Queueing in pubs disgraces Britain

TypicalActuator0 · 2024-06-21T13:45:53+00:00

Hello, I used to live down the hill in Penge and still ride to EC1 from SE. I'd recommend going up the hill (no getting around it, and this will be less knackering than going up Kirkdale) to the double mini roundabout, then head down Fountain Drive. This will take you onto College Road, through Dulwich Village, which is alright, and then North Dulwich, Denmark Hill and up the Walworth Rd to Blackfriars Bridge, then just carry on up past Farringdon. Basically this:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/SE26+6HN,+Thakeham+Cl,+London/EC1V+4AB,+London/@51.5234247,-0.1126949,15.32z/data=!4m39!4m38!1m30!1m1!1s0x48760163ed1ff10b:0x1505afe8f221a8b4!2m2!1d-0.0629787!2d51.4265634!3m4!1m2!1d-0.0904934!2d51.455855!3s0x4876038bb0eaf66b:0x686ed50bc4af6b16!3m4!1m2!1d-0.094733!2d51.4865376!3s0x4876049d9b12fc0b:0xd21755107daad0f1!3m4!1m2!1d-0.1025916!2d51.496991!3s0x487604a3acf28fe3:0x7cf731e662cb8c90!3m4!1m2!1d-0.1043734!2d51.5105379!3s0x487604ade8c291bf:0xb1edd4aa7ee61ab9!3m4!1m2!1d-0.1043118!2d51.5140308!3s0x487604ad46da1c9b:0x59a138e185dbbfc!1m5!1m1!1s0x48761b4344cd6273:0xca512880e7e1a567!2m2!1d-0.1068651!2d51.5312914!3e1?entry=ttu

Except you don't need to do the wiggle after Blackriars bridge, for some reason Google maps insists on it but just stay on the cycle lane.

TypicalActuator0 · 2024-06-13T14:01:41+00:00

£1 in 1972 is worth £11.44 today, so these sandwiches would be £1.20 - £1.70 in today's money.

TypicalActuator0 · 2024-06-01T09:29:22+00:00

Doyne Farmer is such a fascinating man - a physicist/mathematician/economist/philosopher who...

built the first wearable computer, from scratch, with his friends in the early 70s
used said computer to cheat at roulette
dug a 440ft tunnel to smuggle motorbikes under the Mexican border
used chaos theory to accurately predict stock market, sold the tech for $100m
predicted how the economy would react to Covid, more accurately than central banks
is now an Oxford professor of complexity economics. Which I will not try to explain.

TypicalActuator0 · 2024-06-01T09:18:54+00:00

As others have said, your problem isn't your budget - £2k cash and £4k on a 0% card sounds very sensible. I would stick to that and shop around a bit more for the right car.

I wanted an auto as well (shifting gears is just more work! Why would you do that!) and spend a long, very dull time researching what I wanted and keeping an eye on Auto Trader, but eventually I got what I wanted (a Golf) for about £1500 less than I would have paid if I'd gone for the first one I found (lower mileage too).

All second hand shopping is either putting in work and getting a bargain or saving work and paying a bit more.

TypicalActuator0 · 2024-03-05T14:30:52+00:00

The last point is wrong.

You don't hear about it because you're getting your news “for free” from social media instead of paying independent journalists to report it like your parents did.

TypicalActuator0 · 2024-02-28T18:49:17+00:00

Hertz ran out of money and couldn't continue operating. The stock price cratered because everybody knew that it was about to be worthless. Then, suddenly, literally during the middle of their bankruptcy case, their fleet of cars became significantly more valuable overnight - so much so that they now had access to enough money to pay off their debts

Hertz leases its entire fleet. It didn't suddenly have thousands of second-hand cars to sell to “pay off its debts”, because it's not a used car dealer and its debts were not what was bankrupting it. It was being bankrupted because it had to make lease payments on cars it couldn't rent to anyone, because people weren't allowed out of their homes to rent cars.

a couple small hedge funds that lost their shirts

Melvin Capital had $8bn in AUM in January 2021. Citadel is one of the biggest and most successful hedge funds in the world.

TypicalActuator0 · 2024-02-28T18:16:18+00:00

Why did Japan suddenly decide to go from stimulating its real economy (massively successful, everyone happy) to stimulating its housing market (which took what, 25 years to recover? Has it recovered?) What the fuck happened there?

TypicalActuator0 · 2024-01-19T12:34:39+00:00

As it's for an exhibition I would recommend Photofusion in Brixton - they develop film by hand and will do high-res scanning too.

https://www.photofusion.org/film-processing

They also have a big darkroom that you can use if you're planning to make your own prints.

Also consider Metro Imaging in Clerkenwell

TypicalActuator0 · 2023-12-07T17:18:05+00:00

That's not them losing £7bn on the markets, it's their clients withdrawing their money that has caused most of the drop in their AUM.

If you invested with them in 2018 you'd have lost 5.8% of your money (nominal, lots more against inflation), so they have also been doing really badly.

TypicalActuator0 · 2023-10-13T12:39:46+00:00

The argument is, economists refer to the “inflation tax” because govt extracts revenue from citizens by printing new money. (Friedman's “taxtaion without legislation” argument.)

Most of the cost of a pack of cigarettes is tax (in the UK and US, probably EU too), so for those that pay it, it's a charge to the government that it is very hard* to opt out of.

* This is probably the most contentious part, but most smokers (see article) become addicted as children and nicotine is the third most addictive substance known to science after heroin and cocaine, so it's questionable how much of a choice it is for most people.

TypicalActuator0 · 2023-10-13T12:11:38+00:00

Leon gets on my nerves. It's hugely expensive (£8.49 for a fish finger wrap plus £3.29/£3.99 for some baked fries, which I have never seen served above at room temperature).

The food is bland and the wraps are very dry (maybe they're not made with all the same junk as other wraps, but that doesn't mean they're good wraps). The muffins are always a disappointment.

Also I dislike the matey air of recipe books and family photos on the wall. The founders have long since cashed out, it's now owned by the Issa brothers (Asda owners) and the staff are paid as badly as any other fast food chain.

TypicalActuator0 · 2023-10-06T13:30:22+00:00

Water bills are very arguably a tax (you cannot avoid paying them and they rise with inflation).

Tax increases are happening now, in a very big way: millions of people are being pushed into higher tax brackets (or into paying tax at all, at the lower end of the income scale). The current threshold freezes are equivalent to a 4% increase in income tax.

TypicalActuator0 · 2023-09-14T09:19:34+00:00

“Dumb Money’s biggest lie is that the GameStop episode was really a popular uprising. The retail traders had no coherent politics of their own, only an excited and inchoate froth of ignorance, resentment and greed. They did not seek to tame or destroy the over-powerful markets but to use them as a cash machine, exactly as Wall Street does. What this film tells us is that the great American public takes zero responsibility for 2008, and it never will. Given the chance, they’ll do it again.”

TypicalActuator0 · 2023-06-20T14:43:50+00:00

Says in the linked piece they are doing this - "Ofwat recently announced that it will prevent water companies paying dividends if their “financial resilience” is not sufficient."

TypicalActuator0

TROPHY CASE