Grumpy thread

[Homers GSA]

Originally Posted by AnTyx

The small bits were things told to me by Australians who moved here and were deliriously happy to be in society where one's business is presumed to be one's own. It's hard to put a specific finger on it - like proving a negative - situations where you're simply not required to justify yourself socially. I'll come back and quote some if I come across any specific examples.

This is, of course, not to say that Britain is a shining beacon of equality. I'm not British and it's not Britain I'm comparing to.

The big bits, well, the most obvious one was that actually serious attempt to get a Great Australian Firewall that would ban internet pornography in the country. That was when I first thought to myself, This must not be quite the land of "a fair go" that I'd read about.

Well there are some pretty shite places where that may well happen though I haven’t experienced it. Some of our rural towns can be rather insular and everyone knows each other’s business. However, the major towns and cities have actually gone the other way; many people are isolated and lonely.

Funny story - back in the 1980’s I lived in a rural area and would spend the weekends doing what young blokes get up to. Mum knew everything I had been up to before I got home.

The porn filter was a short lived wet dream of a former religious prime minister that was put to death both politically and as the result of a teenager demonstrating how it could be bypassed. Australia has had a history of religious conservative movements which are thankfully rapidly diminishing.

There is a lot wrong in Oz, yet I stand by my earlier statement. We don’t like authority, and can smell bullshit a mile away, yet when its serious we go along with it. A good example would be the Port Arthur Massacre in the 90’s. A knob with an assault weapon killed a heap of people. Government said thats it, you don’t need guns, no more guns. And we mumbled and grumbled and went, “Yeah, fair cop.”. No more massacres.

[chris gale]

Jay
I think it comes down to People not liking being told what to do......I know my rights etc . Seems it's all me me me not us us us . We dont like being taxed and whine about it , hence our NHS bed capacity being way behind Germany as an example . We whined about cuts to our services due to being in serious debt , not saying I like spreadsheet Phil hammond but it certainly put money in the coffers for this predicament. I love my country but it does seem full of selfish dickheads as you say .

[Threewheelbonnie]

Report today of people getting test kits sent to them, deciding not to return their samples then getting positive results anyway .

A colleague of my wife returned from a family funeral in Malta and stayed at home for 14 days. The app recorded him in contact with someone 200 miles away on one of the days he spoke to tracers on his land line on day 6. No one had a clue what to do after their own records confirmed this trace was impossible he'd have needed a TARDIS. Basically just repeated "computer sez no" a lot.

I've deleted the app, can't afford a false positive.

Simple rule : if you want anything ontime, on cost and actually working don't let a government near it, especially the British government.

Andy

[backofbeyond]

Originally Posted by Threewheelbonnie

Report today of people getting test kits sent to them, deciding not to return their samples then getting positive results anyway

I've deleted the app, can't afford a false positive.

Andy

That's the reality of it for a lot of people - are you really going to ring to your minimum wage, hanging on by a thread job and say 'sorry, can't come in. app's just bleeped 14 days isolation.' Especially when it's the third time this month its done it and the consequences of ignoring it are zero. Until recently it wouldn't even run on my older phone. Ignorance, especially if you're feeling ok, is the more pragmatic response.

Re British characteristics - I blame the hippies. It was sometine in the 60's we changed from the old wartime 'do your bit' to the peace and love 'do your thing'. Collectivism was out and it's been individualism all the way since. Strange that the empire vanished into the dust around the same time ...

[Jay_Benson]

Originally Posted by backofbeyond

Re British characteristics - I blame the hippies. It was sometine in the 60's we changed from the old wartime 'do your bit' to the peace and love 'do your thing'. Collectivism was out and it's been individualism all the way since. Strange that the empire vanished into the dust around the same time ...

WHAT!!!! The Empire has gone?

I would put it down to more recent times and “greed is good” promulgated by Thatcher in the 80’s - it meant everyone was out for themselves financially and that carried over to other aspects of life. The hippies were more egalitarian and community minded on the whole - obviously excluding Branson.

[Mezo]

Originally Posted by Jay_Benson

I would put it down to more recent times and “greed is good” promulgated by Thatcher in the 80’s - it meant everyone was out for themselves financially and that carried over to other aspects of life.

Spot on, and Thatcherism spread right around the world.

Mezo.

[Jay_Benson]

Originally Posted by Mezo

Spot on, and Thatcherism spread right around the world.

Mezo.

I suspect on a global level Thatcher working in concert with Reagan are much to blame as the mouthpieces for monetarism. as was said about some accountants “they know the price of everything, and the value of nothing”.

[Tim Cullis]

I reckon I might have an answer for my 'false warning'. According to the NHS website, "Close contact is based on an algorithm, but generally means you've been within 2 metres of someone with coronavirus for 15 minutes or more."

I have been ultra careful, but clearly I had been in the vicinity of someone with Covid which isn't difficult when more than 1 person in 1,000 is infected. I appreciate the proximity bit is difficult to measure, but what concerns me is the 15 minutes part which I couldn't relate to.

Our cleaning lady arrived at our house early Friday morning and although she had received a negative PCR test result, I was wearing a mask, and left the house almost immediately. She is now in Bulgaria for Christmas with no symptoms. I then went to Tesco where almost all my contact was merely aisle passing of less than 30 seconds, except in the self-scan checkout area where I was near others (whilst still wearing my mask) for maybe three or four minutes. I then went home.

But then I remembered that my wife had wanted me to use a Tesco Clubcard on the purchases as there were extra discounts. I couldn't find mine, so I spoke to a lady in customer services who passed me a leaflet on how to set up a clubcard online. I was near to her (though separated by a screen) for a couple of minutes max. I then left the store and sat in the car, downloaded the app, tried to register but was refused as I had already used the email address for my previous (lost) card. I tried again, and also tried guessing the password on the previous card. So after maybe ten minutes I went back inside, queued up again, and as 'luck' would have it, spoke to the same woman at customer services who rummaged around and gave me a phone number to call. I was probably near her for three minutes. If the Covid app measured the time from the first to the last interactions it would definitely have been over 15 minutes.

I was a great fan of the Apple/Google exposure notification initiative when it was first developed, but it becomes of less use if everyone is wearing masks.

[chris gale]

Regardless of how u swing politics wise , people always want what they cant afford . If that was incorrect then Apple , Samsung , Ducati , Mercedes as examples wouldnt exist . PCP, Intrest only mortgages are totally mad financial propositions yet people take them on anyways . Western Europe is in a debt spiral, you can blame politicians and banks all u like but it's still people who day I'll have and I'll possibly pay for it later.

[Threewheelbonnie]

Alternatively, there is no limit to the size of any economy so long as we include none physical items. This site for example could double its number of posts, attract twice the number of advertisers, pay the owners more etc. The extra server space would be about the only physical drag.

Debt is just another product we create. A bank is selling you the fiction it has something to back up the note it wrote. So long as enough people believe that, they keep borrowing from Peter to pay Paul (and loaning the same to Dave, Chris and Ethel). The spin keeps spinning. When we don't believe, we fall back on further fiction like our belief one yellow metal will always be wanted by someone.

The relative values of goods is supply and demand, but supply can be restricted by the branding mentioned. People who believe an I-phone is better than a Waiwei will exchange more for it. A Georgian would have kept you in luxury for life for a machine that could add like a pocket calculator just because supply was zero, no waiting for an i-phone there. The seller would still spend his millions on almost inexhaustible resources like music because he could only eat so much.

If you believe this all ends up in a 1637 style Tulip bulb madness or efficient market stuff happens is beyond my pay grade, but I wouldn't fall for the all debt is bad plan.

Andy

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by Tim Cullis

I reckon I might have an answer for my 'false warning'. According to the NHS website, "Close contact is based on an algorithm, but generally means you've been within 2 metres of someone with coronavirus for 15 minutes or more."

That's it, the warning is a warning, nothing more. It's not like a positive test result where you're pretty sure you have been infected. But the thing is, the more people ignore that the more the virus will spread, especially the super-infectious version the UK's half-hearted containment results have selectively bred. I daresay fewer people would ignore it if there was some financial help for staying off work, but again HMG's response to supporting working people has had glaring holes in it and many of the self employed had to continue working or starve. People like taxi drivers, couriers and food delivery people, who don't come into contact with many others

The history of the UK government in the pandemic has been one disaster after another, from locking down late and light the first time, to reopening too soon and too much, to not implementing an adequate second lockdown, to forcing schools and colleges to reopen as giant petri dishes, to introducing an ineffective "tiers" system, to ignoring their own rules and scientists, to failing to support many of the individuals and businesses affected, to issuing corrupt and ineffective orders for PPE and services to its cronies wasting billions in public money.

Johnson missed 5 of the crucial emergency cabinet meetings in the early stages, while ministers shipped thousands of "surplus" medical PPE items to China and told the British public they only needed to wash their hands while singing God Save the Queen, while other countries were locking down and their wards were filling. It was leaked from one meeting that government policy was "herd immunity, protect the economy and if a few old people die, too bad". Of course this was later denied but looking at the policies they have applied since then it would be hard to do a better job of getting people infected if they tried.

I'm under no impressions that Australia, German or Vietnam are the promised land, they all have their problems. But all of them have done a better job of handling the pandemic than Britain has. Johnson and his bunch of Old Etonian cronies have made the biggest ****up imaginable and not once had the good grace to apologise or one person to resign. Other countries have shown the pandemic can be managed down to low levels and controlled, all we hear in the UK is "this is unprecedented and they're doing the best they can". Well bullshit. When a school football team is losing 11-0 it's fair enough to say they're doing the best they can, this cuts no ice for the national government of a rich country when thousands are dying.

If there's one small ray of light, personally speaking, my wife is planning to travel to London for the birth of our first grandchild and to be safe, she went online and asked for a test. They didn't ask you to swear on a bible you had symptoms and she got a test 6 miles away at an hour's notice. We got the (negative) results back on Christmas Day morning.

[chris gale]

Three wheels,
I agree not all debt is bad but stretching yourselves to the limit not taking into account possible future trends certainly is ........think we've gone slightly off topic

[Homers GSA]

Hi James

The economic outcomes will be very distinct. Individually, there will be many people whose lives are ruined by Covid, particularly small to medium enterprises and their employees.

Globally, the economy will most probably rebound incredibly once Covid is managed. I know that my retirement account grew by 8% in just three weeks in late Sep/early Nov. For those fortunate enough who could weather the storm, there is a lot of disposable income ready to be spent. Tourism in particular will go crazy. Here in Oz people are booking cruises for late 2021..... And some think motorcycle riders take risks. A floating petrie dish - no thanks

The effect on GDP due to covid deaths, and probably more importantly, covid disabilities, will be interesting to watch. The US and UK will probably have a falling GDP due to the ongoing effects of these people being taken out of the economy. The one thing countries like Oz and NZ benefitted from was properly shutting down their economies very early on - we took an initial hit, but the economic recovery will parrallel the projections pre covid, returning to them pretty fast. Those who didn't shut down fully, had less of a financial hit but the hit will take a lot longer and well into the decade or so to return.

As you say, stay safe.

[Jay_Benson]

Originally Posted by Homers GSA

The effect on GDP due to covid deaths, and probably more importantly, covid disabilities, will be interesting to watch. The US and UK will probably have a falling GDP due to the ongoing effects of these people being taken out of the economy. The one thing countries like Oz and NZ benefitted from was properly shutting down their economies very early on - we took an initial hit, but the economic recovery will parrallel the projections pre covid, returning to them pretty fast. Those who didn't shut down fully, had less of a financial hit but the hit will take a lot longer and well into the decade or so to return.

As you say, stay safe.

In the UK the expectation is that the GDP hit will be around 3% in the long term. Just to put that in context, with the deal our “government” has achieved we are looking at a long term it of around 4%. We had the offer from the EU of delaying the transition date by a year but for purely political reasons “we” chose to drink from the poisoned chalice straight away so incurring a 7% hit to economy in one go. Still, a no-deal Brexit would have been around a 6-7% hit by itself.

The long term financial hit that the government took with the various Covid schemes it created has been a life line to many companies - mine included - but the money will have to be covered by IMHO, four things - tax increases, better tax collection by closing the multitude of loopholes, by investing in the country to reinvigorate the economy which to will lead to the fourth thing - higher inflation. The last one is the most contentious I suspect as inflation has always been seen as a bad thing but in this case it could have a benefit of effectively shrinking the debt over a number of years.

[backofbeyond]

Inflation certainly seemed to work in the 1970's

Give it a couple of years until things begin to settle down and the economic numbers start to bounce back as people adapt to their new circumstances. Boris will be all over those, claiming the credit and saying it's Tory policies that are responsible for our new found 'prosperity'. Expect headlines like 'fastest growing economy in Europe', 'You've never had it so good' (nothing like dredging up a quote from a hardly remembered 'golden era') and 'the benefits of Brexit' (although I suspect the actual term is going to be dumped fairly rapidly). And then - surprise, surprise - it'll almost be election time.

Somewhere around that time there will be a soft focus article in some right wing glossy mag called 'The Man who Saved Britain'. It'll have a combination of magisterial formal portraits of Boris together with a few of him 'in the crisis' with his sleeves rolled up sitting at his desk surrounded by paperwork. It'll tell the 'story' of the pandemic and how Boris had to take all those difficult decisions to protect the health of the nation. Boris will walk tall from the pages, it'll be his Falklands, his Battle of Britain. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Vote Boris in the Corona Election.

Oh God, I've seen too much of all this, been cynically manipulated too many times, been convinced that black is white (and the converse) by over promoted and under powered media and politicians and come to the conclusion that as actually managing the economy in the interests of the country is beyond the capacity of any individual or group, the best they can do is manage it in their own interests. Nothing changes. I'm sure economic improvements happen despite politicians, not because of them. All they seem to have the power to do is wreck things. I just hope my and my wife's pension plans are not among them. They will be if Boris inflates his way out of trouble.

And so endeth the daily rant, taken today from St Cynic's epistle to the Downtrodden, verse 666.