threegee

Backbench MPs have agreed to hold a debate on a referendum on our membership of the EU. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15354203 Let's hope this starts the ball rolling on some genuine democratic process. With the Euro teetering and the politicos myths about it now thoroughly discredited this could be exactly the right time to re-examine the mess the political classes have got us into. Great that three options are proposed. Left to their own devices the politicos would rather a stark in or out - with all the scaremongering warnings about the latter - were the only possibilities. Even UKIP doesn't want the latter. We need to get back to what we actually agreed to thirty odd years ago: a commercial free-trade union, not a federal Europe!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15344297 Graph says it all. Double digit at some point in the coming years - the natural consequence of printing money!

Time in use: Over six months. Current Configuration: 2 Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB SATA 5400RPM Hard Drives. Price: About £64 plus about £55 each for drives - all from Amazon on free delivery. Description: The DNS-320 is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) box. Mine came with the original Version 1 firmware, but the upgrade to the latest version was painless. So painless that I've forgotten how long it took - but it was of the order of 15 minutes. The latest firmware completely transforms the feel of the thing and reportedly fixes a few bugs. The box also has an auxiliary USB port under a flap on the front, and this seems to do the job of networking that odd USB hard drive quite well. I don't think this USB will network a printer though (don't need to so never tried it), but I could be wrong here. The unit supports stand-alone bit torrenting, FTP, and has a scheduler for automatic transfers, etc. etc., though I've not had occasion to try any of the bells and whistles yet. In Use: Initially I bought the box with only one 2TB drive. This was because I didn't want to invest in RAID until I decided the NAS was going to be of some use. Also I didn't want to buy two drives from the same manufacturing batch to use in a RAID setup. Consequently I waited well over three months before ordering up the second Samsung Spinpoint F4. When it arrived I slipped the top cover off - the whole thing is utterly screw-less, and the drives are simply held in place by gravity - and dropped the new drive into the second slot power on! The little blue LEDs seemed to be doing something so I refitted the top and walked away. A day or two later I slipped the top off and hot-pulled the original drive. It was very satisfying to find all the NAS data still fully accessible, and I popped the original drive back in again. Not wishing to push my luck on live data this is as far as the experimentation has gone, though I'm sufficiently confident in the set-up to not feel too compelled to keep keep further backups of the data. Logically I should probably blow another £55 and use it to swap with the mirror drive every so often, and store the third drive remotely - yes, will get around to this real soon! Verdict: Excellent value for money, particularly when you consider you are buying a complete (ARM CPU based) networking computer here. The whole thing is a bit plasticy - unlike the more expensive Netgear NAS I was considering last year - but it's easily solid enough. Transfer speeds measured from my laptop using a cheapo 1Gbit/s network switch are of the order of 20-24MB/s second (bytes/sec not bits/sec folks!), which is plenty fast enough for multiple HD video streams or full computer backups. The only improvement I'd like to see is a hard on/off switch so that the box powers up itself after a power outage; you need to press the power button after a power glitch, and if the unit is sited remotely, as mine is, you have to go seek it out to press the power key. Would instantly buy another one, and may well do so when the 2TB of RAID space on this one starts to run out. Recommended!

The "Where does it mention "Asian", or is this in FACT just a typical unintelligent sterotype?" thread is a laugh a second.

The big boys often have less of a clue than the small guys. There's actually nowhere much to go if you are an investor, though anything (save Govt promises) beats bank/BS deposits. In inflationary times investments in good companies with real earnings and with pricing power is the way to go. If you can pick them up during the inevitable blood-on-the-screens days then so much the better. This is why the markets are turbulent yet resilient. The big losers will inevitably be people on fixed incomes, and people who refuse to take multiple small risks. And, if you are Joe Average Worker with no savings, your problem is being caught in the vice of price inflation without the usual corresponding wage inflation. This is the paradox of the markets: by far the bigger risk is to convince yourself that you aren't running any! As for the general situation - well, yes - we are all supremely &*&&*&*'d!

"Politics on the rates" a firmly established principal in good ole Wansbeck, so why should national government be any different?

It's not rational. It assumes that the Banks exist in the same world of accountability as their customers. What is rational - and would have prevented the current credit free-for-all - is a levy on fractional reserve lending. You or I expect to have to pay for a licence to do this or that, but the banks get a licence to create money for free.

It's down into the bunkers for the euro-politicos! "Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said Thursday the ECB would offer an unlimited amount of 12-month and 13-month credits." Isn't this fait currency thing all about credibility and confidence? And, take a look at the 30 day gold price. As I pointed out earlier: you can't preserve wealth by following a herd mentality. Merv seldom says much of significance - well that's his job - but he's determined not to be on the wrong side of history. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15210112 Will more QE work though? Well, if I was being compulsory purchased and found my fund in possession of oodles of QE funny money I'd be tempted to move it to more stable climes, and not do what he hopes I'd do with it. The only real term "benefit" will likely be stir up a bit more inflation. Why doesn't he come clean and bury the 2% inflation target nonsense for good?!

http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-15180835 Maybe we should be considering a move to technologically advanced Bulgaria?

Goodness, yet another out-by-one programming error in this code!

It will never replace Home Highway!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14705838 You know what; Dr Swire is no fool, and he's right! The Scottish justice system knows it is wrong, but hasn't got the decency to come right out and say so. That's the real reason why they released him "on licence", though no one but an idiot can deny he's terminally ill. Despite the CIA frame-up, in time we may still well get to the real truth here. Even ex-CIA people are saying the whole thing stinks!

That's likely because you weren't logged in. The Northumberland Chat Forum is special in that it allows posts from non-members. If you haven't logged in your post will require approval, if you have it won't. It has been that way for a long time.

Will Not Be Liked? Amazing that when you mention this the old meaningless socialist e-word always comes up in the first sentence. In recent times TMW has done more damage to people's chances of getting a job, and to British industry, than anything else. The government has no right to dictate what parties should or should not accept in free negotiation - particularly when it does it for tawdry vote-getting purposes. If the government thinks that people aren't being paid enough as an hourly rate then it should put it's money where its mouth is and provide the extra out of the public purse. It would be a fraction of what they already pay on the dole and make good economic sense for everyone. It's also good social engineering because TMW stupidity destroys the work habit and actively encourages state dependency. There are disabled people sitting bored at home but wanting to work and employers willing to employ them, but big-brother socialism says no. Crazy! That's curtains for a lot of people on the dole then! Set term maybe - it works in the USA. If you are going to have a true insurance scheme then HMG is the last organisation anyone should trust to run it! Well, a start already has been made on planning, so lets see how far they get. I'd be surprised if enacted reforms have a fraction of the impact on the economy as they could have though. No it wasn't lack of regulation, it was lack of transparency caused by over-regulation. Too many people to pass the buck to; too many regulations to quote to cover your backside; and a supreme overall lack of common sense. The simply huge amount of current "compliance" kills competition because it militates towards ever larger organisations who can support the layers of unproductive activity. In amongst this hide the "financial engineers" who come up with ever-more complicated, obscure and interdependent "financial products" designed - as if by magic - to wring ever greater returns out of simple market activities for the issuers. The net result is patterns of trading that no one understands, least of all the issuers of these "products". It might be hard for the politicos to understand this, but you can't regulate your way out of this sort of thing. The only sane approach is a back to basics one. Back to what worked in the past. Back to people who understand their customers and the true risk to lenders they represent - the local bank manager. The last bit isn't true, and I speak as one of those small investors. There's a different set of constraints to the big boys, but smaller investors can - and frequently do - run rings around them. As I said the real problem with the markets is where smaller companies who need to raise capital meet up with far too much regulation and level of expense. The sort of investors who would punt on very small companies don't need the level of protection promised by the main markets. Not even the level of protection offered by AIM. We need a "Dragon's Den" market for smaller enterprises where risk can be widely spread and maybe the level of any individual's single investment is severely limited. This, of course, wouldn't interest larger investors, but the potential returns and excitement would certainly interest many experienced smaller ones. Agreed.

They sent them to an Italian lab forgetting that 2011 is a public holiday?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14582499 Enter NE22 in the box. T-Mobile looks the best, and Vodaphone looks quite poor at "the station". Not too many results collected for Three, but what there are look good. I suspect that Three might have the best overall coverage.

Ah, but he's wearing those invisible Teflon gloves!

http://blogs.aljazee...ug-24-2011-0824 http://www.sandraoff...y-habib-haddad/ http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/english/2011/02/gadaffi-cartoons.html

Pretty much says it all about the irrationality behind the current mess: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14587364 Some of the conclusions we'd already reached here, but it takes a wider view of them. The "Sooner or later leaders will emerge who accept that Greece will have to leave the euro, even though the process is bound to be extremely traumatic” has obvious parallels in the UK experience of the 1980's. General conclusion: politicians can't change their spots; you just have to hope that more rational ones come along to save something from the stupidity, and the unenlightened self-interest, of their predecessors.

Share Capital actually works pretty well. Where it's inefficient is once again due to over-regulation - which kills competition, allows merchant banks to charge exorbitant fees, and excludes smaller enterprises on cost grounds. I've had people say that all the post-flotation market trading is froth and does nothing to further enterprise. But that ignores the fact that investors have to be provided with an exit on their own timescale or they wouldn't commit in the first place. Ditto the evil "shorting", which - rather than the parasitic activity it's often represented to be by poor managements - limits excess and brings the guilty and inept to book. Day traders generally trade themselves into the ground, and longer-term investors near universally win on the law of averages providing they spread their capital around enough. The public purse creams off a cut on every transaction win or lose. So it's not a part of our system that's badly broke, and so doesn't need much fixing. It has - in most respects - actually improved over the years, particularly since the advent of on-line trading. Nothing at all the FSA did of course; just market forces!

It's a well known fact that outdoor air-con comes a lot cheaper in the UK. BTW, I said here when we "won" the Oilypics that it was a disaster, and that the French would have the last laugh given the size of the looming economic disaster. Not sure how many members agreed then - but they sure do now! You can't blame Dave making political capital out of the completion even if there is mass amnesia as to the original figures. That's what p-oily-ticians do for a living. c.f. The Millennium Dome and the Mandelsonian/Prescott !*!@#-up! Anyway, Dave isn't likely to go as overboard as Teflon Tony at The Dome's opening ceremony: "In the Dome we have a creation that, I believe, will truly be a beacon to the world".

World leaders you say! That's exactly what we haven't got! There are solutions out there but they are all politically unacceptable. For the UK the first thing that needs to be done is to kill the minimum wage to get people back to work according to their capacity. Then get rid of all the politically driven so-called employment protection - get back to the days where an employee could walk straight into employment without their potential employer having to worry about all the long-term consequences. The dole should rapidly become a top-up system - not a substitute for work that everyone else has to shoulder. The planning laws need to be scrapped too. There's already a start on this but it doesn't go far enough. There should be an implicit right to build, and anyone who feels that it's inappropriate should have to do a lot more than write a letter of objection. That's how we got all those listed buildings - and precious few since we started overprotecting them, and making people conform to lowest-common-denominator style for new constructions! Overprotection in Banking (and fat bankers) led up to the present mess, and a lot of the banking regulation needs to be quickly rolled back to allow local banks (ones that can be allowed to fail) to exist once again. We'll get back truly local banking jobs again, bank managers that can manage with local knowledge, and real competition for our savings. Hundreds of other reforms are needed, but none are going to be floated by the present spineless political class, because they have to explain in more than a sound-bite why they are truly necessary. That's not to mention the fact that their party probably supported the populist crap that introduced much of the self-immolating stuff in the first place - so they'd have to admit to being wrong! With all this goes an automatic reduction in state expenditure on things that at the end of the day limit growth, and are only there for political gloss. i.e. The cuts become automatic and obvious; no need to agonise about which is the lesser evil, and how to "fairly" apportion scarce resources. Huge droves of government/quasi-government drones would have to find real and productive jobs, with the release of their wages redeployed to pay down Gordo's debt mountain, and properly fund working people's pensions (not theirs!). Maybe we need the collapse of the World as we know it to shed all the baggage wished onto us by the liberal elite, and to get back to basics? There is no leadership to speak of out there at the moment, so natural forces may have to do the job for us.

It's calculating the root of all minus numbers - so I guess it must be imaginary.

Heard on the radio today from ardent lefty female justifying the behaviour on the grounds that the police had indulged in an illegal shooting in London: The problem is that the riots were hijacked by criminal elements. Clearly something to guard against when planning future riots!

Where is the appalling Ed Balls in all this? Bogus cheque writer extraordinary, and the Albert Speer of the current meltdown. At least Gordo had the elementary decency to scurry away to a dark hole somewhere. And, if Ed isn't enough balls, you get a double helping with that mouth-disconnected-from-brain Mrs Balls (who for some strange reason prefers to be known as Yvette Cooper).