Buying a House

I just came across an interesting statistic with regards to money in the UK.

If you earn 40k a year or more, then you're in the top 10% of earners.

Wages have stagnated to the point that 40 grand puts you near the peak of the pyramid.  From there I would imagine it's a fairly steep climb to the top, but the idea that you only need such a modest amount in order to be, by definition 'rich,' in the UK is heartening for me, because I might like to buy a house one day.

If you only need to earn that much to be rich, I can buy a house!

The average UK house price for pre-owned dwellings in February 2015 was £269,000.

....  Shit.

Best Guesses

So I went into hospital for four days to have an operation on my ankle.  The hospital was fine, the operation was standard and everything is healing up nice and quickly.

Apart from the insurance company fighting me, and the hospital telling me that I can send money to them via the post to pay for bills, they can't remotely send me money (I'm not eligible for the entire cost of the procedure due to my income).  Funny how it's incredibly easy to give them money, but requires dozens of forms and signatures (each costing more money) and a great deal of difficulty to get money back.

Obviously their tactics work and some number of people don't claim the money back, otherwise they wouldn't employ tactics like these.

Remember, this is a hospital.

Really classy.

Anyway, look at this big old pot of money and guess how many yens are in there.

I took this down to the post office today and found out the value, which I'll reveal at a later date.

The coppers are 10 yen, the gold ones with a hole are 5 yen, the small silver ones are 1 yen with the occasional 100 yen piece in there too.  1,000 yen is about a fiver right now if that helps (it doesn't, exchange rates don't mean anything at the best of time).

How much do you reckon?

Guess How Much

So for the past year I've been saving up all the one yen and five yen coins that have accumulated in my pockets.  They're the equivalent of one and two pence pieces, except even more useless if you can imagine such a thing.

As you can see there are a couple of 100 yen coins in there, but they'll be gone by the time I take it to the post office.

Anyway, here's the question, how much money is in there?

Tiny People

The people here are fucking tiny.

I'm trying to buy shoes online, using the Japanese version of amazon.  No one here has shoes that go over size 9.  No one.  The online retailers literally have no option above size 9.  There is not a person in Japan that has feet longer than 28 centimetres.  Size 9 is the biggest their feet ever get.  No one in the history of japan, its entire history, has ever had feet bigger than size 9.  No one.  Ever.

I went for a run yesterday, and my knee was a little sore.  I'm going to give it another week or so to recover, and instead I'm going to focus on gym work.  This got me thinking about my shoes though, as I've been pounding these trainers into dust for months now.  Time to get new shoes, I thought.

Anyway, I've bought a pair of the biggest shoes I can find for thirty quid, so let's see if A: they turn up and B: they fit.

It's funny, because when you talk to the locals, they will tell you they're drowning in foreigners.  All these foreigners walking around, destroying their ways of life, taking their women and jobs etcetera.  That many foreigners is a hefty market to be leveraged, and if I know my humanity, any exploitable resource will be shanked immediately upon being discovered: therefore one of two things is true.  Either, humanity isn't as transparent as I've been led to believe, and this massive market of foreigners isn't being tapped - or this massive market of foreigners doesn't exist, and the market therefore refuses to cater for them as it would be too costly.  You decide which is true.

It's also snowing a veritable shit-ton, but it's forecast to start raining soon.  Hopefully it won't rain and they'll cancel school (it really is precipitating vociferously).  Of course, now I've written this it'll stop.  Damnit.  I want to run outside and make a snowman, but it's warm enough that I fear it wouldn't last the night anyway.

Oh well...

On a side-note, I have some pictures to upload.  One of them is a picture of me, as drawn in a japanese cartoon style by one of the kids - the other is a collection of more pictures from when I was pelted by beans.

Trade Agreements

A deal struck a few years ago, affecting some 2 billion people, came into effect on the first of this month.  I've not heard anything about it in the news, so here's a little investigative journalism of my own.

It's a deal between a large number of Asian countries, reducing trade tariffs on select goods, in order to promote trade between them.  Much like the EU, it's designed to increase the competitiveness of the area as a whole, and therefore benefit individual members.

The different approaches to world domination seem to strike an interesting comparison.  america bullies everyone, invading anyone who has anything of value.

The EU tries to be the friend of everyone, with no clearly defined leadership (the epitome of democracy, with all the benefits and flaws that brings) while this new 'alliance' of sorts takes a communist approach to EU style trade wrangling.  That is to say, do what china tells you.

"The average tariff rate on Chinese goods sold in ASEAN countries decreased from 12.8 to 0.6 percent on 1 January 2010 pending implementation of the free trade area by the remaining ASEAN members. Meanwhile, the average tariff rate on ASEAN goods sold in China decreased from 9.8 to 0.1 percent."


This means that china gets everything for .1% of previous prices, while charging .6% of previous prices.  So while they still threaten other countries with force, as america does, they also screw other countries over financially, as america also does.  Who knew communism and capitalism were so similar.  It's also interesting to note that china always had a sweet deal.


It begs the question 'why?' though, because china is only a decade away from being the most powerful country in the world, and no one will stop them; so why bother striking up these deals?  Presumably the money they lose in these deals goes towards securing their neighbouring countries favour.  I doubt the likes of Vietnam could hate the americans any more though, so it all seems rather pointless from a chinese perspective.


One final tidbit:  The ten largest economies in the world, in their relative positions.

Will everyone please now realise how insignificant England is in terms of the world; but how important the EU really is.


The reason why we get crappy laws implemented unto us by the EU is because we are unimportant.  Realise this.