Off Topic The "Discuss Anything Else" Thread

We paid for a DNA test once we had her over here. Wanted to make sure there were no banned breeds in her

 

Through the charity, she came micro chipped, flea and worm treated, they did a blood test to check for any issues, she's got her own passport and fully vaccinated. £250 "donation" and £200 travel expenses. Didn't think that was too bad given how much dogs cost these days, the fact that we don't have to do any of the above because its all been done and of course we gave a vulnerable puppy a home which can only be a good thing.

 

That’s fantastic mate and I bet it is so rewarding, win win.
Been following Rory Cellan-Jones on Twitter as he has done the same as you. Their journey together is really heart warming but he has required so much patience.

 

Anyway that got you motivated for the week ahead. Anyone going to Cheltenham have a good one but keep your heads down as you pass the animal rights activists but if you get a chance on the sly drop them a few sheckles. We wouldn’t want them to expose your hypocrisy. Oh and don’t forget your Ukrainian scarf so you can openly show off your woke credentials on st Patrick’s day Thursday. Be mindful to send Zelenskyy all your winning because his need is greater than yours.
Cheers.

 

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Is Kosha?

 

I’ll hang around as long as possible if only to keep you on your toes.

 

§§

 

Maybe not stick. But They/Them certainly have

 

I think you mean Kosher?

(I did look-up Kosha, which is Sanskrit and means the five layers of the human body, and is a term used in Yoga)
Source: Wikipedia.

 

This is definitely a thing Oddy. Exactly the same happened with my parents. My dad went from stern lectures in the 80s about how Scargill and his like was looking out for our people to Boris fan by the end of his life. He was a bit of a snob though. He was brainwashed by the Telegraph

 

He wasn’t brainwashed, like most working class people he was let down by the Labour Party. Eventually he saw through their lies . Blair wasn’t a socialist he was a Tory . He’s the reason we’re in the ****. As for the European Union, the working classes were sold down the river by Labour. Not many of them left now, the generation that worked and gave their lives for the life you have today.
Mark my words. You will sell your kids into servitude. You won’t be around to see though, they’ll get rid of you just like the last great generation that built this country who would stand by and watch globalist tyranny.

 

Yeah you crack on. Whilst you get poorer my wealth increases. I’m immune from the globalist tyranny. Whilst you’ll be on the rat race treadmill I’ll be pursuing my interests watching from the sidelines.

 

it’s not inevitable surely , plenty of people stay

How so

Do tell, oh wise one

 

The link to the story on the BBC News site was, not too unpredictably, a little out of date and not telling us much other than Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) had gone bust. The bank had become insolvent ostensibly because there was a run on it as many of its business customers withdraw their funds.

It is strange how developments varied on the two sides of The Pond.

Over in the USA, the Fed simply let SVB go to the wall as it had done Lehman Brothers back at the start of the Financial Crisis. So there was past precedence and that was surely better than somebody waking up Sleepy Joe and trying to suggest any alternative course of action. The Fed also decided that it would protect the depositors beyond the $250k business insurance scheme (actually, that is US taxpayers will protect them).

Over here, perhaps to the surprise of many, the government intervened and Rishi Sunak, the Treasury and the Bank of England persuaded HSBC to take over at SVB UK, rescuing a big bunch of UK start-up companies (many of them fintech or life sciences) that could potentially have gone to the wall. Selling SVB UK to HSBC for £1 seems a master stroke, but who underwrites the UK bank deposit scheme?

I heard from one of the venture capital funds yesterday that of the 278 companies that they currently support, only 4 per cent would have been impacted by an SVB UK insolvency. They neglected to mention how much the 11 companies would have lost.

 

Amazing you never knew my ol man but can comment on his character and motivations with absolute certainty. Whatever his meandering political leanings one absolute constant was he was never a fan of know all gobshites.

 

Andrew Bailey is at it again. If you'd have taken everything he has said over the last 3 years and gone against it you would have done very well.

 

When Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves went on the Today programme on Radio 4, she simply ignored any questions about potential Labour policies and just stuck to the “I hate the Tories” broken record. When the Governor of the Bank of England (BoE) went on Today, he treated the listeners like a bunch of morons that failed GCSE Economics.

Here is a substantive part of the article that the Telegraph carried under the headline Interest rates will have to rise further if companies keep putting up prices, warns Bailey on Friday.

“
Andrew Bailey has warned businesses against trying to “beat inflation” with large price rises, warning that interest rates may be forced higher if they do.
The Governor of the Bank of England said companies risked fuelling inflation by continuing to increase prices.
Mr Bailey warned companies that interest rates may need to be raised further if “all prices try to beat inflation”.
The Bank of England raised interest rates for the 11th time in a row on Thursday after inflation unexpectedly increased to 10.4pc in February.
Mr Bailey said he had not seen evidence of companies putting up prices more than necessary but warned that policymakers would need to raise rates if inflation looked likely to become “embedded”.
Mr Bailey told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: “When companies set prices I understand they have to reflect the costs that they face.
“But when they are setting prices in the economy we do expect inflation to come down this year and I would say please bear that in mind.”
He added: “I would say to people who are setting prices: please understand if we get inflation embedded, interest rates will have to go up further and higher inflation really benefits nobody.
“It hurts people, and it particularly hurts the least well-off in society.”
”

In the last eighteen months, the Governor has persisted in blaming everyone but himself and former Governor Mark Carney (the real culprits) for inflation.

First inflation was only going to be “transitory” and would sort itself out. It was the war in Ukraine. It was global energy prices. It was employees demanding excessive pay rises. Now it is businesses hiking prices as their input costs rise. Bailey seems to forget that businesses operate to make a profit and that the taxes on those profits pay for public services.

It is his job to control inflation – his target is supposed to be 2 per cent – but inflation is currently five times his target and food price inflation is eight times his target. Such incompetence would see people in other spheres sacked.

He slashed interest rates to virtually nothing during the pandemic and printed money with alacrity for Bolshevik Boris and Socialist Sunak to squander. Then he reacted too slowly as inflation began to gather steam. His predecessor started the rot, overwatering the Magic Money Tree for a decade.

When Rachel Reeves is in No. 11 Downing Street, he will be delighted as she used to work at the BoE and is sure to follow Establishment orthodoxy. However, the rabid Left of her party will surely demand price controls as well as her much heralded windfall taxes and rinsing the rich (that are going to pay for her green fantasy economy).