Gap between Rich & Poor

Article on BBC website today about shortage of crew to meet current demand for Super Yachts

You tend to see more and more evidence these days of the growing gap between rich and poor and being one for conspiracy theories i truly believe the economy is being orchestrated this way. Do a search on google video of Money Changers and see how the bankers battled to control the American Federal bank and the printing of money. When they controlled the money, they controlled the economy and orchestrated the famous great depression of 1928 for their own gain.

Banks making larger than ever profits at the expense of their customers who struggle to meet the payments and even if you do make the payments you're still getting ripped off.

Once upon a time you had to be seriously talented to have this kind of boat, you had to be a Bill Gates, Terry Packer or Richard Branson of this world to have this kind of status symbol, but these days all you have to be is a banker, stockbroker, estate agent or something similarly talentless that makes a lot of money by ripping of the masses in some way

Still at £1,600 p/m low end tax free salary its not a bad life, you get to travel the world and with food plus accommodation all of that is disposable income. You just have to put up the the high likelyhood that the owner and his/her friends are a bunch of tossers.

This wasn't supposed to be a rant about banks but I just can't help myself :-) probably because I started to go through my statements last night and started adding up Payment Protection Insurance. They were making more than £250 a year from me in PPI and I never ever explicitly requested it. I do recall one meeting in the bank where I was sold PPI on a loan by Financial advisor. Now if this C**t was a proper financial adviser he would have said get a standalone policy and you'll be covered for loans, credit cards, mortgages etc etc, instead these corporate monkeys encourage you to take these things out or worse just bolt them onto the package without informing you so they can get their commission. Its weird that the Office of Fair Trading allow this PPI selling to happen its a blatent case of the public being ripped off to make the banks and their shareholders massive profits.

That said we know what a fine job they did with mobile phones and international text messages and phone calls. Yea they reduced the cost but vodafone etc couldn't believe their luck at how much they reduced the costs, they'd still left them with massive profits. The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that's 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that's £374.49 per MB. This means byte for byte its cheaper to send and receive data from the hubble space telescope. (see register) Now imagine if your broadband cost the same for each Megabyte? So do you still think you're getting a good deal when you get told you get 200 free texts a month, are u f**k

I have no issues with people doing well for themselves and making money, lots of money if need be, but it seems to me stupid to have private insititutions like banks, train, phone, electricity, oil, water in operation with the sole purpose to make their shareholders richer than they already are. Imagine if we had a state bank, it was the only bank in the UK, it wouldn't therefore have to make 20 million pounds profit per day (and thats just the bank of Scotland), sure it would have to make a profit for a rainy day but the difference could go straight back into the system. Imagine how cheap your mortgage would be, your car loan etc etc. Using the above example with the phone network, are we getting good value from different operators, we're being fooled into thinking that is the case but judging by their profits we're not

Somebody out there will rant on about how it never worked before when british rail were in operation, british telecom or british gas, but somebody is going to have to tell me why the system I've just mentioned doesn't work. Sure it edging towards Communism but I'd be happy with that.

Anyway, better get back to work as I've written enough in this slightly incoherent rant! :-)