Who’s listening in 2025?
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It’s an excellent pop song. Always liked it. It’s been a couple of years since I heard it though 
Just popped into my head and thought I’d share!
Having left Birmingham back in 93, I’ve lost connection with the city - and actively tried to do so pretty much instantly after having left.
I went to a school on the “wrong” side of Hagley Road and that maybe is the defining impression I have of Birmingham. In hindsight, there were good bits, bad bits and meh bits. Having experienced mainly the meh/bad bits, I never connected with the city. The city may have more canals than Venice but it was entirely charmless and lacking in opportunity from my perspective. I just wanted to escape.
I vividly remember the riots and indeed most of the catchment for the school was from Winson Green, Handsworth and Smethwick - so lots of fellow students were either directly affected or probably participated.
All said and done, Birmingham is just another city caught out of time. The issues that are manifest there are borne out of the broader economical down turn - analogous to most cities in the UK and the western world.
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Well done that man, but you have a serious problem with understanding scale. Please refer back to the post I made above on interest earned on £1bn.
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In my old field of study there was a fascinating phenomenon where multiple lines of evidence started pointing to the reality that the insulin resistance that causes type ii diabetes was not primarily an problem of glucose metabolism, but of fat metabolism. One of the strongest contributors turns out to be an over abundance of fat storage in organs involved in glucose metabolism, most critically the skeletal muscle. No one though could explain the paradox that increased fat storage is one of the hallmark adaptations of endurance training, something that provides really strong protection against insulin resistance. What is happening in well trained people that prevents the large fat stores causing the metabolic dysregulation seen in more sedentary people?
A lab where some people I knew worked made a big big breakthrough in answering that problem by demonstrating it was not the size of the fat depot itself but the lack of turn over of the fat molecules in the depot. A well trained person is constantly cycling through breaking the fat down, releasing it into the blood stream, burning it, then rebuilding the stores during recovery. Years later I got to speak with the lead investigator of that lab and told him how that was one of my favorite papers. That it was such an elegant explanation with striking parallels to the economy that made it really easy to explain to other people. I got a completely blank look back from him. So I elaborated…you know, an economy is healthy not due to the amount of money that exists within it, but due to the amount of money that is circulating within it, and that when money accumulates in some pockets of the economy to a degree that it can be stored and doesnt need to be spent then the economy suffers. He was horrified at my analogy. Turns out he was a big Reganite and didnt appreciate my communist interpretation of his research.
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A wild statement given how clearly it has been stated on number of occasions by a number of people that they are a football club with a well documented recent history of hooliganism that has seen their fans banned on multiple other occasions.
That isnt an argument for anything. It simply says “other things that were different were treated differently.” That you would use it and think it is an argument that says anything of value I think speaks to a lot of the unproductiveness of what is now a very characteristic pattern of these “conversations”.
What is strange about politicians jumping into a debate to score points? We’re talking about a political class who over the past 18 months or so have been willing to inflict reputational damage on themselves to parrot brazen lies in the interest of Israel’s narrative, even when the evidence is overwhelming that what they are saying is absolutely indefensible.
It is an interesting turn of events that someone who is Reform curious, a party whose attraction lies in the “they [establishment politicians from the establishment parties] have let us down and cannot be trusted” argument, would see two opposing arguments and put weight behind the one coming from those same politicians.
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No, of course it isn’t acceptable.
Which, as you know full well, isn’t the point.
You are using those examples to suggesting people’s concerns around immigration are justifiable. Look, these people who are up to no good have Muslim sounding names.
Does it matter that those same crimes or positions are committed and held by greater number by white British national? It isn’t like immigrants have introduced the concepts of homophobia or money laundering to our shores.
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Nothing. By no means is Britain the only country experiencing the issue of increasing amounts of wealth being hoarded by fewer and fewer people, and far right politicians exploiting the social problems that result.
No-one has ever said otherwise.
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Just want to offer two comments I don’t think I’ve seen covered in the discussion:
Israeli teams shouldn’t even be playing in Europe. They are located in the Middle East, which is part of Asia, geographically. I completely agree with the police recommendation about their fans, and Starmer should stay out of it. But besides that, they shouldn’t be playing in Europe. Ideally the authorities would draw a line and put them in a suitable competition based on their location, but I won’t hold my breath.
Second comment is on rich people. The point is very well made that proportionately they use a small amount of their resources for consumption. If they are a billionaire I.e. extremely rich, this applies even more. Even if they buy luxury goods, and of course they do, in large quantities, the amount of money still left over is astronomical. That money is not being ploughed back into the economy via spending, and that point is well made.
I will offer a small however here though…
The money is invested, for the most part into the stock market. There is a sense in which many people benefit from a strong stock market, as various forms of savings and pensions are wrapped up in it.
It still doesn’t help millions of people at the very bottom, who don’t really have savings or a pension (apart from the State pension) but for the many millions of people a bit higher up, though definitely still not rich, they benefit from a stronger stock market.
Still, I’m not about to applaud billionaires for the blessings they bestow upon the rest of us!
A correction is sorely needed, to tax them more effectively, to do something good for society as a whole. On that point, I’d like to see a cross-party agreement, that cannot be politicized for one party and thus be ripe for change at the next election cycle. Let’s get a cross-party agreement to tax billionaires, and a clear agreement on what the money will be used for e.g. world class health care, or education… something that the wider public will buy into.
Make the argument - it should be a compelling argument, that society as a whole will benefit. You can still maintain an important incentive for hard work and innovation, so people can do well for themselves and get rich, but it’s a matter of scale at the very upper level. Billionaires should do much more for the good of the whole.
If we are going to go after billionaires to extract more tax - which is the right thing to do, then do it well. If it is half-arsed it won’t work.
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Australia isnt in Asia either, but this stuff isnt particularly serious and so national associations are free to make deals with other federations if its in the collective best interest to make that deal.
Oz moved because they felt the weakness of the OFC, something that denied their winner an automatic world cup spot, hurt their chances in qualifying because the best they could hope for was a play off against European or South American opposition. Israel moved because it reached a point of too many teams in AFC refusing to play against them. Being invited to join UEFA was a perfectly acceptable solution at the time, but it is true that is increasingly approaching the untenability of their existence in the AFC with the shifting attitudes in Europe
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It’s all well said about previous arrangements and movement between federations. If Australian fans had a lot of hooligans, and they were causing a stink wherever they went around the world, such that any host grimaced when they were due to come to town, the police weighed in and then the Prime Minister felt compelled to comment, the remedy is simple. Send them back to play in their own geographic federation.
My comment about Israel was more of the remedy sort. If Israeli fans are an unpleasant, hooligan-rich, pain in the arse, remove them from UEFA. Not our problem. Off yer pop. Go and play the Uzbekistan champions, or whatever.
Israel has benefitted from entry to a much stronger footballing federation. It should come with requisite good behavior.
Australia is very adept at playing with itself… 
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[itching to post kenneth williams gif]
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A stat I came across earlier is that there are 50 families in the UK that have more wealth than 50% of the population. Crazy if true.
Can confirm.
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But it is not relative to the point Mascot and I were discussing. Mascot said something (I am not quoting him) along the lines of Government revenue by consumer purchasing being generated by the poor to above average wealth bracket and that the Rich have everything they need so have no need to spend money.
I then followed up by suggesting none of us know what the Rich spend their money on. I used my mate as something to base my point on because he is the only Rich person I know.
I am well aware of the interest made by Billionaires, the interest alone could sort out so much of the worlds problems. I agree with this point, I am not disputing this. However, unless I have mis interpreted something it was not what we were discussing 
.
I mean it without any offence but there is some Irony and a lot of assumption in your post.
As I have stated I do not know the reasons why the fans were banned. I have questioned the motives of the local councillors whom form part of the SAG. There is evidence that their decision was determined pre-meeting and that it was based on their own personal feelings.
Almost every fanbase has a section of fans who are territorial and cause trouble. Was it not Roma who came to Liverpool and attacked our fans for no reason? What happens when English fans travel to Italy? People get stabbed in the buttocks by people on moppeds. Jumped at bars. Italy and a lot of the Eastern European are notorious for this and also a lot of racist chants.
Legia Warsaw’s visit to Villa park, fans still allowed to attend Chelsea game. The club has been fined 17 times out of their 30 games because of fan trouble.
When have Tel Aviv fans been banned numerous times - please support your point with facts .
The nonchalant dismissal of my reference to other sporting events. What is the point of debate if it is solved by a refusal to engage and be open minded. Oh, I get it, what you think is right. Well done you.
Your last point 
. So you make an accusation that I am Reform curious 
. If trying to understand why they are going to steal a huge number of Labour voters then yeah, I am curious. Maybe you should be! You keep telling yourself that everyone else is wrong, stupid, ill informed, Racist.
I am not throwing support behind anyone, I questioned why Starmer was looking to overturn the ban if the evidence was so damning. You have provided your answer, so what is your opinion on the current PM and the current Government?
I will await your response to the above question with interest.
I really don’t know why you are arguing this. It’s like trying to suggest water isn’t wet.
Marginal propensity to consume is a well understood and evidenced economic principle, and it can be clearly seen that MPC tends to decrease as income increases.
This has an impact on government spend because if Government wants to see some return on its spend, then do you direct spending towards policies that put money in the pockets of people who have a high MPC (poorer people) or people who tend to have a low MPC (richer people).
If you want further evidence of this ask yourself why the financial markets shit bricks when Liz Truss tried to do an extreme version of this by funnelling tens of billions to the wealthiest people in society in the form of tax breaks, and it ended up bringing down her government?
It’s almost as if using your experience of your sole rich mate as a counter argument to decades of established economic theory and lived reality is somehow deficient?
So why have you had a week long argument with people about it? Wouldn’t it have been better to look into it first?