Park Life

I imagine Rafas' target will be top 10-12.

Hope we're getting more than the 1m a year Burnley got.

I can see you've missed the hint in those Guardian articles about how tasty insects can be.

There's no point to any kind of economic recovery if you run out of clean air, food and water. As we are doing at an alarming rate. The high end prediction of sustainability on this planet is 10 billion. Food production is very near its limits now. You talk so ignorantly about cars I am stunned. Cars have been the greatest and fastest destruction of energy and raw materials ever invented on this planet. If mankind is to survive they will have to be the first thing to go regardless of how clever they are or their ability to mix cocktails.

Kermode spot on with light spoilers.

All this talk has been around for decades. Entertainment will get more immersive but that is one of their pet projects to keep you dazed and tired. Self-driving cars have been around since the 50's man. The idea peaked in 1987. But what if anything will it do to actually benefit greater society? They said in the 70's that they would rid Africa of starvation. Lot of this so called new tech are silly gimmicks that will have no material impact on human life as a whole. The billions spent on smart meters will ultimately and with luck come up with savings of about 20 quid a year per household. What has advanced and without question is the military and its ability to kill more cleverly and with greater ferocity. We are absolutely heading for a resource poor future with 90% of the planet living in low tech increasingly toxic environments (look at China, India and part of Africa for pollution). Air quality is going down, water is becoming more scarce and more expensive and most of the food is bad for you. Yeah but you have that shiny car that will drive you to Manchester while you look at google ads on the windscreen. Our only hope is to colonize another planet because within 50/70 years we will have crossed the resources/population threshold and it will be a fast downhill from there. Yet here we are talking about Mars and trying to get there with chemical rockets invented in the 40's. Humanity is beyond parody and will die out or be pared back to tiny settlements of advanced elites while the rest of the population slide back to the stone age. /Zardoz.

Alien Covenant. Initial reviews are mixed/bad. Crew too stupid to be in space. Lot of schlock slasher movie moments overlayed with this gargantuan Universal thema. I can't see myself giving it more than a 6.

Keeps magiking up loads of fresh capital without actually making much money last time I looked.

There hasn't been much of that. We're probably right at the limits of our tech now. I mean they've been talking about nano for about 20 years now and Fusion reactors for about 50 years.

I imagine deep down they want to destroy our free healthcare. There is a ratio apparently about how much data you gather and the efficiency of analysis. The more data they gather the cloudier the picture gets. A friend who works inside the dark corridors told me they passed that point about 15 years ago and it would actually make more sense now to start wiping data.

Facebook?

There are arguments for and against this. I think I'm for it. There have been small scale trials and there was a referendum in Switzerland where it was voted down. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-funded-by-capital-income-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-10?barrier=accessreg https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/19/basic-income-finland-low-wages-fewer-jobs

That's weird like cause the IMF and the ECB and others inc Varoufakis were in favour of lowering it. Maybe Syriza bowed to the demands of the ultra-left in the party. It's a brilliant book btw. Hightly recommended. Gets right into the nitty gritty of what was going on behind the scenes and lays out the various characters beautifully. The flirty but cunning LeGarde. Schaubler and his killer looks.

It's in his book. 'Adults in the Room'. About negotiations with the Troika and what compromises Syriza would make. I've only just started it so not sure if later this was reversed. He suggested it to Tspiras anyway while they were swimming.

Not sure about raising Corporation Tax. When Varoufakis was trying to sort out Greece the first thing he did was lower it to energise business. There are only 3 ways to grow the economy. 1.Population Growth to stimulate demand. (This old trick should be familiar by now). 2. Capital investment. 3. Technological advancement (new tech).

XP was really fast tho.

This thread needs a health warning. Rooney, Yaya, Barkley, Batshuayi.

Gloom rolls over for the Yankee dollah. Run at them and head butt them if they say they will vote Tory.

Royal Mail has paid out nearly 700m in dividends and cut 11,000 jobs.

It's just keeping bad banks and the paper markets ticking over. ECB is just signalling it will buy bad shit and hide it somewhere. Low interest rates and money printing is just stealing from the masses. We have to tackle parked wealth weather it's in housing porfolios or offshore and we have to tackle the banks. There has to be laws with reg to business lending (Govt tops it up - ie put in 25% for every 75% a bank lends to business). Banks have to be encouraged to lend to small business and the Govt should back these schemes with hard cash. This kind of intervention is what the markets fear because it is a danger to monopolies with reg to choice and competition. Late capitalism whatever claptrap it comes out with is against competition. It wants over regulated markets that only big firms can bear. I laugh when Tories talk about deregulation of business because it shows they have no clue what is going on. The core reason for the German miracle has been long term lending and partnerships with Capital that work withing 10-20 year time frames. German companies don't hesitate to upgrade their machinery or research because they have access to lending over long terms and plan accordingly. http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/EN/Standardartikel/Topics/Public-Finances/Articles/2016-09-21-sustainably-boosting-investment-in-germany.htm

Economies don't grow unless you invest in them. End of story. That means investing in skills training, infrastructure, encouraging an internal market, low energy costs, tax breaks for capital outlay (plant and machinery - like they did in Germany)...It doesn't grow by just deregulating banks.

You only need to look at a few Vox pops to realise the British public have no clue about politics. I bet about 1 out of 10 would even have heard of Quantum Easing, fractional reserve banking or the relationship between the money supply and inflation. All you can do with these gumbies is have a photogenic leader who is ready to lie his way to power.

Re-energising the economy will cost money. At some point someone will have to spend the money. The history of late Capitalism is littered with its failure to provide real growth and spreading of wealth. It's teetering along on sovereign debt and artificial stimulus like QE and socialising cost while privatising profit. Back in the 80's the Globalists set about moving production to the far east and deconstrucitng Western economies and setting up tax avoidance. Since then it has just been a rota of lies and half truths. Govt of all sides have participated in this myth...New Labour just as much as the Tories.

Looks like a proper left wing manifesto from what we've seen so far. Nationalizing railways is something I would imagine a lot of people can get behind if reading comments sections about Southern Rail and others is anything to go by. The spend for the Afghan and Iraq wars is coming up to 80 billion now yet austerity keeps on being the dominant theme at home.