Thursday 10 May 2012

Why we have a recession:


When you borrow money to spend, you are spending tomorrows money today and agreeing that you will therefore not be able to spend it tomorrow.

It's now tomorrow.

Today's money was spent by the labour government along with yesterdays money.

While cutting back spending won't "recover the economy" right now, there isn't actually much left to spend. Borrowing even more will just rob our children of even more of their future.

If you think spending is important to maintain the economy, then don't spend tomorrows money today - or you can expect a bleak tomorrow.

Did I mention that it is tomorrow?

Labour have been very generous to you and your friends by maxing out your credit card.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Dolphins and Discrimination

I wrote this allegory to capture observations on discrimination that would not be safe to utter plainly. There are at least three lessons here.

Dolphins - an allegory on discrimination

(C) Sam Liddicott 2012
sam@liddicott.com

There were some Dolphins on the windward side of an Island. Like most dolphins, they sometimes behaved aggressively toward each-other.

There were some Dolphins on the leeward side of the Island. Like most dolphins, they sometimes behaved aggressively toward each-other.

In time, some of the windward dolphins became particularly aggressive towards the leeward Dolphins, for no other reason than that they were leeward dolphins, and often hunted them out, or ganged up to attack lone dolphins. This became a particular concern for the leeward Dolphins who began to question their own aggressiveness between each-other.

In time, the attacks of the windward dolphins became so aggressive that the leeward dolphins would often be severely wounded or killed. Sometimes the leeward Dolphins would respond with violent attacks of their own but these did little to change the persistent behaviour of some of the windward dolphins.

When the continual violence of the windward dolphins became too much to bear, the great dolphin sent an Orca to deliver this message:

That although they were all brothers, the windward dolphins would in future be reborn as leeward dolphins, both to experience the effects of their behaviour and perhaps in time to temper the violence of the windward dolphins to their own reborn brothers.

The leeward dolphins were horrified when they heard this. They idea of living with and sharing life and love with those who had so badly treated them - and not be able to recognise them - was repugnant to them and made light of their injuries (they said).

Don't worry, said the orca, they will continue to behave violently towards those who do not appear the same as themselves, and so you will know who they are. Don't hate them, or you may become like them; love them because they will also protect you from the windward dolphins.

I count at least three morals in this tale.

Stop facebook intercepting your links

Are you are fed up with posting links to face book (guardian, yahoo, etc) and find that when your friends follow the link they are forced to accept intrusive facebook apps in order to read the link?


then you may want to prefix your link with this before pasting into facebook:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=

to effectively paste a link like this:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rare-type-storm-sparks-tornado-210613161.html

When your facebook users click on the link, instead of being forced to accept the oppresive Yahoo facebook app, they will see this:


Which will allow them to follow on to the link in a civilised fashion.

NOTE: When adding your link on to the end of http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url= make sure you include the http:// part of the link you are copying.