 | Forum
Thread | Cash out
at 08:32 2 Aug 2020
Who uses cash?
- Old people
- Drug dealers and users
- Tax Dodgers
Why is cash an issue
Cost: Believe it or not, it costs money to make money. Mining metals, minting coins, designing pictures, testing quality, fraud prevention, fraud detection, printing and on and on.
Environment: The environment is harmed in many ways. Mining, supply chain impacts like transportation, electricity at ATMs, felling trees.
Health: aside from the obvious - pollution put into the atmosphere, waters and soil. Money is great for transferring viruses and bacteria. Many, many people touch the same coins and notes, which touch other coins and notes.
Drug Industry: Drug dealers don't use cards to buy and sell drugs. They operate in cash. A typical deal will have huge wads of £20 notes.
Tax Evaders: Paying in cash gives the recipient the ability to not declare actual earnings, reducing their tax liabilities, meaning you, yes you, end up paying more tax as the loss of revenue is factored into government taxation either knowingly or unknowingly.
How does the removal of cash reduce these issues
- No money means no investment in making money.
- No money means the environmental damage is stopped.
- Ceasing the circulation of money ceases the health risks associated with money
- Stopping the ability to pay for drugs without a trail will make it more difficult to distribute drugs on scale.
- Having all transactions through card will reduce low level tax evasion.
How to implement
- Instantly cease production of all new coins and notes.
- Give a one year period for everyone to return all coins and notes to banks.
- After one year make all notes and coins illegal tender. [Post edited 2 Aug 8:36]
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| Forum
Thread | Book Restoration
at 16:23 14 Jul 2020
I'm in the London area and had a family book from the early 1800s returned to me by a randomer via a family tree website. It was out of the family for a good 40-50 years and has been returned in poor condition, so needs proper care and attention.
Has anyone done this? Can anyone recommend a place from personal experience? I feel somewhat out of my depth!
... Already use google, so don't need a lmgtfy! |
| Forum
Thread | Top 10 Political Theorists
at 22:27 19 Jun 2020
So there was a top 10 Political leaders the other day and I found it interesting to read who other people found to be the greatest - particularly when reason are given.
So I thought I'd start one for theorists. Who has inspired you? What was it that captured your imagination? Why do they hold such importance to you?
Pyotr Kropotkin - Unsurprisingly Kropotkin is top of my list. Dubbed the Anarchist prince, he gave up his royal title at the early age of 12, setting a president of practicing what he preached.
He was fiercely academic, spanning many disciplines. Inspired by Darwin, he wrote Mutual Aid the articulately argued that cooperation, not competition, led to the greatest success in nature. Those that could cooperate were greatest in number. Be it insect or mammal, carnivore or herbivore, those that cooperated were better off.
Cooperation is left wing, competition is right wing. This book underpins why I favour cooperation over competition, why I favour left over right.
He also wrote The Conquest of Bread, which was another hugely influential book for me. It stripped politics right down to the basics. As Norman Borlaug puts it "Without food... all other components of social justice are meaningless.
Ludwig von Rochau - I'm sure we all have people who have influenced us so much, yet we've never picked up their works. It was actually learning about Otto van Bismarck and his unification of Prussia on Realpolitik theory.
It was very much the catalyst to challenge my viewpoints and ground them in reality. Sure, I have a huge district of the state and I truly believe that humanity can exist with different and better decentralised power structures. But was is possible? If it isn't possible, then assess the best course of action to make something possible. Place your theoretical ambitions within reality.
Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo and Karl Marx - I've grouped these three together because I actually read about them at the same time. I read their economic theories as part of a history of the economics of politics and it framed them all so well. It was less about right vrs left and more about these theorists approaching politics from an angle that makes a huge difference to people's lives. They were all trying to solve massive economic problems.
I feel I should note that I don't agree with Marx's solutions, but his economic evaluation of capitalism was massively important and not the source of people's disputes with him whether they are from the left or right.
Henry David Thoreau - His essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience really resonated with me. Civil Disobedience, so scorned and loathed by the state as antithetical to democracy was actually promoted as a necessary duty to protect the state from the tyranny of those who abuse and pervert it for their own ends.
It flipped the logic of the state as this system which protects and executes the will of the people, to one that can, and often is, corrupted by those who have vested interests.
Albert Einstein - What's this guy doing on the list? He's a scientist! He also wrote an article on socialism and his 16th paragraph was eye opening. It highlighted the vulnerability of our institutions and exposed their weakness to private capital. I feel to truly understand this paragraph is to truly understand why so many eatablished democracies are in a poor state around the world.
John Stuart Mill - By the time I picked up On Liberty I had pretty established political ideas and I didn't expect this book to be so fascinating. But it really is a well-written piece.
Henri de Saint-Simon - Again, I came to him late and honestly haven't really engaged in him that much, aside from understanding his ideas. The reason why I still find room for him on my list is that he was a big building block for many of the people on my list. Without his contribution, would the others have established theirs? I'm not sure the ideologies would be as robust without him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - My last one was a real struggle. I weighed up putting in Proudhon, Reclus, Kant and Darwin. I think Emerson's essay on Self-reliance was more striking for me at the time than the others.
So there you have it, 10 Political Theorists that have inspired me and the reasons why. I look forward to seeing others, even if you drop in one or two names. |
| Forum
Thread | I’m going on the offensive with this one
at 14:54 10 Jun 2020
So Paul Lambert thinks “we had a bad couple of months before we stopped and we have paid for that” and the supporters are meant to sit here and allow the club to rewrite the season.
No, we had an extremely fortunate start in which we played 11 games and got 27 from a possible 33. That was eight wins, three draws and zero losses. We scored 21 goals (third highest) and conceded just five (lowest). We had a GD of 16 (best) and were four points clear with a game in hand over second.
Since the 7th October 2019 we accumulated 25 points from 25 games. That puts us 19th in a division of 23 with just one point per game (ppg). Shrewsbury in 20th actually performed better in ppg (25 from 23). Tranmere in 22nd performed the same (23 from 23).
In fact, only Bolton (23 from 25) and Southend (15 from 24) performed worse on a ppg basis. That means we had relegation form over our past 25 games. We need to wake up to the fact that if we maintain our current management team relegation is currently a statistically backed likelihood.
Lee O’Neill said it was “disappointing... not get an opportunity to see out the season” as if he somehow hasn’t witnessed what we have produced since the beginning of October. It really is hard to under emphasise the disaster that followed our great start. But let me try and contextualize it for him.
We obtained two more points in our first 11 games than we did in our last 25. We scored 21 goals in our first 11 games and just 25 goals in our final 25 games. We conceded five goals in our first 11 games and 31 goals in our final 25 games.
This is not a “bad couple of months”. This is completely unforgivable and sustained poor performance over the majority of the season. The club needs to sufficiently explain this, as currently it has only been done with delusional comments.
Lambert thought that “we had to win about six of [our remaining] games to get into the play-offs” which is what we managed over the previous 25 games. This should bring into sharp focus what they were pinning their hopes on.
After this dreadful season’s campaign had ended we found out from O’Neill that “our target was to try and make the play-offs this year”. Excuse me? That should have been the bare minimum, as evidenced by the start of our campaign. If you aren’t targeting the top two as a relatively financially stable club, then you don’t have the correct winning mentality.
Sure, a reasonable and objective supporter would look at last season's relegation campaign and say they would accept failure at the play-off stage. But none can sanely say that this should have been our target. There should be repercussions for not achieving this.
What’s more, O’Neill has already said that “Paul and his staff are a part of the club’s plans going forward”. That’s right, there is no end of season assessment, nor reflection time and no consequence for finishing 11th in division three.
And the gall to use a word like “forward” after around two decades of going backwards. A significant reason for that is that we consistently appoint PR people, like O’Neill, who clearly know nothing about football, into positions that influence the direction of our club. It is a scandal that needs to be rectified.
In short, O'Neill and Lambert need to go. |
| Forum
Thread | Tables Since Oct 7th
at 14:42 8 Mar 2020
Points
R Team Pts
1 Rotherham 47
2 Portsmouth 47
3 Coventry 47
4 Oxford 44
5 Peterborough 41
6 Sunderland 40
7 Fleetwood 39
8 Doncaster 38
9 Gillingham 38
10 Wycombe 36
11 Burton 32
12 Accrington 29
13 AFC Wimbledon 29
14 Blackpool 26
15 Lincoln City 26
16 Rochdale 26
17 Milton Keynes Dons 25
18 Ipswich 25
19 Shrewsbury 25
20 Bristol Rovers 24
21 Bolton 22
22 Tranmere 20
23 Southend 15
Points Per Game
R Team PPG
1 Coventry 2.04
2 Oxford 1.91
3 Rotherham 1.88
4 Portsmouth 1.88
5 Peterborough 1.71
6 Fleetwood 1.70
7 Sunderland 1.67
8 Wycombe 1.64
9 Doncaster 1.58
10 Gillingham 1.58
11 Burton 1.33
12 AFC Wimbledon 1.26
13 Accrington 1.21
14 Blackpool 1.13
15 Lincoln City 1.13
16 Rochdale 1.13
17 Shrewsbury 1.09
18 Bristol Rovers 1.04
19 Milton Keynes Dons 1.04
20 Ipswich 1.00
21 Bolton 0.92
22 Tranmere 0.91
23 Southend 0.63
Let's not do the last 10 games |
| Forum
Thread | Break News
at 21:48 4 Mar 2020
... title fail, lol [Post edited 4 Mar 21:49]
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| Forum
Thread | Holy
at 23:24 15 Feb 2020
Great to have him back behind the sticks. Huge kick for the 2nd goal. Route one for sure, but they couldn't deal with that pressure. Great assist. |
| Forum
Thread | Majority my...
at 20:31 16 Dec 2019
As you know, before the election I claimed that I didn’t recognise the forthcoming result because I argued it was undemocratic. I congratulate the Conservatives on their victory, it is a real coup! Jokes aside, if you are a Lib Dem supporter or a Labour supporter, you only have your own party to blame.
Labour governed from 1997-2010 and decided not to bring in a form of proportional representation. The Liberal Democrats decided that a 5-year coalition without a referendum on proportional representation was worthwhile.
Moreover, the parties read the election landscape incorrectly and were tactically naive. I was told that political parties are like buses - You get on the bus that takes you closer to home. So was it worth agreeing to vote on a new bus route, when we had one two years earlier? There was massive anti-Corbyn sentiment prior to the election that was obviously going to end in tears.
Conservative Majority?
Like most of you I woke up to the news that the conservatives had won a landslide victory (I no longer do all-nighters watching it). The initial results looked impressive - 365 seats - a sizeable majority even before SF tell the UK parliament to do one.
I was rather less impressed when I saw their vote share increased from 42.3% to 43.6%. Even in a month of Sundays a 1.3% increase transitioning into a 47 seat increase is unbelievable. That is before we even point out that 43.6% is not a majority.
If a child told me 43.6% was a majority, I’d question the education system. The fact that adults swallow this rubbish is beyond me. It is theft. The majority that is claimed is stolen. But stolen from who?
Liberal Democrats have a bad night? And other misrepresentations.
It was claimed that the Liberal Democrats had a “bad night”. Afterall their leader lost their seat. But as much as the board takes its collective joy from Bluefish’s suffering, the election system stole his vote. It decided that Bluefish’s votes was not worth the same as others.
The Liberal Democrats increased their vote share by 4.2%. That’s an increase of over 3 times the Conservatives. What did the Liberal Democrats extra 1,324,562 voters get as a reward for casting their vote? -1 seat. This was a misrepresentation of -65 seats, which was an increase of misrepresentation from their -36 seats in 2017.
The environmental movement increased their vote share, but still only received 1 of their 18 seats. The Brexit Party got 642,323 votes and no seats, which was a misrepresentation of -13.
A mandate for independence?
Another party claiming they had a mandate from the people was the SNP. With 1.2m votes, they had a misrepresentation on a UK level of 22 and on a Scottish level of 21. With 45% of the Scottish vote they claimed to have a mandate to have a second referendum. Bizzare to say the least.
North of the border the conservatives fell victim to the system, losing 9 seats. This also highlights how bad the misrepresentation was in England. Labour also lost 10 seats they deserved here and the LD 2.
A broken system
With 47million registered voters, one third of voters thought the democratic system wasn’t worth their time. You can tell from my contemptuous tone, that I was one of them. [Post edited 17 Dec 2019 9:55]
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| Forum
Thread | This Country is not democratic
at 10:28 7 Dec 2019
and I do not recognise the forthcoming election results. They are rigged in favour of increasing the majority's share over the minority.
Last election it took roughly 40k people to vote in one conservative MP. Whereas it took almost 200k to vote in a Liberal democrat MP, 550k to vote in a Green MP and UKIP didn't get a single seat with 600k votes.
Based on a 650 seater house, the Conservatives got 42 MPs more than the population wanted. Labour got 2 MPs more than they deserved. Liberal Democrats got 36 less than they should have, Greens got 10 less than they should have and UKIP should have had 12.
This will be repeated time and again because the main benefactors each time don't want a democratic system. They want the system that maximises their position. |
| Forum
Thread | Corporation Tax in Europe
at 10:09 7 Dec 2019
Country %
Isle of Man 0.00
Hungary 9.0
Montenegro 9.00
Bosnia and Herzegovina 10.00
Bulgaria 10.00
Kosovo 10.00
Macedonia 10.00
Moldova 12.00
Cyprus 12.50
Ireland 12.50
Liechtenstein 12.50
Albania 15.00
Lithuania 15.00
Serbia 15.00
Romania 16.00
Belarus 18.00
Croatia 18.00
Switzerland 18.00
Ukraine 18.00
Czech Republic 19.00
Poland 19.00
Slovenia 19.00
United Kingdom 19.00
Estonia 20.00
Finland 20.00
Iceland 20.00
Latvia 20.00
Russia 20.00
Portugal 21.00
Slovakia 21.00
European Union 21.30
Sweden 21.40
Denmark 22.00
Norway 22.00
Turkey 22.00
Euro area 23.30
Italy 24.00
Austria 25.00
Netherlands 25.00
Spain 25.00
Luxembourg 27.08
Greece 28.00
Belgium 29.00
Germany 30.00
France 31.00
Malta 35.00
Sorry if this has been posted before. My colleagues were banging on about how high corporation tax is.
1. It is evidently comparatively low.
2. Raising it to 26% is a bizarre number to choose, as it puts us above countries like the Netherlands that we compete with.
3. Somewhere between 21-23% seems fair
Side note: If companies like Starbucks and Amazon don't pay tax, then they can do one. We don't need them. Other companies will take their place as other companies will want to make the clear profit available in that space.
If anything, these companies should pay higher tax than smaller companies, in the same way higher earners should. A small start-up is more vulnerable than a company like Starbucks. |
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