June 5, 2019 · 12:53

Bones and Boobs in gaming

Gaming has two sides, the hardware and the software side, or as some might call it the boobs and bones of gaming. We will look at the boobs later (desert always comes last), yet the bones are another matter. Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2019/06/04/there-are-tough-times-ahead-for-the-playstation-4-and-xbox-one/#3ca33e3562b4) gives us ‘There Are Tough Times Ahead For The PlayStation 4 And Xbox One‘, I do not really agree, and if so then mostly for the Xbox side, but the man makes a decent point and that is always a good reason to contemplate an article.

Bones

Even as he makes the case, I believe him to be wrong on certain matters. The numbers only partially support him. In case of Microsoft, they had a good run on the Xbox360 and they had decent sales even beyond the Xbox One launch. The reasons was that those with too small a budget decided to pick up a pre-owned console as those prices went down by a lot. Even today, people still buy Xbox 360 games, which is pretty astounding. The premise holds true for the PS3, from day one the PS4 was the child to have and for the next two years there will be plenty of people upgrading from PS4 to PS4 pro as Sony will be dumping the prices for that puppy. The market will slow down, but I believe that Sony has a good foundation to work with, Microsoft a little less so.

Nintendo remains the larger question in this. They are still ascending by leaps and bounds and even now we see in Forbes (three weeks ago actually) ‘The Nintendo Switch Just Topped The PS4’s Lifetime Sales In Japan‘, and that sounds overwhelming, yet the global numbers with PS4 on 97 million and Switch on 35 million gives the equal global sales towards the Xbox, but not the PlayStation. It has only been two years, whilst the other two have been around 7, the Nintendo Switch is still gaining momentum and it is doing so faster than last year. The fact that two of the most enticing (and addictive) games are free helps matters. With Fallout Shelter and Gems of war being great games to play on the Switch, we see a larger appreciation of the console. Nintendo upped the ante by handing all those with an online subscription (less than $40 a year), we see that they all get access to the old games from Donkey Kong, Metroid and Super Mario Bros, with dozens of additional games, all for free for those with the online account. It is one of the most enticing deals you will find in console land. As such the Switch goes on and on and on. That and the pre-owned market makes me oppose the view that Dave Thier has to some degree. the part that is also in debate is “I could even imagine PlayStation 4 sales recovering after the PlayStation 5 comes out and people realize they can still get good use of the old machine, which is likely to see a price-cut“, I believe that he setting is sound, yet I have seen Sony Marketing in action, as such they will cut prices on all options long before the sales recovery issue becomes a real issue for Sony. With exclusive titles like Last of Us 2 (2020), Death Stranding, Sekiro, Ghosts of Tsushima (2020), there is everything to look forward to and besides the fact that there are still plenty of people without a PS4 (or Xbox One for that matter), many of us (including me) still have not upgraded to the PS4pro (a budget issue), for many mainly because we have no 4K TV and that is the big factor (equally so for the Xbox One X), so as Sony starts bundling it’s console with a 4K TV, we might see another rush to upgrade. With several brands (including Sony) offering 55” or larger 4K TV’s for less than $1000 at present, the push for package deals will be very alive at the end of this year pushing the options of additional consoles right up to 2020 at that point the PS5 (and whatever Microsoft has) will become an optional issue. We have seen that many day one people held on to their previous console. I still have the PS3 and Xbox 360; I just never expected that the 360 would be higher regarded than the Xbox One (by me). These are all elements that play a part, as such I partially oppose the view Forbes gave us and I believe to be handing out the correct version (I have been proven correct often enough).

I agree with his slowing down part, but not to the degree he expects it, and the additional factor is not the slowing down, it might be: “New consoles pose question marks for the industry, and people are inclined to wait for answers before making large purchases“. I believe that to be the correct statement, but there was one other factor, it is 4K gaming and that is slow because the larger group of gamers does not have a 4K TV at present, as 4K will be the bees knees this Christmas, we will see a push to a much larger degree and Sony has an advantage over Sony here. It is how I got my PS3 and I never regretted that, especially as that TV was dirt cheap in those days, I expect Sony to do the same caper this year (and other brands as well), which is as I see it the larger stage for the difference between Dave Thier and me, as well as the large purchasing part, there is no ‘wait for answers‘ anymore on 4K TV, as such it optionally prevents a larger slowdown on the consoles and to be honest, you need to see Xbox One 4K with AC Origin to believe just how amazing 4K can be, it blew my socks off let me tell you that; and yes it was on a Xbox One X. Ubisoft & Microsoft actually got that part truly right.

Boobs

Yup, we got there, or as the Bloodhound Gang would state: ‘Hooray for Boobies‘ Yet the software is always a happy place for any gamer, whether it is Minecraft or Spiderman, seeing stuff in 4K is always reason to cheer. So when we look at value how angry do we need to get? When we are confronted with a AAA game (triple A game) we think it will be about quality, but it is not. It merely means that the game comes from a ‘mid-sized or major publisher, typically having higher development and marketing‘ and as I see it, it will be mostly about the marketing. So here comes Ubisoft who as far as I can tell is the only one who truly mangled and downgraded the IP of two franchises, namely Assassins Creed and optionally now Far Cry.

In comes a hard truth: ‘AAA game development has been identified as one environment where crunch time and other working pressures that negatively affect the employees are particularly evident‘, a given that is handed to us by Tweaktown and GamaSutra. In Tweaktown we see: ‘Ex-Ubisoft dev reveals the grim reality‘ with the quote: “it’s more like a mechanized assembly line than a dream job“, this might be a true stage, yet in all this it is not the creators, it is its board of directors as well as their marketing department. Like several software makers, setting a realistic goal is not something either department is any good at; the horrendous Far Cry 5 is clearly evidence of that. I completely disagree with the ratings that IGN (89%) and the 81% that Metacritic gave, I fall in line towards Digital Trends and their 60%. There should be a stage that games like that can no longer be called AAA games when its rating to become this below average. I even have some reservations on the games I traded in for this new version (at $23). Far Cry 5 infuriates me; they really had to do a better job. Not the graphics guys (gals included), graphically Montana is so overwhelmingly amazing that I would be willing to move to Hope County with the next available flight (if there is a decent job there). The story is something I leave in the middle. It is over the top, but there is a side that is actually enticing and you haven’t felt hatred until you are getting a tattoo on your chest by John Seed, the characters (even the over the top ones) are impressive. It is the game play itself that got to me in a massive way. To name just a few:

  1. Planes that touch a tree top dead in their track and in some cases end up on the ground in perfect working order without a scratch.
  2. Like the screaming eagles in Far Cry Primal (one every other minute) the stage comes when planes are there and they are there all the time, I have shot down enough to make a nation go bankrupt, but not for the Seed family, they merely seed more planes (or is that conceive?) And it is not merely me; I found hundreds of posts of gamers irritated by that, it seems that some people at Ubisoft are unwilling to learn.
  3. Spawn, not the Todd McFarlane hero, but the spawning of opponents. In a bunker scene (trying to avoid spoilers), the troops started spawning in front of me, which is a big no-no! This all indicates that the game was either never clearly tested, or the test results were ignored, either way that is an easy 20% degrading on any 89% score, so we are already on 69%. The fact that these issues were never addressed one year down the road implies additional failings on the Ubisoft front.
  4. Ballistics anyone? I love my sniper rifles, it gives me an edge and even in a bunker, the rifle can be a huge advantage, even if you only have 35 bullets to work with (unless you find more ammo). So when that rifle suddenly does not kill with a head shot, but only knock of the helmet, I am speechless. You see, anyone who knows their weapons would know that a helmet is protecting in nature, but the impact of a .50 that travels at 3,029 feet/second giving an impact of 13,350 ft-lbf (foot pound force) does not merely take off the helmet, it rips of the entire head. Now I get and accept that Ubisoft is not giving us that image, but to not see a headshot as an immediate kill is just stupid and silly. That should be 35 instant kills, even in the chest the power alone will crush the chest to death, and no Kevlar thickness in the world will stop that.
  5. The enemy avalanche. I get that throughout the game, it becomes more and more taxing, but the boss fights with wave after wave, where topless people keep running after 5-7 shots is just silly. And it is not 2-3 we get thrown into a stage of dozens and Ubisoft is unable to learn that wave after wave gets to be tedious and actually does not make a game better. Now there is an arcade more and I am not touching it, arcade is arcade and there the rules tend to be slightly different, which is fair enough. Yet in the normal game, Ubisoft makes the same mistakes we saw in Far Cry Primal and Far Cry 4. What was Far Cry 3 has become less and less (as I personally see it).

There is a lot Ubisoft got right too and the extra’s (like the Vaas outfit) and particularly the outfits you get when you have another Ubisoft game is cool, an immediate reward for those who have other Ubisoft games like the Rainbow six outfit is actually really cool to see (I did not have the game so it did not unlock for me), but the effort towards its gamers must be recognised. The bubbleheads (for in the car) if you have certain games is also cool and gives a little extra a fact that has always mattered to gamers.

Tweak town gives a lot more, but when I read: “When people realize they’re just one very replaceable person on a massive production chain, you can imagine it impacts their motivation“, I see it and it might impact, but that is an HR problem, not on my watch here, it is an element I care not for at present. There is also: “How do you get the right message to the right people? You can’t communicate everything to everyone, there’s just too much information. There are hundreds of decisions being taken every week. Inevitably, at some point, someone who should have been consulted before making a decision will be forgotten. This creates frustration over time” that is an issue, it is management that is either not there, not properly ready or even worse, it is ignorant. That also gives light to the connection of testing, an issue that Ubisoft has had for at least a decade. The experience that even now in Far cry 5, the event of looting a corpse and switching the weapon they dropped are nearly always overlapping, making a quick grab for ammo impossible and at times even disastrous. An issue not fixed since Far Cry 3. The article (at https://www.tweaktown.com/news/49863/ex-ubisoft-dev-reveals-grim-reality-aaa-games-development/index.html) had a few more items, but it was less important for me in this case. Gamasutra (at https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/282922/AAA_game_dev_lifestyle_is_unwinnable_says_veteran_game_designer_Amy_Hennig.php) gives a few more items, issues like: “There are people who never go home and see their families. They have children who are growing up without seeing them” get a different rating, it is either a lack of time management, or slave labour, one is a choice the other is criminal; you tell me which is which. Yes, I trivialise the issue here, but at some stage you need to recharge and if you decide not to do that, you burn out. It is the quote: “It’s pressure that rolls downhill and piles onto those behind the industry’s biggest releases, forcing them to go above and beyond to meet rapidly approaching deadlines” that hits pay dirt, they either haven’t learned to neuter their marketing department, or the board members have forgotten what realistic time frames are. Either way it tends to stop proper game testing and that is how we get a screwed up product and we have seen that from AC Unity onwards, Ubisoft has had way too many events like that. As such as we see the quote referring to ‘over-expectant publishers‘, the view we see matches mine pretty much flawless. If you cannot control your marketeers with their hype creation, you fall flat and you get the pressures that should have been avoided in the first place. The evidence is there too, for example Project red with Witcher 3 as well as Cyberpunk 2077. There no one is fussed about the 2020 release, we all know that they broke the mould with Witcher 3 and we want to see that again, we the gamers are willing to wait for excellence, mainly because it has become such a rare thing. A 93% rating comes at a price. It is the oldest stage of sales.

You can have something cheap, something fast and something good, but you can only chose two of the three elements, so the product ends up arriving slow, becoming a bad product or an expensive one, which of those three can you live with the best? Of those three the late arrival is the best (my personal view), but as far as Ubisoft goes, they got that choice wrong more than once, because they were unwilling to delay the release late, costing them points all over the place. It is me not liking Odyssey that requires me to quote Samuel Axon who wrote a massive story on ArsTechnica. He ends with: “Odyssey was not a perfect game. But it was the perfect game to win back this series superfan. It’s so good, I want to go back and replay older games in the series—even some of the bad ones—just to examine and appreciate the evolution“, I get his vision yet it is not my view on the game and that is fine. Ubisoft does not need to appease me, it needs to protect its IP and there we might not see eye to eye on the matter. This is fine, I am merely one view and that too needs to be taken into account, Samuel clearly had another view on the take and I accept it because the article (at https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/i-played-11-assassins-creed-games-in-11-years-and-odyssey-made-them-all-worth-it) is an absolute must for any Assassins Creed fan.

When I look back, no matter how much we like to stare at the boobies, when they are not the ones (or shape, or size) you hoped to see, the interest fades really fast (unless you are a hungry baby) and that is the core for Ubisoft, the absolute essential part was proper testing and fixing (optionally with a day one patch) is something they seemingly have not been steered towards for too long and it shows. As I see it, they efficiently massacred two IP’s at present; the question becomes what will happen with Watchdogs 3? When we accept (I do) that the second was way better than the first, I fear for the third, because they need to get it right. I only got Far Cry 5 well over a year later when it was sold at a mere 17% of the full price gives rise to what we are willing to pay. When you consider that this was a game with a budget close to $100 million and a rising amount of gamers will no longer consider it at full price, and even as it made $310 million, how much money did Ubisoft in the end miss out on? Going home with $200 more is still good, but what could they have gotten? I wonder if they learn this lesson too late, perhaps it is me and perhaps I expect too much from the gamers of today. I merely chase excellence in gaming, and a game that is created substandard will not ever give a feeling of excellence, which is sad on many levels, especially when someone forked out an 9 figure number.

Just consider that GTA5 made $6 billion so far, Red Dead Redemption had a $725 million opening weekend, and that list goes on, all games that have a 90% score of better. It shows when we see that (according to VGChartz) Far Cry 5 seemingly sold less than 4 million copies, God of war far beyond 11 million, and that is also set toUbisoft being on three systems, whilst God of War was on only one system. I see it as the main difference between a 70% game and a 95% game. A difference of 250% or better in sold copies. I reckon that Ubisoft needs to focus on quality a lot more than they are currently doing and that view is shared by global player on an increasing larger scale endangering Ubisoft initial revenue more and more.

 

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June 3, 2019 · 12:54

Dyslexia for dummies

I have at times (more often than not) an evil demon in my brain, it uses its pitchfork to stab into my brain and dares me to prank, often calling me a pussy if I resist. Sometimes I give in; just the idea of friendly pranking is overwhelming. I also tend to do this as a form of justice, but more about that later. The image you see is not mine, it was Facebooked to me and good ammunition is hard to come by, so when I was in a bookshop getting the idea that someone looked bored, I asked for the book and showed the image. She was busy for at least 5 minutes before she figured out that she was being pranked.

There was no evil from me, it was not to give a person an intentional hard time (the one exception which will be mentioned soon), and there was no aftermath, it was a little harmless fun, whilst letting the victim know that they did nothing wrong and of course, the mandatory ‘I’m sorry‘ was added on my side, it was all in good fun. The exception to that rule was when I witness some manager dress down an employee too loudly in public on how their knowledge lacked. At that point my demon did not need to alert me, I looked around and whilst I appealed to his ego, I pleaded for his help to find something and of course as the so called boss he was ready to comply. It was about two minutes later when he gave the task to a worker there. He had been unable to locate the Vegan Beef Burgers in any of the freezers, I cautiously informed the worker what I had done and tears of laughter dropped to the floor, he was able to refrain from loud laughter, it was priceless.

So there I was asking for Dyslexia for dummies and as the salesperson knew me, I wasn’t going to get far. Yet that was not why I was there. There was a sale going on and I got my fingers on a really nice book for $5, sometimes one gets to be lucky. So there I was holding onto a pre-owned copy of The Leper of Saint Giles. I saw Cadfael on TV, but never read it and that is why I got at it. It was then that it dawned on me that I had lost the pleasure of reading to some extent. There was Tolkien, Deborah Harkness, Stephen Fry but those are the older books, during my law degree, I was ‘forced’ to sit down and read so much that the pleasure of relaxing and read a book had faded to some degree. Whether it was merely that or the mountains of digital information that were offered to me on an hourly basis, I cannot tell. The age of me being a bookworm had faded to some degree. There is the notion that I currently find writing more fun than reading and the 1200 articles I have written so far seem to indicate that. I think that creating articles, working on Intellectual Property concepts, as well as an idea for a TV series, and three video games; it seems that the creation bug is in me and it is taking its toll in other ways.

So why write about it?

The Guardian gave me something this morning that lighted the spark of reading and feeling that spark is a little overwhelming. It was yesterday’s story (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/02/jack-the-ripper-victims-had-to-be-whores-anyone-saying-different-deserves-a-trolling) that links to the February article called ‘The Five by Hallie Rubenhold review – the untold lives of Jack the Ripper’s victims‘, I was always intrigued by that era (as well as the individual known as JtR from L) and any detective reader will feel the pinch when Jack the Ripper is called for. I believe that the first movie regarding it was Murder by Decree with Christopher Plummer (Sherlock Holmes), it is the Michael Caine version (Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline) with Lewis Collins (Sergeant George Godley) and Jane Seymour I liked the best. It has a whole range of top notch actors and the premise of the setting of the movie is also quite unique, as such it was an excellent mini-series to watch on DVD and this all leads me to the book.

The book gives rise to a lot of issues that the movies never got to, the fact that there is that historian Hallie Rubenhold took an actual look at the women, the five victims, she sets a stage that the police had worked on assumption on a few levels and it also gives rise as the two movies had inclined to some degree.

In murder by decree, there is a stage that one of the women gave birth to a son from Prince Albert. The mini-series gives rise that there were questions, but I never looked at it from certain sides in depth, because I never had any reliable materials to read, as such and through exposure on a multitude of ways, the five were merely prostitutes. Now we see Hallie Rubenhold digging into historical records and we are confronted with: “In three of the cases, there is no evidence to suggest that they were professional prostitutes, and convincing reasons to believe that they were not“, this is huge because it implies that not only was the entire matter a joke towards investigation, there is every chance that the police had been looking in the wrong direction and the fattening of the stories through newspapers did not help much. The fact that I am also exposed to “Ripperologists have devoted lengthy blog posts and podcasts to attacking her research and her credentials” is just unacceptable. whether it is a true work of history, or even a dramatized writing based on published fact is open to debate, but I am not willing to do that until there is credible evidence (actual evidence) that this is a mere work of fiction. I particularly like the quote: “Rubenhold’s book quotes the judge in the 2008 “Suffolk Strangler” case, who instructed the jury considering evidence against the serial killer of sex workers to put aside their “distaste” at the victims’ “lifestyles”, an extraordinary echo of the same sentiment, 120 years after the Ripper murders“, it seems that there is a correlation of ‘sex workers’ and ‘they deserve whatever they get’ and the fact that it survived the tests of time for centuries. An aspect I had never anticipated. I find one other part disturbing, the view that the writer Stephanie Merritt has when we see Ripperologists and the enigma of Jack the Ripper his enigma lends a macabre glamour, and to shift the story away from sex to the more mundane Victorian social issues of poverty, homelessness and addiction, as Rubenhold has done, is to interfere unforgivably in a narrative they feel belongs to them. I would argue that nothing of any of it belongs to them, history belongs to all, and we can do with it (to some degree) what we like. Historians tend to redress those times into a framework that we today can relate to, fictional writers add pizzazz to it and as such we now know that there were 15 commandments, not 10 (Mel Brooks), some try to adhere to futuristic endeavours like Jane Webb (1827) who would give us the original story of the Mummy and how Brendan Fraser and Arnold Vosloo modernised it well over a century and a half later. History has a great edge, what has happened has been open to interpretation for the longest time, you merely need to read the factual Treaty of Clermont (1095) and how it led to centuries of pillaging of the Middle East.

History can be read in many ways, so what is to state that Hallie Rubenhold is reading the right or wrong historical facts? First to consider is that (as the story goes) that Rubenhold has been trying to get a fix on their lives and even as most will focus on the Ripper and partially ignore the fact that there is serious doubt on the five victims in more than one way, we see one part with: “There is no evidence, Rubenhold argues, that Nichols or Chapman or Eddowes ever worked as prostitutes; the police conviction that the killer targeted women of “bad character” perverted the inquiry. The Ripper’s victims, she suggests, were targeted not because they were soliciting sex but because they were drunk and homeless and – most importantly – asleep. The killer preyed on women whom nobody cared about and who wouldn’t be missed” the stage is a setting that is true even today, the homeless will be targeted more often than anyone having a decent roof over their heads and consider that street lights were rare in 1888, the fact that people in the dark are an open invitation is a given.

The partial fact that we see with: “Nichols, daughter of a blacksmith, spent her first years in Dawes Court, where Dickens had imagined Fagin living with his pickpockets in Oliver Twist.” is a part that almost no one would know. The Charles Dickens fans optionally, yet how many of them are that as well as Ripperologists? Some of the records that are available, or used a quote giving rise to the fact that Police surgeon Dr Frederick Gordon Brown and Police physician Thomas Bond have been in disagreement regarding Catherine Eddowes and there is another part that struck me when I was reading some of the accounts. The fact that I read: “instead of turning right to take the shortest route to her home in Flower and Dean Street, she turned left towards Aldgate“. My issue is not with the route, but more about the reasoning that the police might have had. What was the difference in illumination? A woman would shy from dark alleys and short cuts, especially in those days. A 10 minute longer walk where there are lights would be a common sense reason and this is merely speculation because the streetlights in those days were rare and in poor area’s unlikely to be there or working. In addition, as we look at the autopsy, we see that Thomas Bonds version is supported by both Local surgeon Dr George William Sequeira and City medical officer William Sedgwick Saunders, and what else has been ignored? What more do we not know and that is where the book comes in, because is all versions I have seen the women were downplayed and trivialised as prostitutes. The version of them being down on their luck and more important pushed into a life of self-medicating alcoholics have always been portrayed as the element linked to prostitutes.

Hallie Rubenhold gives us in ‘The Five’ a different stage, when did anyone realise that this was a much larger case riddles with issues linked to preconception and ego? When we see: ‘they came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales‘, one was Scandinavian? London was filled with immigrants, which was no secret, but I never knew that not all these five were English; it opens another stage in all this. I am not claiming that the version of Hallie Rubenhold is the perfect or most correct one, but unlike other works, the victims are the full focal point and that needs to be placed first and that is where we are, a book that suddenly made me curious and gave me the spark and is driving me to read (that book), I have not had that feeling for quite some time and as such this work might be a lot more interesting than anyone is willing to admit to.

When was the last time that a book or a topic made you want to read something from a writer you never read before?

This gives an optionally needed call towards a ‘new’ version of Dyslexia for dummies, not because the person cannot read, but because writers relying on history are attacked without proper scientific or evidentiary support, giving a dangerous setting where the reader was in danger of not seeing this book at all. So perhaps we need a book (Dyslexia for dummies) starting with the premise that the world is flat and the centre of this solar system, and whilst the Hallie Rubenhold trolls focus on these amazing facts, the rest of us can relax and take a good look at the plight that 5 women went through, up to the moment they were confronted with a man who would later be known as Jack the Ripper.

 

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June 2, 2019 · 13:40

When stupid people aren’t

Something woke me up from relaxed to fuming. It started when the headline ‘Austerity to blame for 130,000 ‘preventable’ UK deaths‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/01/perfect-storm-austerity-behind-130000-deaths-uk-ippr-report) was given.

And it is all from the IPPR think-tank. This was nice because this gives us a target to look at. The first thing to realise is that Austerity is a tool to get out of debt, from the 90’s onward, the UK amassed a debt that is now approaching £2,000 billion, the debt is now getting to multiple trillions and a democracy that is at the mercy of banks and corporations is not a democracy at all, it is not even a monarchy, it becomes a feudal stage. Like the US, the UK let slip their tax laws and was a bitch of the EU when tax laws were pushed that gave freedom to really large companies to end up paying a mere 1% or less (the FAANG group being a very nice example).

So whilst the penny is out there, remember that the British people as a voter should have voted down excessive spending, but that was never done and now two decades of austerity will follow. The British children get to pay for what their parents spend, or used. In addition, the IPPR joke gets to be a little larger with ‘Two decades of public health improvements have stalled‘, Lets go back 8-10 years when we learned that the Labour government launched an IT improvement that never worked. It comes down that the NHS ended up spending £11.2 billion on a computer system that never worked. It is a collection of stupid people, short sighted demands and lack of comprehension that pushed for a system that never came. So where will the NHS get these funds to fund health improvements? Well they spend it on a computer system that never worked. I wonder if that is in the think tank research (me thinks it is not).

So when we are confronted with “An estimated two in five (44%) of health visitors reported caseloads in excess of 400 children, well above the recommended level of 250 per visitor needed to deliver a safe service.” The report recommends another 5,100 training places for health visitors. In a statement, the Local Government Association said the government urgently needed to reverse the £700m reduction in public health funding since 2015 and plug a £3.6bn gap in funding for adult social care by 2025“, a finding that is most likely correct and on the money is on the money for funds that the UK does not have. As the UK government is in the red to the degree of two thousand billion pounds, it needs to cut costs or increase corporate taxation to a degree that is acceptable, until the debts go down we would all have to make do with what is left until there is more. So when I see: ‘The IPPR calls‘, in addition to ‘radical new prevention strategy‘, I say, let’s call a spade a spade and not give it the illustrious stage of calling it a money scoop, because there is no money. In addition, the stage of ‘radical new prevention strategy‘ tends to refer to untested actions that have not been proven to be successful and we have had more than enough of those.

So when I start looking at the IPPR I find a few interesting parts. First, their HQ address is: 14 Buckingham Street, WC2N 6DF, not the address of the charity, the address of their headquarters. Now apart from it being right in front of the Victoria Embankment gardens, a place where real estate that is so expensive, I get to wonder how a charity has any money left. Its Director Tom Kibasi also draws flak from others; one Editor in Chief was able to give us all: “Tom Kibasi is at one or other of the leftish think tanks and therefore, by definition, doesn’t know his economic arse from his elbow. This coming into stark relief when he starts to talk about the effects of Brexit. For he’s claiming that the European Union will, through general nefarity, manage to steal away all Britain’s industry. Without realising that they’ve simply not got the ability to do so“, as I myself have admitted to have no economy degree at all (more than once), I feel slightly too short on economic qualifications to counter one side or the other, but the article (at https://continentaltelegraph.com/brexit/its-a-pity-tom-kibasi-doesnt-know-anything-about-the-economics-of-brexit/) shows a few sides to consider. Yet I feel that the editor giving us: “Getting the basics of the balance of payments wrong is embarrassing for anyone purporting to tell us about economics. We can’t have a balance of payments crisis. It’s simply not possible” a larger consideration to address and what I saw and he might have seen is the danger behind the quote: “the UK is heavily reliant on foreign investment – the “kindness of strangers” – which would likely collapse“, this is only half a truth, what is set through “giving sufficient time for firms like Airbus, Nissan or AstraZeneca to relocate production” is a larger danger. You see these companies have been hiding the ‘discounted taxation or we leave’ card over our head for the longest of times. The car industry left Australia because there were cheaper deals to be found elsewhere, in that time Australia basically legalised slave labour, what a rush!

Yes, these people can relocate, yet to players like AstraZeneca we can impose a no trade deal, we give their competitors (like India) the option to giving generic medication. Let us push to pharmacy button who claims ‘It is all the same sir, it is just cheaper‘, and see how that goes. As I see it, when Astra Zeneca has to report a lost consumer base of 68 million, the game changes for them by a lot, will it not?

The issue with IPPR is larger, it is seen in their own funding, those who fund over £50,000 (at https://www.ippr.org/about/how-we-are-funded). Do you not think that they have their own agenda? Stephen Peel, a former senior partner at the global private equity firm TPG CapitaLand private equity investor? Some might call him a philanthropist, but you have to spend money to make money is merely one example. The IPPR is not evil, they are political presenters, they are politically left inclined, optionally far left and they want to stage the labour needs to end austerity, but that government spend so much we are all still paying the bills. But I will make a counter offer to Tom Kibasi:

Any action regarding ending austerity requires a balanced budget to be presented on time, any government that does not achieve that is liable for prosecution and prison sentence for no less than 3 years and all their assets are to be auctioned to recover losses. In addition, that party is not eligible to sit in office until the agreement ends (after the completion of the election of 2097), it is time to deal the banks the chains that they are putting around the necks of governments and people.

I agree that my solution is Draconian, but people like Tom Kibasi aren’t leaving us any options are they?

Do they have a case? Well, yes they do to some degree, there is truth in the matter, there is no denying that, merely the stage where the ‘presenter’ has a case of the denials when it comes to fact that the children (parliament) used mommy’s credit card (HRH Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor) to an unacceptable degree is a fact the UK faces, there is a cost of doing business and a consequence to excessive overspending, the mere issue that most players refuse to look into that direction is additional cause for concern. The fact that they still refuse to look there is a danger as they will do this again and after an £11.2 billion spending spree on an IT system that never worked is too large a danger to allow for. The fact that the IPPR found it not to be important to look at these budget cuts (which regarding their paper) might be relevant, but in light of their conclusion the so called: “if improvements in public health policy had not stalled as a direct result of austerity cuts” was seemingly not done. The actual need for austerity in all this was utterly ignored, how does that make for a functional think tank? Should the board not be observed from all angles? And if that was not the goal for whoever requested that study? What this study conceived by Director Tom Kibasi? He just woke up and said: ‘Let us look at this issue‘, or did he get a call from someone who told him to look into that matter, as exposure would be profitable for those who need these results in the open? The stage that this part of the Think Tank occupies is (at present) utterly in the dark raises other questions too, do they not?

When someone uses a charity to expose the need to spend money, someone is making money in the process; the human condition has shown that to be a truth for the longest of times.

 

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June 1, 2019 · 12:19

Minus eleven

This is not for the faint of heart, neither is this a story for those with a weak disposition towards directness. Early this morning 11 jobs became available, and several apartments are ready to find a new tenant. This all happened by the acts of a man, according to the news outlets it was the act of a disgruntled man.

I am not blaming guns or gun laws. Guns do not kill people, people kill people; it is that plain and simple. The question becomes why? I have been disgruntled, I have been angry. I decided not to kill anyone, I merely relaxed at home with a game of Minecraft, which can be very therapeutical, let me tell you that. We all have ways of dealing with it and one player (American Express) even has a 5 step program on how to deal with a disgruntled worker (at https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/the-5-steps-to-managing-a-disgruntled-employee/).

I particularly like part 4, where we see: “The best policy is to document everything that is taking place. Whatever the disgruntled employee has done that needed to be corrected should be documented, as should how you addressed it. Documenting everything, from warnings and discussions to termination of employment, if you have to go that far, will help to protect you and your company.” and at the core of the article is the matter: ‘It was never your fault!‘, the biggest flaw on it all, the ostrich (or the possum) that is at the heart of the matter. The exact reason why a person became disgruntled in the first place is a lot more important to learn. We all know it is an essential part, but no one wants to address it, not even when dead people are part of the equation.

We can ignore September 2018 with: ‘Woman who killed 3 people at Rite Aid center was a disgruntled worker‘, we can go on February 2019 in Aurora Illinois, September 2012 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 1999 in Atlanta Georgia. This list will go on for a very long time, the issue is that there is a problem of actually dealing with a situation. Managers let issues fester, or more disastrously mislabelling it like: ‘How to Handle the Disgruntled Employee Out to Sabotage Your Business‘. These people started happy, so what made them unhappy? More importantly how did you as a boss screw up your staff members? It might not be you, it might be the bosses of your bosses, but there was a start and not knowing where it started is the first flaw. American Express goes further with: ‘Don’t empower them‘, you see, it is again not your fault! But it is, it is the fault of the manager and that evidence is seen in that they ‘did nothing or far too little to defuse the situation‘, no matter how it is applied, the rules of contract killing (aka ergonomically and silently permanently removing people from any workplace) apply in the same way here:

  1. Segregation

Get the person apart, start a dialogue. That dialogue can give loads of information, because if one person is disgruntled now, there is every chance that up to 5 people are optionally soon to be disgruntled people as well. So that first dialogue can give a truckload of information of what is happening. In addition you might learn that things are not that bad, but his/her partner walked out and the small frustrations have grown into the real mindboggling issues (for that person) and they are optionally not, they are optionally pathways to solutions

  1. Isolation

So in the good case you merely had to deal with small frustrations, like software that was never properly tested before you started to sell it, or departmental changes that now imply that people will miss out on commission that they desperately need to pay the mortgage, things you wave away with: ‘That is just how it is!‘ and you never realised that it had real crunching impact on others. There can be a whole range of options, and the dialogue gave way to defusing the issue. One straight relaxed conversation with a bottle of ware, tea or fruit juice (this is the one place where coffee tends to be no help at all).

  1. Assassination

Dealing terminally with issues is a call at times, a manager merely refers to it as ‘terminating employment‘, but the core is larger, it means optionally replacing that worker, or not. So at that point others get to do the work the ex-employee did. With additional pressure, the risk of additional new disgruntled employees is born, that is how it works and when you realise the pathway, you see how wrong the foundation of the American Express article is. Even as the article started with: ‘Disgruntled employees are something that us entrepreneurs have to deal with, more than we like‘, the failure is seen when we forget is that your workplace created the ‘disgruntled employee‘ in the first place. And it is important to go through the stage, even if it is to make sure that all the right things were done. Proving it was not you or your environment is as important as the setting of the stage of what happens after.

The matter comes to blows when we see the ABC quote: “The shooter, who was a long-term city employee, has also been killed“. The realisation that he was a long-term employee gives light to the change that has happened. Perhaps it was nothing from work, but we need to learn what changed. Guns do not kill people, people kill people and this person decided that going postal was in his case better than delivering mail. Whatever this person did before, learning the trigger is important and there are dozens of articles on how you get rid of the disgruntled worker, learning on how he/she became one is not regarded as important in many of these articles, which I consider to be the biggest flaw of all; especially, as they are about enabling you the entrepreneur on getting on with being one. The flaws seen in that part are often the size of the Grand Canyon.

USA Today (at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/31/police-shooter-opens-fire-virginia-beach-courthouse/1305277001/) is giving us: “The shooting broke out in Building No. 2 of the sprawling Virginia Beach Municipal Center, which includes several city facilities, including the police department. Building 2 houses offices for planning and public works and is adjacent to city hall.“, it is fair that most do not have too much info at present yet the largest issue is going to be the monumental one soon enough. What was the trigger of the event, and it might be that nothing could have prevented it, there was no real blame, yet learning the case is important, the fact that no one is looking at that part is already a flaw. I can understand that the people do not want to hear about ‘comprehension‘ and that is fine, yet it needs to be on the top of every agenda in that place even if it is merely to learn whether this is just one person or if pressures had been brewing in that area for a longer time, giving the risk that this is not a one off occurrence.

Not doing so is like being in bomb disposal and refusing to look at the countdown before you start. A person who goes by the setting of ‘whilst the alarm clock is not going off, there is no boom‘, even when we realise that a 2 second check would give the part that the clock is at 11:56 and the alarm will sound in 193 seconds. The difference between ‘no boom’ and ‘193 seconds’ gives light to what could be done instead of all that has not been done yet when boom time came knocking, and believe me (or not) it makes for all the difference.

It is entrepreneur that also gives light to other ways. When we look at ‘7 Steps to Defuse Workplace Tension‘ (at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/207680) we see: “Conflict is all around us, and it occurs in every office to varying degrees and with almost every employee” we get some of the goods. The problem is twofold, what one lives with will turn the other player into a pressure cooker, with all the dangers when the pressure valve is not working. I will not go too deep into this, because you should read it. This 7 step part is actually very enlightening. It is a 7 step path EVERY manager that will be confronted with disgruntled employees will get to deal with. And the fact that there is a path that diffuses the issue and optionally makes a disgruntled person happy (or way less disgruntled) also means that you achieve retention and optionally renewed loyalty that becomes the golden ticket. A disgruntled employee that got over it in a good way is more than loyal, that person will have your back when the shit really hits the fan and 2-3 of those in your company can save a company when the markets collapse around you. They optionally become your powerbrokers and brand ambassadors. In light of 11 deaths I am not making light of the situation. In this case it was too late, the question becomes: ‘Could this have been prevented?‘ and I say ‘No!’ Gun laws would not have prevented this (because the bulk will blame gun laws), because an axe can achieve up close and personal just as lethally as any gun would.

If there is one part of the article I am not entirely in agreement with than it is the part that Dr. David G. Javitch discusses at ‘5. Encourage Compromise‘, with “each person must be willing to give in a little” we need to first establish the stage. For example, if the trigger was a guy who was a former Football players and all girls in the office want to date him (with additional nightly beneficial needs), and the man blew up because his wife cheated on him (with someone else mind you). The compromise of: ‘What if your wife cheated a little less‘ is not a setting that will work. I am of course taking a ridiculous example, but the foundation of internal and external pressures (internal being the workplace) is still valid in many cases. Like the loss of commission impacting mortgage is the nightmare that many US workers have faced in their life and millions face that pressure even today, so finding out that part is crucial. The internal issues can be dealt with, but when external impact is seen (like healthcare, personal care, financial care and mental care). I would find it important towards resolving the issues that all internal pressures are to be removed (if at all possible). Perhaps (especially if this was a long term employee) an immediate 2 week paid leave so that the person can focus on the pressure could have resolved everything.

All elements that are part of resolving the pain a person faces whilst being disgruntled. And in that case it was not the office, but in that case the pressure was the straw that broke the camel’s back and as a good manager you want your whole caravan to make the journey to the end, so as a manager you optionally get to compromise close towards 100%, yet when it creates loyalty you win in the end and you could win a lot when the chips are down in reverse, it is a path that many ignore for no reason at all.

However, today Virginia Beach is at minus 11, the Mayor (Bobby Dyer), the Governor (Ralph Northam), the Police Chief (James Cervera), they are all there in their emotional states (which is fine). It will take a few days for the events to settle and at that point we will see what was really what. I just hope that the blaming of guns stop, because that too is a possum move to ignore the truth of the matter, people kill people; what triggered this person kill 11 others is a question no one can answer for now.

 

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May 31, 2019 · 13:18

Just like TV

There will be a discussion soon enough whether TV gave the idea to fund extremism and terrorism. I am referring to Blacklist, an episode from season 3 called “Arioch Cain“. In this episode someone decides to use crowdsourcing to get the main character Elizabeth Keen assassinated and soon enough, through crowdsourcing a price of over $700,000 is on her head. That amount tends to attract all kinds of enthusiasts, especially as hardware relying on ammunition in the US is dirt cheap.

This gets us to two articles in the independent ‘British far-right extremists being funded by international networks, report reveals‘ less than an hour ago (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/far-right-extremism-terrorism-tommy-robinson-funding-international-a8937116.html), as well as ‘How crowd funding helps far-right extremism spread round the world‘ also less than an hour ago, but the same writer no less (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/far-right-extremism-crowdfunding-tommy-robinson-a8937311.html). The entire setting is not unexpected. I foresaw this to some extent in 2013 when I reported a certain stage where Facebook games had their own chat rooms and some chat rooms started to change languages. Now, I have no idea what was discussed, or even that anything nefarious was discussed, but the fact that some of these chat groups were private and the fact that they were close to 99% certain not monitored would give certain kind of people options, the fact that one could fund another through pay pal was a second stage in all this. The consideration that the episode was aired almost 4 years ago is also a factor, in 4 years people try alternatives and both the extremist as well as the terrorist population are always willing to try something that cannot really be monitored, so there.

The first article gives us: “Analysts at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) found that despite an increase in extreme right-wing attacks, efforts to disrupt terrorist financing were still focused on Islamists.

A report said a lack of work to find the source of money flows and stop them had allowed prolific extremists and groups to build huge platforms in the UK, US and Europe” as well as “the funds gathered allowed fringe groups to expand their reach with potentially deadly effect” cannot be ignored, and here we have the intersection. although let’s be clear I was looking at one source for very different reasons, I am now quoting: “I have had to clean up the mess of others for well over a decade and now it is time to give those people the exposure they deserve (my findings regarding Credit Agricole will have to wait for a few more days)“, Which I wrote in ‘The Scott Pilgrim of Technology‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/05/23/the-scott-pilgrim-of-technology/), it is indirectly linked as Rusi (at https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201606_whr_3_16_countering_proliferation_finance_v2_0.pdf) gives us “Several other banks have faced smaller fines by US regulators for similar offences, ranging in the hundreds of millions of dollars; they include HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, Barclays and Crédit Agricole.”

I was looking deeper into Omani credit notes which were handed to Iran for goods, but at the current oil prices (the price then) the numbers were not adding up, it was like looking at 10 tankers being paid forward, or someone sold oil at $230 a barrel, which seems even less likely and at trade prices there is no tanker large enough to facilitate the oil. As I was aware and familiar with bills of lading, parts did not add up and I decided to dig deeper, only to find that I had forgotten to save the links and that virtual location was suddenly gone the next morning (that will teach ME being stupid). Somehow one of the links seemingly implied Credit Agricole (a non verifiable number) and that is where I was last week, now I see the Rusi paper and I wonder what their servers could teach me. It was by the way not a new issue for me, I looked into parts of this in June 2018 when I wrote: ‘The Iranian funds play‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/06/07/the-iranian-funds-play/).

The paper also gives us on page 13: “Financial institutions rely on governments to be explicit about their expectations and to provide guidance on how best to meet these expectations“, which is not really realistic when they rely on ambiguity, but the setting is fair and as such we also see the failed setting to deal with extreme right players. I personally believe that when we consider: “FIs are thus faced with a dilemma, in that many wish to meet US expectations in order to avoid penalties, but do not enjoy advice or assistance from their home governments to enable them to direct their efforts appropriately. Most are largely left to determine on their own how to address risks associated with CPF or related sanctions, other than simply screening against UN sanctions lists“, I believe that some of the players considered the benefit of using players like Oman to set the stage of both deniability and facilitation via a fourth person (as the bank was the third piggie in the middle), they get none of the heat and all of the bonus that way. I believed that some French players found an optional resolution to keep their vineyards safe and well-funded. It works for me; I would love to retire in the Cognac area making my own grape juice ambrosia (aka: Jus de raisin maison). The fact that this is all about billions in the other setting, my 1% slice would look super dandy. In case of the Lizzie Dearden articles, we see that the anonymity allows those who shun the limelight to make an ‘effort’ to keep imbalance through extremism, or what some call the Tommy Robinson political resolution, The article gives us: “white nationalists Generation Identity and neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action among the British actors profiting from “international connectivity”“, do you really think that it is limited to that group? All those white collar board members who cannot be seen with their fingers in the cookie jar have no qualms about buying a bakery, so that they can have the jar at any given moment. At that point yesterday’s article also gets another dimension, when big players need to rely on consultants with a given for fear mongering, how did the media ignore that? Examples are abound, for example articles that rely on ‘should’ 9 times and “The primary danger is the repeat of the fears that many investors had to face in 2018” and the entire paragraph is in the article twice. It is ways like that fear is brought and reinforced, when this is done, there is no trail, no conversation and in the end the crowdsourcing methods are the best to keep it all anonymous. It matters, because the intelligent extreme right player works not through shouting, but through reinforcement of the argument, they aren’t all stupid!

When Rusi looks at Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) we get that: “he had profited from both significant support from foreign donors and crowdfunding from individual donors around the world” this does not come through shouting, it comes from enforcing fears and give examples that are current, does that sound familiar?

Do you think that a Philadelphia-based think tank spends £48,000 on silly shouters? Do you think that the quote: “Robinson was also a beneficiary of a “fellowship” from US tech billionaire Robert Shillman that bolstered his salary from Canadian website Rebel Media, where he worked from early 2017 until February last year” is unique? People like Robert Shillman are rich enough not to care, they are too rich and their view is often accepted because they are super wealthy, so they are regarded as successful, but there are dozens who still fear the limelight and crowdsourcing is a solution to fund many others (far right or far left) with an optional handle on extremism, Lizzie Dearden gives a good view on it. There is one part I do not agree with, even as nothing Keatinge writes is wrong. When I see: “crowdfunding allows extremists to build international platforms that spread hate to wider audiences“. I can tell that he is not wrong, but overlooks the optional larger issue. It is not spreading hate, it is illuminating through half-baked examples that the current solutions are not working. It is not the hate part, but the ‘your kid does not have a job, because an immigrant was overly happy to accept that job at minimum pay‘ that is what sells the larger imbalance. Ignoring the truth that every boss tries to cut costs any way they can, as they are misaligning the cost of doing business, we see that an entire generation is pushed to minimum income, even those with good degrees, add to that age discrimination and we suddenly see a shift that is much larger, it is not promoting hate, but caressing the frustrations of the working class that is much stronger and a larger growth concern. Most do not react to hate, but we will respond to the frustrations that they are hit with every day, that is the part Rusi missed (or so it seems).

There is also an issue with: “Crowdfunding is a vulnerability in the system, it’s a way the internet presents funding opportunities that have not previously been conceived” the issue is not that it is an option, it is that this ‘solution’ has been around for 20 years and no one took a hard look at the options that crowdfunding offered until it was too late. Even as we all seem to focus on Star Citizen (2015) that raised $77 million, the fact that the idea goes back to Auguste Comte (1850) gives rise to more issues. The internet might have made the idea global, but there was a larger issue for the longest of time and the fact that we see a project 4 years ago amass $77 million gives rise to larger concerns. Especially in light of lone wolf dangers that have been around a decade earlier. so even as we see the recognition through: “Senior law enforcement practitioners have suggested that non-violent extremism is often the first step in a process of radicalisation that ends in terrorism, which is why financial analysis into nonviolent extremism should not be overlooked“, the very notion of the text in the Rusi paper on page 17: “The only indicator that appears to be specific to proliferation financing risks relates to whether shipped goods are incompatible with the technical capabilities of the destination country. This highlights a third problem, which is that in order to be able to gain this understanding, an FI would need to: understand the precise technical nature of the item and its potential applications (information that may not be available with sufficient specificity); assess the industrial state of the destination country, including its possible nearterm expansion“, you might recognise two problems. The first is that ‘shipped goods‘ becomes a larger issue when they are spare parts. Consider that some caterpillar crane parts are strong and massive enough to create a stable multi scud launcher, more so when assembly and disassembly could be achieved in under an hour. What is Israel going to do? Bomb a crane? When you realise that the issue grows tenfold with electronics, some might see on how far crowdsourcing could finance a network in Europe and as this danger has been largely accepted since as early as 2012, the entire lack of activity in this realm of non-monitoring makes even less sense. The second part is ‘potential application‘, how many people look at a Caterpillar of Hitachi Crawler crane and considers the spare parts to be the foundation of an optional Scud launching solution? Let’s face it there is no flag that would be raised regarding a construction firm receiving spare parts for their crane.

Now we understand that Rusi made a paper that focusses on the issue, and there is nothing wrong with the paper, it is actually excellent. My issue remains and on page 20 we get the good stuff: “All FIs interviewed for this study said their institutions employed sanctions-screening software to check incoming and outgoing transactions against UN-designated entities, and all were doing so prior to the advent of FATF Recommendation 7.” when we get the ‘UN-designated entities‘ and not the check of facilitators, we see a large delay (in case issues are found), and we get a problem when the situation is not the designations, but the fact that both sides have a middleman and these people talk to the match makers, so we now have a party of five with a Chinese wall in place and the stage where more likely than not, the three in the middle are not on any list, especially the matchmaker, who uses a range of ‘middle man’ for each idea with each transaction, when the transactions become fragmented the chance of not revealed becomes a lot more likely than not and crowdsourcing enables this to a much larger degree, add to this the dark web and bitcoin and we get a mess we cannot decipher. If the facilitators go to the tax office and give them ‘I had a one off consultancy job for a year‘ and pay their taxation on time, it all goes into the IT revenue taxed and not one pig will be squealing, not even as it gets roasted whilst the ‘consultant’ brought home the bacon.

They merely need to consider the office location so that it aligns with: ‘due to the lack of legislation in some jurisdictions to allow an institution to support an asset freeze‘ and the solution is there. And that is when the amount is large enough, when it is smaller, almost never ever true action will be taken, the extremists, political or other can use that system any way it jingles to the beat they needed to hear.

It is a case of musical chairs where the rewards for some really stack up, just like on TV.

 

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May 30, 2019 · 13:25

Want a cake? Buy a bakery!

There was a man (not me) who loved cakes so much (definitely me) that he decided to buy a bakery (not on my income), so he spend £1,475,000 and now he has a cake every day until he dies, and that was the happy ending, or was it?

Consider that at the Cake Store, an outlandishly super cake (birthdays) from £45 onwards (up to £850) which will give you colour choice for inscription, 4 levels of cake (the 4th being a Rubik cube cake), choice of filling and selections of candles and sparklers. So it does not get any better than that. Yet we all agree that the most expensive cake is not a daily choice, anything below that tends to be around £100, so a fair cake and there plenty of cakes are 16″ and a mere £69. So at that stage we see that the man paid upfront for 19,666 cakes, implying that he will have a daily cake for 53 years; and that is when we ignore the interest he could have gotten on the £1,475,000 which in an optimum stage is interest that pays for 983 daily cakes a year, we call that a bad choice when the goal is to have cake every day. Now when it is about government policy it is not that simple.

And this gets us to the actual story, the fact that the Guardian gives us: ‘Government spends almost £100m on Brexit consultants‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/29/government-spends-almost-100m-brexit-consultants), I get that consultant might be needed to some degree, but Brexit is something new, so how would they know? Yes, I very much understand that one of Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), or Ernst & Young was needed, but all three? Even if that was the case, for example manpower, the issue is not merely the £100 million; it is the stage of what knowledge did these civil servants not have?

Before we go bashing civil servants left, right and centre, we need to acknowledge that you want consultancy to some degree on international tax issues, on international legislation, yet is that knowledge not available within the government? We apparently have Law lords, we apparently have treasury and tax experts and the fact that they came up short by £100 million in knowledge is a much larger issue than I am happy about.

The fact that the end of this is not near, a premise we see with: “Marked “official sensitive”, the investigation warns Whitehall spending on Brexit consultancy work could hit £240m by 2020, as officials scramble to plan for departure from the EU” should be a larger concern. Then I notice a name which I have stumbled upon. With the mention of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), I go back to ‘The Repetitive Misrepresentation‘, A May 2016 story (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/05/28/the-repetitive-misrepresentation/) where I stated: “The quote in the Business Insider gives you “I got the analyst who wrote one of the reports on the phone and asked how he got his projections. He must have been about 24. He said, literally, I sh*t you not, “well, my report was due and I didn’t have much time. My boss told me to look at the growth rate average over the past 3 years an increase it by 2% because mobile penetration is increasing.” There you go. As scientific as that“, this was at the core of the issue I had with PwC earlier. The final Gem the Business Insider offered was “They took the data from the analysts. So did the super bright consultants at McKinsey, Bain and BCG. We all took that data as the basis for our reports. Then the data got amplified. The bankers and consultants weren’t paid to do too much primary research. So they took 3 reports, read them, put them into their own spreadsheet, made fancier graphs, had professional PowerPoint departments make killer pages and then at the bottom of the graph they typed, “Research Company Data and Consulting Company Analysis” (fill in brand names) or some derivative. But you couldn’t just publish exactly what Gartner Group had said so these reports ended up slightly amplified in message; even more so with journalists. I’m not picking on them. They were as hoodwinked as everybody was. They got the data feed either from the research company or from the investment bank“. This all from an article in The Business Insider from February 18th 2010! (Yes, more than 6 years ago).” I am not stating that BCG did anything wrong, illegal or immoral, I merely wonder how they got their numbers, Brexit is an unseen event and there are no scenarios that fit the bill, so how were their results gotten (or is that begotten?); these are questions that reside with Bain & Company, as well as the BCG. PwC is not out of that firing line, it is for the most only Deloitte who gets a pass (based on previous work), as well as some of the people I know (from) there.

If there is one part I get then it is the entire Defra mess (mess still an optional word). The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has to deal with all kinds of legal and policy issues that have never been transparent, I would be surprised if there is not a whole range of other issues floating up from there in regards to food matters from all over Europe (France being an obvious first). An example that was seen last year when those reading Wine magazines were introduced to: “It’s made from outlawed jacquez and herbemont grapes, he explains, and is produced by a coop of rebellious vignerons in the Ardéche region of southern France.” Wine that is banned by the EU, so that is one part that Defra might not have been prepared for at present and that is merely a top line result I looked at, when we start looking at the Romanian Equine Beef Burgers the matter becomes truly adventurous. None of it is the fault of Defra mind you, merely the stage in which they find themselves at.

That also raises the issue seen with: “Whitehall report criticises departments for lack of transparency“, at that point, what are the chances that the Border Delivery Group with £10.2m and Defra with £8m have been doubling up on data and reports? More important, if they are from different sources, the data will not match and cannot be compared, or better stated, until the questions and data are not rigorously inspected, there will never be a way to tall on a few levels how valid and optionally how replicated the issues are. There is clear overlap between the two, yet the lack of transparency implies that they are not aware of each other’s work until the final report was handed to all the players.

In addition when I see: “the DHSC employed Deloitte for “management support … in ensuring the supply of medical devices in case the UK leaves the EU without a deal”“, questions are shaped in my mind. I get it; there are questions, very valid questions. Yet in all this, Philips Healthcare has 6 locations in the UK, the same for Siemens Healthineers UK. So suddenly they would not be able to provide? They had their tax breaks for decades; as such they are responsible for delivery. It is time to look at these places and see just what tax breaks they got and hold them accountable (to some degree). I am merely mentioning two elements, there are many more where they had the deductibles and now they would walk away? Did the Department of Health and Social Care ever look at that part of the equation? Because if these people ‘walk away’ we can undo these tax breaks immediately, for the next decade or two.

It could be my version of ‘the sun also rises’.

It all comes to blows when we see: “But the report says it has taken an average of 161 days for basic details of Brexit consultancy contracts to be published, compared with 83 days for all consultancy contracts“, the fact that details are withheld for almost 6 months, beckons the question, was that before or after the contract was signed? In addition to this, when we look at “In February, analysis found government and public sector bodies had awarded contracts worth £107m for “professional services” in relation to Brexit planning. Tussell, a private firm that analyses public contracts, said the figure included 28 consultancy contracts worth nearly £92m.” gives me the questions on how much Tussel costs to check all this and are these contracts checked for doubling up, or are the merely checked for validity, hours versus billed, as well as how the contract was set up and what was required to be delivered? Merely the basic stuff and as such, as these contracts are compared, will I find a doubling of data as similar questions are to be answered?

Even as I partially agree with the government spokesperson giving us: “It is often more cost-efficient to draw upon the advice of external specialists for short-term projects requiring specialist skills. These include EU exit priorities such as ensuring the uninterrupted supply of medical products and food to the UK.” I do end up with questions on the arrangement of short term contracts and the fact that the treasury coffer is now out of £100 million. The fact that we see ‘such as’ is also a problem, the people were so over the moon on being a member of the EU, the fact that the government never looked at contingency issues within any government since the UK became a member of the EU is also a failure on several levels, especially when we consider the fact that this looks like an impairment of national security (or is that on levels of national security) whilst we see unproven Huawei accusation left, right and centre, an issue that does matter as you are about to find out.

The Washington Post gave us two days ago (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/28/its-middle-night-do-you-know-who-your-iphone-is-talking) ‘It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?‘ with the added: “Our privacy experiment showed 5,400 hidden app trackers guzzled our data — in a single week“. It relates in a simple way, we accuse Huawei whilst apps are according to the Washington Post: “On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with. And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address -— once every five minutes.”

It seems that there is a flaw, not merely in transparency and regarding the consultancy groups, there is a flaw in the way we think, the government is set to a stage, what would we have to do, whilst the tax breaks have been ignored to the stage where companies have a responsibility to deliver, which of these reports takes a look at that part and when we see that Apple did not do enough, when we are told that the user should not have installed a certain app, the fact that the app should not have been allowed in the apple store (or android store) is equally a setting to look at, the lack of transparency implies that this was not done, not once.

So when we divert (for a moment) to: “According to privacy firm Disconnect, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. That’s half of an entire basic wireless service plan from AT&T.” I made a similar mention in January 2017 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/01/30/taking-xbox-to-court/) where in ‘Taking Xbox to Court?‘ where Microsoft uploaded almost 6 GB in a fortnight whilst playing single players games. The fact that Microsoft hid behind: “we have no influence on uploads, that is the responsibility of your ISP!“, as response the Xbox helpdesk (read: party line) that their support gave me when I called still makes me angry. But now it is not merely consoles, it is happening all over the place and the government either does not care, or has no clue, so when we see ‘privacy’ driven issues, I wonder who they are trying to fool. Especially when I was confronted with ‘possible civil contingency need‘, there are optionally so many contingency needs transgressed upon (as I personally see it), how about recognising that in all the elements clear transparency was an essential first, the fact that the large players are not willing to be transparent, we see a much larger issue all over the place.

Even as part of one of the DHSC reports gives us: “It is difficult to prepare detailed predictions or plans for such unpredictable concerns“, so if we see the impact of ‘unpredictable concerns‘, at what point do we ask more serious question on where the foundation of £100 million came from? And it is not merely the spending, those who asked the questions and the exact questions themselves would also need to be scrutinised, because the private firms merely facilitated and they did nothing wrong, the other side needs to be looked at, to a much higher degree than ever before.

Now consider a paper by DLA Piper (at https://www.dlapiper.com/en/uk/insights/publications/2019/04/no-deal-brexit/data-protection/) only a month ago where we see: “UK data protection law is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect across all EU member states (including the UK) on 25 May 2018, and creates a harmonised legal framework regulating the way in which personal data is collected, used and shared throughout the EU. Should the UK leave the EU, the GDPR will cease to have direct effect in the UK. However, as the UK is committed to maintaining an equivalent data protection regime, a UK version of the GDPR will effectively apply following the departure date (exit-day)“. This is fair enough, yet as the Washington Post two days ago and I was able to show (850 days ago) that the collection of personal data is already off the wall, so at what point will we see recognition that the point of no return was passed a few hundred days ago?

So at what point are there questions on DLA Piper (who did nothing wrong) regarding; “The GDPR imposes restrictions on the transfer of personal data to a ‘third country’” and as the Washington Post gives us an iPhone example, we see that Huawei is clearly 0% guilty in that part, so how is the entire: ‘President Trump is clueless on true national security in the first place‘ not directly on the mind of all, especially when the transgressions are seemingly global. Perhaps when we realise that these are American Apps there is optional no national security infringement and privacy is merely a concept for all the players of that issue in town. At what point will the UK realise that they have much larger issues?

Even as there is complete acceptance of: “It is important to be aware that SCCs cannot be used to safeguard all transfers – for example SCCs do not exist for transfers between an EU-based processor and a UK-based controller (ie where a UK controller hosts personal data with an EU processor). This is a known area of risk to regulators, which impacted organisations may decide to ‘risk manage’ where data repatriation is not a realistic options“, I am willing to state that not only is ‘data repatriation is not realistic‘, it was not an option well over two years ago and the loss of data  (read: data copy transfer) under 5G will merely increase by a speculated 500%.

It is the realisation of these elements where we need to revisit: ‘those who asked the questions and the exact questions themselves would also need to be scrutinised‘.

I wonder if that was done and more important to what degree. We can agree that investigation on what might happen might have a steep price, I get that, yet overall there are larger issues regarding the exact question what was asked, the model, the data, the collection and the integrity of data regarding the question that needed to get answered. I wonder (because I actually do not know), how far did Tussel go regarding that part of the equation?

So how did this get from a bakery cake to 4G and 5G privacy?

It is about the cost of doing business, not merely the stage of prepared for what comes next and I feel that in light of what we are shown by the Guardian, the ‘cost of doing business’ and the ‘next stage of enterprising’ is not aligned, when we realise that there is a large non-alignment of issues, how large is the gap in these reports, not merely on legislation and policy, but on operational levels that will get hit first. The DLA Piper part makes perfect sense, yet when you realise that the mobile application status is already nowhere near it needs to be, how useful is the DLA Piper part, which is technically speaking flawless? When we see that part of non-alignment, how many reports costing £100 million have an operational discrepancy when tested to the actuality of the events?

In equal measure we get the additional question, would transparency have solved that, which is likely to give the answer that require us to take a hard look at those phrasing the questions. One led to the other, and I merely looked at the digital part, when we look at actual shipping (and ships), we see the realisation that the UK is still an island, one tunnel does not solve that, how do we see the filling of the prospect of the danger that a lot more contingency plans are missing, not because of Brexit, but because they already should have been there, the IOS data tracking part is evidence of that.

 

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May 29, 2019 · 12:57

Sexual abuse is apparently fine

The Washington Post gives us the news one hour ago. The article (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/private-letters-indicate-the-vatican-imposed-but-didnt-enforce-restrictions-on-former-cardinal-mccarrick/2019/05/28/dc3ca440-814f-11e9-b585-e36b16a531aa_story.html) gives us: ‘Private letters indicate the Vatican imposed, but didn’t enforce, restrictions on former cardinal McCarrick‘, the setting here is that “an aide to former cardinal Theodore McCarrick released excerpts from emails and letters laying out how the Vatican tried to quietly sanction McCarrick years before he was defrocked for sexual abuse“, so this was not in the short run, this is not a small matter, the Washington Post has additional articles on this in 2018, and it gets to be worse when we consider that clerical abuse expert Richard Sipe published excerpts from the 2005 and 2007 settlement documents in 2010. Yet I am still in another phase. You see most of us got the wakeup call through the movie Spotlight (2016), we had heard rumours left, right and chapels, but the fact on just how big and large the problem is has not made it to mainstream media to the degree that it should had. How can I as a Catholic, remain Catholic when I am confronted with: “send reported abusers for mental health counseling; reassign them to pastoral work regardless of what a professional recommends (i.e. restriction of access to minors); allow them to work again unsupervised; wait for another report of offence; repeat the cycle; cover it all up“, which we got from Richard Sipe in May 2010. And it gets worse when you consider: “The trouble is that it is sealed within the system. Few of the seminarian/priest victims will talk on record. They have everything to lose. Sexually active priests who have no intention of being celibate do everything to cover their tracks“, so according to the release evidence (excerpts from court cases) and the amounts settled was a lot; basically, all the funds that the people hand over for charity, for the church, for the needy. From that amount around $4 billion regarding cases that go back up to 35 years, the largest amount $600 million regarding 221 priests to dress the wounds of well over 500 victims. Whilst none of these clerics are in prison, these people give us lectures on humanitarian aid and the suffering in places like Saudi Arabia? How hypocrite can we get?

So as Newsweek, who was the source gave us one part, they also gave us BishopAccountability, who is actively ‘documenting the abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church‘ give us the additional “We document settlements involving 5,679 persons who allege sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. These survivors are only one-third of the 15,235 allegations that the bishops say they have received through 2009, and they are only 5% of the 100,000 U.S. victims“, the realisation that this is from the last 10 years and that it involves over 15,000 allegations, as i see it a large prison holding up to 25,000 priests called ‘Concilium Vaticanum locum seorsum‘ (Vatican Isolation Location) is required, build at the expense of, as well as funded by the Vatican. I reckon that in the end it is a cheaper way to resolve the issue, when we set these beasts in prison for 5-15 years, things might look up. How acceptable do you find the notion of: “wait for another report of offence; repeat the cycle; cover it all up“? How will you see this when it involves your child or a relative you were close to?

In all this the lamest of all reasons is seen with: “Adult men make less instantly sympathetic victims than children, and the alleged incidents involving McCarrick are less headline-grabbingly horrifying“, so why is the DA not doing his/her job? Crimes were committed, hundreds of times, over and over again, yet we see no convictions, we see no culling of the acts by these priest. When you see all the evidence stack up with a failing to convict and as I see it: “before the 88-year-old simply passes away in seclusion“, is not a verdict or punishment, it is merely a stage of house arrest with optional benefits.

The only thing it does is leave us with the clarity that ‘abuse is fine‘, which is weird, because I know it to be 100% wrong, so why are people sitting on their hands? Why are people trivialising the fact that globally thousands of victims were created and the Catholic Church did next to nothing? At present there are 22 US senators who are Catholic, and how many of them have been active towards the prosecution of these clerics?

Even as lawmakers have passed a bill that would force priests to disclose information about child sexual abuse that they hear in the sacrament of Confession, we see in the Catholic sun that Archbishop José H. Gómez, vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was “deeply disappointed”, which we cannot accept, that feeling of disappointment is a mere 15,235 allegations too late, a stage where we see that there are up to 15,235 victims in the US alone and for the longest time priests would cover for one another and more upsetting higher elements in the Church were part of the cover-up. It is when we consider the CruxNow (at https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2018/08/24/what-new-jersey-bishops-now-retired-knew-about-mccarrick-settlements/) and we take notice of “The Metuchen Diocese made settlements of $53,333 and $100,000, where one (2006) was regarding a former priest who said he had been abused by McCarrick and others. This priest submitted the first known written complaint about McCarrick“, this puts Bishop Paul Gregory Bootkoski in the firing line, yet we also acknowledge that he also reported the offenses to law enforcement, yet what actions were taken are not known to me at present. Yet this indicates that at least a Cardinal or higher had to be aware of it as early as 2006, giving us 13 years of danger to more victims. However, to get back to Bishop Paul Gregory Bootkoski, you see Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington was never informed of the settlements according to the Catholic News agency. It gives questions when we read: “Cardinal Wuerl said last week that he was never informed that those settlements had been reached“, it leaves the actions of Bishop Paul Gregory Bootkoski open for debate and investigation. The fact that Richard Sipe personally wrote a letter to Benedict XVI in 2008 stating the hazard that is Theodore Edgar McCarrick (source: New York times, 2018) supports the view that the events were known in the very top of the Vatican, and as such, how can we remain comfortable as Catholics? I certainly do not feel comfortable at all.

When we realise that the Vatican was informed again in 2000 and 2006, yet in the end nothing was done for decades, that is the larger evil in all this and it is right there within the Vatican. The fact that according to news that McCarrick lives currently at St. Fidelis Friary in Victoria, Kansas and not in prison is really beyond me, the fact that the Washington Post gave us three hours ago that the Vatican imposed restrictions, but did not enforce them (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/private-letters-indicate-the-vatican-imposed-but-didnt-enforce-restrictions-on-former-cardinal-mccarrick/2019/05/28/dc3ca440-814f-11e9-b585-e36b16a531aa_story.html), gives rise to additional issues on several levels, yet if there is hope to be seen it does not come from the very top, but from the other side as Rev. Anthony Figueiredo, it is also in that article that we are made aware of “Cardinal Wuerl has previously stated — and he reiterates again — that he was not aware of any imposition of sanctions or restrictions related to any claim of abuse or inappropriate activity by Theodore McCarrick“, this ‘revelation’ is not about Cardinal Wuerl but on Bishop Paul Gregory Bootkoski, consider where McCarrick went, what kind of a danger he would optionally be to the people there; it is my personal view that the bishop created a dangerous place of intentional harm by keeping quiet, how Christian is that? How Christian are we when we merely accept that there is no prosecution to a lot more members of the clergy?

When we see: ‘Why ‘moderate’ Muslims need to speak loudly against terror‘, yet we also see that we do nothing against the Vatican on these transgressions, where is the greater evil, in the Vatican or in Mecca? Most Christians would consider Mecca to be ‘evil’ yet as we allow for the Vatican transgressions, can we even tell what evil is and what it looks like?

In the 80’s I knew what evil was and what it looked like. I felt like a proud Catholic going up against the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah. Today I am still against the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, yet from those days I am not certain that my mind was playing for the right team, as such my mind wanders all over the place. What do you do when you learn after half a century that would have played for the wrong team? I know that Christians were never innocent, there is plenty of evidence that they wiped at least 17 civilisations from existence, the fact that Catholics are optionally to be seen as an internal cancer that is destroying itself from within is far more dangerous. If we are here to give rise to a better soul and the messenger cannot be trusted to protect our soul, where are we left?

If sexual abuse is fine, and we are no longer able to tell the falsehood of that, how doomed are we really? It is at this point that I recollect (in reality I searched for this) the Quran, specifically Taha 20:102: “The Day when the trumpet shall be blown, and on that day we shall gather the sinners together, blue-eyed (- the spiritually blind ones)“, to be honest ever since I saw Spotlight (2016) I have felt like a blind man, when you fear the people you would easily trust, how deep is the trouble that Christians face and how utterly wrongful has the Vatican reacted to all this, and how many more mistakes will they willingly make to let it all go away under cover of denial, settlement and ignorance towards the victims that they created?

I wonder if we learn the truth of that in time, all of us.

 

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May 28, 2019 · 10:35

Danger on the Australian shores

There is a danger lurking, it took over Japan, the US and Europe, now we see Greg Jericho (aka gorgonomics) vocally giving us: ‘The government needs to get into more debt, our grim economy depends on it‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2019/may/28/the-government-needs-to-get-into-more-debt-our-grim-economy-depends-on-it) and my first reaction is: “You have got to be out of your bloody mind“. In the first politicians should never be trusted with the option of deeper debt, the US and Europe are clear evidence of that. The second is that giving that much power to the banks is just unacceptable. We see transgression after transgression and they walk away with mere fines. Reuters gave us less than two months ago: “The largest ever money laundering scandal in Europe is rippling through the region’s banks“, these people think that they can get away with murder, and whilst we hear politicians proclaim that they will use the full power of the law, we have yet to see any banker do any serious prison sentence since 2004.

Latvia’s ABLV, the Estonian branch of Danske Bank, Sweden’s Swedbank and it is all about €200,000,000,000 between 2007 and 2015. So far the chief executive of Swedbank was let go, and how much money did they make? These issues are connected. Deutsche bank and the Dutch ING, which was ‘forced’ to pay a $915 million last year for example, yet when their takings are part of billions upon billions, these players go home with a pretty penny. So far the Australian banks are decently clean large debts will optionally change that, anyone telling you different is lying through their teeth. When we realise that EU banks payed over $16 billion in fines between 2012 and 2018 because of lax money-laundering checks, we think that there is a solution, yet how does $16,000,000,000 compare to €200,000,000,000? Someone is going home rich and whilst the banks pay of the fine making it a mere cost, the cost of doing business goes up and so do the fees.

the Singapore Independent (at http://theindependent.sg/nigerian-based-in-singapore-jailed-for-role-in-citibank-money-laundering-scheme/) gave us last week “Paul Gabriel Amos was sentenced to three years’ jail after he pleaded guilty to two counts of dishonestly receiving stolen property amounting to more than S$1 million and one count of money laundering” ad this is still about a 2008 case, it took over a decade to get this far, and when we see “Amos agreed to help in exchange for a cut of the criminal proceeds“, that is how it works and this is in places where banking is a lot more sophisticated than anything Australia has. You might hear accusations that these cases are not connected, but they are. They are connected to greed and ‘opportunity’. My issue is that the Australian government has no business taking out large loans of any kind until they fix the tax system, no matter how long that takes. It gets to be even worse is we take the Business Insider (at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/maxine-waters-deutsche-bank-subpoena-trump-kushner-2019-5), the fact that we see: “The chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee told INSIDER on Tuesday that a New York Times article detailing how Deutsche Bank buried reports of potentially illegal financial activity linked to President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner “reinforces the need” for the panel “to obtain the documents we have subpoenaed from the bank.”“, when we consider that the banks facilitated for someone who is not President of the United States and we consider on how willing any bank is on the criminal path as the worst thing they face are fines at a mere percentage of the takings, when they call that the cost of doing business, how long until Australia is thoroughly tainted in a similar way?

the fact that ABC gave us 4 weeks ago (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-01/google-facebook-make-billions-in-australian-sales-pay-little-tax/11060474) ‘Google, Facebook make billions in Australian sales but pay less than $40m in tax‘, do you not think that overhauling the tax system so that these players pay a fair share is a much better solution? Do you think that paying 0.000002% or less is acceptable? Besides that, the least said about the former car industry and their option for legalised slave labour the better.

Should we not prosecute every treasurer over the last 10 years, and after that see what we can do? I am not some anti-capitalist, I understand that capitalism is a driver and a powerful one, yet even at 1% (giving us at least $200,000,000) would solve a fair amount of issues, would it not? So whilst politicians are wasting our time with “Both companies are facing various probes by regulators in Australia and overseas over issues relating tax“, the entire tax mess should have been addressed well over a decade ago, as such can we get the incomes off al treasurers between 2009 and 2019 back please? This treasurer, if he does not adjust tax laws would be allowed to keep $1 for his attendance.

When we make this law the issues change and yes, we will get all kinds of threats, but they can equally fuck off and bleed someplace else dry. I am certain that a market share of 20 million will draw in other potential investors, because 20 million consumers will want all kinds of stuff.

And whilst people like Greg Jericho are talking about the sweet spot, they all overlook the issue that debt will have to be paid back, that whilst we see that Japan, the US and Europe have no exit strategy to end debt, at present that debt will be there for generations, making them the bitches of banks and fortune 500 companies, plain and simple. When the debt matures the quality of life in these places hit another snag, we did not and will not sign up for that.

I would love to see infrastructure fixed and improved upon, but whilst these idiots are unable to fix the tax system they have no business pushing the tax payers into deep debt.

And whilst there is no doubt that Greg is working from logic, he truly is; the issue is not: “Imagine being able to get a loan to upgrade machinery and equipment for your business at 1.5% – lower than inflation! – and you didn’t take advantage because you have a theory about how debt is bad“, he seemingly forgets that politicians are inherently stupid (they are optionally dumb and greedy in a nice compact package), these politicians ignore and push forward what they had to resolve, the amount of evidence on a global scale is overwhelming. And in the end, we the taxpayers get to pay that hardship, all that whilst tax laws were not dealt with a decade ago, how is that fair to anyone?

 

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May 27, 2019 · 12:11

Yay or Nay

There is no escaping the EU elections, the issues are large and the anger in Europe is equally sizeable. In France Marine Le Pen has the lead with a little comfort, but not much. Still Macron got initially defeated (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/europe-election-results-france-marine-le-pen-macron-national-front-rally-latest-a8931361.html).

So even as National Rally is ahead by a fair bit with 24%, it is only 1.5% ahead which is comfortable but by no means a done deal at present. With “even slightly down on what the National Front won in 2014 – meaning the party has made little progress on previous years against an unpopular president” we see that Marine Le Pen is not set in stone, she will need powerful allies in the EU to get anything done and as we learn that “the Danish People’s Party and AfD have stood still or fallen back” it implies that she is already two allies down, and as we also see that at present the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (led by Nigel Farage) only has 54 seats (7.2%), and in all this her Dutch allies fall short by a lot, there the reversion to the old parties is remarkable, it is there that we see that the Forum for Democracy (Thierry Baudet) is seen as the joke it needs to be seen as. Although having 11% and the Dutch PVV (4.1%) shows that Geert Wilders is pretty much done for. Dutch Labour took 18%, with the classical parties VVD (15%) and CDA (12.3%) together they are taking a little over 45%, when they get the Greens on board, the majority is a fact and the other two are out of consideration. The independent also shines light on something I noticed earlier in Australia. It seems that the Greens and their choices are having an impact on Global scales. The Green parties have made remarkable strides in the Netherlands (Groen Links), the Greens in the UK and in France (Europe Eologie-Les Verts) are now a European force to be reckoned with, a shift I actually never expected. As we see that in several places their growth is almost everywhere (where it matters that is) is a 10% growth, it requires us to look into it, these are the voices of the people and even as I am a Brexiteer, I will not ignore the Green view when it grows that fast. I have always given support and specifics on why I am a Brexiteer and I understand that plenty of people have another view, so when we see such a shift it is important to examine the optional why. I refuse to give in to some ‘voting fraud’ BS story. Yes, there will be voting fraud, but the optional 322 fraudulent votes do not add up in a place where 675 million people are eligible to vote. Only a complete fool will set weight to 0.000477% to invalidate any election (I guess that there is a chance that Dutch Thierry Baudet will do just that soon enough).

I am actually willing to speculate that for every Brexiteer there is a person who thought that Brexit was too extreme and pushed towards Greens, other opposed UKIP and went LibDem (a wisdom that is definitely debatable), which is my personal sense of humour that is kicking in. I made notice on this in the last election. I wrote about that in ‘On the purple side‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/05/26/on-the-purple-side/) in May 2017. When I dug into the numbers that the Guardian had, I noticed that “a lot of UKIP and Labour are too uncomfortable with the conservative view“, The numbers showed that the shift when Tories were number one, that the growth went to either Ukip or LibDems and they were almost always mutually exclusive, Where LibDems ‘ruled’ there was a diminished Ukip and vice versa, which was an interesting side to see. I believe that this trend has continued, which is why the LibDems surpassed Labor, Greens and Tories, for a lot Brexit was too extreme and they went LibDem instead. How this will work out in the next national election remains to be seen. In this case it will depend on what the Brexit party actually achieves and so far the EU elections do not give them too much to work with. Nigel might have Marine Le Pen in his corner, but with the Dutch, Danes and Germans absent in this, they lack the seats to get anything concrete done, which would have been essential if the Brexit party would be growing a national impact. On the plus side Jeremy Corbyn got kicked out of London, so there is still another reason to party and when we are confronted with that result we see a reason to have a milestone party, even if that milestone has a LibDem flag firmly planted on it.

We cannot tell what Vince Cable will do next, but today he gets to party, he has earned it and he should. It has been a while since any political leader went out on a high note, just ask Theresa May, and as I see it the win for the LibDem will be the hardest challenge for whomever succeeds Vince, keeping the votes will be a large task, even as Jeremy and Theresa are on the way out (Jeremy Corbyn is in denial of that part for now by his intent to be monitoring workplace humour), their infighting implies that either party will not be out for LibDem blood, but that might not be for as long as the LibDems hope for.

In the meantime just to appease Jeremy Corbyn: ‘How many managers does it take to change a lightbulb? None, they are not qualified‘, monitor that Mr Corbyn!

In recognition

So if I am such a Brexit fan, why am I not angry at the defeat? I believe in democracy, if Bremain would have initially won, I could have lived with it, because we are all for the most democracies (except Turkey at present). The issue was that the Bremain groups were complacent, ignoring the danger, and when they lost the fear mongering began. I will revisit certain articles form then and highlight the big business connections whenever possible. The EU facilitates to big business, only the delusional highlight laws and proclaim that the butcher and grocer at the corner benefits. It all benefits the Tesco’s and large providers, it makes the multi-millionaires and billionaires richer, the rest still end up with a diminished quality of life and for them the EU has had a close to zero impact, but they all share in three trillion in debt that the ECB hands over and the chosen (not elected) individuals walk away with enough coin to live in luxury for the rest of their life. That was the biggest issue and so far no serious attempt has been made to cull that problem. Earlier this month when the Irish Examiner (at https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/ourview/pay-for-meps-time-to-halt-the-gravy-train-922371.html) to the small fact of “outgoing Cork MEP Brian Crowley — whose health condition has prevented him from attending the parliament since the last election, in 2014 — will be entitled to severance payments of more than €350,000 and a €1.4m pension package“, so basically the man has not done his job (for 5 years) and gets a £1,541,000 package? Most people have to take a medical to proof that they are good enough to work in a bar at £7.90 an hour, as such, when you are in denial regarding the gravy train, think again. It is one of the larger supporting reasons to be on the Brexit side. A group of people who basically cost a lot and in the end do not bring that much to the table. And it is not merely their income; it is all the extra facilitation and expenses that are the much larger problem, an issue that the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/25/mep-expenses-eu-court-ruling) gave some visibility to. So when we see: “Details of MEPs’ €4,416-a-month expenses to remain secret“, whilst the larger issue is seen when we consider that besides that part, there is also: “Members of the European parliament are paid €8,611.31 (£7,705) a month in gross salary, plus pension. On leaving the parliament they receive a golden parachute, a transition allowance worth up to €206,664, depending on length of service“, which makes partial sense to some degree, yet a ‘transition allowance?‘ We usually get fired or we’re on a contract with a known end date, for a European MEP that is optionally the next election. And it is not one, it is a setting of 751 members and to some degree their staff will also be offered some expenses (which is fair enough).

So when you consider where your money went (besides the unacceptable 3 trillion in debt from the ECB, there you have it and the entire EU gets to pay for all that, so how useful is the EU for non-huge corporations in the end? I accept that there is a positive part in the EU, but it is one that comes at too high a price and that should have been central, but it is ignored to a much larger extent and now that the election are over and the new wave of keep the EU intact continues, yet even as we all bitch on expenses and nothing is done, I feel that Brexit was the only option, I wonder if it will ever actually happen and if we are on the final nose length to enable Brexit what false promises will we see from Brussels and what will actually be done about it all.

I am not optimistic at present, and I have every reason not to be optimistic any day soon.

 

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May 26, 2019 · 15:24

Surprise, surprise!

There was an interesting surprise this morning. It was not any newspaper; it was no DVD or Blu-ray. It was a YouTube video (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu3mP0c51hE), the announcement of the Downton Abbey movie coming in September. Weirdly enough, I had not felt this happy since the initial teaser of Avengers: Endgame, a movie that is now less than $100 million away from breaking the Avatar record. It is weird how a TV series with 6 seasons have had such a profound impact on viewers and I am not the only one who is amazed and happy with the coming of the movie. Hugh Bonneville, who plays the lord (aka Mr Henry Brown in both Paddington adventures), Maggie Smith, Dowager Countess of Grantham (also famous in a very well-known hotel in India), and of course the list is not complete without Jim Carter as the undoubtable Mr. Carson and some might remember him as a Transformer too.

The list is too long to go into detail and it is important to remember that. Even as the record of I, Claudius is not broken. Downton Abbey got closer to breaking that achievement than any other series ever did. When ITV started this, they had no idea how large a behemoth this would become. The foundation was given by Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford. And we all know that as a member of the House of Lords he would be able to spin a fine yard under the most mundane conditions. Yet Downton Abbey is anything but mundane and that is the first requirement into making a legendary piece. I have mentioned it before, I, Claudius had all the elements in place, for the most so does Downton Abbey. The story is excellent, the cast is amazing and many fans feel linked to many of the actors and actresses to a larger degree. The writing got the start, but it was the player that embodies the script and there is not one who gave less than 110% that part clearly shows in the end result. So there will be forum upon forum that will ask and speculate on what they will get. I reckon that a fair amount will go into the speculations of Robert James-Collier (Thomas Barrow) on what he will be like in the movie, antagonistic, devious or a third still to be revealed part, and let’s face it, the man ‘grew up’ on Coronation Street (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNV_Hh5ZWaE if you forgot the tune, which should be unlikely).

There is no way not to get enthusiastic on the series and now we will be getting the movie. I believe it to be an important work as it is truly the first work that would be close to thumping ‘I, Claudius’ of the throne of being the best drama in the history of TV. I personally believe that it did not achieve that, but only by a nose length. Perhaps it is because the Roman era allowed for more murder and intrigue, perhaps it is the view of lavish parties, but for the first time, it is not about the actors, each set of players was pretty much on par with the other set of players, which was an amazing achievement. As for the script, I believe that the quality of drama Robert Graves and Julian Fellowes are on par as well; the element remaining is the director, the visionary in all this. It is impossible to do this, comparing Herbert Wise to Michael Engler, Brian Percival, Catherine Morshead is unfair, it is work separated by decades of vision and technology. The fact that they all try to meet the Herbert Wise standard speaks for Mr Wise as he set the bar half a century ago and the fact that this bar is still there is slightly too amazing for words.

Yet the fact that no one ever stopped getting there speaks for those pursuing excellence in any way possible and that is what Downton Abbey also embodies, a view towards excellence and that too drives us to the movies and the mini silver screen (aka TV). I think that the end of the Victorian age and the age of George V as the UK was led from WW1 towards WW2 is often ignored, but more important than most would think, the sinking of the Titanic in the pilot, the start of WW1 and the impact of the end WW1 and the setting of the veterans as we saw its impact in Downton Abbey is an eye opener, a side that the previous generation onwards ignored is now directly reflected towards us and it impacts us and how we look at this all. A similar impact was seen with The Crown in season one when some saw the episode ‘Act of God‘, I was not born in the UK as such that episode hit me hard, I never expected such a view on chimneys, the smog it created and what kind of a health hazard it actually was in 1952, as such the way we view health hazards and the way politicians neglect it nowadays is a too little astounding.

Downton Abbey had another part shown during the episode where one hospital takes over another one, it is that part where we see the impact to the population in those years, it hits us directly as it is a real setting, not some drama, or better stated drama that doubles as reality just a little too closely. In the end you cannot have anything but the greatest respect on a part of history and how it is portrayed to us, as such the movie, even as it is about a royal visit is likely to have hidden gems that have to be seen to be enjoyed, and that is likely what the makers are hoping for. A TV series that had 11 golden globe nominees and 3 golden globes won, in 2011, Downton Abbey made the Guinness book of world records with the highest ratings for any TV show, the first time a British show got that distinction. A stage that covers 13 years of history, so as the movie is set to 1928; I wonder what we will be treated to. There is no speculation from me, I am slightly scared to be right in this case and I hope that the readers want to see the movie all the way without any spoilers, other than the ones the trailer gives us. I think that this is the biggest part of my appeal to it. On how historic events affect the characters of Downton Abbey, which historic events we will be made aware off. There were the floods of the river Thames, the Oxford English Dictionary first edition was completed, the London and North Eastern Railway’s Flying Scotsman steam-hauled express train begins to run non-stop over the 393 miles (632 km) of the East Coast Main Line from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh (on my birthday no less), the voting age for women is lowered from 30 to 21, Amsterdam hosts the Olympics and the Dangerous Drugs Act 1925 comes into effect. All events of that year and some will be mentioned; optionally we will be introduced to the discussions on it. Downton Abbey will give so many reasons to watch it and as far as I can tell (judging from the TV series) absolutely no reason not to go see it on the large silver screen (aka not the TV).

We still have 15 weeks to go before the movie makes it to the big screen, and as I see it, September 2019 can’t come soon enough.

 

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