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How Much is a Corbyn?
Comments
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In The City for a while, a million pounds was known as a 'Bernie'.
The reason?
Bernie Ecclestone gave the Labour party a million squids and shortly afterwards Tony Blair announced a temporary exemption of F1 (run by Bernie Ecclestone) from the laws about sports advertising tobacco.
You made me look up where 'bar', another term used for a million comes from, I've known it so long I can't remember where I first heard it. From this source they offer the following:
http://www.aldertons.com/money.htm
£1,000,000 [Thanks to Laurence Coley who says it's commonly used in the money markets and thinks the origin might have originated with the value of a bar of gold - uncertain. Ben Morton offers: I suggest it's because there's a bar on top of the "M" in its roman numeral equivalent. William Foot believes it should be £10,000,000.00. If anyone can clarify this I'd appreciate it.]Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one birdThe only time Chuck Norris was wrong was when he thought he had made a mistakeChuck Norris puts the "laughter" in "manslaughter".I've started running again, after several injuries had forced me to stop0 -
Well then clearly nationalisation is the answer. Glad we wrapped that up.
I mean yes, I've never heard of anyone complaining about the customer service of other government run services, like HMRC, they never get it wrong and their phone service is a breeze! Why would the power be any different.
and government run physical assets are all top notch, I've not seen a pot hole in years!0 -
Some firm of stockbrokers came up with the figure of £124 bn as the minimum cost of nationalising all the Big Six plus National Grid. Or £185 bn for the whole energy industry, if you wanted to include the generators and the local distributors, which most people, including I suspect a certain J, Corbyn, forget about.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/07/jeremy-corbyns-bill-nationalising-energy-sector-185bn
It sounds like they stuck on a 10% takeover premium.
To be completely fair, the putative Labour Government would then be left with a load of foreign assets that could then be sold as not required.
I have my doubts that the French Government would allow the English Government to buy EdF, even at a premium. Especially given that the French Government owns ~80% of the shares in EDF (I'd forgotten that EDF was mostly owned by the French state, I have been out of the UK markets for a long time in my defence).
So Corbyn has promised to nationalise a company majority owned by the French Government. Generally you can only do that by war. I know the Left like to hark back to the past but unwinding the entente cordiale is a bit much:rotfl:0 -
chucknorris wrote: »You made me look up where 'bar', another term used for a million comes from, I've known it so long I can't remember where I first heard it. From this source they offer the following:
http://www.aldertons.com/money.htm
£1,000,000 [Thanks to Laurence Coley who says it's commonly used in the money markets and thinks the origin might have originated with the value of a bar of gold - uncertain. Ben Morton offers: I suggest it's because there's a bar on top of the "M" in its roman numeral equivalent. William Foot believes it should be £10,000,000.00. If anyone can clarify this I'd appreciate it.]
I think that the origin of bar was, as you say, the bar above the m to denote the difference between m meaning a thousand and m meaning a million.
A 'yard' is a billion, i.e. 1,000,000,000, short for a milliard. A milliard was 1,000,000,000 when 1,000,000,000,000 was a billion. The French still use 'long form' (the latter) rather than 'short form' (the former) in conversation. Then they also use the word 'pouce' (inch) as in 'I wouldn't give him an inch' and half a litre of beer is still 'une pinte'.0 -
the only way to run an efficient train service is to nationalise it - and then staff it with people that will get prison time if they run late or any similar problems.
We all know public sector attitudes. I have seen staff leave a man bleed to death in a station because they were on a tea break so couldn't call an ambulance.
Therefore, money "allegedly" is not the issue. If a train is late - barring some kind of "natural" disaster, the management AND driver should be given 5 years inside.
Then we'd see it run efficiently.0 -
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I have my doubts that the French Government would allow the English Government to buy EdF, even at a premium. Especially given that the French Government owns ~80% of the shares in EDF (I'd forgotten that EDF was mostly owned by the French state, I have been out of the UK markets for a long time in my defence).
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So, to summarise, we don't like the idea of a UK state owned utility company replacing a de facto French state owned utility company !
Glad that's cleared that one up0 -
Modern political parties think that the only way to gain credence is to have BIG projects with BIG price tags.
NHS pfIT - that was BIG : £12bn originally and rising
Universal Credit : BIG.
Olympics : BIG.
The good thing about BIG projects is that politicians can milk the glamour up front, before anything has been delivered, and by the time the project has turned into a car crash, they will have all moved on.
Mr Corbyn shouldn't therefore stop at the big 6. There are whole towns and districts in Spain with housing devoid of people. He should rock up with his cheque book, and buy them.
(That's the trouble with Labour - no ambition)
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So, to summarise, we don't like the idea of a UK state owned utility company replacing a de facto French state owned utility company !
Glad that's cleared that one up
I don't want a politicly motivated UK entity running the network (should we cut prices to win votes regardless of the cost? should we retain staff to win votes regardless of if they are needed?), I however don't mind a company which is running it being foreign as long as they are profit motivated (not politically), and the market is competitive, or more so than a monopoly.
If the labour party thinks they can run it better and cheaper, why don't they buy a supplier and run it themselves, they'll be able to run it better and cheaper than the competition, and as such will be able to undercut the competition at every turn and pull a huge market share?0 -
So, to summarise, we don't like the idea of a UK state owned utility company replacing a de facto French state owned utility company !
Glad that's cleared that one up
The problem is likely to be how Mr Corbyn persuades the French Government to hive off a chunk of EDF in order for the British Government to buy it.0
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