Money Category
Money in the news and how you are going to pay and pay and pay
Un-FARE! Uber Downloads Rise 850% As A Result of Taxi Protests
Black cab and licensed taxi drivers protest at Trafalgar Square, London over the introduction of a phone app called Uber which allows customers to book and track vehicles.
THIS is just lovely: as a result of the taxi protests about how awful Uber is in stealing the crusts from the mouths of the poor babbies of taxi drivers there’s been a surge of interest in Uber itself. To the point that downloads of the app rose 850% over the same day a week earlier. This isn’t what those cab drivers were hoping would happen. Well, not unless they’re even more stupid than we already think they are.
Up to 10,000 taxi drivers brought gridlock to central London on Wednesday as they protested against Uber, the mobile application that has become popular in cities across Europe.
Posted: 12th, June 2014 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
Vacant Property: Is This The Country’s Worst House To Rent?
AH, Surrey, where women in white jeans and Anthea Turner hair vie for our affections with men who think Jeremy Clarkson would be a great Prime Minister. And it’s where you can move into this magnificent 1 bedroom house in West Ewell, Surrey.
Live the dream:
Posted: 11th, June 2014 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
The IMF Says Britain Should Build More Houses: Increase Supply, Dummy
WE don’t really need an international economics organisation to tell us this: that Britain should build more houses. That prices are going through the roof, that no one normal can actually afford on in London any more, is all the evidence we need that there’s simply not enough of them to go around.
Because, you know, when prices go up that’s a signal that supply is falling behind demand, that basic idea at the heart of economics stuff. But the IMF has gone ahead and told us so anyway:
On the issue of planning, she said: “But we also recognise that rising house prices fundamentally reflect demand that greatly exceeds supply. Addressing imbalances in the housing market by alleviating supply-side constraints will require further measures to increase the availability of land, land for development and to remove unnecessary constraints to land use.”
The IMF’s report also criticised the “unnecessary constraints on brownfield and greenfield developments”.
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Posted: 10th, June 2014 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Obesity, Booze And Fags Don’t Cost The NHS Money: They Save It
IT’S rather sad to see the people who actually run the NHS being so confused about the realities of that very NHS. The latest being this idea that all of us becoming fat lardbuckets will mean that the NHS runs out of money. So, therefore, we’ve all got to be dragooned into eating less so as to save the taxpayer.
The problem with this is that fatties don’t cost the NHS cash, they save it. Here’s the standard story:
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Posted: 9th, June 2014 | In: Money, Reviews | Comment (1)
So Now We Know Why You Ended Up With That Grossly Fat Porker
IT’S one of those little tragedies that hits most peoples’ love lives at one time or another. One starts out the evening lookin’ fer a little lurve and the eye alights upon one carrying a little extra weight. Some interesting handfuls perhaps: and then one wakes up next to a beached whale. Fortunately, now we know the answer. You should have eaten before you went looking:
It is a well-known maxim that you shouldn’t visit the supermarket when feeling hungry, but new research suggests the same is true when going out in search of romance.
Both men and women are more likely to be attracted to people who are larger when they go out on an empty stomach.
Men, in particular will choose more voluptuous women if they have missed a meal while women go for larger, heavier set men.
But scientists warn that when then hunger is sated, they may not feel the same.
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Sgt. 1st Class Gregory McQueen: The Sexual Assault Prevention Officer ‘Who Was A Pimp’
THIS looks like a nice little piece of multi-tasking. There was a non-commissioned officer in the US Army who was tasked with making sure that the number of sexual assaults was kept to the minimum possible (obviously, preferably none). And he decided to do this by asking some of the more hard up female soldiers whether they’d like to do a bit of escort work, a bit of prostitution, on the side.
Well done that man:
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What If It’s Actually A Virus Turning Us All Into Fat Lardbuckets?
THIS sounds like a very odd theory, that it’s actually a virus that is turning us all into fat lardbuckets. But while it’s an odd theory there’s enough evidence out there that we should at least consider it seriously. Not to the point that we just assume that it’s correct of course: but to the point where we investigate more to see if it might be true.
Coughs, sneezes and a runny nose are not the worst a bad cold can do to you – it might also make you fat.
Scientists believe a virus behind the common cold could have fuelled the obesity epidemic that has swept the developed world. The culprit? A contagious bug called adenovirus 36.
Experts told the European Congress on Obesity in Sofia that eating and exercise habits haven’t changed enough to explain why people worldwide started piling on weight at around the same time.
There’s two serious points behind this.
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Posted: 2nd, June 2014 | In: Money, Reviews | Comment (1)
Epic Adverts: Dynamic Nashville Bass Player Is Looking For Work In G (Some Restrictions Apply)
A DYNAMIC Bass Player is looking for work in Nashville:
Watch The Video Of The New iPhone 6, Dummy
WHAT looks like the new iPhone 6, due for release this summer, can be seen in that video above. The information source is a French website, nowhereelse, and they’ve been pretty reliable in the past. For an English description of what’s going on:
We have already seen dozens of moulds, designs and claimed leaks of Apple new iPhone.
However, a new video provides the best look yet at the rumoured design for a larger, 4.7inch screen handset.
Apple is rumoured to be preparing to launch the handset in August, a month earlier than expected – with an even larger 5.5inch model following a month later.
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Posted: 29th, May 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Rap Genius Founder Fired For Being a Complete Dickhead About Elliot Rodger
THAT you’re able to think up and found one of the web’s hotter properties does show that you’ve got some smarts. You’re good at doing something at least. But that’s not to say that having done that that you’re smart, as Mahbod Moghadam of Rap Genius has just proven. For he’s gone off and done something so dickheaded that he’s had to immediately resign from the company that he himself founded. He took the manifesto of the UCSB psycho shooter who killed all those people last week and loaded it up onto his own site. Fair enough, that’s what it’s for, you put a document up on Rap Genius and then people can add their annotations to it. But then he started to make his own annotations. Which were not cool, not cool at all:
Rap Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam has been fired from the annotation service after posting appalling comments on the memoir of mass murderer Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in a shooting spree earlier this week.
In now-removed annotations on the site on the sick 141-page manifesto, Moghadam added a tasteless series of comments, including “beautifully written” and also “MY GUESS: his sister is smokin hot.”
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Posted: 29th, May 2014 | In: Money, Music, Reviews, Technology | Comment
Was The Entire Run Up Of Bitcoin On Mt. Gox Just A Pump And Dump?
THERE’S intriguing evidence that last year’s run up of the price of Bitcoin on MtGox was simply a pump and dump operation by the owners of the site. For there was a result buyer, every few minutes, of ever more of the cryptocurrency. And no one can really say where that money has gone. It seems to be a phantasmal account, one that existed only on the site, in order to increase demand for the currency and thus push its price up. In the finance world this is known as a pump and dump scheme. Keep buying small amounts of something and watch the price creep up. Then dump the whole holding back into the market before anyone cottons on to what you’re doing. Done right this can be very profitable.
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Copyright Suits: Beastie Boys Lose The Right To Say ‘No’
WHEN Adam Yauch passed away, his fellow Beastie Boys were told, in no uncertain terms, that they should respect his legacy by never allowing their music to be used in advertisements.
And so, the Beasties are now taking on the Monster Energy drinks company over music used for commercial purposes.
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Find Out What The Worst Drug Smugglers In The World Did
IT’S at least an interesting entry for that accolade at least, the worst drug smugglers in the world.
So, two Brits decide to try their luck smuggling a tonne and a half of hashish from Morocco into the Algarve. Sounds like a plan: Morocco’s not that far away, the Rif and such places are hotbeds of cannabis production (they’re not just the right sort of climate, they’re also pretty lawless even today). As such the drug is cheap as chips there.
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Monstrously Stupid Recycling Laws Fine People Who Waste Less
SO, we think there should be less stuff wasted. Sounds like a plan: so, therefore we will fine people who waste less. This is, well, this is monstrously stupid, isn’t it? But it is what the European Union is going to do to Britain. We now waste less paper and glass than we used to. Therefore we are going to be fined.
Recycling rates will fall for the first time in over 10 years due to “green fatigue” caused by councils imposing numerous confusing bins on households, one of the country’s biggest bin collectors has predicted.
The fall will make it almost certain that Britain will miss tough EU targets of recycling half of all household waste by 2020.
A combination of “green fatigue”, declining glass usage, and local authority budget cuts are also likely to have contributed to the fall, which risks the UK having to pay millions of pounds in fines.
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Posted: 27th, May 2014 | In: Money, Reviews | Comments (2)
Montenegrin Patriarch: Conchita Wurst Caused the Balkan Floods
SO says one of the more conservative churchmen of the Balkans, that Conchita Wurst, the bearded bloke in a dress who won the Eurovision song contest, caused the Balkan Floods that have forced 150,000 people from their homes. Quite remarkable what God gets pissed off about really, isn’t it?
In more detail the claim is being made by the Montenegrin Patriarch, that the floods are not a coincidence. Oooh, no, it is a warning from God that people should not join the dark side. Although quite what’s so dark about a bearded drag queen isn’t explained in any detail:
Conchita Wurst is responsible for flooding that left over 50 people dead earlier this month, church leaders in the Balkans have claimed.
The Austrian drag artist, whose real name is Thomas Neuwirth, seized international attention after winning Eurovision 2014 with his hit Rise Like a Phoenix.
However, several church leaders have now claimed the recent devastating flooding across the Balkans, which was the worst in a century and left over 50 people dead, was “divine punishment” for Conchita’s victory.
“This [flood] is not a coincidence, but a warning,” Patriarch Amfilohije of Montenegro said, according to e.novine.com. “God sent the rains as a reminder that people should not join the wild side.”
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Posted: 23rd, May 2014 | In: Money, Reviews | Comment (1)
This Terribly Stupid Strike Against McDonald’s
THERE’S a very stupid piece of labour activism going on over in the US. It’s a series of strikes and demonstrations against McDonald’s over the pay that the people working in the stores receive. The reason it’s such a silly set of demos and strikes is simply that McDonald’s doesn’t actually employ the workers. So why shout at the people who can’t change the situation?
More than 100 demonstrators seeking better pay for McDonald’s workers were arrested as protesters swarmed the fast-food chain’s corporate campus near Chicago demanding a minimum wage of $15 (£8.88) an hour and the right to unionise.
The protest against McDonald’s Corp, the world’s biggest restaurant operator by revenue, came a day before a shareholder vote on executive pay, including that of Chief Executive Don Thompson, who earned total compensation of $9.5 million (£5.62 million) in 2013.
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In America Rising Court Fees Mean The Poor Always Go To Prison
IN America, if you’re poor and you commit a crime, you go to prison. You need to pay your court fees. If you can’t pay your court fees, the State will lock you up. To maintain law and order, they will feed you, cloth you and house you. It’s a genius plan:
In Augusta, Ga., a judge sentenced Tom Barrett to 12 months after he stole a can of beer worth less than $2.
In Ionia, Mich., 19-year-old Kyle Dewitt caught a fish out of season; then a judge sentenced him to three days in jail.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., Stephen Papa, a homeless Iraq War veteran, spent 22 days in jail, not for what he calls his “embarrassing behavior” after he got drunk with friends and climbed into an abandoned building, but because he had only $25 the day he went to court.
The common thread in these cases, and scores more like them, is the jail time wasn’t punishment for the crime, but for the failure to pay the increasing fines and fees associated with the criminal justice system.
A yearlong NPR investigation found that the costs of the criminal justice system in the United States are paid increasingly by the defendants and offenders. It’s a practice that causes the poor to face harsher treatment than others who commit identical crimes and can afford to pay. Some judges and politicians fear the trend has gone too far.
A state-by-state survey conducted by NPR found that defendants are charged for many government services that were once free, including those that are constitutionally required….
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Situations Pretty Vacant: The FBI Is Hiring Pot Smokers
THIS is rather fun. The FBI, over in the US, is one of the most staid and white bread organisations in the world. They’re cops, of a sort, yes, but the internal culture at the place is still pretty much 50’s America. Flag, Mom and apple pie. And one of the parts of that is that pot smoking is absolutely verboeten.
Yeah, we all know, half the damn country smokes it at some time or another and no one comes to any great harm. But then again the FBI is one of the organisations that has to try and track down the drug dealers so perhaps the policy isn’t entirely stupid. The law is, but given the existence of the law the FBI might not be. But even here they’ve had to relax a little bit: you can apply for a job at the FBI if you have ever smoked pot (something they wouldn’t allow if you had ever robbed a bank) but not if you’ve smoked it in the past three years.
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Abu Hamza’s Family Deserve All The British Benefits They Can Get
THE Daily Mail is on one of its head explodey little warpaths shouting about how the family of Abu Hookand (aka Abu Hamza) live off state benefits. But if they are in fact British then why the hell shouldn’t they get the same benefits, rights to them, as any other British people?
There was growing anger last night that Abu Hamza’s family are continuing to be bankrolled by the British public.
As the hate preacher was convicted of 11 terror offences in the U.S., it emerged his wife and children are still being housed at an extortionate cost in one of the most upmarket areas of the country.
It is thought the family have cost taxpayers more than £3million in benefits and social housing, as well as legal fees for Hamza and his sons.
Hamza’s second wife Najat Mostafa, 55, with whom he has seven children, lives in a £1.25 million five-bedroom council house in Shepherd’s Bush, West London – an area popular with bankers and City lawyers.
Last night, neighbours said they were ‘sickened’ the family were continuing to benefit from state handouts.
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Posted: 21st, May 2014 | In: Money, Reviews | Comments (7)
Stripper Wants ‘Booty And Boobs Back’ From Man Who Says She Stole His Laptop And Harry Potter DVDs
ARE YOU READY TOP MEET THE WORLD’S SADDEST MAN and his hard-nosed former lover, who just happens to be a stripper named…Moaner?
Robert Wallace, 32, says he broke up with exotic dancer Nomi Mims on May 3, and then waited a week for her to give him back the things he lent her—$2,000, a laptop, and the aforementioned DVDs—before taking legal action.
Those were Harry Potter DVDs.
Mims says she “really likes him as a friend,” and the items and cash were gifts, not loans.
“I don’t believe in loans because I don’t want to pay anybody back,” she told FOX 26.
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Posted: 21st, May 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Wheat Watch: This Is About Irrigation Not The Crop Being Grown
AN interesting little report trying to insist that people who grow rice are more social, more cooperative, than people who grow wheat. Unfortunately, while the phenomenon they describe might well be true they’ve not quite ascribed it to the correct cause. It’s not the crop being grown that makes the difference but the method of growing the crop:
Scientists have long wondered why the U.S. and Europe are so culturally different to China and other countries in Eastern Asia.
Now one study claims the answer lies in an unexpected area: the different farming methods used by people living in the East and West.
While Westerners are known for their individualism and analytical thinking, eastern culture tends to be interdependent and holistic, the study claims.
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Bob Marley’s Ghost Arrives In Court
Priests and clergy from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church lead a procession out of the National Arena in Kingston, Jamaica. during the state funeral for reggae musician Bob Marley, May 22, 1981. Marley died of cancer last week in a Miami hospital. (AP Photo/Ray Fairall)
ONE thing you can always rely on, with the music industry, is that someone is going to sue someone else, trying to stake a claim to a song, or music, they had no part in writing.
And people wonder why the music industry is on its arse.
This time, the High Court in London is hearing arguments in a copyright dispute over 13 songs by Bob Marley. You’ll know Bob Marley because, to 90% of the world, he’s the only human on Earth who ever recorded a reggae record.
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Pass The Happy Pills: The Internet Is Depressing The Children!
ONE of the great problems in this modern world is that people are forever confusing cause and effect. Or if you prefer, forgetting that correlation does not mean causation. And so it is with this latest report that the internet is making our precious little children sad. For what’s forgotten, not even considered here, is that it could well be that sad people, those with few friends in the real world, go on hte internet more than others, instead of it being going online that makes people sad:
Children who spend too much time on the internet are developing mental health problems, according to government health advisors.
Those who sit behind a screen for more than four hours a day are particularly at risk, although very low levels of use can cause issues, they say.
Public Health England, which issues guidelines to the NHS, said children face social problems such as loneliness, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and heightened aggression as a result of overusing computers.
The huge improvements made in children’s welfare over the last 20 years had now been “curtailed and may now be in reverse”, it said.
In a dossier to MPs it warned of a clear relationship between the amount of time spent on social media sites such as Facebook and “lower levels of well-being”.
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Posted: 19th, May 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, Technology | Comment
How To Have More Sex – The Huge Secret Is Out
ONCE again the scientists have come to our rescue, explaining one of the world’s great mysteries. Why is it that some people en up having more sex with more people than some others? We could posit that good looking people have more offers. Or that intelligent people know how to manipulate people into offering it. Or rich people flash the cash and get offered it. Or, well, come up with your own theory, why not?
As it happens this vital research has been one for us and the answer is that more highly sexed people get more sex:
How intensely a person responds to sexual images can be linked his or her number of sexual partners, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of California of Los Angeles asked 40 male and 22 female subjects how many sex partners they had last year before they showed them 225 images, both sexual and non-sexual.
The researchers analyzed subjects’ ‘late positive potential, which reacts to images depending on their emotional intensity,’ by using an electroencephalogram (EEG), according to a press release. People with more sex partners reacted in the same way when they looked at ‘graphic and less-graphic’ images.
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Posted: 19th, May 2014 | In: Money, Reviews | Comment (1)
