Posts by LucreLout

Trustwave: Here's how to earn $84,000 A MONTH as a blackhat

Yes, quite, but when that truism was first used, we had this old fashioned notion of sending criminals to jail. Averaging out the ill-gotten gains over 24 hours per day for 365 days per year used to reduce the hourly rate a little.

Life in prison not appealing to Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht – appeal filed

Re: He doesn't want life in prison? Shocker.

it's getting more like a poor sitcom every week

Yes, he will literally be trying the Chewbacca defence [1] by the time this thing gets to its final appeal.

[1] Family Guy, for the uneducated.

So why the hell didn't quantitative easing produce HUGE inflation?

Re: Tons of inflation @Simon Hobson

Of course, whenever and wherever new houses are proposed to be build, there's generally "something of a backlash" from the people already living there

I see it all the time where I live. However, just because there is a backlash doesn't mean it is illogical.

There exists in an area, a certain amount of infrastructure such as schools, road capacity, rail capacity, hospitals etc. Adding further people to an area, for that is what housebuilding does, absent increased provision of infrastructure, must reduce the quality or availability of service to those already living there.

More property for sale must logically reduce the value of existing property in a given area too.

So build more infrastructure becomes the inevitable answer, which leads equally to the inevitable question of who pays for that? Well, the NIMBYs (for that is how they are invariably branded) are already losing out on some of the value gain their property would otherwise enjoy and may take the view that is enough of a subsidy towards the new buyers. The new buyers are very unlikely to be able to afford the cost of the new infrastructure to be added to the value of their would be homes, as that would further increase prices. So the infrastructure simply doesn't get built, making the logical position of those already living somewhere to resist further building.

There needs to be a solution, because (and I say this as a home owner) we're not building enough houses. The government doesn't have anything left over after wages are paid to invest in infrastructure - it doesn't even have enough to pay the wage bills, hence the deficit. I certainly don't have what I'd consider to be a fair and balanced proposition for resolving the issue, and I've never heard or read one that was. Invariably they devolve into two camps each persuing their own best interest at the expense of the other.

Re: Numbers don't lie, but liars fudge the numbers @Alistair

Oil may have halved in price in the markets, but it sure as HELL has not HALVED in price at the pumps

Oil is not bought at the pumps, petrol and diesel are. Refinery and transportation costs have not halved because input prices have, and in any case, at least in the UK, most of what you pay at the pump is tax.

Clarkson, formerly of TopGear, had that right. By price, your car has a tax guage not a fuel guage. "Oh no, I've run out of tax!".

Re: QE was used to increase inflation

Explain to me on a fixed income why deflation in consumer goods in line with increased efficiency of production is a bad thing cuz I can't quite grasp that.

To keep it simple, lest I confuse myself, there seems two obvious reasons.

Firstly, the government owe a lot of money. They can't afford to repay that in real terms, so must drive inflation to make repayments less unaffordable. Absent that inflation, taxes will have to rise to fund repayments. Those taxes can't only fall on the workers, so retirees (forgive me if that is not why your income is fixed) would have to take a hit too, leaving you less money to purchase the deflating goods. Lower VAT returns also require a still higher VAT rate.

Deflation means people spend less. Again, that feeds through to employment and taxes, which absent significant cut backs to the size of the state mean those with any form of income would have to pay a greater share.

I've ignored any environmental concerns of mass producing tat (lets face it, half of what we buy is junk) as I'm no great believer in environmentalism. Your mileage may vary.

Re: Is that the sound of a can being kicked down the road?

The biggest expense for people with static (so relatively falling) salaries increases

Lose 10% of GDP and you'll find several million people lose 100% of their salary, and shortly afterwards, their homes.

So you've delayed the inevitable crash

A property crash isn't inevitable. Though I'd agree, it is likely to happen at some point, mostly due to the government and voters not having a grown up debate about the least worst way to deflate the bubble or slow it while the wider economy catches up.

Re: Incomplete point of view @Justthefacts

Banks never used to need your own private island in Docklands, with guards armed with assault rifles

Highly amusing.

I've had a quick look out of my window, and nope, no armed guards. I've seen more armed police at the train station than I have at the wharf; Perhaps they're there due to the poor standing rail workers have with the general public?

For me, we should have let the banks go bust. That we didn't was more to do with politics than it was economics. Quite why that was, and seemingly still is, the fault of all bank staff everywhere remains a mystery to me.

Re: Tons of inflation

Basically we need to build 15 million houses, and then prices will drop to something sensible. If you want a "social" model then taxing inheritance more heavily wouldn't hurt to level the playing field

Firstly lets deal with the myth of inheritance tax. All that would happen if this was increased is that assets would be progressively gifted to children to avoid the tax. Ideologically, I quite like IHT, as it means your wealth is derived from your efforts rather than those of your ancestors. However, what value do you put on a first rate education, for example, as without ability to confer fiscal advantage on your children, more parents will seek to convey some competitive advantage (which is really just the same thing).

So let’s consider building 15 million houses. That would destroy current property valuations for generations to come. Which, if you don’t own a house is possibly a good thing. If you do own one, it is disastrous, as you’re now plunged into negative equity forever – anyone who bought in the last 15 years, so all of Generation X would be finished. If you’re a bank, you’re bust, because those whose only asset is the house will simply hand back the keys and file for bankruptcy. If you’re a baby boomer trying to downsize to fund your retirement then you’re knackered. If you’re the state, how on earth do you propose recapitalising or replacing the banks, and funding this building program that would exceed anything ever delivered by the state?

Moving on from the fiscal Armageddon that would ensue, to look at where we could build all these houses? Imagine we’d built all of these without blowing up the banks, such that people could still obtain a mortgage and so buy these properties. Where do they go? Existing towns and cities couldn’t cope – you’d need to build more roads than the green lobby could comprehend, more train tracks than Beeching ever envisaged…. Where does that get funded?

15 million houses is an impossibility. Optimistically over the next 10 years we might build 1/10th of that. 15 million could take almost 100 years to complete.

House prices weren’t wonderful for Gen X. They aren’t great for Gen Y. For the millennials they’re going to be pretty awful. Everyone has differing definitions of fair, but pointing the finger at preceding generations and plotting to sequester their wealth isn’t going to win enough votes and isn’t going to change anything.

Preventing the problem getting worse requires, absolutely requires, that net population increase is balanced with net house building. That alone is a minefield (do you limit immigration, the birth rate [only possible via benefits], or incentivise house building [which can only really be done via tax reductions]) which could sink any political party, absent a grown up debate about the least worst way to achieve it. If you could achieve a consensus here, then post delivery, meaningful debate on how to reduce prices could begin, and in that, I wish you the best of luck.

Re: Likewise, thanks Tim @Paul 25

Sadly being a leftie in the UK at the moment can be hard work. Any suggestion that someone's sacred cow might be nonsense, or that some highly simplistic view of a complex problem might be wrong gets you shouted down.

I don't know, because I'd rather listen to you and decide if your point has merit than simply shout it down, however, on any realistic assesment of the last general election, it is the sacred cows of the left that were slaughtered by the populace. Simplistic arguments over redistribution of rewards without commensurate redistribution of efforts were roundly dismissed.

With respect, it is for the left to review why it exists anymore. Seriously. When labour formed as a party, had they set out a list of demands chiselled in stone, most of the UK would have regarded those demands as complete a long time ago. Simply lurching further down the same road doesn't bring meaning to the jouney - travel from Glasgow to London and you'll experience the wonderous joys of Cumbria/Newcastle, Manchester/York, and so forth until London. Continue down that road and all you get is Kent ;-)

@Tim

Late this year, early next is the conventional wisdom here.

Base rates won’t rise this year.

Given that a primary driver of inflation is public spending (public sector pay, in essence) and we have a government committed to reducing the bloated size of the state down to something more manageable, this should apply downward pressure on M4 money. Couple that with cooling commodities prices due to lack of demand elsewhere in the world, and it’s hard to see a reason why the UK would need higher base rates any time soon.

Will they rise? Yes, absolutely. Will it be this year? Nearly no chance. Next year? Possibly, but also possibly not. Without the Eurozone competing, an important driver of growth is missing, and it is certainly possible that this will see the slack persist beyond next year. Thereafter, all predictions are fairly worthless due to the in/out referendum and the appalling lack of serious debate or political progress being made.

As things stand, only Europhiles can really be sure how they will vote. I might vote yes, or I might vote no. I’m wholly undecided, and need to see plainly what the ‘new terms’ of our membership of the EU will be before deciding on my vote. The political apathy from the EU on that issue is unhelpful, as clearly the yes camp will need time to sell the arrangement to the UK. I need to know what things look like if we stay in, but importantly for the EU, I also need to know what things look like if we leave. That requires both sets of options be fully negotiated between now and 2017. I raise this issue only because it is this that will determine the route map for sterling and BoE base rates post 2017 as opposed to natural economic functions.

Soon your car won't let you drink. But it won't care if you're on the phone

Re: Calibration?

to get unroadworthy vehicles off the road before they turn into deathtraps

Unfortunately it falls some way short of achieving that. Depending on where in the UK you live, every other car fails its MOT. If your car would pass, then statistically, the guy behind and the guy in front would fail. At best this gets up to around one in three cars, so either the guy in front or the guy behind has a defective vehicle. Citation in link at end.

Defective lighting is the most common cause of failure, and yet would be so easy to police with a camera and lightbulb that I'm suprised our revenue hungry public servants haven't added another roadside tax to their schemes.

http://good-garage-guide.honestjohn.co.uk/mot-data-the-mot-files/mot-data-by-postcode/mot-data-by-postcode-overview/

Google blames Flash for hobbling Chrome, says it sucks (too much power)

Re: I speak for everyone when I say

Death to Biiiiiiiiing!!

Latest Snowden leak: NSA can snoop internet to catch 'hackers' – no warrants needed

Re: Just how did Snowden get all this info? @Ann

Which doesn't square with him being in his 20s (i.e. low level worker bee and not, say, a high-ranking NSA officer) and being stuck out in the boondocks of Hawaii doing database admin work.

Where I work the senior management understand less, a lot less, about technology than their 14 year old kids do. I, despite being twice Snowdens age, and effectively a worker bee, and I have legitimate access to more company secret information than most of the more senior people in the company due to the nature of my work. I have potential unauthorised access to even more - I'd never go look, but most developers here think secure computing is something done from a safe.

If you think about the various projects and initiatives going on in your own organizations, it's unlikely that a young staffer would know more than about 10% of them

Not if they listen. Where I work management like to talk. A lot. I could probably name 100s of initiatives and projects in departments I've never worked for.

I don't really see the relevence of how or from whom he gathered his data. Is it all 100% accurate? Probably not - things will have changed between his grabbing an update, publication, and now.

My view is that time spent debating how he obtained the data is time that could be better spent debating what should be collected, processed, and retained; and what shouldn't.

Elon Musk's $4.9bn taxpayer windfall revealed

Re: Comparing with a 'competitive' project

what they would cost when done by a competent government department

Unicorns can fly too, but since neither thing actually exists, aren't much good to anyone.

Sorry we called you a fatty, say Kiwi spies to Kim 'Slim Jim' Dotcom

Re: to be fair...

Won't help; They've been trying to pin stuff on him for years! Da-dum-tish.

Re: Traffic offenses?

You'd think so, but a quick Google reveals that to not be the case. People have been deported from all over the world, includng the UK, for traffic violations. Which was certainly an eye opener for me - every day's a school day.

Forget black helicopters, FBI flying surveillance Cessnas over US cities. Warrant? What's that?

Re: hmm

Wow. Routine FBI arial surveillance of US citizens, and the best contribution you feel you can offer is to whinge about something "the bankers" were blamed for that happened 8 years ago?

And people wonder why the government keep getting away with stuff...... "Wait, no, don't look at what we're doing, look at what they did!"

In tech? You’ll want to be in London for Interop in June

On the same day, Lord Wei of Shoreditch will be deliver a keynote on “Techlash and what we need to do to avoid it”, examining the social unrest that could ensue in a world where technology enriches its owners but leaves those whose jobs it obliterates stranded.

"Techlash" sounds like someone desperately trying to attach their moniker to a buzzword. It's also a tad late to start being concerned when you think how many roles technology has removed, unless you also balance that with the positive outlook of how many jobs it creates.

Co-op Bank's creaky IT should be flogged off, growls UK.gov

Re: Yet... @Mage

If you ever make CTO of a large bank, let me know, I'll come work for you. Agree 100% with what you have said, but nobody at any bank I've worked for genuinely gets what that means in practice.

Too many chiefs....

Co-Op will be a typical large corporate IT setup, with far far too much management who either never wrote code [1], or haven't done it since VB6. Unless and until boards of directors wake up to the fact that these people destroy value in IT as opposed to adding it, then progress can not be made.

Haven't coded [2] in 10 years? Then retire, because things have moved on so far that you're out of the game. You're simply not cut out for systems architecture, determining strategy for a field that you no longer understand, or even making correct tactical decisions.

[1][2]: Network administration etc included. I'm really referring to coal face jobs here. But I'm lazy. and literate only to Sun reader level.

Third Pirate Bay founder freed from clink, vows to fight domain seizure

I bought more music when Napster was with us than I ever have since.... I know there are other services I could use instead, but for reasons I've not really considered, I don't. Nice one RIAA.

OK Google, how much of my life do you observe and disturb?

Because with Google, you'll never grow old and you'll never die.

Never grow old? Never die? Wow. They've out done my wife, who merely thinks I'll never grow up.

Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht to spend LIFE in PRISON without parole

nobody forced those idiots to buy drugs from the Silk Road. Those that did and died, well it does result in making the gene pool a little better off in the long run.

Yes, I'm sure that is a massive comfort for their bereaved parents and siblings.

Re: Death by Drugs @BobRocket

Thanks for taking the time to reply Bob. It's a very interesting view which I certainly don't disagree with, and have upvoted.

Re: Death by Drugs @BobRocket

Every year approximately 80,000 people in England and Wales are convicted or cautioned for possession of drugs.

Those criminal records harm us all.

Bob,

Any chance you can elaborate on this part of your post please? The rest of it I understand, and as it happens agree with, but this part.... Well, to be honest, I'm struggling with it.

RoO act means that vanishingly few of those convictions are declared for more than a few months, or years at the most. It seems the harm they do to their recipients can best be described as transitory, unless they wish to emigrate or work in a regulated profession (children etc).

I've given it some consideration and I can't see what harm it does a third party (me, in this instance). As far as I can see it does me, and anyone unrelated to those convicted, no harm at all. I'll happily admit I've missed your point, which is why I'm asking for clarification please.

Re: "Mr. Anderson... you disappoint me..."

Life seems appropriate to me

I'll return to this point later or my post won't make sense.....

That it took the jury less than half a day to return a guilty verdict on all seven charges says a lot about the relative strengths of the prosecution and defence cases.

I'm fairly sure everyone, even Ross, would have expected that he would be found guilty. Set notions of justice aside for a moment. The law is a set of rules, which may be right or they may be wrong, but they are written down and (realtively) easy to understand. Somethings you can do, somethings you can't, unless you want to risk trial and punishment.

The USA has some very strict drug laws. Personally, I think the war on drugs was lost before the first shot was fired. As a concept it hasn't worked, and I'm wholly unconvinced that it can ever be made to work. Collectively, we should try something else.

So yes, in the framework in which he chose to conduct his business, DPR very obviously broke the law, and has been sentenced to a wholly typical tariff for that sort of offence. Perhaps had he chosen to relocate out of the country before engaging in Silk Road, and avoided hosting services in the US or conducting any dealings at all in dollars or with US citizens, he could have escaped a lengthy term.

The attempted murder charges, while as yet unanswered, are wholly inexcusable, whatever a persons views on the WoD. Numerous attempted murders conducted via hitmen can only rightly result in a whole life term. When he is convicted of such, for it seems highly likely he now will be, having been legally established as DPR, this particular tariff will be irrelelvant.

Those that believe as I do, that the WoD is morally questionable, and in practice unwinable, do themselves no favours in defending the actions of DPR. He knew the risks, played the game, and he lost. DPR wasn't ideologically wed to ending prohibition of drugs, he was only seeking to rake in profits from an unregulated market.

The rare metals debate: Only trace elements of sanity found

Re: Aha!@TeeCee

Peak oil seems to me to be an impossible theory, unless we physically have burned every last drop on earth, which is unlikely to happen. The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones, nor the bronze or iron ages.

As the cost of oil rises, known pockets of oil that were once uneconomic to extract become economic with existing tech. New tech that was once uneconomic becomes profitable, further increasing the avilable oil.

30 years ago when I was at school we were told oil would run out in 50 years. Amazingly, 30 year of rising consumption later and we still know it won't run out for around 50 years.

One of the principal reasons the enviornmental movement are so vehemently against fracking, is that it alone would put peak oil back to something their grandchildrens grandchildren might want to consider as possible.... but only if the generations inbetween were too lazy or stupid to develop better extraction methods.

There's so many people alive now that incidences of true genius have to be rising, which should expand humanities frontier faster than the generations that have gone before. The future doesn't glitter like gold; It's far better than that.

Re: Repeat?

That is not to take away the validity of the article, just the economics or getting paid twice for the same thing.

That's recycling for you!

The 'echo chamber' effect misleading people on climate change

The Indy may have started out trying to occupy the middle ground but in recent years it's made the Daily Mirror look like a frothy-mouthed bastion of fascism

Quite. Anyone who believes the Indy is centrist is most definately a left winger. I'll admit I'm struggling to think of a paper that IS centre ground..... which is slightly sad. Possibly the Times, but that isn't as clear as it once was.

Perhaps all newspapers should be gaffered to their positional opposite to encourage wider reading?

Buy the Sun and you get the Mirror stuck to the back. Buy the Guardian and you get the Daily Mail too.

Simple hatred of science and liberals drives the denial.

I love science. But I don't believe in MMGW, simply because it doesn't exist - there is no credible science to show that it exists and none of the models work if you run them with historic data. Warmist predictions have been wrong the whole of my life and they continue to be wrong year after year.

Show me anything that credibly even approaches real scientific consensus on the issue and my mind remains open. Unfortunately, global warming has more in common with religion that it ever had with objective science.

The longer warmists persist with panicky predictions that fail to occur, the fewer people will believe them next time. 30 years ago I was warned that if I continued driving we'd have the climate of Portugal by now. Well, I continued driving, and low and behold, no climate of Portugal; No significant change at all in fact.

Sex disease surge in US state partly blamed on hook-up apps

Don't die of ignorance...

... once of the single most effective public health campaigns ever. Sadly canned due to concerns over stigmatisation of people with aids. Perhaps its time for something similarly hard hitting?

WTF is going on with the zombie NSA-friendly Patriot Act? Let us help

Does it matter?

I mean, aside from as a point of principal, does it actually matter if the legislation dies?

Lets assume it dies. Does anyone genuinely believe that they'll stop collecting, processing, or analysing the data? Anyone?

Snowdens leaks would rather suggest that it won't. GCHQ will just spy on the yanks and the NSA will spy on the Brits: The data sets will be swapped, avoiding any need for domestic legislation.

ID-stealing scammers had a bumper start to the year, reveals report

Re: Not only PC based.

They can cancel the policy as far as I am concerned and I will find another insurer without such blatantly stupid policies...

Please be careful doing this. Insurers often ask "Have you ever had insurance refused or cancelled?" If you put yourself in the situation where you have to answer "Yes" then the policy gets expensive faster than Paris gets nekkid.

By all means decline to send them what they ask for, just make sure you're the one who cancelles the policy, then you can still answer "No" for quotes.

EU net neutrality could kneecap the Tories' opt-out pr0n filter plans

Re: What has Network Neutrality got to do with this

I expect they track every site you visit regardless

It's the only safe assumption to make. It's an assumption that I made for myself over 20 years ago, that I have yet to see any evidence to disprove.

With big data analytics, we might be on the cusp of some serious abuse of those logs, rather than targetted abuse if you happened to become significant to the establishment. Pretty well any teenage lad accessing the internet 20 years ago would have stumbled across things like the anarchists cookbook, which may now be proscribed reading, and could certainly raise some undue questions or warning flags.

Re: What has Network Neutrality got to do with this

Or do you really think we should all be treated like morons and/or sheep

Not related to this particular debate, but the facts seem to me that we are all already treated like morons and sheep by the government. Almost every walk of life is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator - driving, fire arms, recreational substances, pocket knives, health and safety law etc etc.

Frankly, I'm only suprised it has taken so long for the government to notice the internet. While TOR may now be compromised, I would expect that increasing international government interest in the internet will usher forth a replacement technology that works much better.

Re: Oh dear @ YAAC

I'm not sure, because I'm not a lawyer [1], but I don't think ISPs require a law to allow them to filter your content. The only thing stopping them is bad publicity. If you know different, please can I trouble you for a link?

[1] Googling won't really assist me because much of the law seems interpretive or case based, so I'd be unlikely to arrive at a legally sound view.

Stranded Brussels airport passengers told to check Facebook

Or an ashtray on the back of your motorbike

Am I the only one getting flashbacks to Randall Peltzers Smokeless Ashtray?

Re: Downvoted because

I replied with some suggested SQL to trawl my (frankly unique) name from their database

Unique? Not really, there seem to be a lot of Anonymous Cowards about these pastures.

Re: Arrrrrgh! Zuck has bought the rights to Belgium?

I may be the last person standing who refuses to use a social app

You may well still be last, but you're not alone yet.

Belgium is only small, so why not just get a fat bloke with a loudhailer?

Why are all the visual special effects studios going bust?

being really good at this stuff is bloody hard work, never gets any easier or more secure but there are still enough desperate operators and new grads out there to make it an employer's market.

Quite. I'm part way through (yet another) degree, and have still to complete the "animation module". Which I am sure will be very interesting, and certainly far outside my comfort zone, but working for large corporates, animation is a skill I'm unlikely to ever use.

I can understand why animation would be a specialist course in its own right, but it feels to me that insisting so many study it just devalues what is likely to be a complex skill, requiring much practice to appear polished.

Re: Seems to me that a rarity...

Not sure Fury Road counts as a remake, either. Also, it's excellent.

Fury Road is just Mad Max without Mad Mel. His 'views' were never going to sit well with Hollywood, so while they were desperate to cash in on another Mad Max movie, they were more desperate to steer clear of Gibson.

Hopefully, if the movie is as good as people say, it will be the start of a second generation trilogy.

NEVER MIND the B*LLOCKS Osbo peddles, deficits don't really matter

Re: @LucreLout - It seems to me...

I see you have nothing useful to add, so we'll leave it here.

Widen your reading list (a lot), open your mind, and do some proper research rather than regurgitating ill informed blog-polemic here (that's the Reg writers job!), and we'll continue another time.

Re: @LucreLout - It seems to me...

how you manage to completely fail to comprehend what is written in nice, plain, easy to understand English

Yes, but its also a load of old lefty, angsty, fact-free garbage (your link that underpins you view).

The author cites Chomsky first among his influences, which isn't so much a warning sign as it is hitting the intellectual buffers. Next up, he teaches English... After working as an administrator in the public sector. So his income and entire way of life is wholly dependant upon a big state solution. His recommended links consist almost entriely of leftist nonsense, which is hardly indicative of his being widely read.

And yet.... and yet, you've fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. You urgently need to reflect on how that has happened. You've soaked up the spin, drank it down like facts, burped it up here, and then you have the temerity to criticise me? Seriously, you've been badly misled and you need to adjust your reading list to encompass something factual, and something representing the other side of the coin.

ETA: Curiously, in all his verbal crapulence, the author you cite completely misses Labours IMF bailout in the 70s, when the country was bankrupt using any definition of the word. Some might find that strange, no? The article is empty rhetoric, and so is any viewpoint based upon it.

Re: @LucreLout - It seems to me...

If you think I have any love for the Labour Party ...

Amazing, isn't it? So many people voted for them, and yet so very many are too ashamed to admit it. Perhaps because they know that voting out of naked self interest has led to another bankruptcy for Britain, and once again it falls to the Conservatives to clear away the mess.

There isn't a single credible source with any evidence of economic capability on the part of any Labour chancellor. For the good of the country, the grown-ups have to take away the cheque book because the endless cycle of shore-leave spending labour chancellors, followed by Conservative chancellors fixing the mess, followed by the public being bought off with bribes to vote in the next Labour "useful idiot". It's just getting us nowhere as a country and we need to stop. Its time to move the debate forwards and we can only do that by limiting the damage any future labour chancellor may cause. "there is no money", remember?

Re: @Graham

Funny, I don't recall you compalining loudly about that during the 13 wasted years of labour, when that very systematic imbalance worked in their favour. Sour grapes, no?

Re: It seems to me...

... that George's aim is not simply to give us a "small state", but to utterly cripple the ability of any future government to undo what he has done

I just can't understand why you say this as though it's a bad thing.

Labour sought to tie the hands of future government sot a big state with reckless PPI contracts, massive public sector pension liabilities, and a welfare class so numerous they can carry the vote.

Britain simply can't endure another tax, borrow and waste labour chancellor, as they all are. Labour have proved time and again that they can't be trusted with the pruse strings, and the British public have proven time and again that they will fall for labour lies about that.

The only logical solution for any responsible chancellor is to tie the hands of all future labour chancellors such that we can skip over the economic train wreck that always, always accompanies labour leaving power. How that should be achieved may be debateable, but that it must be achieved is now beyond reasonable doubt, and its time to move the debate forwards.

Re: Impulsive voting

Pointing out to these people that the coalition had actually increased the national debt more in their term of office than the previous three administrations combined was met with general disbelief

Well, yes, because it's pure spin.

I don't mean it's untrue. It's certainly a true fact, taken out of context and viewed in isolation. The labour government inherited a strong economy with low debt, a structural surplus, and ultra low employment. They then proceeded to p*ss that up the wall, then embarked on scortched earth policies in the run up to being thrown from office, gifting the coalition nothing but debt, a massive deficit, and little hope of turning things around. so little was the hope the the governer of the BoE publicly stated that whoeever won the election would be out of power for a generation.

So, yes, people greet your statement with disbelief because what you're trying to imply by making it (that the coalition was less fiscally responsible than labour) simply isn't true. Even labour are starting to publicly accept that they over spent. People are gobsmacked you don't see it.

Re: An excellent example ...

if you want monkeys running the government and civil service, pay peanuts.

The problem, of course, is that every year we pay still more money, and all we achieve is making the same monkeys we already have more expensive. When does the monkey replacement program begin?

Public servants, in real terms, cost very nearly double what they did just 20 years ago. And we just don't have anything to show for that. Productivity is worse than ever, and debt is reaching unsustainable levels.

Driverless cars deal death to Detroit, says Barclays

Re: Misses the piint

Taxi drivers will hate it, loss of jobs etc.

Lets call it what it is.... Loss of industry. Loss of jobs implies they might be able to get another or go self employed within their industry, and neither will be the case - taxi driver simply won't exist as a role, same as red flag waver, boiler man, cotton picker etc.

Now the pros & cons of that are legion, depending on your view, but resistance will be futile - the same week these things get licenced for full auto is the last week any cab firms need drivers. Car manufacturers, if they have any sense, will set up taxi fleets with the first x000 they build, because it'll only need a phone app / web site, and a little software to run them.

Hmm, how to get home today.... I could take the DLR, Tube, and a train... but they're on strike again... I had a Ford yesterday, I know, it's Friday [ok, it isn't], I'll treat myself to a Jag home. Clicket clickety car.

Re: Maybe one car will be enough for a family

there will also be a number of ... people getting a second car

Yes. My family have three already - My car, the wifes, and my track day car. We'll need one for the child eventually, which will make 4. Then I'll probably buy a JohnnyCab too, decked out as an office / study, and will keep my fast car as my fun plaything, and keep the track day car for, well, track days.

Why the number owned is an issue I don't understand (I have offstreet parking for two of mine, with space I could use for a third)? Number on the road is what matters, but that will increase as people move away from public transport to mobile work places or games rooms at rush hour.

Ultimately, unpopular as it will be with the green lobby, more space will have to be set aside and more roads will have to be built.