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deamon138

Listed below are comments made by deamon138 between Friday, 7th August 2009 and Tuesday, 8th September 2009.

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Will T'Orange be good for shoppers? 7:20pm on 08 Sep 2009 "His argument went like this - we already have a more competitive market than in any other European country. France has just three big operators, Spain four, and in Germany the two biggest players have more than 80% of the market."

The rest of Europe has massive monopolies therefore we should do the same?? Is he as dumb as how that reads?

How about the mobile companies in the rest of Europe being broken up instead?
An end to bankers' bonuses? 7:47pm on 03 Sep 2009 "If you limit the amount of a bank's profit that can be distributed to employees, you are at least addressing the key issue, which is whether those employees - as a group - are taking cash out of the institution which ought to be saved for a rainy day."

No Stephanie, that's not the key issue with this. The key issue is that bankers' pay and bonuses are linked to short term profits. But this creates a moral hazard, as the incentive is for bankers to follow overly risky policies thus driving up the profits and stature of the bank in the short term (e.g. Fred Goodwin and RBS), without heed to the long term stability of the bank (which, taking RBS as an example again, was not good). This moral hazard was one of the (many) failures in the chain that led to the economic crisis. It is this moral hazard that needs to end. You don't need a cap on pay or anything like that, as all the governments need to do is link pay to the long term stability of the bank.

As for "saving cash for a rainy day", I agree that banks didn't keep enough capital and should be required to keep more in future, but I think this has less to do with the amount they've been paying themselves, and more to do with how much they've been lending out relative to how much customers have been putting in e.g. if you put £70 in the bank, they would keep £1 as part of its capital, and lend out the other £69 (or similar figures). That's obviously too risky, and needs to stop once the recession's over and bank lending loosens up again.
The new tech start-up: US government 01:17am on 22 Aug 2009 "I agree with #1, where are the open and accountable .gov.uk websites?!"

Have you tried, you know, looking?

e.g.:

www.statistics.gov.uk

Ours still need some work, but all the info is pretty much there (maybe even MPs expenses now!).
Responses to Megrahi release 8:23pm on 20 Aug 2009 Not sure if I agree whether he should be allowed to go back to Libya or not, but I do think that Cameron is wrong to say that he shouldn't have been released at all.

Yes, he didn't show compassion to those 270 people he killed. But that is what separates him from the rest of us. He showed no compassion. We do.
Baby Peter and anonymity 6:45pm on 13 Aug 2009 Steve, you say, "surely people will want the media to tell them if the information is publicly available".

But the question is WHY will people want the media to tell them their names are publicly available? Most of us haven't gained anything from being told their names. I mean compare the following two stories: "small child was violently abused horrendously" (essentially the original story), and "these are the names of the perpetrators from several months ago" (essentially what the latest "story" was). The only people who have gained anything from this latest "story" are people who "may understandably let their emotions affect them, and perform some sort of "witch-hunt/vigilante justice" on them" as I said above. So I don't think this "story" was serving anyone but a small sub-section of the public
Baby Peter and anonymity 9:22pm on 12 Aug 2009 "£1 million? Where DO they get these fanciful figures from?"

Why don't you read the BBC article I linked to and find out?
Baby Peter and anonymity 11:45pm on 11 Aug 2009 Can you explain why the names of these horrible people was the top story on BBC News today? The headline added nothing new to the story except what their names were. Why is that news vitally important news? Why is that more important than your other headlines, like the goings on in Burma, the Jewelery heist etc?

Now that you've told us their names, what will happen is if or when they're released, some people may understandably let their emotions affect them, and perform some sort of "witch-hunt/vigilante justice" on them.

So to stop that, taxpayer money will have to be paid out to change their identities etc. Not to mention that it will cost £1m per year to protect them in prison from attacks:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8196143.stm

I could understand if today's story added something new that was relevant to the case, such as new facts that had emerged, and you had revealed their names during the reporting of THAT story, but that's not what happened. You just revealed their names, for no reason other than to remind people of the story, let them know their names, and encourage vigilante justice. What possible public interest was there in revealing their names, especially as the main headline?

Thanks BBC and the rest of the MSM, you've done your country proud...
Osborne sets out Tory agenda 5:51pm on 11 Aug 2009 If progressive conservatism is not an oxymoron, then nothing is.

Of course, Labour lost their claim to progressivism a long time ago, but I see nothing in Conservative policy that would be seen as progressive. I agree with what one of the Lib Dems said, namely that, "A progressive party would not cut taxes for multi-millionaires, stand in the way of reforming Parliament or side with bigots, homophobes and climate change deniers in Europe."

I should also add that a progressive party would not cut taxes for married couples, so long as "married couple" fits the Tory ideal of a 1950s nuclear family, with one at work and the other at home, and heterosexual (gay people can't get married but civil partnerships currently provide them will all the same rights as marriage), and with children. Apparently Cameron has trouble understanding scientific research. The research showed that couples who are happy/stable are more likely to get married and therefore bring up happy/stable children. Cameron decided this meant that married couples are more happy/stable than non-married couples, and therefore tax breaks should encourage couples to get married for the sake of their children. Unfortunately, because he does not realise that they get married BECAUSE they are happy/stable, these tax breaks would just encourage non-stable couples to get married, and encourage any couples who may have divorced for the sake of their children to stay married. This would be the opposite of the intended policy, never mind the unfairness in only giving such tax breaks to straight, one parent working families, and no other married couples.

Also, Osborne is right that a progressive party would cut spending, but not right this minute as he wants to, but after the recession is over. He would have 1937 all over again, as back then in the US, the fiscal conservatives convinced FDR to slow his New Deal as the US looked like it was about to come out of Depression, and so balance the budget by cutting spending. Of course, this plunged the US back into Depression, not to recover until spending was required for the war effort.

And a sane party would not promise to cut the deficit while at the same time making all these promises of tax cuts (another not mentioned is they want to cut corporation tax).

So yeah, how again are the Tories progressive?
Clear answers to straightforward financial questions? 10:36pm on 07 Aug 2009 "What I find totally astonishing is that the gov't is going to stick another £50B into the banking bottomless pit, where that money is physically coming from is beyond me, have we got hiddeen funds stashed away or is it yet more reckless lending by the Gov't. Nobody on the public side of the banking fence will see a single penny of it AND at the end of the day, it WILL come out of our pay packets. When is this all going to stop."

The money doesn't come out of anyone's pay packets. This £50B is extra money for the Bank of England's Quantitative Easing policy. Some in the media talk about this as if the BoE is "printing money", and while not strictly true, in essence the BoE has created £50B. The BoE creates money all the time of course (where do you think the notes in your purse/wallet come from?) but QE is extra wealth creation than normal, and in a very complicated manner than normal too. So essentially, more money has been added to the economy, but this has no impact on the national debt. It is not lending, it is not borrowing, it is created. It does not have to be paid back.
What RBS's results say about QE 10:18pm on 07 Aug 2009 "fundamentally what we call money is now an instrument of debt rather than a store of value"

So money has no value? Good luck convincing people of that when you try to steal things in the shops because "money has no value". Or maybe when you come to pay your energy bills, the energy company will decide not to accept your money, as it has no value.

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