Send again, I couldn’t see it once I tapped the notification!

Effectively the US government is attempting what Cameron and Osborne tried to do for ten years before giving up, walking away, and getting nice well paid jobs in other fields.

This is aUSterity and it’s not going to work there either.

Good.

No you prat. You’re arguing if they can afford x euros/pounds then they can afford x+80 without affecting other spending.

If you can afford x, then you can afford x+ 80, right?

Logically therefore, if you can afford x + 80 then you can afford x + 160, and then 240, 320 …

It’s completely stupid to think the world works this way. Sorry to be rude, but it is stupid.

I think that’s right. But it certainly isn’t the intended consequence.

Your thesis is that people simplywill spend the same even though the visit itself is more expensive. This is magical thinking. There will be people who spend less, and there will be people who decide not to go, because there has to be a zero sum.

That’s ludicrous. And quite obviously wrong. If you’ve got a budget for the whole holiday, and more of it goes into tax, then the amount left is the spend, and it’s less.

Of course it has. If you have 1.000E to spend and the you have to pay 10E on a tax then you don’t suddenly have an extra 10E to spend. You just spend less while you’re there, or go later.

What you mean is “it’s small enough that we can’t see it in the data” which isn’t the same thing at all.

Why is it a no brainier? It will simply mean that less money gets spent while people visit.

I got to the end, having run out of delaying tactics, and said “but if I do that, it’ll give you remote access won’t it? Why on earth would I do that for some scammer?”

There was swearing.

Then I asked him if he told his mother he stole from old ladies. Then there was quite a lot of swearing.

Eye bleach! Eye bleach!

We rewatched the box set a couple of years back and concluded that Samantha was the _only_ likeable character.

I’ve kept a “Microsoft” one going for ages. A good ten minutes of trying to explain to me how to install the software he wanted me to use before I told him it was a Mac.

Smoothly transferred me to the “Apple” department(!), and I got another ten minutes out of him.

Reading not your strong suit? This bit of the thread is about the word helicopter.

Harsh. There’s a decent pizzeria at the other end. I appreciate that takes you a long way from trains.