of 1600-1950 would have found a way to stop tens of thousands of fighting age young men, often quite hostile in outlook, from simply walking in to our country, via the beach, every year
If you are ok with killing them, then stopping them is trivial.
A single helicopter with a light cannon could destroy all of them. To keep one on station, you’d need a total of 4, probably. One in maintenance, one getting ready, one in transit, one on station.
You’d just leave the survivors to drown. No need to go all Imperial Japanese Navy and murder them.
There is a slight flaw in the above. I wonder if you spot what that is?
You’re still putting full stops at the end of sentences?
Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats...
People forget what a great stylist Orwell was. And that’s a brilliant example
Orwell used to write quite lyrically and poetically with lots of metaphors and all that. Then he decided a simple style was much more effective. “Prose should be like a window pane. You shouldn’t see the style - the glass - just the meaning beyond”. His style was not having a style
And in this passage he does exactly that. It’s so simple yet powerful. Visceral
“then he was full of holes and the sea around him turned pink”
75% of asylum applicants who arrived by small boat (who've received a decision) have been granted asylum, 93% apply for asylum, so that's 70%. This is only an issue because of a deliberate policy to slow down processing. Which also gives more opportunity for those who aren't genuine asylum seekers to avoid return. And small boat arrivals peaked at 45,000 in 2022.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
Mmm, sure I am. "Dumb as a rock" even like Kamala. Because all the real brainboxes just parrot what they read on Far Right Twitter and don't need to mess about with logic or probabilities or any of that nonsense.
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
So your problem isn't the absolute price you pay for your ticket, but the price relative to other people?
Would you be happier if you (and everyone) pays £300, or you pay £200 and everyone else pays £100?
Pricing behaviour is increasingly complex. I recently bought some shirts from a medium to high end high street gents' clothing store whose sticker price was £75 but which, with various multi buy and other promotions applied, cost me £26 each. If I had known they were also paying £5 for each old shirt I could have got them for £21. This kind of thing makes the job of the ONS very difficult.
I must tell that to my bro-in-law. He, seemingly, can go past a menswear shop without buying a shirt, most of which he never wears. Personally, I don't understand it. What's more, having been brought up over a pharmacy and later run one for several years I have no desire to go into a shop again.
My strategy with this particular shop is to not buy anything from them until they've sent me a discount card offering at least 25% off, which they do eventually if you spurn them for long enough. If you also buy in bulk then you get further discounts and that facilitates you ignoring them for a couple of years afterwards. Their profit margin on people who buy at sticker price must be off the scale as presumably they are not selling to me at a loss.
Well, there's the difference between whether they're making a profit on the marginal sale of an individual shirt (not including fixed overhead costs), and whether they're making a profit overall.
I expect that, if they only sold at the discount price, they might not make enough to cover their overheads, but they're not losing money by selling to you.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
Mmm, sure I am. "Dumb as a rock" even like Kamala. Because all the real brainboxes just parrot what they read on Far Right Twitter and don't need to mess about with logic or probabilities or any of that nonsense.
What’s the *probability* of an especially dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerging in the only city in the world which has a lab taking novel bat coronaviruses and making them especially dangerous? As against it emerging from the market 300 yards from the lab which has never sold bats?
You didn’t trouble yourself with THAT probability because you’re an idiot
As I said you’re so stupid you don’t realise how stupid you are. Which is actually quite dangerous
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
Isn't that the fault of the EU enforced tender process that obliged the government to pick the cheaper, shittier option from the French/Polish bid rather than the UK incumbent?
Didn't the UK incumbent try and put the price up 3x compared to their previous bid?
I don't think it was as much as that and the option that was chosen was only very slightly lower, I think it was something to do with all of the tech that was being added to the next generation of passports which warranted the higher contract value. Either way, the government was forced into making a poor choice.
I've looked it up, and you are right, it wasn't anywhere near 3x.
De La Rue, who previously had the contract bid £380m, and Gemalto bid £260m.
I've had a bit of a listen to the debate in the Commons, which has generally been very good, and skimmed a report summary. Starmer and Sunak have both been good, but I am probably happy that we have someone who I think (hope!) is a boring, detail man dealing with it.
The impression I get is that the Report blames everyone, including insulation manufacturers, suppliers, regulators (ie those doing fire tests) builders, local council as I think owners, the management organisation (which included a lot of resident representation on its board), and others. That may not be an easy agenda to address, as it would be easy to throw everything in the air and lose the good parts of our existing system - there are lots of babies that could be thrown out with bathwater. There are lots of angles.
The messages I am getting are about disaggregation in both manufacturing and building supply chains, and in building management chains, about transparency, about capacity in local authorities and about redress and how to achieve it. I think it highlights that no single measure (eg Tenant Representatives on Boards) will fix it.
On disaggregation I would draw a parallel with eg highway maintenance and repairs, which is an atomised mess.
There are implications for ownership, management and tenure, at block owner, lease owner, and occupier eg tenant level. That has implications for whether we want leasehold to continue, but if so how do we make sure that safety is as well managed as it would be by eg the Grosvenor Estate in whatever the new setup is - a joint commonhold for a block of flats will not be as professional (and as safe) if managed by the committee of owners.
There are similar questions for management of tenancies (iirc Grenfell was caused by an appliance fire), safety of electrical equipment (another reason for addressing eg non type-approval of lithium batteries), and leases.
Separate issues between new build, and existing, under these headings for buildings, and for when existing are refurbished.
There are corresponding implications for challenges to that - is the First Tier Tribunal system adequate and for what, or is this another reason for a housing court (as requested by the National Residential Landlords Association, for example).
One thing that may fall down a gap is attention to quality of buildings. An example is how electrical extension leads are used and causes potential hazard (eg kettle and toaster on a 2 way). That can be reduced by required minimum numbers of sockets.
- Building Control Information to be automatically public, as Planning information is currently. - It is questionable whether the current setup of testing labs and similar is adequate eg should the Building Research Establishment be privatised. If it is OK being privatised, how should it be supervised, given that the insulation tests were able to be fiddled? - Capacity building in Building Control, which has been starved under perhaps both Con and New Lab Governments. This is crucial. - Consideration of where regulation should properly sit. I'd argue for a more strategic role for local authorities as the hub, covering the building, management, and LL regulation areas. That will require resource and professionalism amongst staff. - Careful thought about the side things I have argued - tenure reform, building management, supply chain, build chain. - Conflicts of interest need thought. eg between Local Authority owned or managed or arms-length property vs regulation of such.
Politically, I think that some of this could be a part of RR's needed justification for increasing capacity in local authorities in order to do things with Council Tax.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
It feels like a whole lifetime has gone by and you and Casino are still posting the same stuff If you've been to interesting places and done interesting things why are you posting on a loop?
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
It feels like a whole lifetime has gone by and you and Casino are still posting the same stuff If you've been to interesting places and done interesting things why are you posting on a loop?
I’m in fucking Montenegro and have been posting about it daily you retired tampon advertising moron
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
He's a remarkably limited individual.
I thought that was a pretty good post I did there. Far Right speech as Pollution. Because it is, isn't it? It stinks the place up. But to be clear, I'm not proposing any extension of our current laws in this area. Free speech, yes. Absolutist and untrammelled, no. There's a balance needed and I think we have it about right.
"I disagree with what you're saying but I will defend to the death your right to say it - so long as it isn't contravening our laws around inciting hatred and violence."
'Could' and 'may' are the important words here. Of course they can be sued, anyone can sue or be sued. The issue is who would win.
It would be scandalous if Oasis etc lost. They were selling tickets way below the price they could have got if they started high and went down if any were left unsold at £5,000 (or whatever) a go.
It's not Oasis being sued here, it's ticketmaster - and high time too. It'd be in everyone's interests if the courts came down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The whole thing is wonderfully British.
We're basically having an argument about queueing.
it's not though.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
Exactly.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
Still no...
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
The known problem with that approach is that it leads to ticket touts acting as the middleman, so you still have rationing based on price, but the touts take a huge cut.
If the tickets are sold via an auction mechanism it would greatly lessen the impact of touts, and it would ensure that the people putting on the show benefit in full from the demand for the show - the outcome most likely to lead to an increase in supply.
Starting very high and slowly reducing the prices until all tickets are sold seems like the fairest route - avoids touts too. However it does mean that only the rich get to go, and they might not collectively make the best audience.
That's effectively what happens currently though: the touts have teams of people in Malaysia, and each employee oversees 30 virtual machines with different IP addresses that automatically login at 7:00am.
They will get 95% of the cheap tickets.
And that's why bands have presales for people who are members of their various "fan clubs" - to give them a chance to buy tickets before the touts rush in.
It seems like some variant on that: a presale for the fan club, followed by a reverse auction for 80% of the tickets.
In random gaming news I think @Casino_Royale is right and we've passed peak woke. Sony unceremoniously shut down a $200m budget game yesterday because it was so poorly received by players due to poor design choices with the characters in the game and that all of the characters (including robots) had pronouns in their profiles.
I've heard from my old colleagues that management are furious and all games are being put into a review process to dump all of the shite that people are rejecting. You can't lose a big company $200m to push an agenda no one wants and escape consequences.
Very quietly companies are realising that customers have begun to vote with their wallets. Movies that push the woke agenda are failing, games that do it are failing and after the backlash against Bud Light consumer products companies are rowing it all back. Consumers had enough of being force fed an agenda with everything they watch, play or buy and have adjusted their purchasing habits accordingly, it's taken a few years to get there but we're now at the point where companies can't shove a bunch of nonsense into the products and expect people to just live with it.
This is silly. Concord didn’t fail because you could choose the pronouns of your character. It failed because a) it’s a bit shit, b) it tried to charge £40 when the competition is free to play & making their £zillions on charging for hats.
Sony management are 100% to blame for thinking that they could launch a £40 MOBA in a world where Overwatch and Valorant already exist, have captured the available player base and are free to play.
But we assured repeatedly on here by the PB Trump Arse Lickers / Bedwetters that RFK quitting would be good for their man.
Any sign of this? No.
As many of us said at the time, it appears to have made sod all difference.
Funny old world.
Some people said it would be worth a point or 2 to Trump. You seemed to take extreme exception to this for some reason. Is there any evidence it wasn't worth a point or 2? There's plenty of things that are going to be worth more than a point or 2 to either candidate like a convention bounce, advertising, normal movement as people start paying attention.
Given how few RFK voters there were by the time he quit it's hard to get good polling, but the little evidence I've seen points towards it being worth a point or 2 to Trump.
You could equally ask what happened to the massive convention bounce Harris was supposed to get?
In random gaming news I think @Casino_Royale is right and we've passed peak woke. Sony unceremoniously shut down a $200m budget game yesterday because it was so poorly received by players due to poor design choices with the characters in the game and that all of the characters (including robots) had pronouns in their profiles.
I've heard from my old colleagues that management are furious and all games are being put into a review process to dump all of the shite that people are rejecting. You can't lose a big company $200m to push an agenda no one wants and escape consequences.
Very quietly companies are realising that customers have begun to vote with their wallets. Movies that push the woke agenda are failing, games that do it are failing and after the backlash against Bud Light consumer products companies are rowing it all back. Consumers had enough of being force fed an agenda with everything they watch, play or buy and have adjusted their purchasing habits accordingly, it's taken a few years to get there but we're now at the point where companies can't shove a bunch of nonsense into the products and expect people to just live with it.
This is silly. Concord didn’t fail because you could choose the pronouns of your character. It failed because a) it’s a bit shit, b) it tried to charge £40 when the competition is free to play & making their £zillions on charging for hats.
Sony management are 100% to blame for thinking that they could launch a £40 MOBA in a world where Overwatch and Valorant already exist, have captured the available player base and are free to play.
The greatest pronoun choosing game ever was South Park, the Stick of Truth about a decade ago.
It had the most incredible character design process, it introduced me to the concept of cisgender, you could be anything you wanted to be.
Except, when you got to the end, it made no difference. Irresepective of your name, gender, sexual orientation and the like, you were simply "New kid", and treated like shit, and your pronouns never came into it, as you were only ever insulted by Cartman and co.
Are we at or passing peak Elmu? He can intimidate and oppress mortals with his wealth, social media reach and phalanx of clone lab grown lawyers but if he takes on the Republic of Brazil and/or the EU then he's going to come off second best.
He does seem to have abandoned any pretense that buying Twitter was a sound business move and fully embraced it as a personal propaganda machine
His argument now is that $44bn was “not the price of Twitter but the price of free speech”. Its quite a good line
I agree he does say some mad stuff on there. At the same time he also allows some pretty wild abuse of himself - which I find surprising for a guy with a thin skin
In the round I think Free Speech TwiX is a good thing, not least because it has revealed just how biased to the left Twitter was before. I do not expect PB to agree with this
It's not free speech though.
Posts which call Republicans "wingnuts" are deleted for violating the terms of service on abusive speech.
Posts which call for violence against refugees or brown people are just fine and aren't taken down.
It's selective speech. I find it rather telling that you're more comfortable with the current balance of the bias than the previous iteration.
Well yeah. I’m on the right
I find it rather telling that you’re more comfortable with the earlier left wing yawn blah fucksake you pompous tiny dicked wanker-of-maggots
But it isn't really free speech, is it? It's going from one flavor of not free to another.
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
Just on the pragmatics of this it's better that the right is silenced rather than the left because it's the right who tend to say deeply reprehensible things that make decent people shudder.
You’re saying this to provoke (and I approve of that, at least it adds spice) but the thing is: you actually believe this, too. You genuinely think a lot of right wing opinion should simply be silenced
I don't mind people arguing for a small state and saying things like "there's no such thing as a free lunch" (although it's irritating), it's all this other stuff, demonising muslims and migrants and refugees, deep misogyny, white supremacy dog-whistling, promotion of lies and conspiracy theories in the face of science and reason, we really could do without most of that. It's pollution. And the people adding to, fostering and enabling it are not in my view "free speech advocates" they're polluters. They're polluting the town square and making it hard to breath. That's my mental image of it.
So, you’re still a wanker. Also, quite dumb. You’d have censored the lab leak hypothesis and in your world we’d all be going round worrying about fucking bats in soup instead of properly worrying about the safety of biological research laboratories
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
It feels like a whole lifetime has gone by and you and Casino are still posting the same stuff If you've been to interesting places and done interesting things why are you posting on a loop?
He's in Montenegro now apparently. Broadening his mind again. It'll need a new head soon at this rate. Getting a bit tight in there.
In random gaming news I think @Casino_Royale is right and we've passed peak woke. Sony unceremoniously shut down a $200m budget game yesterday because it was so poorly received by players due to poor design choices with the characters in the game and that all of the characters (including robots) had pronouns in their profiles.
I've heard from my old colleagues that management are furious and all games are being put into a review process to dump all of the shite that people are rejecting. You can't lose a big company $200m to push an agenda no one wants and escape consequences.
Very quietly companies are realising that customers have begun to vote with their wallets. Movies that push the woke agenda are failing, games that do it are failing and after the backlash against Bud Light consumer products companies are rowing it all back. Consumers had enough of being force fed an agenda with everything they watch, play or buy and have adjusted their purchasing habits accordingly, it's taken a few years to get there but we're now at the point where companies can't shove a bunch of nonsense into the products and expect people to just live with it.
This is silly. Concord didn’t fail because you could choose the pronouns of your character. It failed because a) it’s a bit shit, b) it tried to charge £40 when the competition is free to play & making their £zillions on charging for hats.
Sony management are 100% to blame for thinking that they could launch a £40 MOBA in a world where Overwatch and Valorant already exist, have captured the available player base and are free to play.
Barbie was a success despite being very woke, because it was a good movie.
It's almost like people like to watch/play things that are good, and are quite sophisticated at just ignoring the bullshit from culture and woke warriors.
In random gaming news I think @Casino_Royale is right and we've passed peak woke. Sony unceremoniously shut down a $200m budget game yesterday because it was so poorly received by players due to poor design choices with the characters in the game and that all of the characters (including robots) had pronouns in their profiles.
I've heard from my old colleagues that management are furious and all games are being put into a review process to dump all of the shite that people are rejecting. You can't lose a big company $200m to push an agenda no one wants and escape consequences.
Very quietly companies are realising that customers have begun to vote with their wallets. Movies that push the woke agenda are failing, games that do it are failing and after the backlash against Bud Light consumer products companies are rowing it all back. Consumers had enough of being force fed an agenda with everything they watch, play or buy and have adjusted their purchasing habits accordingly, it's taken a few years to get there but we're now at the point where companies can't shove a bunch of nonsense into the products and expect people to just live with it.
This is silly. Concord didn’t fail because you could choose the pronouns of your character. It failed because a) it’s a bit shit, b) it tried to charge £40 when the competition is free to play & making their £zillions on charging for hats.
Sony management are 100% to blame for thinking that they could launch a £40 MOBA in a world where Overwatch and Valorant already exist, have captured the available player base and are free to play.
Here's the full list of internal blame from an ex-colleague:
1 - competing with overwatch was a stupid idea 2 - the cringy guardians of the galaxy setting was 5 years out of date 3 - the character designs were extremely ugly and in live service games it matters a lot for advertising and cosplaying etc... 4 - releasing at £40/$40 against established f2p games in the genre was suicidal
Now maybe things are different this year and state polls will be more accurate.
And maybe they will not be.
Yes but as we saw with Corbyn we don't know which way the polling error will be. I think the Dems outperformed the polls in the midterms iirc..
So - we know the polls are likely wrong, we don't know which way they'll be wrong. Which means for betting purposes you'll probably have to assume they're correct..
Comments
Which is pretty much why the events industry came up with Ticketmaster. They were set up to take the crap away from artists and venues, by keeping all the shady business practices under one branded entity - so the fans are having a go at TM rather than the band or the venue.
That said... the polls understated the Democrats at the midterms, and all the evidence is that Democrat enthusiasm is higher than Republican.
So, yes, I tend to agree that Harris is slightly cheap.
There is a somewhat prickly defensiveness to him though, that I think he has to try and avoid. It does make him look somewhat haughty, and it could become a bit of a weak point opponents could exploit.
“I Told You So, You Fucking Fools” - R Conquest
Also, Lesson Will Be Learned*.
*No actual Lessons included. Or Learning. Or Will. Or Bees, for that matter. All Wrong Reserved. May contain nuts, May contain nutters.
Many fun mornings were spent queuing outside record shops and theatres, waiting for the latest gig to go on sale. Something that generated a sense of camaraderie, rather than the tout-dominated online bunfight that’s today’s ticketing market.
Watching Oasis in 2025 would just make me poor.
Watching Figaro or La Traviata would result in PTSD
I note that 80% of the text and royal arms has rubbed off the front of my 3 year old blue passport whereas its predecessor is pristine after 10 years hard use. This is not funny, it's the sort of thing you get shaken down for 100 USD for at dodgy border crossings. Fecking useless.
I hate road tunnels WITHOUT lights. They are just terrifying
Thanks. Had to get that off my chest
Perhaps reflect on that. All of you PB Woke Centrist Dads. You are not just MONUMENTALLY boring you drive people off the site with your fucking tedious and predictable Wokeness. And your boring-ness
The Premier League failed in an attempt to make Everton pick up its full £4.9million legal costs for last season’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules case.
A commission and appeal board instead ruled that Everton should only pay £1.7million, about a third of the total amount, with the Premier League covering the remaining £3.2million for the PSR case which resulted in Everton being deducted ten points, reduced to six on appeal.
Everton had challenged the league’s costs, with their lawyer Celia Rooney telling the appeal that the figures submitted were “frankly eye-watering”. The full findings of the costs appeal are revealed in a judgment made on July 5, which is now available on the Premier League’s website...
...Legal experts have told The Times that given the costs disclosed for Everton, the costs of the Manchester City cases will be many tens of millions of pounds.
The appeal board’s judgment shows that the Premier League paid its lawyers Linklaters much higher fees than Everton paid their law firm Pinsent Masons for similar work. Everton claimed the costs sought as recoverable by the Premier League were “both unexplained and inexplicable” and “grossly excessive”.
The club stated that the cost per witness statement was more than five times higher for the league (£148,668 for the Premier League, compared with £26,637 for the club), and cost per document disclosed was 19 times higher (£9,773 compared with £515).
The hourly rate charged by the Premier League’s lawyers of £940 was “nearly double” the then guideline rate of £512 and the £550 charged by Pinsent Masons, Everton argued.
https://www.thetimes.com/sport/football/article/premier-league-everton-legal-costs-psr-rules-fwfwdgwqt
@stephenkb
The second is that 137 Conservative MPs ignored the huge amount of evidence that Rishi Sunak could not become Tory leader in the summer of 2022, passing over two candidates who could have beaten Liz Truss while doing so.
https://x.com/stephenkb/status/1831305223123443721
It's the hypocrisy that grates with me.
You should try S Korea, btw. They have some doozies.
Hopefully soon we can ditch the whole passport nonsense and just have a card or an app on our phone, or even a chip in our forearm, with all our travel and visa data digitised.
Doubtless it would cause outrage, but it's probably fairer than the current arrangement where the main benificaries appear to be ticket touts.
Too early? Sorry. I’m having a beer in old royal Cetinje in the serious heat
An awful lot people have right wing opinions. A large minority of people have really strident right wing opinions - cf the success of AfD in Germany this week gone
TwiX no longer represses the right. That’s all that’s changed, to my mind
It boils down to an argument about queueing.
If you were in the queue at a bar and the person in front of you was charged less than you for the same pint you would be understandably upset
We see it happening in real time on flight booking websites.
Which just goes to show how much interest this is generating. Oasis could and probably should have charged five times as much - but kept some tickets back to be sold on the day at a vastly lower price, and given a fifth away to charities etc
Thus screwing the touts
But for gigs, prices for these have rocketed. Demand is up, and supply is necessarily constrained. So the dynamic pricing acts to increase prices further in a context when people already feel that prices have increased unreasonably - and that's why it's being complained about.
The events industry has come up with a solution to queueing in the context of a mismatch between supply/demand by using price as a dynamic variable - and the great British public ain't happy.
It's not clear to me what the variable should be to dictate who misses out on getting tickets.
Some people are going to miss out. Who should it be?
(I'm not defending Ticketmaster btw, I'm just pointing out there is no perfect solution to what is essentially a queueing problem)
The answer to the queuing problem is first come, first served. Everybody pays the same price, and when they run out that's it
Ticketmaster have rationed access to the option to buy tickets by queue, and then rationed ability to purchase by price
If it is money, then very simple price mechanisms, well understood, are the time honoured way of maximising the take.
If it is gratifying the fan base, you have to do something different. The best choices are: the old fashioned queue in the rain, and a ballot, 2 tickets max in each case.
The worst way: 4 million people+ touts+bots all logging on at 9 am and then attempting to satisfy the fan base + maximise the take. Guess which one they chose......
Would you be happier if you (and everyone) pays £300, or you pay £200 and everyone else pays £100?
You are literally too stupid to see the danger of your own stupidity
If the tickets are sold via an auction mechanism it would greatly lessen the impact of touts, and it would ensure that the people putting on the show benefit in full from the demand for the show - the outcome most likely to lead to an increase in supply.
Often limited to those who were member of the relevant fan club before a gig was announced.
That is not how queuing works, in general...
His horizons are some of the narrowest I’ve ever encountered. Like meeting someone who can only see nine inches in front of his face - and has no curiosity as to what lies ten inches further on, especially if it might upset him
With your words or Wagging Tongue
With your long tall tales of sorrow
Your song yet to be sung
Personally, I don't understand it. What's more, having been brought up over a pharmacy and later run one for several years I have no desire to go into a shop again.
I've heard from my old colleagues that management are furious and all games are being put into a review process to dump all of the shite that people are rejecting. You can't lose a big company $200m to push an agenda no one wants and escape consequences.
Very quietly companies are realising that customers have begun to vote with their wallets. Movies that push the woke agenda are failing, games that do it are failing and after the backlash against Bud Light consumer products companies are rowing it all back. Consumers had enough of being force fed an agenda with everything they watch, play or buy and have adjusted their purchasing habits accordingly, it's taken a few years to get there but we're now at the point where companies can't shove a bunch of nonsense into the products and expect people to just live with it.
Apparently the Judge wanted *Starlink*to cut off service by shutting down payments.
Rather than by tearing up their license in Brazil. This is because the military are big users - as is the government. Remote schools for example.
Se he wanted to be able to blame loss of service on the provider.
Starlink not being turned off, despite non payment of fees, means that the onus for this hasn’t fallen on Starlink, as expected.
This is only an issue because of a deliberate policy to slow down processing. Which also gives more opportunity for those who aren't genuine asylum seekers to avoid return.
And small boat arrivals peaked at 45,000 in 2022.
1. She is gap toothed.
2. She dresses well
3. Her name is memorable and will remind voters of butterscotch
4. She looks like a high class divorce lawyer. Just the ticket when facing Sir Keir.
5. Right wing and ruthless so should scare the pants off Farage
I expect that, if they only sold at the discount price, they might not make enough to cover their overheads, but they're not losing money by selling to you.
You didn’t trouble yourself with THAT probability because you’re an idiot
As I said you’re so stupid you don’t realise how stupid you are. Which is actually quite dangerous
De La Rue, who previously had the contract bid £380m, and Gemalto bid £260m.
- Building Control Information to be automatically public, as Planning information is currently.
- It is questionable whether the current setup of testing labs and similar is adequate eg should the Building Research Establishment be privatised. If it is OK being privatised, how should it be supervised, given that the insulation tests were able to be fiddled?
- Capacity building in Building Control, which has been starved under perhaps both Con and New Lab Governments. This is crucial.
- Consideration of where regulation should properly sit. I'd argue for a more strategic role for local authorities as the hub, covering the building, management, and LL regulation areas. That will require resource and professionalism amongst staff.
- Careful thought about the side things I have argued - tenure reform, building management, supply chain, build chain.
- Conflicts of interest need thought. eg between Local Authority owned or managed or arms-length property vs regulation of such.
Politically, I think that some of this could be a part of RR's needed justification for increasing capacity in local authorities in order to do things with Council Tax.
"I disagree with what you're saying but I will defend to the death your right to say it - so long as it isn't contravening our laws around inciting hatred and violence."
Yep.
They will get 95% of the cheap tickets.
And that's why bands have presales for people who are members of their various "fan clubs" - to give them a chance to buy tickets before the touts rush in.
It seems like some variant on that: a presale for the fan club, followed by a reverse auction for 80% of the tickets.
Sony management are 100% to blame for thinking that they could launch a £40 MOBA in a world where Overwatch and Valorant already exist, have captured the available player base and are free to play.
Some people said it would be worth a point or 2 to Trump. You seemed to take extreme exception to this for some reason. Is there any evidence it wasn't worth a point or 2? There's plenty of things that are going to be worth more than a point or 2 to either candidate like a convention bounce, advertising, normal movement as people start paying attention.
Given how few RFK voters there were by the time he quit it's hard to get good polling, but the little evidence I've seen points towards it being worth a point or 2 to Trump.
You could equally ask what happened to the massive convention bounce Harris was supposed to get?
It had the most incredible character design process, it introduced me to the concept of cisgender, you could be anything you wanted to be.
Except, when you got to the end, it made no difference. Irresepective of your name, gender, sexual orientation and the like, you were simply "New kid", and treated like shit, and your pronouns never came into it, as you were only ever insulted by Cartman and co.
It's almost like people like to watch/play things that are good, and are quite sophisticated at just ignoring the bullshit from culture and woke warriors.
https://x.com/kennardmatt/status/1830985886961385782?s=43&t=a8w_iZEdCb52zK_FrBw3IA
1 - competing with overwatch was a stupid idea
2 - the cringy guardians of the galaxy setting was 5 years out of date
3 - the character designs were extremely ugly and in live service games it matters a lot for advertising and cosplaying etc...
4 - releasing at £40/$40 against established f2p games in the genre was suicidal