It's a word we'll probably all have to get used to spelling. Rhyming slang I believe.
sorry, what does it rhyme with? [/thick]
Boracic lint = skint.
It ended up being shortened to 'boracic', usually pronounced 'brassic'.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Me and a buddy had a habit of subverting rhyming slang for no other reason than it occasionally made us giggle:
"Up the apples and stairs"
"Trouble and wife"
"Down the battle boozer"
"I couldn't give a Donald Fúck"
"I'm on the dog and phone"
"Gone for a J Arthur Wank"
etc ad nauseum, you get the picture. Yawn.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
UndercoverElephant wrote:
We also still made stuff. We had a large and diverse industrial sector - or at least we were in a position where we could easily rebuild those sectors after the damage caused by the war. Now all we make is things like racing cars and hi-tech military equipment. We have built an economy based on finance, higher education and "services" and import most of the useful stuff from abroad instead of making it.
Nah, you live too far south. We still make stuff oop north. The UK is still 7th biggest manufacturing nation.
(Not that that's anything to be proud of - there is quite enough stuff already been made. We should re-use what we've got.)
UndercoverElephant wrote:
We also still made stuff. We had a large and diverse industrial sector - or at least we were in a position where we could easily rebuild those sectors after the damage caused by the war. Now all we make is things like racing cars and hi-tech military equipment. We have built an economy based on finance, higher education and "services" and import most of the useful stuff from abroad instead of making it.
Nah, you live too far south. We still make stuff oop north. The UK is still 7th biggest manufacturing nation.
(Not that that's anything to be proud of - there is quite enough stuff already been made. We should re-use what we've got.)
The rating of the UK as the 7th biggest manufacturer is misleading, I would argue.
We are the 7th biggest assembler of overseas produced components. Assemblies that are then re-badged as "made in Britain".
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
The difficulty is making stuff for the rest of the world that can be sold at a competitive price.
Abolishing labour rights, the minimum wage, welfare, health and safety is one way to go, of course.
I have just been reading about the Mormon missionaries in the Lancashire of the mid-nineteenth century (when the UK was the 'workshop of the world'); the Americans were shocked to see folk passing out in the street from lack of food. Plus young children were working long hours in factories and sent down pits. Horrendous industrial accidents etc.
. . . and that was a time when Britain had many captured markets that pretty much had to supply cheap raw materials and buy finished stuff from our factories.
Unfortunately the freeing-up of international trade brought about through GATT and the WTO has created a race to the bottom in manufacturing and raw material extraction costs. As long as this prevails, there will always be one unfortunate corner of the World that is prepared to accept primeval working conditions in return for being lifted even slightly out of abject poverty.
Once China and India become all middle-class and reject this way of living, who will be next to take on the role? Haiti? Nigeria?
International trade works well when there is an exchange of needed commodities to the benefit of both parties. It doesn't work well (IMO) when we get the race to the bottom caused by massive disparities in living costs and standards, resulting in companies out-sourcing their manufacturing to the lower cost countries to line the pockets of the shareholders that don't have a moral stake in these countries.
I think we need to be moving to a state where we are as self-sufficient as possible, importing stuff when we genuinely need to, not just when it's economically convenient to do so.
Now perhaps I’ve led a sheltered life, but something about Portuguese tax payers bailing out the daughter of the President of Angola, especially given the reality of Angola, strikes me as perverse if not outrageous. And let’s be clear this is what is happening. The bank, a private business, has got itself in deep trouble and would go bankrupt which would ruin its owners.
Except that the Portuguese government has decided to force the Portuguese tax payers to put €1.5 billion of their money in to the bank so that it can remain profitable for its owners. I put it like that because…that is actually how it is. Banks can and often do go bankrupt without the depositors being effected.
Bankers and politicians will always warn of the risks to ordinary people but it is their own wealth and power that they are really looking out for. Hundreds of banks have gone bankrupt in America for example and none of the depositors have lost a cent. When banks go bankrupt the people who use the bank are protected. They go in and out as usual. But the owners, the share holders, lose everything. As do the bond holders starting with the most junior and working up to the most senior, each losing their money until the banks’ debts are paid off. That is how it should be.
‘Saving’ banks is about protecting the owners, the bond holders and those politicians whose power and prestige is aligned with that of the owners, and very often also tied into the bad deals which brought the bank to its knees in the first place.
The point is this, if any citizen of Europe, or any ordinary person, were to walk in to Banco BPI (the bank in question) and try to deposit €10 000 in cash that transaction would be reported to the Central bank under international anti money-laundering regulations. If the central bank had suspicions they would in turn alert the relevant police authorities. But, it seems, if the daughter of the President of Angola walks in with 50 million euros, which is what her initial stake in Banco BPI cost, no one thinks to ask where that money came from.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Tarrel wrote:Unfortunately the freeing-up of international trade brought about through GATT and the WTO has created a race to the bottom in manufacturing and raw material extraction costs. As long as this prevails, there will always be one unfortunate corner of the World that is prepared to accept primeval working conditions in return for being lifted even slightly out of abject poverty.
Indeed.
Strange how a country develops with a level of protection, but once top dog and able to enforce and abuse market dominance it's a change of heart and Free Trade, GATT, WTO, NAFTA etc.
I heard on the World Service recently (hardly a hotbed of radicalism) that the IMF always push the Washington Consensus. Not good for ordinary people, for long-term sustainability or stability in the world; there has to be a better way.
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