The Political Thread

[Richmond Clements]

Right!  I'm still getting my head 'round this, and you know what, I don't give a toss, if it's real money or not, they still put the jumper in a bag and gave it to me.  And, as long as I can go into a pub and hand over some of this "not real money" and get served with a pint of Guinness I really couldn't care less.  In fact, I wouldn't mind a few sackfuls of this "not real money", I'll find a use for it somehow!!

That was pretty much my thought process on it too...

[Old Tankie]

Christ, Richmond, we agree on something!  I'm sure it wont last!! 

[Richmond Clements]

Christ, Richmond, we agree on something!  I'm sure it wont last!! 

Ha! It's Christmas - it's a time for miracles!

[The Legendary Shark]

Tankie, the point isn't that your money can buy you a jumper - the point is, to whom does that money belong?

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You might think that the answer is obvious - it belonged to you and then you swapped it for a jumper so now it belongs to a shopkeeper. But that's only the smallest part of the story - the bit we all see and use and think we understand every day. Of course it's real money - you can buy stuff with it!

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But.

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That very money you paid for your jumper with was initially borrowed from a private source by the Bank of England. It was borrowed first and then printed. It was borrowed on the strength of a *promise* - the promise that it'll be paid back in the future - from your taxes.

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A Fiver, then comes into being worth *nothing* minus interest. It is worth nothing because, as soon as it is printed, as soon as it becomes 'real', it represents £5 worth of debt and £5 worth of credit at the same time (this is the trick at the heart of the scam, as far as I understand it) but, crucially, has already started incurring interest charges.

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Okay, so now your Fiver goes out into the world through many routes. Let's say our Fiver gets lent to a high street bank (because this is where high street banks get most of their money from - they borrow it from each other like some people switch debts between credit cards) at low interest. Now it's worth minus five pounds (because the high street bank needs to pay it back) and has two lots of interest pulling on it.

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Next step, some Old Dear draws the Fiver out of her bank account as part of her pension. The Fiver is now worth minus ten pounds as the pension pot is now a fiver shy - and as pensions are funded through borrowing, that Fiver now has three lots of interest being sucked out of it.

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Your Old Dear spends our Fiver in the shop and pays VAT, so now our Fiver's worth minus ten quid, minus 20% VAT and still has three lots of interest on it.

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Then Tankie gets the Fiver in his change and swaps it for a jumper and more taxes taken out (is there VAT on jumpers?). The more the Fiver is used, the less it is worth to society and the more it is worth to the bankers.

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This is how our debts got to be so high and why our governments and societies are trapped - how can you pay back a debt when your money is worth less than nothing? Well, you start with the poor - you repossess their property and assign it a monetary value to balance the books.

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That jumper you bought was only worth pennies in real terms, the overwhelming majority of the cost was debt.

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[The Legendary Shark]

Oh - and I didn't think anyone was being snippy. Sorry if I gave that impression.

[Professor Bear]

So how does the act of burning money - taking that fiver and burning it to ash without ever spending it - affect the economy?

[Tombo]

Sorry Mr. Shark but as far as I'm concerned my attitude towards money is the same as that towards Christina Hendrick's bosom.  When people tell me they (or it as the case may be) is fake my reply is always "if I can touch them, they're real".

Simply put "money" (real or illusionary) can be exchanged for goods and/or services which I can then enjoy.

[The Legendary Shark]

Burning the Fiver will stop it accruing more debt but, even though it no longer physically exists the debt it has already accumulated on its travels still remains.

It also means one less fiver in the economy, meaning the rest of them have to stretch a little further.

[The Legendary Shark]

Tombo - do you think it's right that you have to pay to use money? Pay to borrow it, pay to own it, pay to use it? Do you think it's right that for every £1 you own, other people owe £99? Are you comfortable with the fact that banks have more power than governments and societies?

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Of course you can swap promisary notes for goods and services - it wouldn't be much of an illusion otherwise, would it?

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I also love boobs as much as the next man but I prefer real ones to promised ones.

[Tiplodocus]

There'll be 2 billion more people living in Africa at the end of this century, that's way more than live there now. How is the current distribution of resources and consumption going to work in the face of that reality?  What does that mean for the world of 2100?  These are questions we need to ask ourselves, questions more important to our lives and our fellows' lives than can I afford the new iPhone.

As if the ethical dimension wasn't good enough reason, switching to a vegan diet would help with this problem.

[Professor Bear]

Serious question here: can I bill my credit card company for my time?  If so, I'll shortly see how those cunts like being charged out the arsehole for fuck all.

[Richmond Clements]

Serious question here: can I bill my credit card company for my time?  If so, I'll shortly see how those cunts like being charged out the arsehole for fuck all.

I have heard of this being done, yes. Also people charging banks for letters they have written to them etc...

[The Legendary Shark]

Of course you can. You can bill anyone who expects a slice of your time. Whether they'll pay you or not, though, is a different matter.

[Professor Bear]

I'm more curious of the specifics of how I go about this: do I initiate contact with them, how do I bill them, etc.  I've decided to do this after discovering that my credit card company went paperless without consulting me and then immediately started charging me for an accounting error they'd made - they were in error so they removed the charge, but not the late fee for me not paying for their error, and have been charging additional late fees ever since - which I've been unaware of, seeing as they stopped sending me bills, bills I need to actually take into a bank to pay off what's owed, and so it goes...  I'd actually paid the card off years ago so there's nothing on it at this stage except them charging me for their telling me that they're charging me.

I was heartened a while back after seeing that the TV licencing bods found to their cost that if someone bills them, just ignoring the bill isn't enough, as the law states that if no-one shows up in the small claims court to refute a legitimate claim, the case is awarded by default to the claimant, meaning the court orders the company to pay what they've been billed, and the claimant's legal fees.  That's why if you bill the TV licencing company for taking up your time, they will now send out a form letter telling you that your bill is invalid - though the form letter does not actually invalidate your bill, it's just sleight of hand to make you think there's nothing you can do, which is pretty much tv licencing in a nutshell.

[TordelBack]

...switching to a vegan diet would help with this problem.

To a sauropod every problem looks like a hard-to-reach leaf.