Tag Archives: Tories

June 15, 2021 · 21:11

If it bleeds, it leads

Yes, one of the famous sayings from the entertainment media regarding the media and the news media. We can find all kinds of response regarding the media, yet at present we see an overly cool head when it comes to the matters involving Martin Bashir. We saw the media blow out of proportions when it came to news regarding Lady Diana Spencer, even more when she became the wife of the prince of Wales, it continued as they divorced and continued as she became close to Dodi Fayed. The people still believe that paparazzi’s were directly responsible for her death, as such I still believe that it is my civic duty to mutilate any paparazzi if I ever get the chance. The paparazzi and the media have never been held to account, the media wants its images, its pound of flesh to get revenue through circulation, yet when it comes to their own (like Martin Bashir) the bare minimum of exposure is required. Yet, that might soon change. As we are told by the Texas News Today (at https://texasnewstoday.com/martin-bashir-misled-and-duped-michael-jackson-during-2003-interview-former-lawyer-claims/314833/): ‘Martin Bashir ‘misled’ and ‘duped’ Michael Jackson during 2003 interview, former lawyer claims’, we see “The attorney, Brian Oxman, claimed in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com that while Bashir was ‘not evil’, his ‘careless actions’ were fuelled by ambition and began a fatal downward spiral for the star”, if this is proven we get 3.5 million plus 47 million fans.

Well over 50 million fans out for blood, for the blood of Martin Bashir and this time the media will not abide, they are scared that they are optionally a future target. So as the Guardian gives us “Just three weeks after the devastating Dyson report into Bashir’s use of fake documents to secure an interview with Princess Diana in 1995, the BBC’s internal investigation cleared the corporation and its existing executives of any wrongdoing when it rehired him to report on religion some 20 years later”, the Guardian seemingly goes out of its way to not investigate the Michael Jackson interview, and now we see “Bashir’s interview with Jackson was aired in the explosive 2003 documentary Living with Michael Jackson on British channel ITV. The documentary was credited with sparking a child sex abuse prosecution against the star, in which Bashir testified. Jackson was acquitted of all charges in 2005”, and the media is largely reporting as little as possible as I see it. Even now, the Guardian is all about being as timid as possible, we get to see “BBC did not get to bottom of Martin Bashir’s lies, Hall tells MPs”, yet the rest is all about “Of course, it depends what allegations you mean. But the report from Lord Hall, which has already been discussed, went to the board of management and the board of governors and it was on the basis of those reports that an understanding was reached”, yet the foul stench that accompanied Martin Bashir is avoided as much as possible, even now when we see from a few sources “Martin Bashir: ‘No evidence’ journalist was rehired by BBC in cover-up over Princess Diana interview, review finds”, yet the smallest sentiment is ignored: ‘Why was he rehired at all?’, with the abundance of decent journalists out there seeking a job, they rehired the one with a report against him, a damning one that was thrown to the bottom of any available pile. And the media is apparently not asking the questions, or at least not loud enough. So when we now consider “Oxman is now calling for an investigation by ITV, similar to a recent inquiry into Bashir’s landmark BBC interview with Princess Diana in which she candidly admitted to cheating on Prince Charles, prompting a scandal and royal family crisis. The inquiry, run by UK lawmaker Lord Dyson at a cost of $2million to the corporation, found Bashir fabricated bank statements and lied to convince Diana to talk”, should something be found, than it is more than the end of Martin Bashir, it will damage both ITV and the BBC further. If 40,000 complaints was enough to remove Piers Morgan from a show, what do you think 50,000,000 complaints gets us all? And at that point the media will find it in its heart (and their wallets) to burn a media man at the stake, revenues are to be considered (as I personally see it). It is such a shame that when it comes to ethics and evidence the media is willing to take a page from ‘unnamed sources’ a little too often. And when the people reconsider that part 2 of the Leveson inquiry would be about “the extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International, other media organisations or other organisations. It will also consider the extent to which any relevant police force investigated allegations relating to News International, and whether the police received corrupt payments or were otherwise complicit in misconduct”, we need to consider the small part called ‘other media organisations’. And even as the Tories scrapped it, they might no longer have that option, the setting we currently see regarding Martin Bashir could sway the people in demanding part 2 and that is what the media fears. The accusations by Brian Oxman are of a very different nature and it might fuel a few additional parts in this debate. It might be the one part the BBC (and ITV) never banked on and that is the one flaw the people will get to see a lot more than the media bargained for. 

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November 24, 2019 · 13:51

The fake promise

Even as the media relies on fake news to get things done, politicians rely on fake promises, that is visible in the elections in that, UK Labour thinks it can rally 3 million elderly votes and as such is makes that so called promise to ‘Labour pledges £58bn for women caught in pension trap‘ there is just one problem both sides whilst in government have spent too much, Labour lost (through stupidity) £11.2 billion on an IT system that never worked. The conservatives made different mistakes and both of them gutted social housing. The Guardian voiced it as “More than 3 million women who believe they have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket after steep increases to the state pension age are being promised compensation by Labour as part of a £58bn scheme designed to end a “historic injustice”” In addition they give us “Labour would introduce a universal scheme that would see the women affected given a maximum payment of £31,300, with an average payment of £15,380“, so here is the problem, first of all until they get elected they cannot make a guarantee, if they get into office they will have to deal with terms like ‘universal scheme‘ and with ‘the women affected‘, If they are setting apart £58 billion, they have more pronounced numbers (and better statements), would they not?

The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/23/labour-fifty-eight-billion-pound-pledge-women-pension-age-trap) comes hand in hand with (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/nov/23/station-pension-age-women-labour-compensation), yet they all are forgetting about the fact that in a world with same incomes, also comes same laws and as such both genders have to retire at the same point, do they not? So as we see ‘The Tories stole my state pension when I was 60, now I want it back‘, in addition, the Tories stole nothing, both sides of the isle overspend by way too much and the political ruling administration had to sacrifice, people do not seem to get that money that is spent from a place where it does not exists, will have to come from a place where is optionally is, as you can see in the image (which Tejvan Pettinger uploaded on May 1st 2017) for those not completely aware of him, he is an Economics teacher (A Level students) at Greenes College and formerly with Cherwell College, Oxford.

He shows that during Labour reign, government spending close to doubled, can you name at least one place where that you as a person benefitted from that? I doubt you can, and that is part of the problem, austerity and government austerity was essential for well over 10 years, when Tories get back we see a rise, but a rise that is less than 1% per year and in an age of 3%-4% cost rise that is a pretty amazing result, yet Labour DOUBLED their government spending, so what did they spend it on? So when we see John McDonnell state “We’ll raise the money in the appropriate way” I wonder what he means because it is not an answer and the government coffers are empty, leave it to labour to give an empty statement like ‘We’ll raise the money in the appropriate way‘, we see a whole lot of that and no real answers. You did not actually think that labour has answers for the money they are ‘stately’ boasting to spend, are you?

One day earlier we see: (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2019/nov/22/unforgivable-jo-swinson-confronted-student-lib-dems-record-austerity-video) another attack, but one on the LibDems. Here we see Jo Swinson getting attacked with no option to respond, but there you have it, people are starving in Glasgow that is what I got out of it. The issue is not Jo Swinson, it is the attack and part of this is the Scottish political wing, for over 5 years the political wing has (seemingly mind you) not done enough to bolster its economy, now Scotland is part of the UK and that makes it also a UK need, yet in the all the political dealings we see that Scotland does not have its eggs in the same basket on the same route and that is a larger failing, some might watch “The party has tried, by portraying its leader, Jo Swinson, as a potential prime minister, although this is an unlikely possibility, given its position third in the polls“, but Labour is dealing with several issues and the LibDems are pushing for those results. the Anti-Semitic attacks on labour alone could cost them somewhere between 5%-10% of the votes, it might merely result in 15 seats, but those seats are coming straight from the Labour angle (and those people are more likely to swing towards the LibDems than the Tories, which is fair), and it is a very small step from third to second in that race, even as the Tories are bound to get the largest swing in votes, the LibDems are back and together with the Tories they are bound to get a few wins in for their party (Brexit not being one of them).

That will be the party Achilles heel, the entire Brexit mess is exasperated by large corporations to find delay on delay to maximise their profits in 2019-2020, too many CEO’s have too much riding on that and the quote “a slogan criticised for underestimating the amount of time and effort required to negotiate a new trade deal with the EU” is on the money, but the people are seemingly not asking whose money was that anyway? In all respects the Tories have a large advantage and Labour is more likely than not getting the hot breath of the LibDems on their heels, Labour will lose a few places to the Tories, but they will lose a whole lot to the LibDems and that changes the race considerably.

So, why my attack on Shadow chancellor John McDonnell? Jeremy Corbyn did the same thing last election, at that point he made promises towards nurses, doctors and police forces that he would never be able to keep, the coffers of Britannia are empty, they will remain on empty whilst the UK is part of the EU, in addition there are a whole range of issues playing and yes, there will be an end to those elements, but not with the EU dictating budgets, they are keeping budgets their state coffers cannot write and it forces them all to become Corporatocratic nations to the largest extend, that must be prevented in the UK. There is a reason that corporation fear monarchies, they fear them because a monarchy takes into consideration all lives, the poor as well, you merely have to look into the US to see their rights dwindle, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and those other nations see a much larger picture, one that does not fit the spreadsheet of a corporation, we much protect that part of life, even as other governments are willing to adjust their views to fit corporations to a much larger degree.

It is merely my point of view, but so far that view has shown to be correct. I’ll let you figure it out on your own terms; you are entitled to do that.

 

 

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November 11, 2019 · 12:57

The deal

There is a deal out there, at least in the UK. There are all kind of deals out there, the consideration is all in the eye of the beholder, yet what is the deal?

The independent has a few views, the first one is ‘Labour and the Tories are both desperate for a taxpayer-funded spending spree – I don’t trust either of them‘ (at https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/labour-conservatives-general-election-spending-plans-economy-a9195736.html), yet its by-line has an interesting thought ‘makes me wonder who is actually monitoring the books? Who is in charge of the economy?‘ Yet that is he issue and it has been n issue for close to a decade. Another article is focussing on ‘Which chancellor would you prefer to ruin your life? Sajid Javid or John McDonnell?‘ (at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sajid-javid-john-mcdonnell-general-election-chancellor-brexit-labour-a9192161.html), yet in the guardian we see: ‘Labour derides £1.2tn Tory costing claims as ‘work of fiction’‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/10/labour-derides-12tn-tory-costing-claims-as-work-of-fiction-corbyn) there is a larger issue at play, there is no doubt that both sides have parts that make sense, yet both are as the Guardian states ‘Both parties have promised significant increases in public investment, funded by government borrowing‘, this is however not a great time.

The dangers that are out there is the fact that Austerity is a path that is slow and cannot be fast, there is still a decade of austerity at the very minimum and this spending spree will add half a decade. The Guardian also gives us “The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said the Conservatives’ investment plans would amount to an extra £20bn a year, and Labour’s to £55bn a year” whilst tempering this with “Javid declined to say whether the Conservatives would implement promises made by Boris Johnson during his campaign to become leader, which included an increase in the threshold for higher-rate tax to £80,000 a year“, the problem with that part can be seen through the numbers giving by the government (at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincome/financialyearending2017), and that is merely two years ago, so when we look at the chart, how much of that collected money will give any kind of relief towards austerity?

The problem is that the people are sick and tired of austerity, but that was going to be the controlling majority to deal with debt, we can call it ‘austerity’ or we can call it ‘debt control’ the UK cannot continue the spending it had done for the longest case, not if they do not want to be vassals of banks, and the problem is that the largest collection of banks are those out of the UK, the only way is to fall below that spending spree and that is not a popular solution to listen to. Yet the numbers are clear and I get to laugh out loud for almost a year as Labour made these promises whilst the budget just didn’t allow for it, and the funnier part was that the proper taxation was key, not merely the richer people all people and more important corporations, yet Labour did not really give any of us the view that corporations were to properly taxed, were they? And the one chart I gave you shows that taxing the right will not give us anywhere near the funds required, so why is Labour connecting to its members with fairy tales and a conundrum of stories that could be minimised to a level that gives them the reality of a magical roundabout (the one with Eric Thompson doing the narration). The situation is that bad and we are just not catching on, why is that?

In that case the Libdems get closest to it by “The Liberal Democrats’ central spending pledge is a radical increase in childcare, which they said would be free for all working parents from when their child turns nine months old, at a cost of almost £15bn a year. They said they would fund it by reversing corporation tax cuts and increasing capital gains tax“, I wonder how much you can tax capital gains tax, and I have questions on how you will ‘reversing corporation tax cuts‘ but they do have the right idea in part, as I see it ‘reversing corporation tax cuts‘ is the better stage, and what do you think will happen? Apple will suddenly decide to reduce new locations from 15 to 10 (no great loss there) and others will follow suit, when the going is less profitable they will all vacate towards ‘bonus share’ percentages and all of it out of the UK, I personally believe that it is time to stop giving into the need of corporations, but that is just me. And the most important part remains, you cannot do any of the spending until taxation is clearly established, All parties need to learn that inescapable truth, because it is already too late for alternatives, the UK, the US, Japan and the EU have been playing the spend card for too long and whilst collections have been delayed and outstanding the world has no reserves left, this generation is the first one handing out money that was means for the grandchildren, and we all let them do it. And whilst we read ‘Javid has adopted a considerably more relaxed approach to balancing the books‘ with empty persuasion we forget that they already ended up spending the money that was meant for our children and now they are busy spending the funds meant for the grandchildren and I wonder what excuse they will use to let that continue?

There is a larger inequality and that inequality is not addressed, why is that?

And when it comes to excuses “The Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng also sought to defend the Conservatives’ calculations on Sunday, but refused to give an equivalent for his own party’s spending plans. “I’m not going to bandy around figures,”” The question is what is worse, not being into the act of bandy, or giving us fairy tale figures? I honestly cannot decide, omission or denial, both seem to be keeping the voters away from having a judged informed decision and as far as I can tell, none have any idea of where they will get the money from to fund whatever they need to get elected. At present the UK has a debt that amounts to 86% of GDP, whilst Germany has one that is a mere 62% of GDP, now there is an additional side, Germany has a much larger GDP as they are supplying for the need of many, the UK does not have that option, As such it amounts to £2.265 trillion and that amount grows well over £5,000 per second, as such the debt might seem a mere £62,500 per taxpayer, but when we look at a debt of £36,400 per citizen do you think I was kidding when we are currently spending the money that was meant for the grandchildren? With a debt of £2.265 trillion, the interest cannot be below £225 billion a year, so when you look at the total collected taxation, did you think that the previous chart gets anywhere near that amount? Oh and for Germany (in comparison) €1,990 trillion Euro, yet their debt is diminishing, it has been that case from 2010 onward when it was at €2.035 trillion Euro. Germany is ahead of the UK there, and for now it might be €48,000 per taxpayer and €24,000 per person they are merely seemingly in a worse place, yet their total debt is still going down every second, the UK debt is still increasing and until that comes around the UK has no cause for cheering or for some debatable spending spree.

The rich cannot fill that gap, anyone who says differently is lying to you, it is time to fill the gaps, reversion tax gaps is one part and making corporations accountable for whatever scheme they have next is another part, it is time to let corporations pay for their mistakes, as we need to hold the ruling parties accountable, the clear path seen is the fact that whatever is available for your grandchildren is diminishing and your vote is a clear path in stopping that. So make sure you follow the right party, I’ll let you figure out who that is.

Oh and one small consideration, when the entire EU, the UK, the US and Japan, Russia and China all have debts in the trillions, where do you believe the wealth of the world is?

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June 1, 2018 · 11:50

Data illusions

Yesterday was an interesting day for a few reasons; one of the primary reasons was an opinion piece in the Guardian by Jay Watts (@Shrink_at_Large). Like many article I considered to be in opposition, yet when I reread it, this piece has all kinds of hidden gems and I had to ponder a few items for an hour or so. I love that! Any piece, article or opinion that makes me rethink my position is a piece well worth reading. So this piece called ‘Supermarkets spy on them now‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/31/benefits-claimants-fear-supermarkets-spy-poor-disabled) has several sides that require us to think and rethink issues. As we see a quote like “some are happy to brush this off as no big deal” we identify with too many parts; to me and to many it is just that, no big deal, but behind the issues are secondary issues that are ignored by the masses (en mass as we might giggle), yet the truth is far from nice.

So what do we see in the first as primary and what is behind it as secondary? In the first we see the premise “if a patient with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia told you that they were being watched by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), most mental health practitioners would presume this to be a sign of illness. This is not the case today.” It is not whether this is true or not, it is not a case of watching, being a watcher or even watching the watcher. It is what happens behind it all. So, when we recollect that dead dropped donkey called Cambridge Analytics, which was all based on interacting and engaging on fear. Consider what IBM and Google are able to do now through machine learning. This we see in an addition to a book from O’Reilly called ‘The Evolution of Analytics‘ by Patrick Hall, Wen Phan, and Katie Whitson. Here we see the direct impact of programs like SAS (Statistical Analysis System) in the application of machine learning, we see this on page 3 of Machine Learning in the Analytic Landscape (not a page 3 of the Sun by the way). Here we see for the government “Pattern recognition in images and videos enhance security and threat detection while the examination of transactions can spot healthcare fraud“, you might think it is no big deal. Yet you are forgetting that it is more than the so called implied ‘healthcare fraud‘. It is the abused setting of fraud in general and the eagerly awaited setting for ‘miscommunication’ whilst the people en mass are now set in a wrongly categorised world, a world where assumption takes control and scores of people are now pushed into the defence of their actions, an optional change towards ‘guilty until proven innocent’ whilst those making assumptions are clueless on many occasions, now are in an additional setting where they believe that they know exactly what they are doing. We have seen these kinds of bungles that impacted thousands of people in the UK and Australia. It seems that Canada has a better system where every letter with the content: ‘I am sorry to inform you, but it seems that your system made an error‘ tends to overthrow such assumptions (Yay for Canada today). So when we are confronted with: “The level of scrutiny all benefits claimants feel under is so brutal that it is no surprise that supermarket giant Sainsbury’s has a policy to share CCTV “where we are asked to do so by a public or regulatory authority such as the police or the Department for Work and Pensions”“, it is not merely the policy of Sainsbury, it is what places like the Department for Work and Pensions are going to do with machine learning and their version of classifications, whilst the foundation of true fraud is often not clear to them, so you want to set a system without clarity and hope that the machine will constitute learning through machine learning? It can never work, that evidence is seen as the initial classification of any person in a fluidic setting is altering on the best of conditions. Such systems are not able to deal with the chaotic life of any person not in a clear lifestyle cycle and people on pensions (trying to merely get by) as well as those who are physically or mentally unhealthy. These are merely three categories where all kind of cycles of chaos tend to intervene with their daily life. Those are now shown to be optionally targeted with not just a flawed system, but with a system where the transient workforce using those methods are unclear on what needs to be done as the need changes with every political administration. A system under such levels of basic change is too dangerous to get linked to any kind of machine learning. I believe that Jay Watts is not misinforming us; I feel that even the writer here has not yet touched on many unspoken dangers. There is no fault here by the one who gave us the opinion piece, I personally believe that the quote “they become imprisoned in their homes or in a mental state wherein they feel they are constantly being accused of being fraudulent or worthless” is incomplete, yet the setting I refer to is mentioned at the very end. You see, I believe that such systems will push suicide rates to an all-time high. I do not agree with “be too kind a phrase to describe what the Tories have done and are doing to claimants. It is worse than that: it is the post-apocalyptic bleakness of poverty combined with the persecution and terror of constantly feeling watched and accused“. I believe it to be wrong because this is a flaw on both sides of the political aisle. Their state of inaction for decades forced the issue out and as the NHS is out of money and is not getting any money the current administration is trying to find cash in any way that they can, because the coffers are empty, which now gets us to a BBC article from last year.

At http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-39980793, we saw “A survey in 2013 by Ipsos Mori suggested people believed that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits was fraudulently claimed. What do you think – too high, too low?
Want to know the real answer? It is £1.10 for every £100“. That is the dangerous political setting as we should see it; the assumption and believe that 24% is set to fraud when it is more realistic that 1% might be the actual figure. Let’s not be coy about it, because out of £172.3bn a 1% amount still remains a serious amount of cash, yet when you set it against the percentage of the UK population the amount becomes a mere £25 per person, it merely takes one prescription to get to that amount, one missed on the government side and one wrongly entered on the patients side and we are there. Yet in all that, how many prescriptions did you the reader require in the last year alone? When we get to that nitty gritty level we are confronted with the task where machine learning will not offer anything but additional resources to double check every claimant and offense. Now, we should all agree that machine learning and analyses will help in many ways, yet when it comes to ‘Claimants often feel unable to go out, attempt voluntary work or enjoy time with family for fear this will be used against them‘ we are confronted with a new level of data and when we merely look at the fear of voluntary work or being with family we need to consider what we have become. So in all this we see a rightful investment into a system that in the long run will help automate all kinds of things and help us to see where governments failed their social systems, we see a system that costs hundreds of millions, to look into an optional 1% loss, which at 10% of the losses might make perfect sense. Yet these systems are flawed from the very moment they are implemented because the setting is not rational, not realistic and in the end will bring more costs than any have considered from day one. So in the setting of finding ways to justify a 2015 ‘The Tories’ £12bn of welfare cuts could come back to haunt them‘, will not merely fail, it will add a £1 billion in costs of hardware, software and resources, whilst not getting the £12 billion in workable cutbacks, where exactly was the logic in that?

So when we are looking at the George Orwell edition of edition of ‘Twenty Eighteen‘, we all laugh and think it is no great deal, but the danger is actually two fold. The first I used and taught to students which gets us the loss of choice.

The setting is that a supermarket needs to satisfy the need of the customers and the survey they have they will keep items in a category (lollies for example) that are rated ‘fantastic value for money‘ and ‘great value for money‘, or the top 25th percentile of the products, whatever is the largest. So in the setting with 5,000 responses, the issue was that the 25th percentile now also included ‘decent value for money‘. So we get a setting where an additional 35 articles were kept in stock for the lollies category. This was the setting where I showed the value of what is known as User Missing Values. There were 423 people who had no opinion on lollies, who for whatever reason never bought those articles, This led to removing them from consideration, a choice merely based on actual responses; now the same situation gave us the 4,577 people gave us that the top 25th percentile only had ‘fantastic value for money‘ and ‘great value for money‘ and within that setting 35 articles were removed from that supermarket. Here we see the danger! What about those people who really loved one of those 35 articles, yet were not interviewed? The average supermarket does not have 5,000 visitors, it has depending on the location up to a thousand a day, more important, when we add a few elements and it is no longer about supermarkets, but government institutions and in addition it is not about lollies but Fraud classification? When we are set in a category of ‘Most likely to commit Fraud‘ and ‘Very likely to commit Fraud‘, whilst those people with a job and bankers are not included into the equation? So we get a diminished setting of Fraud from the very beginning.

Hold Stop!

What did I just say? Well, there is method to my madness. Two sources, the first called Slashdot.org (no idea who they were), gave us a reference to a 2009 book called ‘Insidious: How Trusted Employees Steal Millions and Why It’s So Hard for Banks to Stop Them‘ by B. C. Krishna and Shirley Inscoe (ISBN-13: 978-0982527207). Here we see “The financial crisis appears to be exacerbating fraud by bank employees: a new survey found that 72 percent of financial institutions say that in the last 12 months they have experienced a case of data theft by one of their workers“. Now, it is important to realise that I have no idea how reliable these numbers are, yet the book was published, so there will be a political player using this at some stage. This already tumbles to academic reliability of Fraud in general, now for an actual reliable source we see KPMG, who gave us last year “KPMG survey reveals surge in fraud in Australia“, with “For the period April 2016 to September 2016, the total value of frauds rose by 16 percent to a total of $442m, from $381m in the previous six month period” we see number, yet it is based on a survey and how reliable were those giving their view? How much was assumption, unrecognised numbers and based on ‘forecasted increases‘ that were not met? That issue was clearly brought to light by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011 (at https://www.smh.com.au/technology/piracy-are-we-being-conned-20110322-1c4cs.html), where we see: “the Australian Content Industry Group (ACIG), released new statistics to The Age, which claimed piracy was costing Australian content industries $900 million a year and 8000 jobs“, yet the issue is not merely the numbers given, the larger issue is “the report, which is just 12 pages long, is fundamentally flawed. It takes a model provided by an earlier European piracy study (which itself has been thoroughly debunked) and attempts to shoe-horn in extrapolated Australian figures that are at best highly questionable and at worst just made up“, so the claim “4.7 million Australian internet users engaged in illegal downloading and this was set to increase to 8 million by 2016. By that time, the claimed losses to piracy would jump to $5.2 billion a year and 40,000 jobs” was a joke to say the least. There we see the issue of Fraud in another light, based on a different setting, the same model was used, and that is whilst I am more and more convinced that the European model was likely to be flawed as well (a small reference to the Dutch Buma/Stemra setting of 2007-2010). So not only are the models wrong, the entire exercise gives us something that was never going to be reliable in any way shape or form (personal speculation), so in this we now have the entire Machine learning, the political setting of Fraud as well as the speculated numbers involved, and what is ‘disregarded’ as Fraud. We will end up with a scenario where we get 70% false positives (a pure rough assumption on my side) in a collective where checking those numbers will never be realistic, and the moment the parameters are ‘leaked’ the actual fraudulent people will change their settings making detection of Fraud less and less likely.

How will this fix anything other than the revenue need of those selling machine learning? So when we look back at the chapter of Modern Applications of Machine Learning we see “Deploying machine learning models in real-time opens up opportunities to tackle safety issues, security threats, and financial risk immediately. Making these decisions usually involves embedding trained machine learning models into a streaming engine“, that is actually true, yet when we also consider “review some of the key organizational, data, infrastructure, modelling, and operational and production challenges that organizations must address to successfully incorporate machine learning into their analytic strategy“, the element of data and data quality is overlooked on several levels, making the entire setting, especially in light of the piece by Jay Watts a very dangerous one. So the full title, which is intentionally did not use in the beginning ‘No wonder people on benefits live in fear. Supermarkets spy on them now‘, is set wholly on the known and almost guaranteed premise that data quality and knowing that the players in this field are slightly too happy to generalise and trivialise the issue of data quality. The moment that comes to light and the implementers are held accountable for data quality is when all those now hyping machine learning, will change their tune instantly and give us all kinds of ‘party line‘ issues that they are not responsible for. Issues that I personally expect they did not really highlight when they were all about selling that system.

Until data cleaning and data vetting gets a much higher position in the analyses ladder, we are confronted with aggregated, weighted and ‘expected likelihood‘ generalisations and those who are ‘flagged’ via such systems will live in constant fear that their shallow way of life stops because a too high paid analyst stuffed up a weighting factor, condemning a few thousand people set to be tagged for all kind of reasons, not merely because they could be optionally part of a 1% that the government is trying to clamp down on, or was that 24%? We can believe the BBC, but can we believe their sources?

And if there is even a partial doubt on the BBC data, how unreliable are the aggregated government numbers?

Did I oversimplify the issue a little?

 

 

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May 26, 2017 · 14:19

On the purple side

You readers have seen my views in the past. I have been critical of labour and I have given UKIP a pass in the past regarding Brexit, an ideal I am still in favour of, especially as we now see how quick French election promises were shifted like a stab in the back by the French Investment banker turned president. UKIP does not get a soft deal at present, merely because it had a year to prepare, it has a new ‘leader’, one that has nowhere near the charisma of Nigel Farage and charisma or not, they are vying for the top position and if I can chop Labour to size, UKIP deserves no lesser treatment. So what is up with them?

Page 10 gives us the first part “We will fund our schools, build more houses, and rebuild our depleted armed forces. We will do this without adding a single penny to anyone’s tax bill. Our cost-of-living package will also save households £400 a year“, the mere question ‘how?’ should be evident here. The answer given “reduce foreign aid to 0.2 per cent of Gross National Income, and end our financial contributions to the EU budget“, which cannot be done the first year at least, in addition, whatever the UK loses not having to shift into the EU will go into other places, now I am all in favour of giving a chunk of that to the NHS, but the math feels wrong. The reality is that foreign aid often intersects with creating business opportunity and visibility. In my view to get anywhere near all this it will be a lot more than the 0.2% of that national gross, yet how much would be cut exactly and from where? By hiding (read: presenting it like this) they are actually no better than Labour, they have no real idea how to fund their idea’s. In the end they would cut way too much changing the humane image of the United Kingdom that is nowhere near reality and more than that, the UK would lose their face of strength. You see foreign aid is also showing a face of strength. In light of: ‘We can help, we can do this!’ that is a strong message and that strong message cannot be tempered with in light of Brexit, until proper trade paths are set, and properly set in stone, changing the face of England is a dangerous one. In addition, the pledge of more police in light of Manchester just days ago is equally stupid. There is no indication that it would have stopped the Manchester events and more important, labour left the UK with so much debt that we will be feeling that pain for at least 3-4 more years and there is a reality, there will be initial pain from Brexit. UI have always stated that the UK would grow to strength much faster after that, but it is still an issue that will need to be overcome. In addition, as the VAT is removed from the domestic energy bills, the coffers will remain empty, the deficit will go up because that money would need to come from somewhere else. Where will it come from? Tax increases? Extra levies on environmental reasoning’s?

Then on page 12, UKIP does something really stupid, and believe me that stupid is the word for it. As I personally read it, they set into the light, their own Patrick O’Flynn, UKIP MEP for the Eastern region. When we read “Starbucks recently reported profits of £13.4m on a UK turnover of £380m. Its corporation tax contribution fell to £2.7m, down from £7m the year before. How can a vast business that sells coffee in paper cups all over the country for £2.50 a pop end up paying a corporation tax contribution amounting to much less than one per cent of turnover?” Now, the question is valid, but there is a clear side. Turnover (£380m) and profit set at £13.4m, so corporate tax being £2.7m. So we can speculate that it is 17%, that is not too low, consider that Starbucks has shops all over England and in some of the most expensive places in the UK. They have around 800 stores in the UK alone, meaning that there are UK offices too, including the European HQ. So with shops all over London, what do you think the costs are? Now, there are issues for sure, yet in that light to set Starbucks in the limelight whilst the Apple games of legally allowed bookkeeping is setting a very different picture was just stupid. Macworld gives us that part (athttp://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q2-2017-financial-results-revenue-figures-apple-earnings-report-3581769/), when you make $53 billion per quarter, a lot more should be going to the state, yet this is global not just UK, yet it is interesting to see that Ireland was fighting the EU ruling that Apple had to pay back taxes and the Irish government is fighting that ruling, which is insane on a few levels, so far the Irish state has spend €270,000 in legal fees, to fight the demand the EU has that Ireland is due back taxes from Apple. This links to the UK, because the tax system on corporations is an issue, which UKIP addresses on the same page, yet they are just addressing corporate taxation. It is not the issue that is draining taxability, it is the allowance to shift what is charged in the UK.

Let’s show this in an example. A software firm ships software to the UK. The software is set to £0.01 as it goes to the software office from wherever. The software costs £999 and is sold to companies lets say in a package deal with 30% discount. We now see £999 + training £250 + consultancy £750 totalling £1399, discount was £600. Yet the head office wants the agreed £999 software part (or at least the contribution percentage), so the discount is in the books applied to the other two. £1000 minus £600, so we see a taxable amount of £400, now considering the consultancy and training costs in staff, how much is left to tax? That is a multi billion-pound shift, so talking about cups of coffee is a little bogus in my mind. and all this is perfectly legal, because it was set in a package deal. If you make that option no longer an option then that firm either sells a lot less or pays a lot more in taxation, is that not a much better setting? The business side reads nice and it is a nice set-up, I am not sure if it would work like that, but time constraints sets me in the mindfulness that there are a few question marks, but overall the setting of opposition of the small-mindedness of Labour reads nice. In addition, they actually missed the opportunity to offer incentives for businesses to hire aged workers, when that is made more appealing, there would be a business shift that aids in better moral, implying that there would be more competition within a firm which would drive and work eagerness to some degree, which is merely a speculation on my side. Yet they drop the ball with British jobs for British workers. Yes, it has been their voice to do so and I am not against it, yet the voicing of “we should be offering jobs first to our own unemployed, rather than inviting cheap labour from overseas to do the jobs British people are perfectly able to do“, this brings fear to the British Farmers who at times feel lucky to get anyone to take a job outside of the cities. I took special interest on how UKIP decides to solve the housing issue. We get some facts, but there are two elements that are vital to it all. You see, the claim of “a bold policy to roll out high quality, low cost factory built modular (FBM) homes, affordable on the national average wage of £26,000” reads nice, but lacks any solution that would actually work. You see, I can find that (at http://www.hanse-haus.co.uk/house_overview.html), yet the issue is for the most not the house, it is the land and location. Unless the people in the UK are willing to move out of London by a decent distance, the land will be unaffordable, in addition, whatever is built will only fuel congestion in several ways. So it will be about location, infrastructure and availability of services (gas, light and internet). As these parts are often not too lavish or cheap, getting anything at £250K is a stretch at best, in addition, how would there be a working life when the places affordable are on an unholy distance from any location work could be found at. None of the parties has any realistic solution. The Greater London area is so pumped on price per square inch that finding a liveable solution is almost out of the question. so finding a place for 60,000 is almost the unsung drama of the century at present. Page 17 does have some nice parts, parts that I offered as a solution in the past to other parties. I like the restrictions of housing to be for living only and not for any resale other than back to the Housing Development Corporation (HDC). It is close to the only way to get a lid on speculative profiteering in housing projects. I have seen and felt that impact myself in the past. It would enable first home owners a lot more and might help, yet the reality is that this would be outside the Greater London area, which is not a bad thing as there are plenty of cities that could benefit, yet will it work? what reads nice is not a guarantee to be a solution, so I will keep an open mind. When it comes to the NHS, UKIP makes similar mistakes Labour does by merely throwing money at it. For sure the NHS needs the cash, yet the issues are not addressed. The issue is not just “1,500 doctors leave Britain every year for better pay and more relaxed working conditions in Australia or New Zealand“. Addressing that part is essential in solving some of the issues the NHS has, like Labour, throwing money at it will not really work and besides that, where the money is coming from is equally a question that is an issue, because a coffer that has no £9 billion, has no option to spend it, so where is it coming from, merely pointing at the foreign aid budget will not bring forth the coins, so as UKIP has no real solution at present we need to consider alternatives. One alternative could be that any doctor or nurse working a full year at the NHS would see a 5% lowering of their student debt. Would that not be a solution to consider? It would relieve stress, they would actively work and lower the debt without paying and that improves their quality of life especially their first 5-10 years, in there we would see that the NHS could benefit from those 6-10 year veterans, a group that is dwindling down the fastest as I see it. Their part on national not international health care is pretty insane. It is unworkable as refugees and other cases would fall out of the basket. Telling a refugee that this person is not entitled to health care is just not an option. It vilifies the NHS in untold and unacceptable ways. In addition, such paper requirements would give power to insurance agencies in ways I don’t even want to contemplate. Their entire approach to mental health is pretty much food for the waste basket. As we read “Every year, some 150 million GP consultations and up to forty per cent of A&E attendances are linked to mental health issues and drug or alcohol abuse, yet there are insufficient resources for doctors to refer patients to specialist care“, as I see it, Binge drinking needs to be vilified in an open and massive way. It is costing A&E pretty much an arm and a leg in the most literal of ways. Setting the premise that issues on narcotics and binge drinking is either set to private insurance or not treated at all is pretty much the only way left. As the crackdown on binge drinking has failed again and again other steps will be needed. This part in UKIP caters to votes in very much the wrong way. we can see that the healthcare side needs additional help, yet in equal measure it now needs to address that some should no longer be allowed to call for help. The entire mention of cyber bullying was a waste of space and many know that changes are needed, yet as legislation is falling short on technology issues in several ways, there is no answer, so voicing it in consideration is a loss as such. Overall the UKIP manifesto reads better and more believable than the Labour one by a fair bit, I do not believe that the numbers are realistically, as they are mentioning that cuts are to be reversed, yet in all this, there is no valid way where those required funds are coming from. When we consider that with foreign aid ‘The provisional figure for 2016 is £13.3bn‘, and the Gross National Income was predicted to be around £520B, the UKIP idea is to lose £13 billion and spend it in the UK is an issue. With £500 million, there will be no goodwill created outside of the UK, which now implies that business opportunities will go to players outside the UK, on the basis of what is required, what is desired to be cut and what is to be achieved overall, cutting in the wrong pie comes with dire consequences and the ‘upbeat’ story that UKIP provides the provisional voter will not be one that can be maintained to the slightest degree. In all this they focus on corporate tax, yet the tax overhaul that is needed is not seen or shown to the degree it should be. We might love the read on housing, the reality is that the plan has flaws from the very beginning and the protection of farms and farm labour is thrown out of the window as it will be about British jobs for British workers. The least stated on the NHS part the better. I admit, I liked reading their version the best, but like any novel, whether the novel is in red, yellow or in purple does not matter, the life of the people in the UK is not a novel and the reality is that hard times were bestowed on the people (that is excluding Brexit) and the current population needs to deal and suffer that inheritance. Weirdly enough, for the Tories (my blue team), UKIP offers options that the Tories should consider adapting or doing in unison with UKIP, there would be the benefit that some untrained outspoken members could convert to better outspoken people and as they see the light, not only will the quality of UKIP members go up, there is every chance that a more conservative view will be adapted which is good for all of the UK. I have seen messages and forums where UKIP members are and many of them are decent people, only at times drowned out by the loudest speakers rambling more and more extreme expressions, just to get attention. That is merely my view and I believe that this could be solved. As I noticed and reported on in 2015, it seems that people who were not outspoken Labour or Conservative were either Lib Dem or UKIP. It was almost a given that where one was, the other would not be. That is the situation that the Conservatives do not seem to have focussed on (as I personally see it). By offering a wider scope parts of UKIP and Lib Dems would go Conservative which is good as I see it. As Paul Nuttall made three blunders in the last 30 hours alone, he needs to carefully consider where he is moving to. Blaming Theresa May was utterly stupid (wrong does not begin to describe it), being seen as the anti-EU party is a given, but that focus is now no longer valued or valid perse. The issue has been that the spending spree of Mario Draghi was a clear motivator and now we see that Draghi is relabelling a vestment of finance (read: London), as stated by Reuters as “UK financial market infrastructures (FMIs) would be considered as third-country FMIs rather than EU entities“, that part alone should anger the UK people and its bankers. So as Draghi is now stating that the UK stops being European, and set to third country is not only wrong it is a clear statement on a course of blaming of his own failure down the line, and this is happening whilst many parties outside of the UK are questioning the policies of Mario Draghi more and more. the mere mention by the Dutch on how Draghi produced 2.3 trillion out of thin air gives voice that my fears have been forever correct (at least from the beginning of the second wave), that in light that the first wave never actually brought Europe any solid economic growth. The third blunder we see from Paul Nuttall is him calling politicians too cowardly. He wants to recruits thousands of police and troops, but again, there is no way to pay for that. In light of his statement in light of Manchester, he flaws in equal Titanic levels as (thank god for that), it is not up to politicians, but to the intelligence branch and the police to set the stage and the optional solutions, an option made a lot harder by the US lately, a side he did not really touch on. This is also not the time to ‘pounce’ on radical Islam as the path on how to resolve that is actually something that the professionals who are doing just that, are also considering what the best approach is. That is in part the lesson we are now learning from the Manchester Arena. These professionals know what to do and we should let them do that. The attacks on Theresa May, were folly and there was no clear indication on the threat. The evidence now shown that there is a support system in place for Lone Wolves is a really serious issue and I feel certain that the Metropolitan Police and MI5 will know on how to deal with this. So in all Paul Nuttall should have voiced support, not incriminations of any kind. He basically cut his own fingers whilst there was no need to handle a knife at all, as I see it, it will hurt his numbers!

So on the purple side, I have seen some nice reads, yet the reality is that none of the parties can offer anything positive for the Conservatives, they are all in denial of the utter emptiness of the treasury, which does not help their situation either, at least UKIP has the benefit of not trying to push the UK in deeper debt, something Labour is trying to do, straight off the bat. As I see it, the Conservatives remain the strongest, the interesting side is that both Lib Dems and UKIP have opportunities to work with the Tories if they mend their ways and in addition, if UKIP repairs its ability to speak properly and non-extremely on thoughts that were never required to be extreme.

As they presented a purple Union Jack on their cover, they need to realise that this jack is showing shades of purple, attuning their views better to a wider group of British people, who are all optional voters, they need to realise that they are a new party with a visible lack of experience. In all this, I personally believe that Nigel Farage, if persisted in politics could have made a strong gain, in the last week we saw that Paul Nuttall is not up to the job at present, which, if realised by the voters could turn a stronger shift to both Conservatives, yet especially the Lib Dems, because a lot of UKIP and Labour are too uncomfortable with the conservative view (or the Labour view for that matter) and that is fair enough. I just wonder how Tim Farron will deal with the easy slide towards his party. Oh, and that is discounting one part that a lot of people have not considered, which was the case in the Netherlands. The Greens could actually propel forward a fair bit. That part will be known this soon enough.

 

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May 22, 2017 · 16:44

See Other Side

I am just looking at an article of last Saturday, and I have to be fair, I really liked Pamela Duncan and Cath Levett’s article (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2017/may/20/general-election-2017-manifesto-word-count-in-data), now there will be a whole host of issues we could go into, yet the article is a nice read. Weirdly enough it is the part of the Lib Dems that stands out a little in a positive way. You see, in this age, they are the ones having a high usage of the word ‘support’. That does not mean that it is a good way (or a bad way), the fact that neither Labour or Conservatives have that word in their top 5 is an equal issue to make. Labour is all about ensure and we saw how that went over. the idea that they are using ‘ensure’ whilst they are about to push the UK well over a third of a trillion deeper in debt is a massive issue. The Tories are using it down the line as well, so in what way are the words used? You do not have to wonder or think of it too deep. Reading the manifesto is a first and I had loads of issues with the Labour one, the way it was made (secretive) the way they shouted when it leaked and the way they so easily want to make ‘promises’ whilst having no finds to do so. The UK will need at least another decade to get over their previous spending spree and the least said about bungling the NHS IT issues the better. It is interesting that UKIP was taken out of the consideration at all. That is because now in the age of Brexit, their next steps are actually interesting and required knowledge. It is the follow up of the party that advocated Brexit that is an essential. Do not think for one minute that the article does not matter, you see, the Facebook article (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/21/revealed-facebook-internal-rulebook-sex-terrorism-violence), shows that in a lot more detail. Facebook is no longer a mere facilitator. With the ‘Revealed: Facebook’s internal rulebook on sex, terrorism and violence‘ article on moderation, we see that there is a shift from moderation to opportunity creation. The quote “Yet these blueprints may also alarm free speech advocates concerned about Facebook’s de facto role as the world’s largest censor. Both sides are likely to demand greater transparency” is in the limelight here. The article gives us generic terms to illustrate, yet in a setting where the secondary lines are all about swaying, how does text and text analytics have any consideration of validity to censor or impede? In this the article skates near it in a sentence of life ending regarding President Trump. The reality is “they are not regarded as credible threats” is the jewel that cannot be ascertained by algorithms, for the mere reason that content is created, it tends to be a shifting wave not set in stone, making algorithms pretty useless. It is also why Google is focussing on AI, as with that, the ability to dimensionally set content becomes a close reality. In this another realisation is coming to light. The article gives us “Some photos of non-sexual physical abuse and bullying of children do not have to be deleted or “actioned” unless there is a sadistic or celebratory element“, consider that this gives the setting that bullying is to be condoned. One source stated: “The statistics on bullying and suicide are alarming: Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC. For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts“, whilst Facebook is stating that it is not intervening in bullying. We can argue that there is the freedom of speech, yet the bulk of such bullying is done through fake accounts. Facebook is at present ‘reviewing more than 6.5m reports a week relating to potentially fake accounts – known as FNRP (fake, not real person)‘. That is a potential 350 million accounts a year, that is a little short of 17% of all Facebook accounts. We cannot fault Facebook here completely, as the quote “Facebook cannot keep control of its content,” said one source. “It has grown too big, too quickly.“, the ‘too quick‘ and ‘too big‘ have sunk large corporations before. It is the realisation of content that is at play. Another quote that matters, links to a May 1st article on dangerous content. The quote “the biggest and richest social media companies are shamefully far from taking sufficient action to tackle illegal or dangerous content, to implement proper community standards or to keep their users safe“. Which is pretty much the quote of Yvette Cooper, Labour MP. Yet in all this we ask how? Either the world becomes a censoring police state, or it allows as much freedom of speech and freedom of expression possible. Facebook and Google both have issues in this. By trying to facilitate they set up a situation that those not allowed to speak do so in almost extreme fashion. We know and were ‘sullied’ by political players regarding content. And in this ‘sullied’ is pretty much the way they set it. You see, the quote “Referring to Google’s failure to prevent paid advertising from reputable companies appearing next to YouTube videos posted by extremists“, which seems to be the correct description in a pig’s eye. the statement is true, yet the actual truth is that Google designed a online facilitation of advertisement allowing small businesses to gain proper and granulated visibility of what they offer to the interested audience at less than 10% of what printed media demands. Give me one example where that will not be exploited? And when it comes to explosive situations, lets remember Alfred Nobel who found a way to make working for tunnel diggers relatively safe. It was these crying governments who thought of using dynamite against people during acts of war was a good idea, so please Yvette Cooper, go cry me a river somewhere else, and please feel free to flush yourself like you are a cast member of Trainspotting; please please pretty please. In this Germany is not without fault either. The quote “In Germany, the report points out, the justice ministry has proposed imposing financial penalties of up to €50m on social media companies that are slow to remove illegal content“, Illegal where, and what is ‘slow to remove‘? All pointless statements in a proposition that is laughable. We can all agree that ‘illegal‘ content is to be removed, yet I think the Germans need to consider their high chair when we consider the issues regarding the CDU before Angela Merkel was in charge, the days of Christian Wulff has a few issues whilst he resigned and subsequently got acquitted in 2014. The press and government hid behind ‘since it was not clear who had paid for these holidays‘ should be an issue as there is a debatable consideration that they did not pay for it, you see for the bulk of all of us, when we go on holidays it tends to be a real dip in our daily cost of living. That might not be for everyone, yet when we see clarity of who did pay, there is a lot more going on. The entire Google matter gives rise to political games in favour of printed media who feels massively threatened, whilst Google has NEVER EVER been unclear of how their AdWords system worked and how you could maximise YOUR visibility. So when the part of ‘YOUR visibility‘ is a not so nice organisation, in a system that facilitates for millions, the damage could happen. It is a lot more complex than merely paying for a vacation using your bank card or credit card. Here, we now have content!

In this light, when we consider the elements and we go back to the first article “the parties will “ensure” that in “government” they will “work” to do “new” things that “support” you, the “people”.” it is a clear political message that can fit any of the three parties and that is what the writers set out to do. Yet what are the new things? Where are the funds coming from? How will it better your life? That is where the content is. Labour pushes you in even further debt, the Tories are trying to go one way, whilst you lose as little as possible, and that whilst trying to deal with large issues like the NHS and the debt. The Lib Dems want to be supportive of you as they have lost way too much to actually achieve anything. The manifestos are trying to sway you in the way they can and ways that are allowed. In this social media is the unspoken gun that will spray consequences on the choices of opponents and whilst they would like to guide you towards their base of choice, the censors are seeing a shift in methodology. In all this we see non political parties trying to play a similar game whilst ‘enticing’ you to ‘their’ places of ‘combat’, which in extremist views are actually ‘theatres of war’. In all this we see shifts as governments on a global scale (USA and Indonesia) are now on the verge of having to deal with people who return from Syria in a radicalised state. America in this has even more problems as Syrian and Iranian ties are getting stronger. This implies the dangers for America as this pool of radicalised people is an optional source for VEJA to see what damage they could to to America and more important, whether they could give pressure to Indonesia giving American Allies (read: Australia) more headaches that they are comfortable with at present. So where is that content? You see, as you might have seen in the past and in the media, content is created, it is created by setting a stage and let data be data, making the watcher nervous, or reactive, in social media is an absolute first to create large waves. The problem with censorship is that you create waves, whether you censor or not, by trying to create the waves in your favour you are also fuelling the opposition who could hurt you if intentional censorship is exposed. In this the attempt to ‘save’ the Trans Pacific Partnership is a clear monument of evidence how political players are there to ‘cater’ to big business whilst misrepresenting it as ‘labour rights and environmental protections‘ that whilst too many media outlets have already reported on how consumers will basically lose rights. So as we see that we keep an optional job, whilst having no say on where we spend our money and having no options to the amount we have to pay to get better, can you explain to me how that is a good thing for anyone else than big business? In this we now get back to Google. Yes of course they are in it for the money (to some extent), yet they have shifted the bar of technology 5 times in the last 7 years, whilst Microsoft has merely pushed the same bar forwards three times and making us pay for those new iterations. Does Google have issues? Of course it has, when you push out something as revolutionary as Google AdWords, things will happen and flaws will be found. You show me a windows version that got the bulk of basic parts correct after 29 iterations and you will be on the shortlist for receiving a Nobel price (they gave one to Barack Obama after all).

We all create content and whilst we saw on how the number of words might persuade us on how well any political manifesto was, we know that content was not given, mere curiosity (read: and it is still a nice article to read). We can agree that speech, whether elective or hate based is to address a group that will listen to them. in this there are points of technology (read: facilitation), yet in UK law there is an explicit defence for facilitation, as there is in almost every Common Law nation. In this we can clearly argue that there are issues to solve, nobody denies that, not even the technology firms. Yet do you want to live in a Microsoft world where it is merely iterative result of non fixed software that works, yet has issues and we get to pay for these flaws again or again, or are we willing to see Google solutions evolve where we have been introduced to new options, and amazing new boundaries as we moved from 3G, 4G and now towards 5G, with smartphone issues that Apple could not give in the last 4 versions of their iPhone. I got introduced to more invigorating options in 12 months of Google than I saw Microsoft show us in 15 years and that is whilst the Media remains very uninformative on non-consensual upload of data by Microsoft, that too is content!

In finality, consider the quote “Facebook also told MPs that it is is reviewing how it handles violent videos and other objectionable material after a video of a murder in the United States remained on its service for more than two hours“, whilst we need to consider the 2014 event of ‘Video of ISIS beheading U.S. journalist James Foley‘, the issue the CNN brought forward was: “The question is why taking it down is controversial at all. The answer, I think, shows how important services like Twitter have become, and how this has thrust unexpected responsibilities onto them“, it took years in court to deal with the Christian Wulff case as some would state it in a very unsatisfied way, whilst there is the raising of hell in light of certain videos? We can agree that some should not have gotten through, yet that is when we are in the emotional stage of not realising the size of technology involved. We should like the 2008 Facebook sex tape case conviction towards the poster of the video. Yet the political players know that this is a game that they cannot win, so it is easier to go after Facebook and Google, that whilst they rely on businesses to use these solutions to turn a few pennies, all knowing perfectly well that it is a cloud of facilitation. Is it merely because being linked to a large firm getting kicked is sexier that actually solving issues like age discrimination or giving suspended sentences on intentional fraud. When we are set in such an environment, can we trust anyone? We are all dealing with concepts of ‘facilitation’, ‘censoring’, and ‘technology’, at times on a daily basis. We all need to consider what is on the other side of that piece of paper, because when we consider that on page two of that news is an advertisement mentioning bogus scientific results? How criminal is the paper? and how will you take down printed advertisement? The elements here matter, because it introduces a term that has bearing, one that politicians have used for decades. In this they ‘hide’ behind the term “wilful blindness“, to remain ignorant intentionally of a situation is an issue, an issue that Yvette Cooper has been demonstrating in the response as given by the media. In equal measure can we accuse Microsoft of the same thing? The fact that some bugs that were seen in Office 95 and are still an issue in Office 2007, does that matter? That’s well over 12 years!

We ourselves also create content by not looking at the other side, which during the upcoming election is a bit of an issue, because, as I personally see it, Europe is in a new level of turmoil, one that it has not seen for several decades. It is also a larger issue as most nations have borrowed away the reserves they had. The safety netting is gone, which makes proper and complete information a lot more important than the previous 4 elections.

So lets not forget to see the other side, because when we are told: ‘look here’ the actual action that harms us is over there on the other side, in that it is my personal view, that in that regard all politicians are alike, and not one party has ever been ignorant of using that tactic.

In this business will go vastly beyond politics, because as the 5G waves start hitting us all, it will be about creating content, in this we will all look at the other side of the page and wonder about the validity, not because we want to, but because we have to. We will no longer have a choice in the matter.

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May 13, 2017 · 16:27

And the price goes to?

This is the thought that started me this morning. The two articles in The Guardian, ‘Al-Qaida tempts Yemen recruits with quiz offering AK-47 as top prize‘ as well as ‘Jeremy Corbyn says Labour manifesto will transform people’s lives‘ gave me that feeling. Both hollow, both set in a weird form of fanaticism. The only thing that Labour does is push people to their doom by giving false hope and setting in motion promises that cannot be kept, for the mere reason that previous Labour administrations left the people in the United Kingdom with minus a trillion pounds. That requires £100,000 pounds per person to clear. So do you, the UK voter have £100,000? I guess that in well over 99% of the cases that is a no. So Labour is pushing a game that cannot commit to and should they push for it, it will leave the UK without any hope, pretty much pushing the UK people towards the Greek way of life. You might have seen that on the TV. Consider, that if the Tories could secure the election by just giving 10,000 nurses a job, would they not have done that? They are committed to grow the UK back to strength, it will take at least 5 more years to get the UK in a much stronger position. In addition, the European zone is in an unsecure place too. Even if they hide it in some good, some bad; They keep on spending. The quote “Mario Draghi said the European Central Bank’s stimulus hasn’t finished the job yet” refers to his monthly billions upon billions of spending on things that are not bringing anyone an economy tht brings money or jobs to the people. They are not securing jobs and they are increasing the debt by about 80 billion euro’s a month. Basically they are adding a second trillion euro’s in the second year that this is going on. So as we see some hollow promises, look at the Al-Qaida article where we see: “Al-Qaida is attempting to recruit new members in Yemen by holding a quiz, with an AK-47 assault rifle as top prize, according to local residents and media“, by the way, the second price is a motor cycle and the third price a laptop. It is one way to get militants, via direct mailing, yet what this organisation has in common with Jeremy Corbyn is that they both advocate a path to certain death. Who signs up for that?

In the previous election we did not fall for the unsubstantiated offers by Ed Miliband, the UK voters should not do that this time around either. The Labour party realises to get anything done, one needs to govern, yet when labour gets close to be in that position, we see infighting. discord amongst the ranks and power hungry labour MP’s the moment they think that they can get ahead. This is not the path to help the people of the UK.

So when we look at the mere examples:

  • Abolish university tuition fees
  • boost infrastructure investment
  • renationalise the railways
  • increase the minimum wage to £10 an hour

In these examples, how can any government a trillion pounds in the red do any of this? Because any government pulling this off, I would vote for that player, but when it is a hollow promise, one that cannot be kept, what are they other than wannabe’s with no clue how to get it done? It is only the 4th one that has a certain merit, yet when they do that, how many places will lose jobs and one person have to do the work of two? I have quite literally been in such places in the 80’s. I can tell you, there will be no objections, because you have a job and the few pennies more will reflect in longer hours (often not paid for) and as you get home with less and less energy it will become the hell you never wanted. All because the labour party failed calculus. In this we can speculate with a decent amount of certainty that they are doing this as they noted that the UK unemployment rate is at its lowest. Yet, bosses report to people who want to see return on investment, so as wages go up, production will either go up by certain amounts, and if that is not possible jobs are shed, because the bosses want their pound of commission, so the game is played on. Still the fourth past is the most likely option to work, the rest will cost the coffers of the chancellor, which is currently an empty chest filled with outstanding debt notices. debt notices the previous labour government dumped into that same coffer and we are still paying for those. So do you honestly want to add to that? So as we see this we now need to focus on: “Senior insiders say the drafting process involved a very small group, led by Corbyn’s policy chief, Andrew Fisher, in close consultation with McDonnell. Individual shadow cabinet members were only given details of policies in their own area; while the political officers of the affiliated trades unions were allowed to come and see the entire document, and discuss its contents with Fisher, earlier this week, but were not allowed to take a copy away“, so Labour makes a manifesto that is shown to a few insiders, yet it needs to be kept under wraps, all this whilst the elections are merely a little over 3 weeks away. So now we see them stating “each faction in the Labour party blames the other side for the embarrassing leak“, so they are blaming the Tories? All this should have been known to the optional Labour voter weeks ago. To drop something that I can shoot holes in in merely 5 minutes implies that Labour has gotten more clueless, they have no direction and they are giving voters the idea that they have a clue by offering things that cannot be achieved in this economy. If labour was true to all people, they would set in motion to raise the price of milk by £0.50 per litre so that the farmers in deep debt could find some relief. Where is that in their manifesto, where are they voicing this? People do not want to hear about raising the cost of living, because for the most the people in the UK have lost their quality of life. This is why Labour is pretty much bullshitting you. True Labour would have stood up for the farmers and their hardship, but the sexy side of governance is not found in that part of the world, so they remain silent. There you see the first direct evidence that this Labour is the same waste as the previous three ones, the two elected who drive us into debt, one non elected because there was no way to make good on the promise and the present one trying to razzle dazzle you with a manifesto that has no bearing on the reality of life, that is their embarrassing moment. In that whose story would you go for 1st, Al-Qaida with their Kalashnikov or Labour with nationalising the rails (which the BBC already showed in details in 2013 that it was not possible) and 60% in renewable energy. An absurd notion that the Swedes achieved as they have 3 cities (Stockholm, Goteborg and Malmo), with a total national population of 10 million people. The UK with 68 million and a lot more cities. the Greater London area alone is the size of the entire Swedish population, after that we get Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Leicester, Edinburgh, and these are merely the places larger than Malmo, the smallest of the three cities. The UK would require renewable energy amounts in excess of 750% of what Sweden has, a feat that is not possible as the UK would be short by well over 90% of the required need at present. So again we see how the Labour party is just full of… that stuff the cows make and makes the grass grow (read: it is a 4 letter word)?

There is just the small part of the manifesto I saw and some of what the media leaked. In addition, the fact that some in that small inner circle leaked it gives reason that they know that what they claim to offer is nowhere near feasible. That is modern labour for you. I could have made a much better manifesto in hours, one that might not have good news, but one that labour people could be proud of. Jeremy Corbyn basically left them with nothing and as we read that the other two were Andrew Fisher and John McDonnell, I just have to ask. Was Fisher not the one sacked in 2015? So how did he get back in the good graces of Corbyn? There is less against McDonnell the man is pure labour and we can ask how it is Corbyn and not McDonnell that is leading labour. That being said and how we is making the tuition free claim, how can he stand with this? Several sources have been asking how it will be paid for and not one valid answer came back at present. I will not fault them for the attempt as it is a noble one, yet when the treasury is showing well over minus a trillion, there is no way to get it done. Consider that there is still a deficit at present (it is a lot lower, but there is a deficit none the less), how can this be paid for? The government can pay for it, driving their costs up, or offer a tax incentive to companies lowering their income, there is no real solution. Some have been speculating into IP and letting students earn value whilst they study lowering their debt. Yet in that they would either take someone’s else’s job, or the last one there would be discriminatory value as IP Law Students and Engineers will have an unfair advantage against other students as patents are valued more and more. It is the most likely and the least fair system. It would drive business and art students in a rage as they need to pay full fair, which would be an unjust path.

If there is one side in the Labour manifesto that I support to some degree is that there would be a tax bracket for those making in excess of £80K, yet only if the 0% tax amount gets raised to give the lowest group a little more cash. If the 0% bracket is raised by £1500, whilst the 80% bracket is no more than 3% higher, there would be a social justice in play. Oh, and all references on how the higher bracket funds nurses, better realise fast that the highest income class, constitutes a group of less than 25,000 people, so how much extra would you charge them? The HMRC has those numbers (to some degree) and when you consider the cost of 10,000 nurses, you will realise that there is no validity or reality in such claims. Labour is failing the people if the United Kingdom in several ways and it started with a laughable presentation on a manifesto that has no bearing on truth or reality, the fact that it will be shown to the people in the 11th hour, how much faith can you have in any manifesto that is not openly shown, will not be in play until they are in office and the fact that large parts are already shown as non-achievable, how can you give them any consideration? In that I recall the UKIP manifesto, I might not agree with it, there are plenty of opposing views, but they gave it out when they tried to go for the election trophy, at the beginning, not at the point where the readers get a two-minute warning.

Oh, and for the little heads up. I will soon treat you to a story on how a place like the Australian Foodco, who is presenting the sale of franchises and only afterwards tell the people that its business model relies on underpayment, which actually will never work at all. Just in case you are interested in starting a franchise.

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May 7, 2017 · 16:09

Awaiting the next…

There is not a lot to do today, the French polling booths opened up 28 minutes ago, there is no certainty who will make it to the palace in Paris and I will not speculate at this time. In that regard, the shouting of ‘hacked’ by Emmanuel Macron seems shabby and shallow. In that same light, we see (what I regard to be) the the hilarious idiocy of Jeremy Corbyn with ‘We’ll fund spending by raising tax on £80,000 earners, says Labour’, which is a joke when you consider that it does not even get close to 20% of the spending spree he has in mind. The UK is in a state of hardship for now and that has always been a known fact. It is a hurdle that the right politicians can overcome and Jeremy Corbyn is showing again and again that he is not cut out for that position. The quotes “under the plans, 95% of taxpayers would be guaranteed no increases in their income tax during the next parliament” as well as “those earning above £80,000 should expect to pay more to enable improvements to the health service, education and other public services” show the level of lacking reality. Now, I have nothing against raising taxation just a little in high earner fields, yet that was to offset increasing the 0% tax bar so that those in low incomes would get just a little more. The improvements needed to health care alone will require billions, more than the tax increase allows for, which means that the UK Labour party is deceiving you. Would you vote for someone who actively and openly deceives you? You as UK voters, you should know this by now. In all this, these false promises from Labour UK is merely a clear sign that voting for them is voting for the downfall of the UK. UKIP is equally down, having no constituencies left and the lack of the charisma of Nigel Farage is a problem for them. Paul Nuttall is not getting it done, which is no bad reflection in him. He started as the underdog and with merely a Brexit, it is not enough. Farage was (even though everyone disagrees) a visionary, not the most diplomatically eloquent one, but a visionary none the less. Paul requires more than he has at present, more following, more issues to work with and these two are much harder to come by at present. The Lib Dems are not in a growing side either, but they already had a following and I will admit that Tim Farron did a lot better in this election than I gave him credit for. If he can connect to Theresa May and plead for essential parts of the Lib Dems message to become accepted by the Tories, he will actually have a game to play and if administered better than Nick Clegg did, he will have an advantage, one that surpasses the Labour party at present, which is saying a lot.

In all this, we have weeks to see the press give voice and give a swing to what these politicians are trying to say without sounding like Oliver Twist with ‘Can I have a little more please?’

Whatever happens, it will not happen until Tuesday as Monday will all be about France and it will be about the next phase of France. In that regard I do believe that the outcome of the elections is merely a stage towards what will be opened at that time. No matter the win, a European referendum seems to be no longer avoidable. Macron is realising it and Marine Le Pen is merely waiting for Macron to screw up that one mistake is all that will be required.

That is the setting which we will see before the general elections and hen that happens it will impact the political actions in the UK. It all takes a turn when we look at the BBC with their reality Check, those claiming (read: Nick Clegg) that households would be £500 worse off is still not proven to be correct. If anything, they are 0.2% better off, yet there is a little over 6 months to go, so there is room for the end result to shift, yet by June this might be proven to be no longer a reality. It is those bog winded predictions that should be at the core of how we hold politicians accountable and in that regard Nick and Jeremy are not doing too well. Even as they hit out against Nigel Farage when he stated ‘I would much rather’, which is a preference and not a certainty, they themselves are all about ‘is likely to be’ which is actually also a prediction. It is the intonation of ‘it could be worse’ that counts. I have seen too much from certain people showing this path. It is the level of fear mongering for votes that really gets my goat.

Clegg was doing a similar thing less than 24 hours ago on how raising taxation would gain Sheffield £100 million (source: the Express). As I see it “by adding a penny onto every pound of income tax people pay. The tax, the Lib Dems say, would raise £103.7 million for Sheffield each year – £84 million for the NHS and £19.7 million for social care” the quote is merely wishful thinking, by raising taxation by even 1%, the lowest two groups could find themselves in near physical hardship, which now implies that the spike that the increase brings will result in NHS costs more than twice the amount they are gaining. By the way, that one percent addition, implies that Sheffield gets a little too much. When we get the numbers from HM Revenue & Customs, we see that in 2015 South Yorkshire the total taxation was a little over £2 billion, 1% of that is merely £20 million, so where is little Nicky getting the rest from? I am 100% certain that the quality of life in South Yorkshire did not go up by 500% in one year. Yorkshire pudding just does not give that level of taxable revenue. Which implies that Tim Farron has a problem by letting Nick Clegg babble all over the place. Perhaps Clegg was the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Jeremy Corbyn? In all this we see a need for clarity and getting the correct information to the voters, because any Clegg-Corbyn union will ruin the United Kingdom as I personally see it.

So what is next? What are we waiting for?

That is an actual issue, at times we can only wait until the results arrive and the UK will be awaiting what happens next. On this day, this Sunday, the UK will be reacting to what happens on the mainland. Even Greece is getting visibility by proclaiming to be the ally of Macron, so how are they valued at anything? Late last month we see how Greece is one target to make the debtor deal, whilst last week we see that the EU is trimming down the forecast for 2017 from 2.7% to merely 2%, in all this were the numbers adjusted? So after the deal, we get the bad news that the numbers were off by almost 26%, how is anything in Greece valued at all? (source: RTE).

So, those people who were off by well over 25% are all about engaging through the facilitation of a former French investment banker as President of France? In all this the UK will go forward in Brexit, because not doing so will have dire consequences. That risk is now coming from the US a they are trying to get the Financial Choice Act into place. So at the Guardian reported “If you want to buy a house, it will let salespeople push you into high-interest, high-fee loans because it increases their referral fees. On top of that, it makes it easier for realtors and mortgage lenders to sell you into closing services that they actually control – essentially giving themselves a kickback”, is just one of a few issues that give rise to the angers of more than the low income earners to become either a wage slave or homeless. You only need to have been there to know that you will do nearly anything to remain a wage slave. On the 15th of February of this year I wrote (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/02/15/pimping-the-united-states/): “If there is an upside, then it will be that the next financial event will have one enormous difference, the moment the US people see that their quality of life returns to a 2009 state, there will be 170-205 million people unanimously agreeing that the President of the United States is to be assassinated, moreover, when that angry mob runs to Washington, the army will not intervene as they will have been hit just as hard as well as their family members. So at that point the Secret Service will need to protect an idiot, whilst they have less than 1% of the ammunition required to stop that angry mob. Good luck to them I say!”, the Financial Choice Act might be the actual point that made my speculation a few months ago an actual reality. At that point we need no longer worry about either the IMF, Mario Draghi or the Euro. I reckon that once one of the players goes a little overboard for mere greed, the people will gut (quite literally) anyone working on Wall Street, at that point the people at the IMF will run for their lives, having no control over what happens next on the global market. Mario Draghi would essentially take the first flight into anonymity and the Euro would take a dive so steep that 10 EC members will take flight to their old currency overnight giving the UK and Sweden a large reason to smile for a few hours (they would still take a hit soon thereafter), pensions in Europe will become a thing of the past. Yes, this is speculation, yet when the financial services making a profit will over $150 billion a year needs more options for profit, I think we can all agree that the dangers of any future lost to the population at large will have dire consequences for anyone facilitating in that endeavour.

The weird part is that Frexit will actually increase the dangers to the Financial Choice Act to become a reality, because that is the way greed tends to go. Those wanting it are already massively rich and they will not care about the 98.4% of the population that they hurt to such an extent. So as we contemplate Brexit, Frexit, Swedone, Withdrawsaw, Czech-out, Donegary and any other fashion word for countries leaving the Euro (oh, I forgot about Beljump and Nexit), the US in their lack of foresight is about to give rise to financial fears to the global market at large. I will dig deeper into the Financial Choice Act in the near future.

 

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September 20, 2016 · 13:29

The UK NHS is fine

This is the view that some seem to impair on the Britons. When we look at the article (at http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37331350), “Seven-day NHS ‘impossible under current funding levels’“, we see that there is an initial massive problem. I have no reason to doubt any of this, yet consider the issues in play. The Guardian gave us “Jeremy Corbyn has urged his supporters to campaign for jobs and the NHS once the current leadership battle is over. A year and a day after he was first elected as leader, Labour’s leader told a rally in Brighton that whatever the result, he hoped that they would join with him to convince the rest of Britain to join in a quest for a fairer society“, this is just a from one article. Yet, when we look a little further we get the Canary, which gives us “All the time I’ve been in parliament, I’ve been opposed to privatisation of the NHS and I voted against it with colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party over many years because we wanted to see a fully-funded, public, National Health Service. The Tories have sought to privatise it. A Labour government will have to take the whole NHS into public ownership and make sure it remains there. The next Labour government will go further than reversing Tory cuts. We intend to deliver a modern health and social care policy, fully publicly provided, and fully publicly funded, by integrating health and social care into a single system, so that everyone gets the care they need when they need it.” (at http://www.thecanary.co/2016/09/05/jeremy-corbyn-lays-out-his-plan-for-the-nhs-in-under-a-minute/). You see, we all want that, the Conservatives are not against it, the government just cannot afford it such a solution. When you take the government Credit Card and spend over a trillion pounds. Under Labour the debt went from less than 400 million to well over a trillion. Even though 2004 did not hit the UK as hard as other places, Labour should have changed their approach to budgets by a lot, then in 2008 there would have been no option but to radically implement austerity measures. This was never done the way it required to be. The people were told these overly optimistic views, mainly, as I personally see it to let money roll. In December 2007, the 2008 forecast was between 1% and 1.3%, The European Commission in 2008 was “In summary, growth in the UK economy is expected to slow to around 1¾% in 2008. In 2009, with no large carryover effect from 2008, the gradual recovery in domestic demand through the year will bring annual growth to just over 1½%“. Yet, when we see the BBC report (not forecasting) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8479639.stm, we see that 2008 went per quarter from +0.6% to -1.7% in 2009 it grew from -2.5% to 0.1%. So at no point was any forecast ever met. This is something that has been going on for over a decade. Not just the UK mind you, the EU as a whole is playing that same managed bad news cycle that starts with overinflated positivity whilst those behind this game are delusional beyond belief. Until a massive change is made in the approach business and politicians are taking to blow up the governmental credit card. This relates to Jeremy Corbyn because unless the man was lobotomised in 2001, he should know better. Under Labour governance, the debt went up by a little over 600 billion pounds. Did they not consider the consequences? Overspending year after year, followed by managed bad news is not a solution. It never was and any politicians voicing that it could should be barred from public office for life! (Again, this applies to both sides of the political isle). That simple realisation is all UKIP needed and the mistakes made today and the symbiotic relationship of required spending between business and government needs to come to an end. In this coming decade we need actual solutions, an actual path to restore the pushed imbalance of Wall Street status quo pushed us all towards. So until we all realise that, the NHS is fine, because soon many people will have too many additional problems and the NHS will not show up on their radar. That is my prediction if the current wave of weighted misinformation continues.

So the NHS is fine according to those who needs funds to the directions they desire. You see, here we get confronted with the reality that the Conservatives are dealing with. Do you actually think that the quote “Prime minister declines to guarantee points-based system and extra £100m a week for health service“, the reality of a budget is that money runs out. It did 2 years ago and solutions need to be found. I personally, as a conservative would have preferred that the NHS was higher on the list. Yet, reality got in the way here too. The UK got into Brexit and we all knew that there would be consequences even though realistically the extent would never be a given. In that regard, the issues that Japanese PM Shinzo Abe raised might be regarded as a joke. My reasoning here is that the quote “Countries such as Japan have already warned the UK that a lack of clarity about Brexit and loss of the benefits that access to the single market brings could lead” brought. So this PM is crying on the UK doorstep whilst he should have asked President of the European Union Donald Tusk. No, he wants to know this from the UK, which in my view makes him sound more like a servant of the Washington Oval Office than the PM of Japan he is supposed to be. In addition, is it not interesting that an organisation like the EU has nothing in place regarding the notion a leaving nation will have as an impact of its structure? All this reflects back to the NHS, because as we see more and more political bashing from the people who are now finally realising that their Gravy Train is about to stop and that their cushy incomes based upon virtual works and situations will not continue, now they all come up into the light to push people into continuing disaster that could soon be the former EU.

This all relates to the NHS, because it will impact the NHS. I am not pushing for the entire Junior Doctor Contracts. Whatever the stance is there, the truth is that a pilot strike for better conditions would be the same, the airline would be put under pressure, but the airline would continue. With the NHS it is not that simple and the impact could be harder, yet the people have a right to stand up what they consider to be their right. Yet in all this people are very easy to ignore that the government has been giving into pharmaceutical companies not just the TTIP and in that regard they did not take a tougher stance on those pharmaceutical parts, opening stronger ties with India and the essential need for Generic medical solutions (where applicable), because that also impacts the NHS, lower costs for medications means more for staff, equipment and location. We all accept that the NHS needs solutions and so far there is a lack of actual actions that are leading to longer term solutions.

Yet we need to see that Labour isn’t the only lose screw on the political bench, Tim Farron from the Liberal Democrats are on the same foot. I gave my answer earlier. Unless the UK can get the budgets truly under control and until massive changes are implemented that will allow for better budgeting, the NHS would stop because business people want profit through privatisation and too many people are wasting the true future options of Britons through misrepresentation of forecasts. If you think that this is off? That forecasting is too complex, which can be concurred by many including me to some extent, it is not the case to the extent that we saw for too long a time. I discussed part of this in ‘A noun of non-profit‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/05/15/a-noun-of-non-profit/), in addition there is ‘Cooking the books?‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/01/22/cooking-the-books/) where I proved some of these points and showed the danger. So basically, the predictions I made in January 2014 are now showing to be correct. So as people are looking at a way for the government to spend more money and show cooked forecasts, consider the next time this is done and the austerities that will then follow., We can no longer continue this irresponsible push for unrealistic solutions that do not lead anywhere and takes us to look away from the solutions that actually need solving. The NHS needs solving and it needs it now.

There is no debate about the NHS and privatisation. Everyone would happily get rid of the idea if there was money to do that. I am not mentioning the aging population, because that has been known for a very long time and we can only partially blame the economic crash, because that hit everyone square in the face. So when I read the LibDems demanding the end of playing politics, whilst they are sitting next to Labour doing just that, we have to wonder where they got their view from. The independent reported only 3 days ago. The article (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/lib-dems-demand-end-to-playing-politics-with-the-nhs-a7315236.html) gives a few quotes on that matter. “Mr Lamb has also launched a consultation on the introduction of a NHS specific income tax, which would ring fence a possible one pence per pound earned for the NHS budget, and appear on people’s payslips as such“, that is an optional solution. You see, this was introduced within the Netherlands decades ago and it solved plenty of issues. It is hard to talk about taxing this, but consider that the NHS will be short by 6 billion in the near future is at the heart of the issue. Consider that from your pay check, the government takes an additional £2 a week. Now consider the working population of 31 million people meaning that we have an optional 62 million pounds at our disposal, money that is destined exclusively for the NHS. Now, do not think for a moment that this will be temporary. There is the realistic consideration that this will be for all time, giving us two groups of people, those entitled to full health care and those with the minimum package. Now, retired people would get full health care on principle that they paid their dues a long time ago. There is every chance that people will not feel happy regarding this solution, but what options are left. The irresponsible ones seem to think that it will fit in the budget, especially those who haven’t been able to keep one since 1997. In this solution I feel decently comfortable with the solution that is consulted on by Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Norman Lamb. For one, I have seen this work in the Netherlands. In addition his version of “introduction of a NHS specific income tax, which would ring fence a possible one pence per pound earned for the NHS budget” sounds better than my £2 a week on small incomes. On the other hand, if we consider the minimum income of £286.54 per week, my amount sounded a little better, but we cannot deny the minimum £2.86 a week could solve nearly all options over time. It gets even better when we see that the average is £403.36 per week, so we are looking at a possible £120 million per week. I do believe that there should be an upper limit, yet where that ends is something that cannot be answered at this time. What is important is to seriously start taking up the ideas out there and see which one could lead to pressure release on the NHS, because at this point, every day not acted is another nail in the coffin that will be used soon enough to bury a past NHS era.

 

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May 22, 2015 · 10:26

Is it all Greek to you?

Greece keeps on tracking the news in several UK papers and newscasts. Greece is big news in a few regards, but I will not go into that too deep. What should be known in this premise is that I still believe that Greece for the larger extent is playing a game, the fact that Greece is playing this game is because (as I agree), the downfall of Greece could topple Italy and France to a serious extent, which will hurt the United Kingdom to more than a minor extent (it would have been massively worse if the UK had the Euro) and it will debunk the premise of a united Europe in several ways.

Now let’s take a look at the news:

BBC (at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32790726) ‘Greek debt deal within next week, says Varoufakis‘, stated on May 19th, this gives us the oral deadline of no later than May 29th.

I, the Lawlordtobe.com (that’s me) stated on May 6th in the article ‘What’s the matter?‘ “You see, there we see May 1st an IMF interest loan payment (now due May 6th) and May 12th we see the part that 760 million is due. The part that was unknown to me is also the part that is not loudly voiced to EEC nations, because this knowledge will influence the voters (as I personally see it). You see, the missing part that is not voiced in many sources is the small fact that two T-bill batches mature, the first one on May 8th and the second one on May 15th, each worth 1.4 billion“.

Now we know that the May 6th payment was done, but the May 12th payment could NOT be made, for this Greece used its own IMF emergency funds, this means that this is now due 30 days after May 12th. In addition, the amounts due in June is 1.5 billion initially towards the IMF, yet because the May payment was not made, that debt is raised by 50% and Now we see that 2.3 billion will be due before June 30th. In addition 5.2 billion in T-bills will mature, so how is that going to get paid for?

Alas, this is not all, even though payments are not due, the Greek debt ceiling has been raised (again) now giving to total debt ceiling at 80 billion, when we add the outstanding debt, this nation with 11 million people will be down almost half a trillion dollars! Now one fact that many are ignoring, this all amounts to an annual interest that is close to 22.5 billion a year, Greece cannot even raise 5% of that at present!

Let’s get back to the news!

The financial review gave us this news on May 19th (at http://www.afr.com/news/world/greece-wants-europes-bailout-fund-to-pay-maturing-bonds-20150518-gh4ljr), the headline ‘Greece wants Europe’s bailout fund to pay maturing bonds‘ gives you the rising nightmare that I was pushing towards for some time now! The quote “Greece has proposed to its international lenders that Europe’s bailout fund pay back maturing Greek government bonds held by the European Central Bank as a way to overcome a funding crunch, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on Monday“. It feels a little like going to that nice place in Amsterdam (with all those red lights), then after you had your fun, you ask the girl if she would be so kind enough to ask Mr.  Eberhard van der Laan to front the bill (the current Mayor of Amsterdam). What do you think is going to happen next? Including May, through to August a total of 11 billion in Bonds will mature. So, how is this a good idea?

Syriza has, since it came to power, only made things worse for Greece. The Greek people might think that they are protected, yet as I see it, the only thing they achieved is to alienate its creditors, leaving them with no alternatives, for now let’s get back to the news!

Less than 20 minutes ago (whilst writing the draft), the Guardian got wind of a possible extension of 4 months (source: Helena Smith, the Guardian), which is likely today’s topic between Angela Merkel and Alexis Tsipras. Which now gives us more worry, because EVERY delay and every inaction from Syriza gives less and less chances for Greece. Yet from Reuters (at http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/21/us-eurozone-greece-schaeuble-idUSKBN0O61C220150521), we learn that there is no happy expectations at present. The quote “But Schäuble poured cold water on this idea, saying reports from the international institutions involved in negotiations with Athens suggested talks were progressing ‘very hesitantly’. ‘What I know from discussions with the three institutions does not back up the optimism arising from announcements from Athens,’ Schäuble said in an interview published on Thursday“, whether the latest news is more accurate is harder to see, because the ‘earlier’ news from the BBC amongst others see a game played where Varoufakis and Tsipras are in ‘managing bad news mode’ and overly optimistic, an approach already rejected by more than one participant and as I showed, the amounts due means that my prediction on May 6th (in the article What’s the matter? at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/05/06/whats-the-matter/), where I stated “Why do I feel that I am the only one seeing this, or at least the only one clearly voicing this, because the UK elections, when the voters learn that Greece is about to desire up to 30 billion before the end of the year, so that it can pay the outstanding bills“.

Now we see that Greece is hoping on an 11 billion bonds bailout, a bailout deal of 7.2 billion and an additional bailout is already a certainty, the amount at present is however not stated (possibly unknown to the involved players) and up to August we see the need for 6.7 billion in payments to the ECB. In addition there would be interest payments too. My prediction of the needed 30 billion has been surpassed, yet no one else made clear mention of these required funds, especially the UK papers, as this would have opened the floodgates towards UKIP. How informed was the British voter allowed to be?

Back to the news!

When we consider the extension, we also see first voices. Now let’s take a clear look at what the European public is being offered and the shear insanity of it.

  1. “experts are saying after four months of seemingly stalled negotiations the gap-stop solution makes eminent sense – not least because it gives the leftist-led government enough time to either hold a referendum or call fresh elections, polls that the governing Syriza party would almost certainly win hands down”.
    a. How will new elections solve anything?
    b. Is Syriza wins again, then how will progress ever be made?
    c. Setting up an election takes months, which means that in 4 months no achievement will be made, whilst the internal costs of new elections will be added to the debt.
  2. “Both scenarios would allow Tsipras to deal with militants in his party and move to the centre stage offering clarity to a political landscape blighted by Syriza’s two seemingly incompatible aims: to ensure Greece stays in the euro zone while at the same time eradicating austerity”.
    a. Is it possible that the militants Syriza were never the problem to begin with?
    b. Staying in the Eurozone and eradicating austerity is as I see it a mathematical (and statistical) impossibility. It is only possible if all debts are forgiven, which should never be an allowed option!
    c. Is it even possible to offer clarity to the current political landscape? The political landscape includes the people behind the banks and the bonds, which makes for very murky waters at best.
  3. “This scenario makes sense because it would provide sufficient time for Greece to hold a referendum or election both of which would ease Syriza’s position,” said Kevin Featherstone, who heads the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics, which basically reiterates the issues in point 1.

I cannot oppose Kevin Fatherstone academically as he is a professor and that title is not given out with boxes of Weetabix, but my logical insight in data opposes his view and a few others on intense levels. I have nothing against Greece and even less against the people of Greece, but why should we not hold politicians both present and past responsible and accountable for their acts? The current financial dilemma Greece faces should call for public scrutiny of what was done, which includes openly naming and shaming those who did this to the Greek people and in that regard, let’s all stop blaming ‘Ze Germans’!

But this view would not be complete without the two theatre plays that are also linked to this.

In one house we see Grexit, a Greek production with Director Tsipras and the supporting soundtrack by Varoufakis. You see, the emotional bytes from a Greek paramedic stating “We don’t have enough money to help people – we don’t have enough ambulances” is less than an appetizer, it is not even close to interesting, the issue is, how will the retired people of Greece buy water and bread? When the cash runs out, when people do not get paid and supermarkets cannot get paid, that will show the nightmare Greece is heading to in a very straight line, one that active non-posturing could have prevented in February 2015, Antonis Samaras was on that path, it was a painful path, no one will deny that, but the alternative we see now is about to get a lot harder and many times less humane! At http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32332221 we see the bills due, most of it was a known part, now add to that the public sector wages of 2.2 billion. There is only one part that could offend me. The quote “For some economists, potentially the best option would be for Greece to pursue a ‘managed default’” is the one I cannot find peace with, you see, managed default means that it is a staged setting of non-payments. Yet in those situations, the banks, the causers of grief will get paid, the retirees are very likely to end with nothing, or perhaps a mere two drachma on the Euro deal. Now, I could be COMPLETELY wrong here. I do not know how a managed default would pan out, but in my view, the ‘for Greece‘ is not the same as ‘for the Greek people‘, the second one should take precedence no matter what, but that might just be me.

In the other house we see the upcoming production of Brexit, a split Farage/Cameron production in different halls. The production is in turmoil, because duo ‘Fat Cat’ and ‘Bully’ are taking notice of this production and they do not like either play. The newspapers have been mentioning these issues. Latest noise comes from Paul Kahn, the Airbus UK chief “the company would reconsider its position in the country if Britain left the EU“. Why, is my question at that point? These industrial settings were a reality before the Euro and as such, they should remain a reality after Brexit. Several banks (like HSBC) and other firms made similar noise, many of them reliant on people who would lose fortunes when the Euro debts would strangle the nations as the larger players try to remains relatively safe from the Greek collapsing fallout. I question (to some extent) the actual issues that are at play when a Brexit would follow. In my view, the strict regulation of Greece and its debts would have diminished that risk. The fact that the Status Quo game was played so long after it was not feasible is at the heart of all this. A certain group of people now feel that they are in danger as they kept on sucking on ‘the tits of plenty’. These people went for the breasts of milk and honey in perpetuity, whilst ANY mother can tell you that this is not possible, a mother must rest, regain strength and resources. With the minimum of common sense any man can tell that a mother will need these parts too, yet the economy is not a mother, it needs no rest, it needs no nourishment, it will continue ‘ad infinitum’, or does it?

So now we get news that is viewed as bully tactics from industrials and exploiters towards the UK, with the clear message ‘stay in the EEC or else!’ Now we have the issue at play, because Greece is the first of three elements that imply that staying in the EEC is no longer feasible. I personally believe that David Cameron is trying to push the referendum forward, not to get out of the EEC, but to stay in the EEC, because if National Front (France) does get the votes, they will move away on principle and then the British population will follow ‘en mass’! Which will only drive the power of Nigel Farage. This paragraph is again speculation, but I believe it to be the true path we all face.

Now for the final part of the speculation, again, it is like a virtual path in data, to get anything tangible is not an option. I do not move in the circles that these players move, so I have nothing but my instinctual view on data. You see, I mentioned them before. Yet, one piece I did find. It is at http://cib.natixis.com/DocReader/index.aspx?d=6159546E36436C53616F365A3346735064757A5239413D3D. (attached below)

Here we see what I predicted all along. It is nice to see confirmation on such a high level and they foresaw it before I did (but not by much). Their paper is dated 26th May 2014, almost exactly a year ago. The quote that gives it is “It is therefore unlikely that we will see the GUE/NGL group – which brings together leftist tendencies from socialism to radical anti-capitalism – form a block with representatives from the PVV, the UKIP or the National Front. At the right, the ‘soft’ Euro sceptics in the ECR find it difficult to agree with the ‘hard’ in the EFD, as the parties they represent are often opponents on the national political arenas (e.g. Tories vs. UKIP or PdL vs. Lega Nord)“.

This is exactly what almost happened and the danger has not gone away, it is actually increasing. Yet, if the UK referendum falls before the French elections, the chance of separation is much smaller. Which means that with the UK referendum no longer an issue, if National Front does win, Natixis will have time to rescale their assets. That is at the heart of the linked matter. Natixis has well over HALF A TRILLION Euro in assets. One French firm, 15 members of that board (including 4 women) yield a bat that is more formidable then David Cameron can bring to the table and these people stay OUT of the limelight. Headed by François Perol, together with the members Daniel Karyotis, Thierry Cahn, Alain Condaminas, Laurence Debroux, Alain Denizot, Michel Grass, Catherine Halberstadt, Anne Lalou, Bernard Oppetit, Stéphanie Paix, Henri Proglio, Philippe Sueur, Nicolas de Tavernost and Pierre Valentin represent the unspoken brilliance of the assets economy! They achieved without the economic power of the United States, what Alan Greenspan couldn’t achieve with the powers of the US Federal reserve behind him. Consider that in the game of Roulette the bank always wins, in this game the bank lost and Natixis bested both the odds and the bank, they just did not advertise it. Now we see that the worry of Natixis never left and the play is still moving towards what Natixis regards to be a radical anti-capitalistic unity. I for one am not opposed to capitalism, but they too must be held to a level of accountability, an aspect that they denied existence of and as such the situation has escalated to the point where we are at now.

So, if this is all Greek to you, then you are not alone. I am not an economist and I am also in doubt on the correctness of my view, yet my data expertise pushes me to these elements and so far my predictions have panned out correctly. Which means that Greece is at the centre of many events and driving additional other events. Nigel Farage has grown UKIP and as the economy deteriorates that power growth is only getting stronger, but for the next 55 months it is not an issue, the French Milestone of National Front is only 22 months away and that is a worry for Natixis, 22 months is not enough to resettle well over half a trillion euros, especially when none of the moveable markets would remain stable.

So behind Greece and its debt is a tsunami of economic turmoil, the Greek people might not realise that Greece is small compared to some other issues, but those other issues will not allow the Greeks to be the reason for the other domino stones to fall. As I see it Alexis Tsipras was nowhere near ready to play the game he played on the level it needed to be played at!

Is it still all Greek to you?

Natixis_20150522

 

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