threegee

Malcolm Robinson, on 11 January 2012 - 05:27 PM, said:

Maybe HSBC are cleverly anticipating what customers want? They don't want their money going to pay bigger bankers bonuses, or into the mostly pointless activity of moving it around the world (and back) each time on commission, or mixed up with the funny money that's all part of fractional reserve lending.

Perhaps HSBC has very wisely said to themselves: we really don't want to be in this retail banking business as it is so boring and risk-free, so we had better step-aside and leave it to someone else.

Does anyone know how many tables you could get in if you took out the bank counter? There's an obvious name for this new one: The Shanghaied Shanghai!

http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-16870464

Who's this Mass Market guy they are going to offer 300Mb/s to? Bet he doesn't live anywhere near you or me!

Why does the inevitable take so long these days, and cost so much of other people's money in the process?

Fascism it may be, but it's not old-style might-is-right, just-go-for-it-because-we-can, fascism. More like let the gravy train roll-on just a few hundred yards more (sorry meters!) and damn the ultimate expense - because we've got 300 million mugs out there to fund it (and their children, and their childrens children), fascism!

Suppose it amounts to the same thing though. A reckless disregard of common sense; of other people's rights; for other people's point of view, and the pursuit of power whatever the consequences may be. Hey, isn't that Stalinism too? No, wrong; Uncle Joe had a cunning plan - this shower can't think it through far enough to have any "end" to justify their means!

Pete, on 18 January 2012 - 04:50 PM, said:

The Groves were defo on BBC! It would have been produced live too. In those days the only option to getting up in front of an on-air camera was a telecine, and the later cost real money; so you only filmed if you could resell it. It took the Beeb a long time to work out that their output could be sold to other TV broadcasters, or indeed was worth the expense of preserving.

As an aside, did you know that Tyne Tees TV had one of the very first video recorders, long before the mighty BBC? It was an american Ampex with 2 inch tape and almost filled an OB van. I was in the van when they were showing it off in London at "The Radio Show" exhibition one year. The cost then was massive - millions in today's money. The BBC wouldn't pay the money, though they played around with their own system for years before finaly abandoning it and buying commercial machines.

ITV companies had to embrace recorded TV very early on, because their advertising revenue depended on it, and they didn't have all the on-site production facilities the BBC had.



Nope! The above is a small modern one. The model that TTTV had is briefly shown here:-

Quote

Must have been quite a lot of private houses nationalised too then - the ones that were busily fitting inside bathrooms post-war!

Truth is there was a steady and general improvement in conditions. But food rationing went on far far longer than it should have due the the post-war Labour government, and it wasn't until Churchill was returned to power in 1951 that the country got off its backside and we started to see real recovery. By 1958 Britain had "Never had it so good!" - including the miners! Most people around at the time realised this - except the Labour Party who were still fighting the class war, and amongst themselves. Wasn't until Harold Wilson that Labour started to come to its senses. But, he had one hell of a fight on his hands with the communists in the party, and still went on to plunge the country into another financial crisis. Sound familiar?

There were some short-term benefits from nationalisation, but it soon became a gravy train, and rendered Britain's Industries uncompetitive. The pit closures (and the modernisations) would have happened regardless, but they were more painful under nationalisation because they resulted from a "command economy", and were far less staggered than they would have been had simple competition been the deciding factor. Immediately post-war many Industries did need consolidating, and nationalisation did just that. But, it brought with it a whole raft of other problems.

And.. none of the above is from a book, or a second-hand opinion. I saw it with my own two eyes, and wasn't a member or supporter of any political party then.