TallestJohn
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Registered on: March 2015
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Post by TallestJohn on May 9, 2015 2:38:57 GMT
The system limps on - it's cancerous nature requiring ever increasing growth, but there is no room left for it to grow into! Its growth is now completely imaginary, but it will reach the bounds of imagination sometime too! It will only take a small crisis, and it's all going to fall down - and there is going to be one hell of a sh!tstorm. UNSUSTAINABLE WWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAWWW BBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRR EEEE EEEE EE
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V12
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Posts: 185
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Post by V12 on May 9, 2015 3:44:54 GMT
I might try a serious, rambling reply tomorrow.
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Post by Leprechaun (kighnet) on May 9, 2015 4:23:35 GMT
You know this country is in a bad way when someone is seriously considering saying "Fuck it, I'm out"....If that certain someone did do that then it would most likely be for either America, where you can can be shot for the colour of your skin (no offence to any Americans) or Australia, where their leader is arguably more racism than that twat Farage! As an American, I take no offence. I'm sad, that as a straight white man, my safety is much greater than millions of Americans due to the color of their skin, the god they worship, or who they love. The primary thing I have to worry about is a!@#$%^ who ruin our government/land and whether or not the country stays as a place that attempts freedom from religious (or non-religious) persecution (as it fails at times).
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Post by Pundip on May 9, 2015 10:55:40 GMT
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Duchartre
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Posts: 461
Registered on: March 2015
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Post by Duchartre on May 9, 2015 11:34:09 GMT
This does a great job of explaining it.
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double_s92
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head toilet cleaner
Inconsistantly Constant
Posts: 1,709
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Post by double_s92 on May 11, 2015 19:39:42 GMT
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V12
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Posts: 185
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Post by V12 on May 11, 2015 22:58:56 GMT
I guess to get back to my original point, why are we putting off the inevitable by trying to pay off debts that will never be paid off? And why are we doing this at the expense of the majority of people who will be poorer/sicker/unhappier because of it? This was just going to be a short reply but as you can see it got a bit out of hand. I'm not sure how much this follows on from what you're discussing but it certainly ties into the potential debt crisis. For the record, this is my opinion based on things i've read. I'm an economics novice, much of this could be wrong (in many ways i hope it is) but for the sake of discussion i thought i'd share. The main issue here is that the government is working with an almost £100B deficit, IMO a result of lower tax income (wages not meeting inflation among other things) and austerity which has more to do with your second point. But that's another story for another time. When the government needs money to make up a deficit, they tend to issue sovereign bonds and gilts. Put simply, you buy one with a set interest rate and a maturity date. So after a certain amount of time you can cash it in and the government give you the purchase price back plus the agreed interest. A loan essentially. These are tradable and have a huge market based around them. Since early 2009 the Bank of England (BoE) has been following a Quantitative Easing policy, buying up gilts with new money. For legal reasons the government can't sell directly to the bank, so has to sell bonds and gilts (b+g's) to private entities which in turn sell them to the BoE. This was supposed to be temporary with an intention to sell them back once the economy has recovered. Money has essentially been printed by the BoE to fund this deficit, and eventually inflation should start. This will technically reduce the value of the debt but also the value of the £. But this isn't just free money, it's an asset exchange. So by swapping money for b+g's, they are reducing the supply of them, which can create a bubble, while moving a lot of money back into the finance sector. So a lot of groups are borrowing money to gamble on the fact that £ based b+g supply will reduce and prices go up, adding to this bubble. So when these sovereign b+g's are released back onto the market prices will most likely drop and things might start going wrong. The bond market has recently been sweating anyway before the BoE has started moving them back onto the market. The price of b+g's is strongly linked to interest rates, lower interest rates and yield on the bond gives them a higher price. So when people start selling off bonds in larger amounts, prices drop and interest rates will most likely increase. The BoE hold about 30% (£400B ish) of the UK debt at the moment, with another 35% or so in foreign hands thanks to a relatively strong £ value. The risk of the £ inflating is that the exchange rate improves in favour of foreign currencies (can get more £ for your $) so foreign investors might start moving away from the UK b+g's to cash out while they can get more of their own currency back. The other issue will be interest rates. Inflation means the £ will be devalued (less purchasing power) so banks will want to increase interest rates to compensate for this as well as a corrected interest rate for the drop in b+g price. Pension schemes and insurance companies buy a lot of bonds too so a collapse in bond prices will cut the value a lot of peoples pensions. We also have a lot of personal debt in the UK based around the low interest rate, cheap credit has pushed up the price on a lot of assets. With an increased interest rate and our stagnant wages, more people will default on their mortgages putting houses back on the market, sending prices down. House prices are linked to GDP too (rising house prices tend to encourage consumer confidence) so if that decreases, the debt to GDP ratio will take a hit meaning the government is less likely to be able to pay back debt. A lower £ value will also increase the price of imports putting even more stress on our lower wage society. It's also at this point that public spending will be cut even more. GDP will no doubt be reduced along with tax intake too so larger cuts will be needed to try and balance the deficit and stop inflation gathering pace (cut off the money flow to add value). Not to mention the increased interest rates on government debt payment which will eat up an even larger portion of the government budget. So stagflation would be a real risk at this point. If this doesn't happen quite yet, then deflation occurs as we've seen recently since the drop in oil prices. Debt and lack of demand thanks to austerity has brought this on in many ways. This won't do us much good either as it makes the debt look even greater (as the value of money rises) especially when you consider the rate at which debt is increasing compared to economic growth. It also discourages spending, why buy today when it might be cheaper tomorrow etc. so you have reduced tax income and even less growth. The answer to this is further Quantitative Easing to try and encourage inflation, but that can have it's problems as i mentioned earlier. Interest rates won't dip into the negatives because everyone will withdraw whatever they have to avoid this. Keeping inflation steady while attempting recovery seems the only way out, either side of this and it looks like shit will really hit the fan. It's bad for the tax payers but it allows the country to spend money it doesn't have, for a while anyway. I suppose this is why it's now very important to close the deficit to stop the money printing, but with debt rising faster than GDP it's going to be even tougher. Personally, i think austerity is the one thing that's holding us back; people lower down the ladder are being shafted by stagnant wages and the increasing equality gap. They're very important in getting the economy moving again as they tend to spend a greater portion of their income. tl;dr We're printing money to keep the country running and it's going to fuck us if we don't keep it under control; while austerity is fucking us in the meantime. But some people are benefiting and that's no accident.
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Post by tjezc☻ on May 19, 2015 7:43:22 GMT
So who won? And does anyone care? I bet it was Cameron. All Brits are as conservative as canned carrots.
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double_s92
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head toilet cleaner
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Post by double_s92 on May 19, 2015 10:08:53 GMT
So who won? And does anyone care? I bet it was Cameron. All Brits are as conservative as canned carrots. Conservatives won by a majority, so yes that Spatula Cameron is still Prime Minister. Scotland, after just voting to remain in the United Kingdom, had almost every constituency vote for the Scottish National Party except for 1. No, I certainly dont care however it does give me something to complain about and you know us brits love complaining
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Duchartre
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Post by Duchartre on May 20, 2015 1:15:06 GMT
Scotland, after just voting to remain in the United Kingdom, had almost every constituency vote for the Scottish National Party except for 1.
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TallestJohn
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Post by TallestJohn on May 20, 2015 1:34:33 GMT
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nudeltime
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Posts: 388
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Post by nudeltime on May 20, 2015 20:22:50 GMT
Voting system in UK is shit anyway^^ for whoever wants to learn more, you can watch "Politics unboringed" on youtube
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ShroomGames
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memes
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Post by ShroomGames on May 20, 2015 21:02:37 GMT
Voting system in UK is shit anyway I many ways I agree, in many ways I do not. In ways I do agree is that votes don't really count, whilst the SNP got less than UKIP (I'm not defending UKIP here, mind, I hate them) they got 56 seats. UKIP got... 1. The green party should've gotten many more too but only got 1 as well. Plaid Cymru got just about 800K votes (or at least well beneath 1,000,000) and got 8 seats. That's pretty weird. However, when you vote in the general election in this party you vote for your LOCAL MP, this means that really your vote counts for just one seat in parliament, which is for the winning MP in your local area. There are 650 seats in Parliament, each one representing just one MP. The people in one area vote for their MP, their MP could win, the scoot off to Parliament and the cycle continues throughout the country. This could mean that, even if they get many votes, a party could lose many or gain very little seats in Parliament. So really, it's democratic, but kind of a dodgy democratic in which the vote-to-seat ratio literally is non existent. It works but some don't like it. TL;DR, it is pretty crap in some ways but really it works. You probably knew all this already.
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nudeltime
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OP, Original Prankster.
Posts: 388
Registered on: April 2015
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Post by nudeltime on May 20, 2015 21:09:24 GMT
Voting system in UK is shit anyway I many ways I agree, in many ways I do not. In ways I do agree is that votes don't really count, whilst the SNP got less than UKIP (I'm not defending UKIP here, mind, I hate them) they got 56 seats. UKIP got... 1. The green party should've gotten many more too but only got 1 as well. Plaid Cymru got just about 800K votes (or at least well beneath 1,000,000) and got 8 seats. That's pretty weird. However, when you vote in the general election in this party you vote for your LOCAL MP, this means that really your vote counts for just one seat in parliament, which is for the winning MP in your local area. There are 650 seats in Parliament, each one representing just one MP. The people in one area vote for their MP, their MP could win, the scoot off to Parliament and the cycle continues throughout the country. This could mean that, even if they get many votes, a party could lose many or gain very little seats in Parliament. So really, it's democratic, but kind of a dodgy democratic in which the vote-to-seat ratio literally is non existent. It works but some don't like it. TL;DR, it is pretty crap in some ways but really it works. You probably knew all this already. I watched the series, that's why I'm so happy that we have a 2-vote system here in Germany. Although the parties here are... well there's not much actual competition and new parties are mostly racist...
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Post by endersai on Jun 4, 2015 21:37:59 GMT
You have to look at the positives. Labour was not elected, which is a start because Miliband was a bit of a dork; but more importantly, you didn't have a man whose first tweet was his own name as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I do lament that both our centre-right and centre-left parties have gone to the Democrats and Republicans for election strategy advice. Who wants to emulate the American system?!
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