MS Office, for example is a product with 30 years of development behind it. How do you replace it?

• You could buy a competing commercial implementation. Something like… Ah, hang on … Google Office or Apple’s offerings or …
• You could start up a new EU company to develop an office suite. Five to ten years later you may have something that can compete, but that company needed secure investment so it didn’t get acquired over that period. There’s also no guarantee it will succeed. Probably a €250M gamble.
• Or you can build on open source and accelerate faster. Deploy what exists today and invest in the development to enhance it.

If you want to minimise risk and move quickly, I don’t see another option.

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Best thing they could do is develop some RAM manufacturing capacity.

Which I think is largely what you’re seeing happen. France’s national options are all built on open source for example.

Does anybody have anything other than an “introduction” to MMT? I find that everything I see stops short of answering the questions I have.

• MMTers will say it’s just a new (more accurate) way to think about how the existing system works, but how does it effect a governments options for policy?
• They will also say it’s not a license to spend recklessly, as the difference between money issued and money reclaimed drives inflation. This sounds like having a limit on a budget deficit / borrowing to me, so how is this different?
• They will also stress that it means you don’t have to wait for growth (i.e. increasing tax income) to start government spending as spending is money creation. Fine, but it’s still a feedback loop, and after year 1 why does it matter where the loop started?

Even with a LibDem majority government I don’t think it would be a currency union. They’re rejoiners for sure, but I think it’s to re-establish what was lost. Not go further.

Germany, France, Poland and Italy are all having problems with right wing political factions rising. This isn’t coincidental. The UK was the first target and it resulted in Brexit. We were taking by surprise, but we are cleaning house.

Our enemy’s aim is to divide Europe because we’re all weaker separately. Strengthening the link between the UK and the EU is the last thing they want.

Yes, but we’ll be have a customs union first with a services agreement as well.

I don’t see us taking the Euro. I just don’t think anyone wants to surrender economic policy to the ECB, and the last time we tried to go through the ERM process it ended very badly. The GBP is too heavily traded in it’s own right to maintain the exchange rates in a tight enough band for long enough.

Be a shark. Constantly renew them.

You can tell it is by the missing part of the image.

CANZUK needs to meet, sure.

They’re saying it can’t be used as a reason for assigning blame in a divorce. Infidelity is a classic example of when someone can be “at fault” and so assigned blame for the marriage ending.

“No-fault” divorce exists for situations where the relationship is no longer tenable but not because anyone did anything damaging.

They did say it would be removed as a reason for “fault-based” divorce, not divorce generally. You won’t be able to say “he’s at fault for not wanting sex” and so get a preferential settlement.

So people are concerned that Chinese cameras pointing at the Magna Carta will be used to… What?.. read the Magna Carta? That doesn’t sound like a bad thing. They could probably do with understanding that laws also apply to those that rule.

If they’re just working out that cheap cameras aren’t reliable enough for security, that’s something different.

They’re already their own separate war crime. Let’s not cheapen what “genocide” means.

Post WW2 America has dragged us into far more conflict than we should have been part of. I think the only conflict the UK has entered of it’s own accord is the Falklands war. Other than that it’s been UN peacekeeping forces, NATO operations, or (and these are the problem ones) trying to make US operations not look unilateral (e.g. Iraq 1 & 2).

They’ve also made sure all our innovation goes to them first.

Now I’m sure there have been benefits to having the US in our corner, but I think we’ve been exploited in a lot of ways for the sake of the “special relationship”.

The UK has problems, but are you seeing what’s going on in the US right now?

Just like every other sector.

For a peacekeeping mission, there has to be a peace to keep.

He’s asking for combat troops.

Without Europe Ukraine would have already fallen.

Europe is playing the role the US did for a long time in WW2 with the Transatlantic convoys. Supplies.

What Ukraine is asking for is a full blown conflict between Europe and Russia. I think it’s right to try to avoid that.