Rayvin

True enough I suppose. You're longer in the tooth with this stuff than I am, so I'll defer to your experience here.

Unfortunately the whole market moves up and down based on bitcoin. I've not invested in it at any point because I don't think it has particularly strong utility in the long run, but there are plenty of other strong cryptocurrencies that are moving us towards a decentralised financial system, which is something that I think would indeed be desirable. Elon has more or less crashed the lot of them today. You're right about the memecoins and so on, but I think projects like ADA and possibly XRP in some senses, do have legs and reasonable technological underpinnings. ADA is up today despite all the chaos, which is pleasing at least.

So I've just picked up that Vitalik Buterin, one of the lead guys behind Ethereum and 27 year old billionaire, was inexplicably given half of all Shiba tokens (Dogecoin rip off) which the developers considered was effectively 'burning' them. He's just given 5% to India for their COVID relief and crashed the coin. It's the wild fucking west with crypto It needs to get these cowboys out of the picture if it's ever going to get anywhere.

I mean he's definitely set off this latest dip. It's just tedious tbh, the only thing you can do is hold and wait while your screen is flashing red at you. ADA is still holding at least, that's something. Seems relatively impervious. Probably because Musk isn't in on it.

He really fucking does, the utter cunt Crashed the entire fucking market.

Jesus. 99 ETH would be about $400k now... But you've still got what, a whole BTC? People seem to think it'll reach $1m although I think some other coins will outstrip it in terms of gains over the same period, personally.

Knowing my luck it'll collapse overnight but I have to say that I have an overall pretty good feeling on it. I'm not risking anything serious, if it falls over then oh well. Never heard of this coins at this level are a right pain to buy though. Need various wallets and transfers and exchanges.

Nice tip, will review. And yes, I'm not immune to the latter either Hence Bonfire. Here's the whitepaper for it, I think I'll probably dip in. https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/607c529b76581dfbd9b01429/607fa34305117f50be77c8a6_Bonfire_v1_tease_1_1_1.pdf Currently trading at 0.00005. Released 3 weeks ago. High risk obviously, but the team behind it is visible and committed. It's one of these ones that encourages you to hold by putting a 10% tax on all sales, 5% of which is distributed to all other holders. Problem with it is that the supply is utterly massive, but they're actively burning so who knows.

Yeah I vaguely remember that happening. He was a fairly classic Brexiter in many respects but he wasn't a bad guy other than his inability to take responsibility for the chaos his vote caused. I'm fairly sure he was of the 'I'm alright Jack' mindset at one point or another as well. I'm currently investing in ETH, ADA and XRP - the latter not because I believe in the project per se (although it does seem to have sizable uptake within banks and financial institutions) but because the company behind it is being sued by the SEC which has held the price down. Court case concludes in October as I understand it, and price should rise nicely if they win. Naturally, if they lose, it'll go down - but the signs seems positive from my reading of it.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2021/05/tony-blair-warns-labour-could-die-under-starmer-and-woke-left-he-planning Blair giving Starmer both barrels here. Not sure I can see the evidence of a 'plan for a return to front line politics' but it would certainly be a dramatic development. I agree with much of this, in particular this part: Young progressives, suggests Blair, have “defaulted to issues around culture, gender, race and identity” precisely because Labour has failed to offer them an economic programme that is both radical and practical. Starmer’s empty cultural politics follow from his failure to offer any economic vision.

They probably did you a favour since it crashed from 0.74 to 0.49. You can pick it up on eToro if you want it badly enough though. 'High roller' might be a bit generous mind Decent shouts, will look into them. I've been looking at Bonfire lately but it's hard to tell if some of these projects actually have legs. Probably the wrong thread for this like.

I thought you were the expert in this? I'm fairly new to the scene with it but I've read a few of the white papers for some of the projects and there are very few losers in decentralised finance other than the status quo institutions. It's hard to imagine that it won't continue to gain traction, assuming it isn't actively stopped in some form through legislation.

Agreed but not quick enough to offset the damage this will do.

Non-pretentious, informed, compassionate voter. You're in such a minority in this country that you're not worth mentioning

Totally agree with this, every word. 1 and 3 will co-exist I'm quite sure. 3 will get the social progress components along with action on green initiatives, and probably even some public ownership. 1 will get a stable and competent business environment and ideally, a nicer country to live in. 2 will also benefit from all of that, but they'll bitch about it.

That transcript I fucking hate him man, he's one of the most tedious managers we've ever had.

I do now think Lisa Nandy would be a better option.

Starmer has said that Labour are going to spend the summer 'speaking to people who don't vote for them' instead of holding 'rallies of the faithful'. How is this a change of tack from what they had already been trying to do? Aside from the left/right nature of this and all the ideology either way, I do think that what Labour need is a bit more fire. Starmer isn't exactly charismatic. Neither was Corbyn, and neither was Miliband. Someone prepared to go into Parliament, call Johnson a cunt to his face and be unapologetic about it. Someone with the ability to bypass traditional media to get a message out there would also help. I'd be tempted to say they actually just need a figurehead while a council of political strategists work out policy - the same as when companies employ a CEO who is really just a marketing device, and not a corporate leader.

Rayner sacked from various roles by Starmer... She was meant to be able to speak to the kinds of voters they lost over Hartlepool so maybe this is a sign of change. Not a great look at the moment though considering he has supposedly taken "full responsibility".

Completely agree As an aside, this has been an interesting discussion and I've enjoyed throwing views back and forth a bit - but I'm leaning towards essays again now which no one wants, so I'll step back for it a bit

May's government was considerably less corrupt, considerably more professional, and unbelievably, considerably more honest. Johnson is a populist and makes policies and decisions around that point alone. This makes him incredibly weak, reactionary, and devoid of any long term plan. It's a recipe for disaster that will need to be cleaned up by another, more professional and competent government 10-15 years from now, probably with yet another decade or two of austerity. But yes, they're more left wing than the previous ones so we get to see the occasional socialist leaning policy. The problem with it is that these policies do need to be part of an overall plan of reinvigoration and development of the country in general in order for them to work - not random acts of chaos.

Well, this certainly seems to be Starmer's approach - whether he's being effective about it or not, this is completely the position he's taken. It's cost him my vote going forward, and my membership of the party, but in the end maybe it'll be worth it. I doubt it personally, but who knows.

This is where I got to as well. But then I also start wondering if this exasperation is actually how you end up being Tory, later in life. "I'm alright Jack" is pretty much the Tory party tagline.

I would stick to the base they've got, stop pandering ineffectively to a group that aren't remotely interested in listening, accept that we're not going to be in power for another 5-10 years, and start working on cross party electoral efforts with the sole focus of getting one win to bring about PR. But I don't think there's much to be done at all, frankly. This is just where we are.

Immigration has negatively affected certain groups in society, absolutely no doubt about that. I remember speaking to taxi drivers about this from time to time (ironically), and they would tell me that immigration had pushed their wages down. Of course, once you dug in a bit more, it turned out that what had actually done it was the greater use of GPS and the council taking away the 'local area familiarity' tests, thus removing the barrier for entry for immigrants to take up taxi work. The taxi companies themselves naturally hired ever increasing numbers of drivers because it kept their costs down and ensured greater service availability. For me though, in that scenario, it's not the immigrants who are the problem. It's the local government policy to water down specialism, and the hiring firms who don't give a shit about their workers. Of course, as far as the taxi driver is concerned, stopping one of these is as good as stopping any. Although in reality, it'll still happen anyway because the UK still takes large immigration influxes from around the world, because it's in the interests of the rich to keep labour costs down. Brexit or not, their situation won't change. From a social standpoint, I really do think integration in this country for incoming immigrants has been an utter shambles. The point of bringing people into this country isn't to bundle them all together in specific areas so that you effectively have multiple different cultures living side by side in an uneasy standoff, it should be to bring people together so that cultures happily co-exist and can be shared with common bonds reinforced. We have failed at this, 100%. Because there's no votes in it, I would argue. Having said all of this, when Renton pulls out stats and research to highlight the positive good that immigration has brought about in this country, that is 100% unarguable unless someone has similar detailed research to the contrary. This is a level of debate that your average guy on the street rejects because he can't win it. He's all about his anecdotal evidence of things he thinks he has seen - ignoring the fact that he only sees what he wants to see (as do we all). But for anyone who does read and follow the stats, I mean what are we meant to do? Look at them and go "well, this here is well researched and ultimately is just the truth, but we can't really say it is because it will hurt the feelings of the working class man in the street"?