UK taxpayer is now liable for Thames Water’s £12bn debt.

How the fuck did we end up with a system that allows so called “investors” to not just pick our pockets, but the pockets of people that haven’t even been born yet?

All this to allow Thames to survive for at least one year.

Thames needs to be allowed to fail and investors need to take the hit, not the bill payer.

I think it’s a fair point just not well made.

To paraphrase my first reply, to each their own, if someone truly enjoys gambling, they’ll find a way to do it, legal or not.

However, there is a lot of good that money could be doing, whether it is used to help your kids or anything else like that, rather than it being hoovered up by fat cat CEOs and people that hold shares in gambling businesses.

Why stop at online. The amount of pensioners and vulnerable people wasting their money on horses and fruit machines is pretty depressing.

On the one hand, I strongly believe in personal freedom (as long as you’re only harming yourself) and if people want to spend their money, that way it should be up to them. On the other hand, some people are vulnerable and need to be protected from themselves.

Apparently the fastest known winds in the solar system are 1,100mph and on Neptune.

About time. I still won’t be giving my custom to P&O on principle tho.

It was you saying that they were turning the adverts off, now you’re saying they can’t. So to call my research “armchair” is quite ironic.

The article you shared said that it’s only creators not in the YPP that don’t receive revenue but you either didn’t read it or just decided to omit that information based upon your predetermined conclusion.

A quick Google says you’re wrong, I’m not an accountant for YouTube so I couldn’t prove otherwise. Presumably if there was zero benefit to creators, they would all turn the adverts off, rather than just some of them.

I’m aware that they only get a small percentage of the ad revenue but it’s like that in every business unfortunately. When I buy a loaf of bread at the supermarket, I know that only a tiny fraction of a percent the price will go in to the checkout worker’s or farmer’s, or the baker’s paycheck, but I’m not going to boycott supermarkets because of that.

A couple of ads isn’t the end of the world for most people. Whilst I understand that they are undersirable, I also want the creators I enjoy to be able to get paid.

Some of the creators I enjoy are quite niche and they put their time, effort and money in to making the content. I don’t think a couple of ads is too much to ask to help pay them back.

It was introduced under the Tories but massively expanded by new labour. The article says that the money won’t be syphoned off by investors and shareholders but I’m extremely sceptical. The only solution is nationalisation.

It’s not going to be fair unless the average person has the ability to rent a council house.

The right to buy is completely useless to people who are paying £1000pcm to the slum lord.

To be fair, some phones already have that but they have much lower spec cameras/lenses, so it’s currently a trade off.

If a flag ship phone were to find away to implement a flush top spec camera, it would still only be an incremental improvement rather than a great new technology or a substantial innovation.

Yh, I’m not for bailing out companies that are “too big to fail”, I see it as socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor, but that’s a separate debate.

Tech stocks were a interesting case as they bloated far beyond their actual value during COVID, what happened in 2023 was probably somewhat of a renormalization and now they’re back to business as usual. There will always be peaks and valleys, but I’d be very surprised to see tech stocks fail in the long term.

I’m not going to argue that there has been no progress, just that it’s not on the same scale.

Look at the difference between phones from 2004 to 2014, then from 2014 to 2024 and surely you’d have to agree. We’re looking at huge leaps in tech and innovation Vs much smaller incremental improvements.

And I’d once again like to state that this is not a complaint, just a point of view showing that astonishing amounts of technological innovation are not necessarily required to keep companies in business.

On the contrary, I absolutely appreciate it. I was about 15 when mobile phones first became a thing that everyone owned, so I’ve lived through the entire progression from when they were something only a well to do businessman would have all the way through to today. The first iPhone was 2007, 17 years ago btw.

When mobile phones became popular, each new generation of phones saw HUGE improvements and innovation. However, the last ten years has pretty much just been slight improvements to screen/camera/memory/CPU. Form wise and functionally, they’re very similar to the phone of ten years ago.

I understand that some technophiles will always be able to justify why the new iPhone is worth £1600 and if that’s what they want to spend their money on then good for them, but I personally think that they are kidding themselves. Today you can get a brilliant phone for £300 or even less.

In more recent news;

BBC News - Samsung profits jump by more than 900% on chips https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68738046

I agree. Smartphones, for example, have hardly changed at all over the last ten years, but you don’t see Apple and Samsung going out of business.

I remember when running counter strike at 30fps on a 480p monitor meant you had a good computer.

Modern graphics are amazing, but they’re simply not required to have a good gaming experience.

It’s not about banning fun, it’s about trying to control the narrative that the grass isn’t greener.

Removed by mod

Yh, not like it’s her job to parent the child, that’s the government’s responsibility!