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Reply | Disappointed
at 23:28 8 Mar 2025
It's March and not only is Lblock not in need of dry underwear, he's veering close to happy clapperdom.
Things must be looking up. |
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Reply | Football Governance Bill
at 11:01 8 Mar 2025
Regulators are fine when they’re given the tools and powers to do the job properly.
They’re not fine when they’re undermined and hobbled by governments and officials that have been compromised by the industries under regulation, ie hiring MPs as consultants etc. Then when people say regulation doesn’t work the practitioners of corruption can sit back in the satisfied knowledge that the mugs have been suckered again for just a little chump change. |
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Reply | Help! 150 UK Men Needed Urgently!! (Not Spam or Click Bait!)
at 11:12 6 Mar 2025
A couple of observations: the questions are far more weighted towards attitudes on masculinity and masculine sexuality than mental health, and the question of whether I know anyone who’s sought help for mental health issues had no influence on any of my answers to the other questions. |
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Reply | Football Governance Bill
at 11:02 6 Mar 2025
No thanks. Claire Fox is an extremist nutcase and sure enough, a little way in the politically charged agenda is revealed. |
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Reply | Trump v Zelensky
at 23:00 4 Mar 2025
The Putinisation of the US is proceeding faster than anyone anticipated.
From the radical left Financial Times.
There is nothing cryptic about Donald Trump’s endorsement of cryptocurrency. Four years ago, he said bitcoin was a “scam”. Now he wants to make America the “crypto capital of the world”. To see that as a U-turn is to miss how Trump works. The second statement follows naturally from the first.
On Sunday, Trump said that five cryptocurrencies would be included on the US Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. America’s “crypto reserve” would include bitcoin, ethereum and three others (solana, cardano and XRP) that caught investors unawares. Whether David Sacks, Trump’s “crypto and AI czar”, whose investment firm has stakes in all five, was also surprised is a question for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Each surged in value following Trump’s announcement.
A few hours later, Trump scrapped America’s chief anti-money laundering measure — the rule that US shell companies must disclose their beneficial owner. The second move also flowed from his first. Last month, he shut down the Department of Justice’s anti-kleptocracy initiative, which has been seizing assets such as mega yachts from sanctioned Russian oligarchs.
The most striking aspect to these steps, which amount to a charter for criminals, is that Trump is making little attempt to dress them up. This pig has no lipstick. Trump and his wife Melania have launched their own memecoins. Trump’s alter ego, Elon Musk, is also a heavy crypto investor. Indeed, there is a non-cryptic clue in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which shares an acronym with a cryptocurrency. One of Musk’s nicknames is “Dogefather”.
No matter how chaotic Trump’s flurry of actions, a bright thread holds them together. France’s Louis XIV first summarised it as: “L’État, c’est moi.” Trump might update that to: “The State — it’s me (and Elon for now).” The planned launch of a crypto reserve is more transparent than most; the Fed would serve as backstop for investors in a speculative asset with no obvious use value except to criminals and the dark web. It will be an insurance floor for billionaires, including the Trump family. If crypto’s value falls, the Fed can step in and buy more.
It is even harder to find a public value for anonymous limited liability companies. Complying with the Treasury anti-money laundering regulations involved filling in short forms and legally signing off. Trump claimed the rules were a “disaster for small businesses nationwide”. Better-informed FT readers might suggest a legitimate business that would disguise its ultimate ownership. I cannot think of one. It is worth recalling that a Reuters investigation in 2017 estimated that a third of the units in Trump’s Florida towers were anonymously owned. It also found that Russian passport holders had invested at least $98.4mn in Trump’s seven luxury-branded Florida towers.
It gets worse. Musk’s Doge operation aims to cut public spending by rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. His declared savings do not yet add up to a decimal rounding error. But Doge’s hit to US regulatory capacity is already significant. Thousands have also been fired from the Internal Revenue Service. If Doge’s goal was fiscal efficiency, it would be doing the opposite. For every dollar invested in tax collection, the IRS yields at least five in return. Ordinary taxpayers have their income deducted at source. Musk, whose company Tesla has paid no federal income taxes in two of the last three years, employs people to ensure collection day never arrives.
The Washington landscape is littered with regulatory agencies in turmoil. But Musk’s impact on the Federal Aviation Administration deserves special citation. Without public bidding, Musk’s Starlink seems to be looking to take over the FAA’s air traffic control system. In the absence of Musk identifying waste, fraud and abuse, here is an example. A hostile takeover of the FAA by Starlink would be an abuse of power that involves probable waste and is quite possibly a fraud on the US taxpayer. It could also put air passengers in danger.
The idea that Trump is “flood[ing] the zone with shit” no longer makes sense when his actions all point in one direction. Even his foreign policy is driven by acquisition, whether that be turning the Gaza Strip into a Middle Eastern riviera, buying Greenland or taking Ukraine’s mineral resources. Trump’s crypto move threatens a similar predation on the US taxpayer — as do Musk’s conflicts of interest. All of this is occurring under America’s nose. Trump has subverted the role of the public servant. The US state now serves him.
https://www.ft.com/content/afe77c07-3f71-4b96-8c46-9cb4dc0b3fad |
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Reply | Rest of the Championship thread
at 22:06 4 Mar 2025
I'm calling it curtains for Derby. Can't see them making up 7 points in 11 games, their form would have to improve dramatically. |
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Reply | Time to play our own
at 16:09 4 Mar 2025
Surprisingly difficulty to find info on final position based prize money for the Championship, but I think it's probably fair to say the difference between finishing 7th and 21st isn't very much. That's not to say the manager won't be trying to finish as high as he can because, anything else aside, that's what goes on his CV. |
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Reply | Time wasting Goalkeepers penalised with Corner
at 15:47 4 Mar 2025
The same idiocy that afflicts politics - create new laws to solve problems that could easily be solved simply by enforcing existing laws. But of course, if you have a body that's tasked with creating new laws you can bet that new laws will be created regardless of their necessity or desirability. |
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Reply | Trump v Zelensky
at 15:41 4 Mar 2025
Suggest you do some more reading about the events of 2014 in Ukraine, preferably that isn't written from a Russian biased viewpoint. |
| | kensalriser
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