What's Boiling Your Pi$$ Today?

[Don the Don]

Mc Donald's to me is a load of bollox...Hate the people I see using them and hate that fucking clown...
Now if they shot that clown and introduced a gorgeous woman with nice tits arse and legs with a sexy pony tail and some thigh high leather boots and she had a catchphrase like " taste my muffin "...
I might just might see crap Donald's in a different light...

Be more than burgers on that menu, sounds like a knocking shop "CUM" Diner

 

[DD67]

…. I think you and me are not their target group…
BUT shooting that SOAB „Clown“ would be a good start!

Yourself & that other maniac aka Duck.
Will be pleased to hear that Ronald McDonald hasn't been part of the McDonald's family for a very long time.
Apparently he was dropped after yet more pressure from the righteous Cockwombles.
They claimed that he encouraged children to eat at McDonald's & therefore he was bad for the health of children?

Utter boll#cks! Surely the parents get to choose when/where their kids eat.
That's how it worked when I was a kid. Demanding to go to a restaurant to eat would have got me a thick ear, not a burger!

 

[Doc Strange]

Are you determined to bore the readership into submission with arcane economics? Respectfully (that was hard!) you perhaps confuse Keynes enthusiasm for Government intervention to set balls in motion with public ownership.

The Classical economist would say say the Government should do what only a Government can (Courts, Defence, roads and infrastructure) and leave the rest to private capital. The dividing line is often about ‘what is infrastructure’? The pipe or the contents?

My take is that the privatisation was a ‘good thing’ (NHS specs or Specsavers = no contest) but that the privatisation was ballsed up with horizontal segmentation that doesn’t actually serve anyone apart from a few fat cats. It was politicians wot did it and from both sides of the aisle with different utilities. The problem persists between rail operators and nationalised track ownership….. which seems to cause most of the problems.

The electricity supply business is a prime example of the problem. The price of distribution is pretty uniform but the big variable is the cost of generation. We should have had separated those two halves for real competition……think broadband pretty much all using BT infrastructure but competing on price as ISPs. It hasn’t stopped innovation over mobile networks either….

Anyway, if the ownership construct is wrong it doesn’t excuse either politicians or polluters for sewage in our rivers etc. There is high level incompetence and worse on all sides and inadequate holding to account.

The great Keynesian boosts in public works post WWII and since are beloved of politicians because they get to be generous with our money and then take credit. It’s Gordon Brown at his worst with your cheque book. There is plenty of Classical economic opinion that Keynes appears to get the ball rolling but that is is generally squandered and never sustained because the Government runs out of our money. Conversely, private investors have skin in the game and may be slower out of the blocks but produce better outcomes at less cost.

Still awake? It’s all opinion. Keynes famously said he changed his if the facts changed. Reagomics and Thatcherism would have probably persuaded him but we slide back to Keynesian policies because the are a political fig leaf….. not because they necessarily produce better outcomes. Their hands in your pocket…..

The thing is that what Keynes advocated has never been properly put into practice I believe.

Yes, Keynes advocated governments spending money to stimulate the economy during the downturn in the economic cycle. But this was to be paid for by squirreling a bit away when in the boom part.

However, governments have been happy to do the spending part, but not the saving part.

DS

 

[Sarky B’stard]

The thing is that what Keynes advocated has never been properly put into practice I believe.

Yes, Keynes advocated governments spending money to stimulate the economy during the downturn in the economic cycle. But this was to be paid for by squirreling a bit away when in the boom part.

However, governments have been happy to do the spending part, but not the saving part.

DS

Which is why politics always trumps economics - look at Sunak’s budget that is vastly more Gordon Brown than Nigel Lawson. The chickens WILL come home to roost. I actually think Keynes was vastly overdone through the 50s and way past what he would have advocated but he died in 1946 - always a good career move, dying early!

The money supply/cost of money is pretty conclusively the central plank of strategy. All the recent central bank stimulus has created asset bubbles for a few and stoked inflation. I reckon we are about to re-learn old lessons because politicians like to buy cheap popularity and let their successors worry about the debt they create. I don’t think Johnson even understands or cares over much. Oh !

 

[Sarky B’stard]

By way of amplification 🎙on the politics…..

Gordon Brown always claimed Adam Smith (d. 1790) as a socialist. Smith wrote:

“The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. ”

I reckon he must have met one of Brown’s sermonising forebears who had ambitions of government and delusions of competence because he also wrote:

”Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

So it doesn’t matter who the governing ‘haves’ are, they just make it their business to remain ‘haves’. That would appear to reflect my experience of both Parties.

 

[DD67]

By way of amplification 🎙on the politics…..

Gordon Brown always claimed Adam Smith (d. 1790) as a socialist. Smith wrote:

“The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. ”

I reckon he must have met one of Brown’s sermonising forebears who had ambitions of government and delusions of competence because he also wrote:

”Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

So it doesn’t matter who the governing ‘haves’ are, they just make it their business to remain ‘haves’. That would appear to reflect my experience of both Parties.

That's all well & good. But what about the really pressing issue here?
Ronald McDonald being unfairly dismissed?
On the grounds that being happy & wearing a clown outfit, could make kids fat!

 

[Capt. Drunkey]

I don‘t know what it is with me and clowns: they either made me very sad, or they scared me.

It all started with Adolf…

 

[Sarky B’stard]

Well Brown just didn’t wear the gear but that never stopped him

I went to see him speak once and his general demeanour was plain odd. It’s a major contortion to claim someone for socialism well over a hundred years before the philosophy was enunciated and who was unfailingly critical of central government wastrels and autocrats.

Ronald? Oh he deserved everything he got.

Treasonous b*****d!

 

[DD67]

I don‘t know what it is with me and clowns: they either made me very sad, or they scared me

Anyone who finds clowns scary has got serious problems. How old were you when you stopped sucking your thumb?

@BAD LUCK DUCK
Are you scared of clowns?

 

[Capt. Drunkey]

sucking your thumb?

You mean, I should think about stopping?

 

[MartytheMartian]

I've never felt one way or the other about Clowns. They have never scared me but I certainly haven't ever found them funny either.

 

[Capt. Drunkey]

I've never felt one way or the other about Clowns. They have never scared me but I certainly haven't ever found them funny either.

I was ironical with my comment, but the truth be told: Circus (like Zoos) in general always made me feel sad. (And now I am dead-serious).
When I was a kid, we visited them once or twice but I did not find the magic. Just sadness.

Oh, and I love the song „Leningrad“…

 

[MartytheMartian]

I only recall one time that I went to the zoo as a kid and I can't honestly recall any of the animals that I must have seen. I don't really have a positive or negative view of zoo's I would simply rather see the animals on film having been captured doing what they do by experts than lounging around in an enclosure doing nothing much. Never been to see a circus of any sort as I have simply never been interested in it.

I think I was born jaded by the entire world!

 

[DD67]

I was ironical with my comment, but the truth be told: Circus (like Zoos) in general always made me feel sad. (And now I am dead-serious).
When I was a kid, we visited them once or twice but I did not find the magic. Just sadness.

Oh, and I love the song „Leningrad“…

Zoo's are definitely sad places

That's where we'll all end up. With looney lefties & climate change activists pointing at us. And telling their kids about how we once roamed free. Drank beer, smoked cigarettes, used aerosols, ate food from one use plastic containers & drove/rode vehicles that burnt fossil fuels

 

[Sarky B’stard]

Everything from tv to the internet has taken the gawping out of zoos and the days when the monarch kept exotic animals at the Tower of London. Zoos see their role as educational and conservational but the safari parks are still in more voyeuristic territory. Circuses have almost died on animal welfare grounds but stagger on beyond ‘civilisation‘.
My main beef is WWF etc., seeking animal sponsorship and everything being given names like Bertie the Badger or being subjected to the patronising crap of Kwis Packham. If we just look after their habitat the inhabitants will quite happily look after themselves.

 

[Sarky B’stard]

Zoo's are definitely sad places

That's where we'll all end up. With looney lefties & climate change activists pointing at us. And telling their kids about how we once roamed free. Drank beer, smoked cigarettes, used aerosols, ate food from one use plastic containers & drove/rode vehicles that burnt fossil fuels

I was lucky enough as a teenager to get occasional behind the scenes access to Regents Park. Dad was the MAFF Regional Veterinary Officer (when we had such things) for Hertfordshire and most of Northern London. His quarantine remit meant periodic checks of new arrivals and I well remember stroking a cheetah, staring skywards at a Kudu pair and a nervous encounter with Canadian Timber Wolves in their run. German Shepherds pah!

Sad? Somewhat. A Tiger having a tooth removed is quite pathetic in its captive condition but they did rotate with Whipsnade where space as far mor generous. The carnivores definitely look relatively scabby in captivity.

 

[chas]

everything being given names like Bertie the Badger or being subjected to the patronising crap of Kwis Packham. If we just look after their habitat the inhabitants will quite happily look after themselves.

Anthropomorphising animal behaviour and giving them cutsey names makes me switch off many wildlife programmes.

 

[Don the Don]

I think I was born jaded by the entire world!

The doctor smacked the wrong end with you @MartytheMartian

 

[DD67]

The doctor smacked the wrong end with you @MartytheMartian

I heard that the Midwife slapped his Dad?

 

[chas]

That's where we'll all end up. With looney lefties & climate change activists pointing at us. And telling their kids about how we once roamed free. Drank beer, smoked cigarettes, used aerosols, ate food from one use plastic containers & drove/rode vehicles that burnt fossil fuels

As retirement plans go that's novel mate.