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the_fatcat

Listed below are comments made by the_fatcat between Wednesday, 7th October 2009 and Thursday, 10th December 2009.

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Time to hug a banker? 3:30pm on 10 Dec 2009 60. At 2:25pm on 10 Dec 2009, gdocherty wrote:
"Just how many banks, both foreign and domestic, which have not required government assistance will be affected by this windfall tax? ....... Why should they and others like them suffer? ...... The majority of the people being paid these bonuses were, are and will remain deserving of them"

Deserving of them? The tax only affects bonuses over £25,000. Who 'deserves' a single bonus which is more that the annual average earnings? In some cases, certain individuals are getting a single bonus which is ten times what an average individual can hope earn in an entire lifetime?

In these rewards Western society has lost all sense of relative values and objective judgement of absolute worth. History shows us that all civilizations eventually collapse. I truly believe that we are living through the collapse of ours.
Efficiency trap 11:56am on 09 Dec 2009 101. At 10:54am on 09 Dec 2009, Alan Greaves wrote:
"The dominant cost driver in the public service is staff costs. The savings needed will only be achieved by swinging staff cuts, maybe 100,000 off the public payroll."

Try ten times that number. I believe we could loose 1,000,000 public service employees without the population of this country noticing any actual difference in the level of provision of 'front line' services.
We're all bankers now 8:06pm on 07 Dec 2009 Government guarantee = no bonuses.

How difficult is that to understand?
Public servants on $20m a year 12:02pm on 03 Dec 2009 37. At 11:46am on 03 Dec 2009, U13457721 wrote:
"New reality TV show idea.

Investment bankers appear on telly to justify why they should get their obscene pay and bonus.

At end of programme viewers get opportunity to vote on whether or not they should get their bonus or be sacked - no middle ground."

Or better still, executed - just like in a recent episode of Spooks....
The fear of minarets 2:15pm on 30 Nov 2009 A decisive, democratic decision from a cultured, educated and peaceful nation.

Let's see what the global response from "the religion of peace" is.
Facts about file-sharing 6:37pm on 29 Nov 2009 46. At 11:25am on 29 Nov 2009, G5airplane wrote:
"...I'd also like to say one more thing. It's estimated that 7 million of us fileshare. Isn't it common sense that if 7 million people in your country are breaking the law, then it's the law that needs to change?"

Er, no, it's education which needs to change - and drastically, starting at primary school. You learn from a very early age that you can't walk into HMV and just take a CD or DVD that you'd 'like to have' without paying for it, so why should you expect to get the music contained on that CD, or the film on that DVD, without paying for it?

You obviously want the actual music contained on the CD, or the actual film contained on the DVD, otherwise you'd be happy with a completely blank CD or DVD, wouldn't you? No? Well then, you are now on the first step to understanding it's the music or film which has the intrinsic value - and you need to pay to enjoy that value.
Facts about file-sharing 6:20pm on 29 Nov 2009 48. At 12:00pm on 29 Nov 2009, StargateHitchHiker wrote:
"Rory,

Well done on using the correct legal terminology - UNLAWFUL. It is not illegal.

But I see the chap at the BPI and posters #36 (Blue_Blood1) & # 37 (the_fatcat) are still banging out the same old Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) about it being a criminal act. It is nothing of the sort.
For both your benefit, and for the benefit of the chap at the BPI, I will, once again, explain the difference between illegal and unlawful:"

OK - unauthorised filesharing of copyright material, per se, may be "unlawful", but as you are obviously intent on expounding the letter of the law to defend these 'unlawful acts', you would also know that theft of intellectual property and copyright infringement is a criminal offence in the UK under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Those who carry out the primary extraction of copyright material (eg ripping a CD) and then placing it in the public domain (eg uploading to a torrent server) would be caught under this legislation.
Facts about file-sharing 7:06pm on 28 Nov 2009 6. At 1:52pm on 27 Nov 2009, its-all-gone-wrong wrote:
" where I can legally download an album of equivalent quality to that of a compact disc, i.e. lossless, at a price that reflects the absence of a physical product and its associated manufacturing, storage and distribution costs i.e. at a price significantly lower than that of a compact disc? Once you’ve solved that little problem people might start to resent the music industry a little less."

This old chestnut again: "A CD only costs 40 pence to make. Why do I have to pay £10 for it? That's the 'fatcat' record companies ripping you off"

Ok, for you, and all the others that think music should be 'free' let's go through this one more time:

Studio hire - equipment (microphones, mixing desks, computers, software)
Technical maintenance
Sound engineers
Recording producer
Sound editor
Mastering engineer
Music copyist
Session musicians
Photographer
Graphic designers
Booklet editor
Picture researcher
Picture reproduction rights
Mechanical royalties
Marketing
advertising
Promotion

= 80-90% of the cost of a CD

Manufacturing, distribution, storage

= 10-20% of the cost of a CD

Still wondering why on-line downloads are not that much cheaper than a physical CD?

And to all the rest of you: illegal filesharing takes the bread out of the mouths of all those people listed above who earn their living producing high-quality recorded music - so you can steal it.
Steve Jobs: Teenage hero? 12:49pm on 17 Oct 2009 28 mark-dj wrote:

" just go on eBay and type in PowerBook G4 - there are 5 year old laptops going for prices far in excess of what they are actually worth. "

Really? A Powerbook G4 can run 10.5.11 - the last version of Leopard before Snow Leopard was released a month ago and the latest versions of most commercial software, particularly in the creative field (Quark, Photoshop, Logic...and MS Office) without too much difficultly.

I would like to see a 5-year old PC trying to run Vista and the latest versions of Quark and Photoshop. That's probably why old Macs retain their resale value.
Tories bash the rich 10:55am on 07 Oct 2009 Robert wrote:

"Or do they pay what George Osborne has signalled as the new maximum - viz £197,689 (actually presumably it's a bit less than that, since the Tories would impose a pay cut on all ministers)?

But if a newly recruited boss of Royal Mail, or the BBC or the Bank of England were paid less than £200,000 a year, surely all his or her more junior colleagues would also have to see their pay slashed?"

I think £197,689 per annum is a perfectly reasonable salary. If someone will be the PM for that (with the possibility of being cast out of their job within 5 years) then I see no any argument at all for higher salaries in any of the other positions you list.

'No one will do it for that!' I can see mandarins arguing. Really? I'll do it for that - and I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other perfectly capable people in the country (not that I'm arguing that I fall into that category!) who would!

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