BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

[Ian H]

Haha.

View attachment 9917

This made me laugh. Not everyone will know why (I have no idea why I bothered blanking the name)

 

[BoldonLad]

Or for even more context, it costs on average £50k to feed and house a prisoner for a year. You would expect a child to cost more, but not *that* much more.

Let's say that we allocate £20 per day for food. That's enough for a nice M&S ready meal every night, a reasonable packed lunch and breakfast. That's £7300 for the year. Now I pay about £300 a month for gas an electricity for 4 people. So lets add £900 for the cost of heating and cooking. We can even bung in £450 to cover water charges. I pay £2k a month on my mortgage which buys a house for 4 people, so lets allow £500 for accommodation costs. That's £6k per year. This is a child so we need some cash to cover trips, birthday presents, school equipment , clothes etc. Let's be generous and allow £1000 a month for expenses. Now let's send them to a Private School that has the ability to cope with mental health issues, has small class sizes etc so add £24k.

That's £50,300. Of course, the child will need someone to look after them. So lets add in the cost of some full time carers at a decent salary. Lets have a rotating set of three carers each doing 8 hours per day and pay them £40k each to get good calibre staff. That's £170,300. And that's bespoke care for one child with no economies of scale.

I'm struggling to see where the remaining £150k is being spent. Any ideas?

Not defending the annual cost, but:

You omitted additional staff to cover holidays, sickness etc

You omitted staff “on costs” eg NI, EE Pension Contributions etc

 

[Pinno718]

Not defending the annual cost, but:

You omitted additional staff to cover holidays, sickness etc

You omitted staff “on costs” eg NI, EE Pension Contributions etc

***pedantry alert*** neenawneenawneenaw...

 

[midlandsgrimpeur]

I think the outrage can be at both.

Fair point. I have said it before on other threads, Osborne's austerity was simply a smokescreen to sell off vital public services to the highest bidder. It's a national disgrace that sadly most people are completely unaware of.

 

[briantrumpet]

This made me laugh. Not everyone will know why (I have no idea why I bothered blanking the name)
View attachment 9919

I know it's a while since I've seen you, but... erm... not sure the beard suits you, sir (if you don't mind my frankness).

 

[briantrumpet]

It's almost unbelievable... the Express making stuff up that makes Labour look bad (not that they need much help at the moment)

 

[briantrumpet]

Just because we like graphs with non-zero axes...

 

[Dorset Boy]

Just because we like graphs with non-zero axes...

View attachment 9966

Apart from it should read "bonds trade", not "bond trades", why is hedging to US$ particularly relevant to the UK?

 

[briantrumpet]

Apart from it should read "bonds trade", not "bond trades", why is hedging to US$ particularly relevant to the UK?

No idea. I was kinda hoping someone would explain...

 

[PurplePenguin]

Given the glowing red flags that include a non-zero axis and "author's calculations" of derivatives, I was ready to be enraged, but the article is surprisingly coherent and suitably caveated.

This is his argument.

A lot of people love comparing the bond yields of various countries and drawing broad conclusions — ideally hilarious ones, like the US paying more to borrow than Greece. The yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds is more than 0.5 percentage point higher than 10-year Italian bonds as well. The 10-year UK gilt yield is almost 2 percentage points higher than 10-year German Bund yields. But are these yield differences actually credit spreads? No. Absolutely not.

He makes the point that comparing yields in the same currency (e.g. Eurozone ones or corporate to government ones) makes sense, but it doesn't make sense in different currencies because those currencies may change in value over time.

He's therefore changed it all to one currency which is the US dollar and concludes as follows.

Can we talk about these differences in yields as the market’s assessment of sovereign credit risk? We’re not sure. Spreads will capture all sorts of technical funnies — issuance expectations, flows from bulk annuity insurers, etc. And the analysis relies on the assumption that term premia are equal across interest rate swap and nominal bond markets. But this way of looking at cross-market spreads makes a lot more sense than just looking at the gap between bond yields in different currencies. It’s just a shame it’s so annoying to calculate.

On a more simplistic level, there is something called a carry trade. A classic example of this was borrowing cheaply in Japan and lending the money in Australia at a much higher rate. Many people did this and thought of themselves as geniuses. However, it is really just currency speculation and many people got burnt because of this during the financial crises.

 

[BoldonLad]

Given the glowing red flags that include a non-zero axis and "author's calculations" of derivatives, I was ready to be enraged, but the article is surprisingly coherent and suitably caveated.

This is his argument.



He makes the point that comparing yields in the same currency (e.g. Eurozone ones or corporate to government ones) makes sense, but it doesn't make sense in different currencies because those currencies may change in value over time.

He's therefore changed it all to one currency which is the US dollar and concludes as follows.



On a more simplistic level, there is something called a carry trade. A classic example of this was borrowing cheaply in Japan and lending the money in Australia at a much higher rate. Many people did this and thought of themselves as geniuses. However, it is really just currency speculation and many people got burnt because of this during the financial crises.

Yes, my understanding too. I wonder, given Trump's economics, for how much longer USD will be the currency of choice for such comparisons?

 

[briantrumpet]

Given the glowing red flags that include a non-zero axis and "author's calculations" of derivatives, I was ready to be enraged, but the article is surprisingly coherent and suitably caveated.

This is his argument.



He makes the point that comparing yields in the same currency (e.g. Eurozone ones or corporate to government ones) makes sense, but it doesn't make sense in different currencies because those currencies may change in value over time.

He's therefore changed it all to one currency which is the US dollar and concludes as follows.



On a more simplistic level, there is something called a carry trade. A classic example of this was borrowing cheaply in Japan and lending the money in Australia at a much higher rate. Many people did this and thought of themselves as geniuses. However, it is really just currency speculation and many people got burnt because of this during the financial crises.

Thanks Mr P.

 

[briantrumpet]

A Bluesky thread that caught my eye:

Bear with me, I anticipate your disagreement. There is a clear pattern to the advice given to those who want to press back against rising racism. What it boils down to is that if you point out that racism is often being dressed up as “legitimate concerns” you will alienate people. /1

The way forward, it is said, is empathy and careful, civil, rational persuasion. Maybe that’s right, but I’m not yet convinced. I think it’s significant that so many people with racist beliefs have been so clear for so long that they have felt unable to speak their minds and “tell it like it is”. /2

Why would they believe that? Their problem has been that the consensus that racism is bad created a social cost for them. They hd to be careful whom they spoke to; a reputation for racism could be ruinous. Even in my lifetime that wasn’t always true. People worked hard to build that consensus. /3

Racist views were something agreed to be shameful. For the people pushing racist views today, the reluctance to call them out is a tremendous boon. Even as social media brings them together, it demonstrates to them that they can be bolder without consequence. That’s why they’re now more explicit /4

Their aim is to create the impression that they speak on behalf of a much larger group - a group of people still cowed by fear of social cost - and ultimately to suggest that the social cost will be incurred by those disagreeing with them. /5

That’s why they try so hard to identify points of shame: if you disagree, you support grooming gangs, rape, child murder, whatever it is they are trying to panic people with this week. If the anti-racist response is a quiet word and an agreement to agree to disagree, they’ll be delighted. /6

TLDR: Make racism shameful again. While you’re at it add fascism too.

https://bsky.app/profile/seanjones.org/post/3lyvaczcdgk2v

 

[glasgowcyclist]

He didn't do that under his old log in before he left after the arrests in Southport.

What was his previous username on here? His old posts only show “Deleted member 159” now.

 

[briantrumpet]

Someone pointing out that Robert Redford died before Bob Woodward, whom Redford played in 'All The President's Men', though Woodward is actually seven years younger than Redford. (Also noting how tame Watergate now feels compared with the present.)