Ronnie

So was this audio like? I want to hear it and build up a catalogue of "Fuck you person I don't know from wrestling forum" sound bites, they are unbelievable, they really are.

It will be, someone split the Happ hazard one into a little clip and uploaded it separately,

And he's now done the same for this one too. Fuck you, neil and tiger_rick!

Wasn't it that there were two Icons but one of them was FG PMSL?

Not to my knowledge.

How I understand it is that he created an account as "The Icon" and started posting in a totally different way to get the endorsement of certain posters here, using his existing account to back his opinions up every now and again. When his favourite posters noticed him and made comments such as "The Icon's the best newcomer here" he placed them in his sig.

He got busted one day (probably speaking from the wrong account) so asked for his original account to be deleted. Neil duly did this, but then changed the name of The Icon to FGPMSL anyway.

There is a separate poster "Icon", but I don't think he's related to this in any way.

How pathetic is he?

Probably not quite up to double figures on the FamilyGuyPMSL scale.

Any idea why "HapHazard" sends a message to Brian and Vinny show saying a big fuck you to Neil?

Because Neil suspended him. Suspended, mind; not banned, not force-fed him his own grandmother, not anything more than a simple suspension.

Happ then emailed Neil to tell him what a cunt he is, wrote a bit of a complaint about him at the F4W board, and then had a message for him when cashing in his shout-out.

I would say that arguing that because smokers pay for the health issues cause to others by their smoking, makes it ok, is difficult argument to make!

Yep, that wouldn't be the easiest case to make, though I don't doubt that some economists probably would have a go. (Not me, though: I got mega-heat for refusing to describe people as 'human capital' in my MSc dissertation.)

It strikes me as an incredibly difficult argument to make on a purely statistical level anyway. If smokers didn't die of smoking-related diseases, eventually they'd die of something else that might also cost the NHS, so is that taken into account?

That's an awkward one, isn't it? I mean, if it's non-smoking-related then it shouldn't really count as a black mark against them, any more so than it would for a non-smoker to die requiring treatment.

If smokers didn't spend all that money on cigarettes, would they spend it on other things that would generate tax revenue, such as alcohol or, I don't know, anything with VAT on it?

Yeah, that's a fair point. I suppose the only counter to that is that 80+% of every pound that they spend on anything else doesn't end up in Treasury coffers if they buy standard goods.

The arguments for banning cigarettes is much better held on purely medical grounds. Either ban tobacco and alcohol, or legalise cannabis basically.

I suppose the only difference there is that tobacco and alcohol have been around forever. Were they only discovered today, I think it a certainty that they'd be banned.

Also, you're not taking into account at all the healthcare costs of non-smokers who've developed conditions as a result of passive smoking, particularly in the home (as opposed to smoking in public) including smoking during pregnancy. In the US, a study showed that expectant mothers who smoke cause the deaths of over 600 boy babies and 400 baby girls each year. Babies who survive but suffer from smoking related problems cost the country approximately $800 each to help, totaling nearly $4 million.

I certainly wouldn't want to make ill newborns a point for debate and wholly condemn anybody selfish enough to smoke whilst pregnant, but wouldn't you count that as "treating smoking-related illnesses" anyway? And even if not, $4m is barely noticeable on top of

If I recall correctly, more tax is raised through the sales of tobacco than the cost of treating smokers. However, the argument only works if the tax money raised from tobacco was spend solely on healthcare, but all tax revenue goes into one bit pot and id distributed accordingly. I'm happy to be proven wrong, or shown the correct stats etc but my understanding is that healthcare gets less than 10% of the full allocation of revenue. If that makes sense??

I don't get that line of thinking at all.

If I pay you, the tax administrator,

I've heard that before, but is it factually true? Sounds like it could easily be one of those urban myths that gets repeated so often it gets accepted as fact.

 

If someone could provide some stats or something, it'd help.

Treating smoking-related diseases costs up to

I'd say raising the legal age doesn't work, but raising the price does. I know loads of people quitting because they just can't afford it now; prices have gotten to the point where they impact smokers' budgets significantly enough.

Are black-market prices too high for them too? It seems strange to go to the trouble of quitting something that one enjoys rather than changing the supplier first.

I guess we'll see how the UK Government react when Salmond names the date for the referendum. I have a feeling they'll be going all out to avoid it happening though, which doesn't make much sense if we are nothing but a burden on Englands tax resources.

If that were Westminster's attitude, then it would be keen to get rid of other disadvantaged areas too. It isn't. It still transfers money from wealthier parts of England to poorer ones. The fact that it might be keen to hold on to Scotland doesn't mean that Scotland is secretly a profitable source of revenue, so much as part of the United Kingdom that many in Westminster don't want to see broken. Westminster hasn't been tempted to grant independence to, say, Oldham, Stoke, or even Tower Hamlets to ease the economic burden.

^^ Only babylon signed up last May.

Yep, 'seasider', which led to him complaining over at F4W that the nasty mods had banned him for posting that Big Daddy should be in the Hall of Fame before Kent Walton.

^^ I think the element of that post that I find hardest to get my head round is that it's someone as young as 33 who is proudly committing murder in the name of resisting "forced occupation". It's not even someone who grew up in the 70s with all that this would have entailed for lifelong hostility, or who developed political awareness in the 80s, but someone who came into adulthood at the point when even people like Paisley realised it was time to seek peace. I find it absolutely mind-boggling.

Wasn't Martin O'Neill a Northern Irish Catholic though? He managed Celtic and didn't get anything like the treatment Lennon is getting.

I suspect that the distinguishing feature is their characters. O'Neill's a soft-spoken, likeable chap who merits respect. Lennon really doesn't come across like that at all.

Why do I get the feeling that you've missed my pretty easy to understand point here?

Because I did miss it!

Are those not political discussions / threads now as well?

 

In other words, what's the point of suspending him from this one and not the plentiful other political discussion threads that spring up round here?

Sure. Wouldn't it have been easier just to raise the point, though? It'd have stopped Johnny Rush-in getting the wrong end of the stick and making a pointless post. And now two.

Ahem.

 

http://ukff.com/index.php?s=&showtopic...t&p=2351308

 

http://ukff.com/index.php?showtopic=124851...p;#entry2351302

Happ Hazzard is not allowed to post in this threaduntil 19th May 2011. If he posts in here before that date please report the post.

^^ I suspect that David missed your sarcasm.

No to be fair that is a little simplistic.

I'd say there's certainly an ideological element to the way they're attacking the state spending, and I'd say it's unreasonable to slash state spending by such a high amount without actively attempting to close (rather than open new and backdating them) tax loopholes. And the model they're proposing mirrors rather worryingly the model used in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, all of whom had their economies utterly ruined by it. In addition to which the cuts in police budgets (to give one example) mean we will see a reduction in front line officers, according to every set of figures I've seen, and will (and have) certainly affected moral in the forces, all of which will have a knock on effect of a more dangerous and violent society, which is nice of course.

And most economists I've seen interview have suggested the current viewpoint of the government that we cannot run with a deficit is a complete fallacy, that allowing the deficit to continue is fine as long as we are able to service it with no issues. A better option would be slow down hugely the drastic cuts we're seeing, which come just as we show signs of moving out of a recession and will probably push us back into one, and await the next period of steady growth to put the extra cash that creates into reducing the deficit.

That's a much better answer, and one that I can't jump on

So we've gone from tax and spend, to just lots of tax.

Nope, and to claim that is hyperbolic nonsense.

When the situation is that too much was being spent compared with tax coming in to pay for it and an incoming government sets about an agenda of reducing that overspend, then you would expect to see expenditure reduced, taxes increased, or some combination of both. Don't act as though we're now in a position where no money is spent and the government is simply trying to steal all of your money for some sinister reason.

I've often wondered why off topic posts don't count. Is there a reason?

To discourage people who were looking at increasing their post counts at the rate that D-Von's been expanding his waistline, the consequence of which was dozens of bollock-poor posts all over Off Topic.

Watched 'The True Story of Wrestlemania' the other day.

At WM8 it mentions originally is was to be Hogan/Flair. Why did they change their mind and go with Savage/Flair instead?

I've heard it was because of Hogan's decision to "retire". Flair beating Hogan at WrestleMania was a no-no and putting Hogan over a drawing card only for him to walk away was also a no-no. So apparantly they switched it so Hogan wouldn't have to lose and they could end WM with their babyface winning.

Meltzer has said in the past that it's because their house-show run was receiving only tepid reactions, so McMahon determined that he would need to programme something else in the main event.

Can anyone tell me what the situation is regarding eyetest costs in England etc? We get them free in Scotland as well.

I got mine free of charge last week. There's a voucher that employers must provide upon request to employees who work with Visual Display Units (a posh phrase for computers), which is accepted in most opticians'.

From the website:

If you regularly use a VDU screen as part of your job, your employer is legally obliged to pay for your eyecare.

 

Corporate eyecare vouchers are easy - our unique scheme enables you to use vouchers in over 96% of UK opticians.

Unexpected phone call from my brother today: "You're gonna be an uncle." His girlfriend is ten weeks' pregnant.

Although I'm sure that the reaction in the etiquette guidelines would be to express one's joy at the news, I'm afraid I could only muster "Oh, fucking hell. For fuck's sake." They've only been going out for twelve weeks ... and she's gone down with any of us that have met her disastrously, with my mother expressing concern that she'd get herself pregnant to trap him. (She just seems the type who wants a kid here and now and the daft twat seems to have taken "I'm on the pill" as the truth.) I suspect that she was a one-night-stand gone wrong anyway; there's no reason for them to be together and, after she caused a commotion at my sister's, my brother expressed to my brother-in-law that he doesn't even like her. Ridiculous.

Any economists on here who disagree? Please go ahead and present counters and whatnot.

I suppose I'm likely to be the nearest thing to an economist here. (I started my PhD in economics several years after completing my MSc; I was quickly reminded how much I dislike the subject shortly after starting, so resigned after a year. Blame it on Freakonomics for tricking me into thinking that it would be fun.)

It's not a case of being able to disagree with what was written so much as simply having a different opinion. It's rather like religion in that way, where some people will decry another's when there's ultimately nothing by way of proof to justify one's holding of one belief over some other.

The article that you quoted is big on Keynesian arguments, but it's worth bearing in mind that there are other schools of thought. (Keynesian economics (roughly "governments should spend their way out of a recession") became outmoded decades ago, as the monetarist school of thought (roughly "manipulate the stock of money to resolve recessions", which we've seen with quantitative easing) became the dominant one. Since then there have been "Real Business Cyclists", "New Keynesians" and so forth.)

Nobody can say what the "correct" approach happens to be, or even confirm when one approach has done better than another might have. For example, FDR is commonly lauded for his mastery of the economy during the Great Depression, where he implemented Keynesian policies. However, I read a book called "FDR's Folly" where he was blamed for exacerbating the Depression, and where the author was meticulous in indicating what he did wrong, the damage each action caused, and why a monetarist approach would have worked. And Ben Bernanke, head of the Fed, said in the recent past to monetarist pioneers Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you [for introducing the monetarist theories], we won't do it again."

When Nobel Prize-winning economists are bickering between themselves on this very subject, then how can any of us expect to credibly tie our flags to the mast and say whether we support or refute Krugman's words? We couldn't and shouldn't.

Well, maybe not 100%, but it's not as though there isn't precedent for extremely rich people to give away the bulk of their wealth. The richest people in America seem to, in general, be extremely generous. Warren Buffett, for example, rejects the absurdity of people becoming billionaires without having earned that status, and has famously pledged all save a pittance of his fortune to philanthropy. Ditto Bill and Melinda Gates. There are Carnegie libraries all over the country. Rockefeller donated $75m to the University of Chicago alone.

Giving away is one thing. The government taking it away is another thing entirely.

Agreed.

I'm not even saying that I agree with the sentiment politically (though I hold it to be ludicrous that someone can become an instant billionaire without ever having earned a penny), but I understand mikey's point (which I erroneously attributed it to Kenny earlier); one way of equalising wealth across the board is to simply take it away at the point when someone dies and redistribute it between those at the bottom, instead of letting it go to someone higher up the rich list.

Edit: Kenny verbalised it better.