Starhub: A Singapore style mugging?

A few years ago I went on holiday to Brazil. On the day I arrived three guys came up to me, hit me on the head, knocked me to the ground, hit me on the head again and took my money. It was not a pleasant experience.
Just a few months ago I move to Singapore to live and work. A colleague had a spare local-sim card and he lent it to me. We both agreed to transfer ownership of the sim, but it turned out to be quite a hassle. It couldn’t be done over the phone, online or by post. We had to go to a particular starhub centre and there were none near where we worked in central Singapore. We both had to go together to Dauby Gaut and wait for an hour to get it done.

While I had the sim in my phone I made a conscious decision to strictly limit the use of 3G. Most often I just used wifi, when it was available. When I saw a bill was slightly surpised to see that I had used 0.00877 GB ( just under 9 MB). I’m not exactly certain how that happened. Perhaps I viewed a map that I previously had downloaded but the phone refreshed via the 3G network.
I have frequently seen some starhub advertising that shows the cost of downloading to mobiles is something less than 35 SGD for 12GB. So I think that is might be acceptable to charge slightly more on other packages, may be even 30% extra. But to my amazement, I was charged 88 SGD for my tiny 0.00887 GB. At that rate 1 GB would cost more than 10,000 SGD, or to put it another way, I was charged over 317,000% above the advertised rate.
What’s worse is that my colleague didn’t show me the previous month’s bill, so when I saw it, there was a combined bill of 210 SGD. The best starhub has offered to do so far is to reduce it to 186 SGD.
What do you call it if a firm advertises one rate but charges 317,000% more?
Would it be appropriate to call it a Singapore style mugging?
If it is legal, then I think the law needs to be changed.
I must say I would have preferred if instead starhub had just sent someone to the airport when I arrive to mug me. I would have lost less money that way.

Response to Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens spoke on Progressive Radio (click here to listen to the broadcast)


When discussing the US lead invasion of Iraq, he mentioned that there are 4 conditions under which a country can be deemed to have lost its sovereignty and be open to international intervention to remove its government:

1: if it invades the territory or occupies the territory of neighbouring countries
2: if it violates the genocide convention (it is mandatory to prevent or punish genocide)
3: violates the non proliferation of nuclear weapons
4: gives support, encouragement and shelter to international terrorism

Lets look at the USA:
1: Invasion: The list of countries it has invaded either directly or by proxy over the past century is very long.

2: Genocide: The fire bombing of Tokyo on 25 Feb 1945 alone led to 100,000 civilian deaths. There were significantly more than 100,000 deaths in Cambodia in the spring of 1970 in the US Operation Menu.

3: Nuclear Weapons: The problem of nuclear weapons was born in the USA, they invented them and are the only country in history to ever use nuclear weapons. The sensible alternative to the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not an invasion of Japan, but rather a negotiated surrender. The Japanese had already indicated their willingness to admit defeat and start talks.
Morally, if the US wants to be in a position to insist that other countries should give up their nuclear weapons programs, then they should lead by example.

4: The US has been the most consistent supporter of international terrorism for the past 60 years.

So using Hitch's criteria, the US has given up its sovereignty and so should be open to international intervention.

The biggest problem is that the US has been unable to get over the idea that if it is good for me then it is for the good. In general people are terrible judges of the morality of their own actions. When people don't have an external over-see-er, the consequence is that nuclear weapons are dropped on civilian centres ( Hiroshima and Nagasaki ) and the perpetrators think it was just.

Later in the discussion Hitchens mentioned that we should have 'blood for oil'. An important question for him is: how many barrels of oil is his youngest daughter's life worth?

If you're wrong then how will you find out?

What is the truth? How can you find it? One of the interesting things about reading the works of the most intelligent people that ever lived is that even though they have amazing minds, they all seem to have the ability to be very silly sometimes and frequently are plain wrong, to my mind. Great minds don't think alike and so, a significant portion of them are wrong.



I reckon, the first step on the path to the truth is to realise that if one of the convictions that you currently hold is false, then you won't know it. That follows from the definition of conviction. So then what do you do?

Well, next step is to ask yourself the question: if I'm wrong, then how will I find out? We could think of some method that we could employ, but then the follow on question is of course, if that method doesn't work, how will I find out?

Suppose someone is asked: if your religious faith is incorrect, how will you find out? and they answer that God will tell them, then you can rightly tell them that they're being a nitwit, since if their faith is fundamentally wrong and God doesn't exist, then he won't be around to tell them. So they would need a better answer. To be honest I've never heard a sensibe answer to the quesition from a religious devotee. The statement I have the truth, I don't need to search any further, is very arrogant and is likely to lead to an end to progress for people who have that opinion.

To really answer the question about how we'll find out if we're wrong takes significant humility. The starting point is that we may well be wrong.

However there are some groups who really do try to answer the question about how they'll find out if they are wrong. For example scientists will say that if they are wrong, then future experiments will show it and so old theories will be dumped in favour of new ones that agree with the evidence. To me that is a reasonable answer, though there are perhaps flaws. For example if some new brilliant scientist comes along with a new exciting theory which explains all sorts of existing anomalies, it could well be rejected by the main-stream because the ideas are just too revolutionary. Older people in particular have difficulty taking on new ideas and so science may well miss out. The peer-review system in journals is not perfect, but to my mind, the achievments of science ovew the past few centuries have been amazing

Wikipedia is an interesting case. They have really shown humility. They say that they'll find out if they're wrong by allowing anyone correct it. The result is absolutely astounding. They have created the largest encyclopedia in the history of humanity and no other has been faster at fixing mistakes. The down-side is that it sometimes is vandalised, however when people vandalise articles, they get corrected and that is the key.

For me the important thing is not to absolutely know the truth, but rather the ensure that you have a path to get there.

Apcoa parking: you've been clamped

Recently I was in a private car-park in Dublin and I paid for 2.5 hours of parking, it was 2 euro per hour. When I returned I found that my car we being clamped. The clamper, who was from Apcoa parking claimed that I was 9 minutes late. A fact which I disputed. The clamper asked for a fee of 11 euro for each minute that I was late.



When I asked him if he thought that what he was doing was reasonable or moral, he gave me the Auschwitz Guard defence, i.e. he was just doing what he was told.

Can anyone think of a worse job than working for Apcoa. You'd go round clamping people, seriously annoying them and then dealing with the consequences.

I was told that I could appeal my fine, but I'd have to pay it first. I wonder has anyone every got money back from Apcoa after appealing to them?

Is there any legal protection, if someone returns to their car and Apcoa says that they are one second late. Are Apcoa legally allowed impose any arbitrary fine?

Apcoa have a notice saying that if you tamper with the clamp then they'll fine you 3,000 euro. I wonder is that more of a threat or a promise. Suppose someone were to break the lock with a metal cutter, then what would the real fine be?

I wonder would the following business be legal:
Buy a metal cutter and some locks that Apcoa use on their clamps. When anyone gets clamped, go to them, (before Apcoa) and offer to cut the locks. Any locks that are cut will be replaced. The fee charged to the car owner would be significantly less than the Apcoa fine.

I heard a story recently of a clamping firm that kept clamping builders as they worked on a site. Whenever the cars were clamped, the builders would get their angle grinders and cut off the locks.
This continued for a while until the clampers got very annoyed and threatened legal action if the cutting continued. Though they persisted in clamping. Then the builders started pouring glue into the locks. So the clampers were unable to unlock the clamps. The builders were then on hand to offer their services with the angle grinders. The offer was taken up. After that the builders' cars were left alone.

Sometimes, people do indeed turn the tables on clampers, for example in London last year some residents in a apartment complex blocked the clampers exit until they released the clamps for free. Click here to read the details.

Don't visit areps.at

A nasty virus has been going round facebook today.
In a way it is very simple. Someone visits the site: areps.at,
It looks quite like a facebook login page. They give their username and password then their facebook account is hacked into and all their friends are sent a message asking them to 'Check areps.at', some of them do and so the virus spreads.



If it happens to you, then you should immediately change your password.

Motivating players well

Back-ground: Chelsea lost the Chapions League Semi Final on 6-May-2009 after a string of penalty claims were turned down

It does nothing for the dignity of the sport to have footballers frequently throwing themselves on the ground looking for free-kicks and penalties. It makes the players look like cheats, which is indeed what they are. But one of the consequences, just like the boy who cried wolf, is that when Drogba genuinely should get a penalty, referees bear in mind that most time he goes down he is just looking for the foul and wasn't actually fouled. I don't have sympathy for Chelsea, because they cried wolf too many times.

However, I don't think the real problem is with players' ethics, but rather with the way they are motivated. Right now if a player is in the box and his half tackled, then falling over is a good option, quite frequently it will yield a penalty. We need to introduce incentives not to fake it. For example:
1: Play on advantage more often, then if no advantage is accruing pull back for the foul

2: After the match a video referee should look through the match for instances of diving. Those who are caught will get multi-match bans for bring the game into disrepute. Currently if a player is caught smoking hash he is dealt with harshly, if he dives, then he is rarely punished. Clearly the priorities need to be changed.

3: Referees should bear in mind that if a player is fouled he can still sometimes remain on his feet. Too often a referee will only give a free kick if someone falls.

Players often have very short-term horizons, they think that if they give away a corner then the danger has been averted, or if they get a yellow card, then they haven't hurt their team. So perhaps it is time to use a sin-bin for yellow card.

And finally, when a foul happens at the edge of the box, the important thing is not where the first contact was, but rather the last. If the first contact is outside the box, but then as the players move, contact continues into the box, the referee should play on the advantage until in the box and so a penalty should be given.

Nasty side of facebook applications

I saw a rather nasty application on facebook today. It looked rather innocent at first, just a harmless IQ test that someone could take and possibly compare scores with friends. However there was a tiny bit of small print which I almost missed, it read:
Subscription service 4 items/ week, €2.50 per item + €2.50 to join. 18+. SP MTL 015260014. To unsubscribe txt stop to 57151

After being asked 10 general knowledge questions, I was then asked to submit my telephone number. I guess if I had done so then they would have taken €10 from my mobile phone account each week until I noticed. I reckon I'd prefer it if they would just mug me. There is a certain integrity of purpose about mugging which these quiz masters lack.

I'm certain that the scores of my friends which were displayed were not genuine results. In particular if the quiz just asks ten general knowledge questions, how could my friends possibly end up with scores such as 132, 126, 121, 116 and 109. I've asked one of my friends whom it was claimed took the test, she assures me that she did not.

If you want to see a version of the scam,click here.

If this is not currently illegal, then the law needs to be changed. As it stands now, plenty of people will do a one off quiz online and then for the rest of their lives the cheats will steal 10 euro per week from them.

I'd strongly encourage anyone affected to lodge a complaint with the Irish Consumer Agency, start by clicking here. Note the company behind the scam is Blinck United Ltd, The Digital Hub, 4 St Catherines Lane West, Dublin 8.

I'd define a scam to be a business where a majority of the customers would not have proceeded with the transaction if all the relevant facts were made clear to them before hand. Using that definition, this is clearly a scam. However that definition can't be used in a law.

I wonder are new regulations required to stop cheats like Celldorado?

I'm really interested to know, do they confirm ownership of a mobile before the mobile account is charged? For example, if I asked local politician to help me and he did nothing, then could I go to the celldorado scam site and then sign-up for a couple dozen services under a made-up name but using the politician's mobile number? Even if the politician's mobile is paid for by the state, I'm sure he would eventually notice a mobile phone bill in the thousands of euro per month. That might just prompt them to bring in some new regulations. Needless to say, I couldn't possibly condone such a strategy.

The ones who caused the problem

The Irish economy is in a terrible state and I think that the time has come to apportion blame. It is very clear that there is one group who caused the ridiculous property bubble and they now deserve our contempt. They are responsible for the mess we are in and if there were any justice in the country they would be the ones who should be brought to account.

We can't possibly blame the people who sold their homes at the top of the market. They weren't being greedy, they were simply accepting the market price for what they sold. The bubble was not caused by foolish buyers who risked money they did not have to purchase property they could not afford at absurdly inflated prices. No.


There is one group to blame. They made a huge contribution to the property price inflation. This group of people was not driven by any altruistic motivations they simply want to make a buck. And indeed they did very well out of the economic growth. Without them there simply couldn't have been a boom. They fascilitated just about every property purchase. It is time to name and shame them. Though no doubt many of you have already guessed who they are. They are of course the furniture removal firms and their greedy employees.

Now let's spare a thought for the victims, such as the bank executives who have lost out. For example poor Jake DeSantis .

It will all be free in the future

Do you remember the days when companies used to charge for personal email accounts? Ah, perhaps you are too young. Well in future a lot more is going to come your way for free. For a start, right now mobile phone calls are absurdly over-priced. If you have a local wifi network, then you can now use skype on your phone for free. This is only the start.
Good news for people in general: Mobile phone charges are about to collapse.
The bad news for mobile companies, their profits will follow the prices and then will come the bankruptcies.


The music industry is falling behind the times. They cannot stop the sharing of music files online. If thepiratebay.com gets shut down, then you'll find 10,000 other similar sites in 200 countries round the world taking their place. So, the future is free music for all. Revenue will come from concert sales. Giving away free music online is a way of advertising concerts.

Cable TV is coming to an end. Why pay for 100 channels on Cable, when there are millions available online for free. Pay-TV is on the way out. It just can't compete with the pirates who stream films and live sport for free. Watch out for more embedded advertising, for example 5 second ads in the middle of sports matches.

Film industry are powerless to stop web-users sharing films online and so DVD sales and revenue from TV will plummet. Similarly cinema attendance will drop as everyone will have access to films even before the official release date. But the bottom line is that people want to see films and the film industry wants to continue making them. The obvious solution is to have embedded advertising. If the major source of revenue is from product placement, then film-makers will no longer see file-sharing sites as the enemy, but rather as their friend. Of course I expect the film industry to fight the file-sharers for a while more, but sooner or later they'll realise that the war is over and they've lost. It is time to re-build the industry in this new barely recognisable land-scape.

Most of the current crop of commercial TV stations round the world will go bankrupt. A few will see the new technology as an opportunity and will thrive. But most will want to cling to the past, with middle aged management who harp back to the good old days. Round the world state supported TV stations will limp on with hand-outs and money forcefully taken from the populations in taxes and licence fees. Their viewing figures will plummet.

Morally I think that is objectionable to forcibly take a licence fee from someone. It is an abuse of power. On the other hand, sharing a file with my neighbour is so much more noble, even if I've never met him and he lives in Ulaanbaatar.

But for those who are interested in making money, there will still be plenty of oportunities, but things will be different and they'll need to be very adaptable.

Locked Public Tennis Courts

I went for a jog this evening and passed some public tennis courts. It was a beautiful evening, the sun was shining, it was a nice temperature but all the courts were empty. The courts were locked! There was a very high fence round them.

I continued my jog and a little while later I saw a couple of children playing tennis on a road. They had no net and indeed no protection from on coming traffic. There weren't too many cars on that particular road and I guess the kids assumed that if one came round the corner they'd probably have enough time to get out of its way.

As a consequence of having locked courts:
* Fewer children in the area will play tennis than would otherwise be the case
* Bored children will get up to mischief rather than play tennis
* Children who do want to play will risk their lives by playing on the road
* Other children who really want to play on a real court will risk their lives by climbing over the high fences which are round the courts, since the gates are locked.
* Those that have the power to lock the courts will get a kick out of the fact that they have the power to prevent children playing.

From an insurance point of view, how can a child be allowed run through a park but not allowed on to a harmless tennis court?

I reckon the people who locked the courts are not stupid, they are just very poorly motivated.

Hang the painting not the painter

Memorable art should be edgy, it should captivate the public's interest. We need not insist on it being deferential to the powers that be.

The Cowen paintings which were left in the National Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Academy fit the bill. The two galleries now have a wonderful chance to hang fascinating paintings, with very interesting stories behind them. They have the potential to become their most viewed paintings. The only question is, do the gallery management have the courage to be relevant? Their first step should be to contact the artist and seek his permission to retain the paintings.

One of the great tragedies of art galleries is that not that many people go into them. The vast majority of the population don't step inside a gallery in any given year. By hanging the Cowen paintings curators will see their visitor numbers soar. They can let the public make up their own minds about the artistic merits of the pieces. At the very least, the paintings will bring new people who will then be introduced to the other paintings on the walls.

How often are the paintings in Irish galleries mentioned on the front page of BBC online or in the New York times?

I say hang the paintings on the wall, don't hang the artist.

If there are some haughty senior members of FF who think that we should only ever show groveling respect to our the taoisheach, then send them on an extended visit to North Korea, (at their own expense), so that they can see what happens to a country when all must be obsequious to their dear leader.

If we compare the paintings by Casby, with say a UK broad-sheet political satire cartoon, we then find that in fact Mr Casby was actually being much more kind.

I think the Polish magazine Wprost went too far when it published a doctored photo of Germany's Chancellor Merkel breast feeding the Polish Kaczynski twins. I'll let you the reader decide:

Cowen in the Nude

It has come to my attention that RTE, the state broadcaster, has stepped way out of line. They had on their news an item concerning a nude paining of Brian Cowen. They clearly don't understand their role in the state.



I am full of admiration for Michael Kennedy (FF TD), he has been standing up for our dear leader Brian Cowen and has asked the head of RTE, Cathal Goan, to consider his position. Mr Kennedy does indeed mean well. Though he is without a doubt being too soft.


I am very please to read that Goan, has apologised. We have no place in our country for journalism which mocks Mr Cowen. It does not matter that their article was factual, entertaining and of great interest the public.


Some enemies of the state abroad have a great interest in distributing anti-Irish propaganda. The BBC and The Times have both done a great disservice to themselves by publishing stories ridiculing Mr Cowen.

Now our solution is three-fold:

1. There should be jail sentences for those in the media who are disrespectful to our dear leader
2. To promote more patriotic journalism, news outlets should send their staff to train in North Korea, where they can learn how to show the sort of deference to a leader that he deserves.
3. We need to block the internet and publications from abroad. They are full of anti-Irish nonsense and often have nasty hidden agendas. We can learn from China here, they have their great-firewall.
   

As a first step, to send a clear message, Mr Goan should be sent to an FF gulag in Mayo for the rest of his natural life.

I followed the herd with the intelligence of a sheep

Here is a negative scenario for Ireland, which I'm not necessarily predicting, I'm just saying it is a possibility:
A couple of the banks default, triggering the government guarantee.
On the international money markets no-one wants to buy Irish Government bonds and so the government defaults. Thus no civil servants get paid.
There is then a 'run' on all banks causing the last standing banks to collapse. Then the real fun starts...
With massive deflation bankruptcies soar. When the government eventually gets back on its feet it finds it has massive debts which will take 30 difficult years to pay back.
Huge waves of emigration return and has a result we have hundreds of thousands of empty homes round the country which are worthless and are allowed to fall into ruin.
Just as we had deserted 'famine villages' in future we'll have 'credit crunch villages', those new developments round the country which will be left idle, a reminder of the folly of us all.

As for the blame for all this. Well, it's been caused by idiots, people just like me who bought a flat right at the top of the property market. When it came to understanding the real value of the flat I had followed the herd and used the intelligence of a sheep. We were all fools and kept pushing the property market up and up. We never looked down.

I had read of bubbles in markets before, the Amsterdam tulip bulb mania, the Wall Street bubble in the 1920's and so on. It is so easy to say 'oh those fools'. It is quite a different experience to be one be one of them.

I'm very confident there will be lots more market bubbles to come. It is just a part of human group dynamics. If you ask me how much is a tulip bulb worth, then I say, whatever someone will pay for it. If you can find a dimwit who'll pay you 4 fax oxen for one. Well then that's what is is worth. Looking back now we can see that it certainly is not a sustainable price, but there are fundamental reasons why can never have fore-sight like hind-sight.

One key element of economic markets is uncertainty. If they were predicatable, then they would be fundamentally different. I would never expect a group of gorillas to fully understand and be able to predict the dynamics of their own group interaction. A human, who is more intelligent has a chance to understand the gorillas. But to understand the dynamics of a group of humans, you'd need to be more intelligent than the members. If we had evolved to be more intelligent creatures, then we'd have an even more complex society, one which we still wouldn't be able to fully understand.

Freedom of Speech

It seems to me that one of the significant contributing factors in the Rwanda genocide was RTLM Radio which encouraged hatred and ultimately the slaughter of Tutsis. Though we will never know for sure, had the station been put off the air, I suspect, things would have turned out very much better.

If we always support the freedom of speech, then the radio should have been allow to pump out its calls for genocide.

If we were to ban all broadcasts that promotes violence, then a discussion on whether the US should continue to use military force in Afghanistan would not be allowed.

If we close down media that encourage the law to be broken, then we have stifled discussion on unjust laws.

If we censor pieces that are deemed incitement to hatred, then I would be unable to honestly write my thoughts on the Saudi Religious police who have arrested and charged a 75 year old woman with mingling with two young men, one of who she says she helped raise since he was a baby and the other was delivering some bread. The unfortunate old woman has been sentenced to 40 lashes and prison term. ( see UPI news report )

If we forbid the encouragement of the ethnic cleansing, then the Bible would at the very least need to be edited, removing for example the requests from God that Amalekite men, women, children and infants should be butchered, ( see Samuel Book 1, Chapter 15, verse 3) It cannot be claimed that the Amalekites are entirely a historical people, as the council of advisers in the Reformed Pastafarian Church call are known as the (modern, pacifist, pro-Israeli) Amalekites.

As is often the case, it seems that it is difficult to make up a blanket rule that will sensibly cover all scenarios.

Thoughts and one-liners

Being first is a good start.

Some people blame the media for the sexualisation of teenagers, I blame the pituitary gland.

Its was very sad, the marriage had the most tragic ending of all: one of them died.

All firms will go out of business, but some will out-live you.

People can thrive without being a member of a religion, but religions go extinct without members, so we know who needs whom.

Of all the religions that people have had through the ages, the vast majority are now extinct.

He was so unsuccessful, the women found him unattractive,
she was so successful, the men found her unattractive,
when they met, they both chose celibacy rather than each-other.

Take everything away from a man and he'll still be able to have happy days. Give him everything he wants and he'll still be able to have miserable days.

The military commander did not know the meaning of the word retreat. It lead to awful confusion.

The difference between an expert and an ordinary person is a few words of terminology.

I know what those advertisers are up to, but unfortunately they understand how my mind works so much better than I do theirs.

All that I know of him is what I learnt while making up the wikipedia article about him.

I prefer watching live sport rather than Shakespeare's Hamlet, because the emotions of the players are real rather than faked by actors and I don't know what's going to happen at the end.

If there is a law in the US banning gay couples from forming a marriage contract, then one solution would be to drop an 'r'. Gays could form a (single 'r') mariage contract. So the effect of the law would be to ban gays from using a particular spelling.

To suggest that the responsibility for the problems in Africa is not with the Africans is condescending to them.

I don't watch reality TV, because when I want to hear opinionated, illinformed people talk nonsense, I enjoy meeting my own friends down the pub.

All the other artists were being very different and original, so to blend in and be accepted, I had to do the same.
_______________________________________

How to stop a speeding train:

First World war approach:
Get 20,000 men onto the track, packed tightly, each linking arms with their neighbour. Any men who refuse will be shot for cowardice.

Second World war approach:
Bomb the line from a plane, killing many of the passengers and people who live near the track.

The thinking man's approach:
Switch the signal light from green to red.

Free Advertising

I'm a big fan of wikipedia. It is not perfect, it has some flaws, but overall it works incredibly well. Web-users together co-operate and create something amazing.

Following in the footsteps of wikipedia other "wikis" have been launched. i.e. websites whose content is created and edited by the general public. For example there is wiktionary.org with is a dictionary. I find conservapedia.org quite amusing, it is similary to wikipedia, but it is written from a conservative US perspective.

Now, there are many cities where it is almost impossible to find out the cost of basic services such as dentist or electricians. But what if someone built a wiki which allows people enter the name, address and prices of various services, then suddenly everyone can find out how much the plumbers in their area cost.

Well, such a site exists, it is GingerWiki.com


From a consumers point of view, it is a great source of information on the prices of services in your area. If you want a table of prices charged by dentists in Ireland or prices of doctor visits in Hong Kong, then GingerWiki.com is for you.
But because it is a wiki, consumers themselves can input the names, contact details and prices of services. For example, if you've been to a dentist who has obsurdly over-charged you, then you can use GingerWiki.com to warn the people in your area.

From a small business point of view, GingerWiki.com effectively offers free advertising. Whether or not the firm has an existing presence on the web, GingerWiki.com offers a page for free. It is very easy, start by going to the add a new business page, then fill in a form indicating the company contact details, services offered. It is also possible to indicate prices and the company logo can be added as well. Then when the Save page button has been clicked, the page will immediately be available and it will include a map showing the location of the premises, which is worked out using the postal address supplied.

It is not important to vote

If you live in a democratic country it is not important whether or not you vote, which is not to say that the right to vote is unimportant. When it comes to supermarkets, it matters to me that there is competition between them for my business. That said there is no need for me to frequently check the prices of given products in each of the shops near me. By not making an effort to find the best bargains it could cost me more than a few percent of my salary as I waste money that could have been saved.

On the other hand, the last time I voted I was living in the UK and there I had a choice between the two parties. The main difference that I could see was that one was going to put up tax by a couple percent to fund an improved health service. To me I wasn't something that mattered much to me. Even if the politicians kept their word after elections, for many people life goes on very much the same whether one party gets in or another.

However, as a general rule, people are power hungry and politicians are no exception. By having a democracy politicians are motivated to please the people, well at least to please the people that vote, or more specifically the swing voters. Those who consistently vote along given party lines aren't really participating and more than the non-voters are.

It is important that people have the power to vote out politicians that don't do well, but whether one member of the population actually votes doesn't make a difference.

You can't fly and grow at the same time

The problem with flying and growing at the same time is that flight is very tricky and controlled flight is nearly impossible. But it is not completely impossible, as long as you get everything absolutely right. Having different parts growing at differents rates is just not going to allow you get off the ground.

Another little issue is that flying models are not scalable. If you were to tripple the size of everything in a helicopter, then you'd end up with something very dangerous. The only good news for potential passengers would be that it most likely wouldn't even be able to take off.

Looking at teenagers it is clear to see that growing is slightly uncontrolled process that may produce a swan in the end, but there is a long period of being an ugly duckling.
And speaking of swans have you ever noticed that small (young) signets don't fly.
In fact the same goes for all birds. They wait till they are the same size as their parents before flying! This is in contrast the ability to walk. For example a lion cub can run and jump even though it is much smaller than its parents. The dynamics of the walk of a lion cub are slightly different to that if an adult. But not fundamentally.

Also insects can't fly and grow! A fly will start life as a maggot or grub, then turn into a pupa and after that start to fly. By the time a fly flies, its growing days are over. Sometimes round the house, mostly near the rubbish bin, I see small flies that, to me, look just like miniature versions of the common house fly, well I can be sure that tiny ones are not the young of the larger ones. They are in fact a different species.

Bats are another fine example, their young they are cared for and fed by their mothers until they are ready to fly, by which time the growing will have stopped!

If an animal were to try to fly and grown then the growing rates of different body parts would need to be very precisesly governed. Also subtle changes in wing shape would be required and timed perfectly to deal with the altering body mass. A big ask.

So in summary:

• a controlled walk is not tricky and is more or less scalable so you can walk and grow.

• a controlled flight is very tricky and it is not scalable so you cannot walk and fly

Bankers

Summary:
For economic growth we people to take risks by lending money.
For long term stability we need banks that don't go bankrupt.
Thus we need banks to pass on the default risk.

Details:
It seems that the word 'banker' sounds like a swear word more-so now then ever before. Banker bashing is a popular pursuit in blogs and newspapers. But seldom do we hear the view from the inside, so let me try to start to remedy that.

Banks are full of regular people, who can show kindness and compassion, particularly to friends and family. They will hold open the door open for a little old lady, but when it comes to large sums of money, they will be, for the most part, very selfish. It is reasonably rare for individuals or firms to give more than 1% in truly charitable donations and the giving that is done is often used as a form of relatively cheap PR work.

Overall I think it is fair to say that banks are selfish institutions, full of selfish individuals. People just like me. In our desire for money we are very much like other groups. In our defence I would say that we are perhaps more open about aims than some. For example politicians frequently claim that they are motivated by a desire to do go and to help others, but their actions are much more consistent with a group whose primary motivation is a lust for power.

In banks, the executive boards have some significant power, but it is not absolute. Ultimately they are accountable to share-holders, who do from time to time demand the sacking of the board.

Suppose, back in 2004, a board member of a major bank were to present to the board the suggestion that they seriously reduce the credit exposure of the bank, which would drastically reduce risk of bankruptcy and indeed the profit of the bank. The board would know well that if they were to take up this suggestion then the share-holders would have them all sacked. If their competitors are making billions by taking large risk, then they are very heavily pressurised to do the same.

Roughly speaking, businesses work for the benefit of the share-holders. They take risks to generate profit. Outside of banking, firms go bankrupt reasonably frequently. Only a tiny fraction of firms that were in operation in 1900 were still going in some shape or from in 2000, without having experienced a bankruptcy and bail-out at some stage.
It turns out that in fact banks have good longevity compared to pretty much any other industry.

However, if we want any form of economic growth, then we need there to be risk-takers. We need to allow firms the right to risk bankruptcy. However suppose we say that the collapse of a retail bank is too devastating for an economy for a government to allow, then we cannot let banks take much risk at all. Any time money is lent there is a risk. So, if we absolutely can't let the banks go bust, then we need to have other risk takers. One solution would be just to let the banks just be intermediaries, not wear-housing the default risk, but rather passing it on. Hedge funds have the potential to be very very helpful to an economy, if they can be encouraged to take credit risk. If they are paid enough of course they will.

Individuals with deposits in banks could also be paid to take on some additional risk. For example an investor could be offered the following:
Choice 1:
Lock away 100,000 Euro for 1 year in super-safe bank and you'll get 1% interest.

Choice 2:
Lock away 100,000 Euro for 1 year and you'll get 6% interest, subject to Ryanair not defaulting on any of its debts. If Ryanair defaults, the 100,000 Euro deposit will be converted into a Ryanair bond, with face-value 100,000 euro.

It is clear, it is simple and we can have safe-guards against mis-selling.

The benefits of offering choice 2 to investors are:
1: Ryanair, and companies like it, will be able to raise money more easily
2: Individuals can get better returns on their savings, by choosing to take some risk
3: The safe banks which the government won't let to bankrupt are exposed to much lower credit risk.

Choice 2 above is basically a 'credit default swap'. They are not very popular at the moment, but they have great potential to come back in future.

Response to Kevin Myers

In January 2009 Kevin Myers wrote an article in The Irish Independent entitled Huge Areas of Britain Have become Foreign Colonies in which he discusses the consequences of a possible future Liverpool team consisting of Africans managed by a Brazilian. In response, I would say that on the football pitch timing is very important. However, as a football fan, when I see a beautiful goal, it matters not at all to me whether it was scored by a player who left Africa just a few years ago, or by a Brazilian whose ancestors left Africa on slave ships a few centuries ago or indeed by a Caucasian whose ancestors left the Rift Valley a long time ago. The ancestors of all players came from Africa, but the timing is not important.

Football fans care passionately about the colour of the jersey worn by the player who has just scored, but they really don't care about the colour of the skin beneath the jersey.

Professional football clubs count the number of supporters that attend per game. In the club that I played in, we'd count the number of games between each supporter. Sometimes we would have to wait for ten games until at last one kindly wife would show up. One of the big differences between my team ( Wandsworth Celtic) and Liverpool was the elitism of the players. Top class footballers attract huge attention. Fans will pay to watch Liverpool, I would need to pay people to watch me play.

For the last few decades Tranmere Rovers have had more English players than Liverpool. But every week Liverpudlians vote with their feet and go along to Anfield in much greater numbers than to Prenton Park. You may ask "what's Prenton Park?", to which I reply that's my point exactly.

A city or country is made up of its inhabitants, whether they be recently arrived or otherwise. So when I moved to London as an economic migrant worker, in a small way, I became a part of what London was. If the skin colour of the population changes, then the fact still remains, that London is full of Londoners. What has changed is what it means to be a Londoner. The grand-children of Jamaican immigrants who have never lived outside of London are certainly not foreigners in their own city.

People do lose touch with their past. However would it matter if one Londoner did not know that his Jamaican great-grand father fought during the second world war against the Romanian great-grand father of his next door neighbour?