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yoda

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Posts posted by yoda

  1. I finished "Dune" recently. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Are the sequels worth checking out? I'm tempted to pick up "Messiah".

    Even more recently I finished "The Expendable Man" by Dorothy Hughes. Really terrific. A 100% certified page-turner; I was totally pulled in and fired through it in two or three nights. I think I might have preferred it to "In A Lonely Place".

  2. I get that Adam Mckay doesn't do subtlety but I wasn't particularly enamoured with Don't Look Up. It's okay - not good but not terrible - and I laughed a few times but it was about 30 minutes too long.

    On a separate note, I saw West Side Story last week and enjoyed it. It does some things better than the original and misses the mark with others. I actually liked Ansel Elgort's version of "Maria" but he was a bit of a personality vacuum. On the other hand, Ariana DeBose as Anita was, by some distance, the stand-out performance.

  3. Going back to the hospitality stuff from several pages ago.

    In the 2018 and 2019 festive period I did shifts in a relatively busy bar / restaurant. Most nights you needed at least 6 staff on (and usually you'd have eight people on) - every weekend in December and then every night in the week before Christmas was heaving. 

    I was in on Friday for a couple of pints. It was dead. Apart from Christmas Eve they're estimating that they'll only need 3 staff a night. There's obviously an element of some people being cautious but the government "advice" has obviously had a huge impact.

    At least last year you had furlough. You got your pay packet topped up a wee bit. This year... nothing. 

  4. 38 minutes ago, coprolite said:

    Sure https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inflation.asp

    Clearly price rises are a feature of inflation (as are wage rises) but they're not the whole story. Neither is the money supply bit the whole story. 

    Prices can rise because of shocks and fall back down again without being inflation. Or they can rise because of shocks and cause inflation. 

    We're splitting hairs but that is a very awkward definition. The majority of people would define it as a sustained increase in price level. The Bank of England, for example, literally define it as that. The Federal Reserve too. 

    What a way to spend part of my Thursday night. Discussing the semantics of inflation.

  5. 3 hours ago, Billy Jean King said:
    3 hours ago, Detournement said:
    Interest rates up because of inflation is the headline across the media.
    No explanation of how higher interest rates reduces inflation anywhere as far as I can see. It's just another tool of austerity. 

    Take it you didn't do o-grade economics ???

    To be fair (tbf), I don't agree with a lot of Detournement's takes but they've got a point here. And it's not exactly an uncommon take either. There's a number of people questioning how much of an impact it'll have. 

    There's obvious forward guidance implications but - and this is my amateur opinion - I'm not convinced a rate rise will have much effect either way. Although I think there's more reasons to oppose rate hikes at the moment than there is to support them.

    2 hours ago, coprolite said:

    Price rises are not inflation. 

    Citation needed. Because almost every textbook or central bank website I've read defines inflation as a sustained increase in the general price level. 

    Inflation causes a decrease in purchasing power, which is a reduction in the value of your money.

  6. Parking the impact on businesses to one side and looking at workers. It's pretty bad that they're doubling down on the "advising not legislating" approach to hospitality. There's going to be a lot of folk (predominantly those on minimum wage with "flexible" working hours) out of pocket, with no immediate or obvious way for them to cover that loss of income.

     

     

  7. 5 minutes ago, Wee Bully said:

    Yes - anyone organising a works night out pays in advance. Normally weeks in advance. 

    But you don’t care about the facts as it doesn’t play to your narratives. 

    You're being deliberately obtuse. Plenty of smaller workplaces will book a restaurant for dinner. They will pay a small deposit per head. They won't pay for everything up front.

  8. 26 minutes ago, Wee Bully said:

    So, the moonhowling tears about the death of hospitality weren’t warranted. Who knew?

    People drinking bring in less money than people eating and drinking. A few grand a day has effectively evaporated. And of you're on a zero hour contract then you're not getting paid.

    I've no issue with masks or table service but actively telling people to avoid hospitality - but not offering support - is obviously going to have a horrendous impact. Particularly after last Christmas being a write off (rightly or wrongly).

  9. On 02/12/2021 at 17:07, Smurph said:

    My girlfriend and I have a joint account. She spent six pounds an hour on hers.

    Top five for me were Nightmares on Wax, Childish Gambino, Quasimoto, Young Fathers and BROCKHAMPTON.

     

     

    D558E786-E2FC-40D3-A20B-5724A9FDA227.jpeg

     

    I gave Quasimoto a listen a few months ago because of your avatar. Some really good stuff. 

  10. 29 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

    It's being driven by shortages caused by the double whammy of Brexit and increasing demand around the world from countries coming out of lockdowns.

    You could possibly add in a third factor - the blockage of the Suez Canal which restricted supplies.

    Well... yes. It's a bit simple to just blame Brexit although it obviously hasn't helped matters. Other countries have inflation caused supply chain issues too. There's a global supply issue - shipping containers, semiconductors, and pandemic effects on literal production lines. 

    I'll see if I can dig out the article looking at demand - it's The UK household savings data is a bit misleading. Lower income households haven't really seen an increase in savings. And those on furlough (directly receiving government cash) saw their savings decrease (or so the BOE say). 

    24 minutes ago, Michael W said:

    The real cost of furlough, track and trace etc. comes well down the line.  Debt payments were 56bn in 2020/21. 

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/298524/government-spending-in-the-uk/

    That was 10% of the tax take last year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/284298/total-united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts/

    2020/21 was of course an aberration, so in reality it's about maybe 7.5% of the take in a normal year. 

    That is money raised which is consequently wasted on nothing productive - government stuff from years ago, being paid for today and the future. The tax take has to increase to cover the unproductive use of a not exactly insignificant part of the government's revenue.

    This is a good piece by Duncan Weldon with a bit on debt servicing costs:

    https://duncanweldon.substack.com/p/britains-macro-policy-mix-is-a-mess

    As an aside: a lot of the debt fear mongering ignores the alternative. Lockdowns without deficit spending. With an end result of, well, the government having to spend lots of money anyway.

  11. 4 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

    You're typically way too early with the advanced smug twattery.

    We haven't even begin to start talking about how to pay for any of this and the restrictions and gargantuan spending on covid aren't over yet.

    S01E01-NEKa4AO4-subtitled.jpg

    1 minute ago, Elixir said:

    We might not be wheeling carts of coins to the shops for milk and bread, but have you seen what's happening with inflation?

    Yes, it's a concern (although it's objectively not hyperinflation) but Reuters had a breakdown of what was driving UK inflation. Big increases in energy prices (obviously) and the second hand car market is going wild (because of supply issues that were discussed in the summer of 2020). It's not exactly controversial to say that it's supply side driven rather than the result of government spending.

  12. 4 hours ago, yoda said:

    The furlough scheme was a good experiment in how massive government spending in an advanced economy doesn't lead to the end of days (mind the hot takes about Weimar hyperinflation in this thread? lmao). 

    Screenshot_20211210-145840.thumb.png.827d67845d39eda8f7acb99c384716af.png

    On 22/04/2021 at 12:24, oaksoft said:

    Zimbabwe tried that and they are not the only ones. How are they getting on?

    jon stewart secrets GIF

  13. 15 minutes ago, 101 said:

    And if it needs protecting against a good flu season then the UKg need to get the purse out and pump it full of money. Allowing time to tackle the ling term societal ills that make us rely on the NHS so badly to start with.

    The furlough scheme was a good experiment in how massive government spending in an advanced economy doesn't lead to the end of days (mind the hot takes about Weimar hyperinflation in this thread? lmao). 

    But instead of focusing on investing in the health service (and the wider social services more generally) it's back to conversations about balancing books and paying off debts.

    And folk just let them change the conversation. The pandemic has exacerbated a lot of problems brought about from austerity. But instead of driving change, nobody seems to be too bothered. Culture wars over masks are apparently a better thing to be outraged over.

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