doc_holliday

Being Scottish isn't important to me on a national identy level.

However saying you are Scottish when abroad as opposed to British tends to result in a much warmer reception.

As a Scot, it is sometimes much easier to identify as being Scottish in many parts of the world. People tend to be slightly warmer to you when they find out you are from Scotland and not just Britain.

I guess years of colonialism still makes being British slightly tarred.

For example visiting America, people are interested enough if you are from the UK but if you mention specifically Scotland they instantly start getting much more excited.

"As wages and population increases"

But that is not true for parts of the UK.

Wages in general in the UK in real terms have gone nowhere or down, yet pretty much everywhere in real terms property value has gone up.

"especially considering making a return on any sort of savings today isn't really a thing"

You can still get around 4% dividends or 7% capital appreciation from some stock funds. Which give or take is no better or worse than property in general once you have considered taxes / repairs / upgrades.

You are right it can be a good hedge against inflation of city costs, but that is a bit of a gamble.

But what you are saying would imply that property prices in lower demand areas went down as property prices in higher demand areas went up.

That didn't happen. Instead even lower demand areas everywhere in the UK have gone up in real money terms and relative to local earnings.

No where has fallen significantly, everywhere now your money doesn't go as far as it did. That is what loose money policy does.

Just places like London have had astronomical increases.

It's a great article to see in the mainstream press and something that needs to be discussed.

When it comes to UK housing most people tend to blame immigration / lack of building. Which certainly haven't made the situation any better. They both can distort the supply / demand equation.

The main thing though that effects the demand however tends to be looser monetary policy. This makes more people have more money chasing the same properties. It's an absurd situation and all we have done is essentially devalue money in terms of property. We are no richer.

An even more interesting point to the UK market is places like Scotland. Scotland's population actually dipped from the 80s into the 90s, and is only just above where it was in the 80s now... and yet in that time real property values have doubled and above in most places.

During this time they never stopped building...

We should all be angry at monetary policy of the last decade or so.

I would doubt an ASIC would be worth it, giving the number of organisations needing this CODEC would be relatively low. An ASIC run is expensive and even more expensive if there is subsequent error in the design.

FPGA makes sense for this application. It can always be re-flashed.

In the real world you wouldn't always buy / sell at the price you hit, someone could front run or by the time your sell hits the market there could be lack of buyers and the price will have tanked.

So this makes it seem easy, when the trade differ in real life from what might look available one minute.

Yes, I said something to a similar effect in my other comment.

My problem with it is there are a lot of people that get shafted as things change and really get hit hard by it, and the government are to blame for that.

Other cities in Europe manage to get a balance between capital investment and tearing the heart out of the city.

Yes places change and become world cities. However the problem is the people that made it interesting gave the culture, night-life and art can no longer live there or have a reasonable existance.

You kind of at that point end up with really coorporate art and culture as everything has to be high value and you notice the quality really starts to suffer.

Also the people who attend these things find they cannot live there either and it all dies.

Per calendar month. It is used very often in rental adverts.

Whilst London is quite apart from the rest of the UK. It isn't the only place in the UK with disproprtionately high rents. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, anywhere with a bouyant jobs market you pay over the odds for compared to Europe.

Granted not as high as London, but as a % of income not dissimilar at the end of the month.

I can see London begining to hollow out at some point like it has before. Slums will begin to rise again (if some areas aren't already close to being that already).

Vast wealth will be left in pockets and as all the mid earners leave to try have a better life in the countryside and elsewhere the reason London was successful in the first place, the culture and those that create it will be in deficit. Then the rich will see they've paid over the top for property and they too will leave.

Then London will begin again. Like it has multiple times.

I think this has been mentioned a couple of times when it has come up, but it would be nice to be able to add / remove local taxes e.g stamp duty here in the UK.

Now it depends by what you mean by that. Many people's idea of financial security is very different, some see it in ability to live comfortably with materialism, others see it as not having to worry about the next meal and your shelter.

If the financial security is materialistically based, I feel working more for that will be regretted.

I dunno, I don't think it is an unreasonable aim of society that if you are supplying your labour to someone (why shouldn't this include McD's?), that you are able to at least live a reasonable life.

By that I mean secure accomodation (not large, but comfortable), food and transport.

Excellent post. I feel Dickens summed it up well.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."

It's good for the economy in the short term because it brings demand forward (whether this is then repaid in more productivity in the future is the problem!)

Terrible for individuals though, brings untold misery.

It is a combination.

Policies from the government over the last couple of decades have combined with people's greed, and well we are where we are today.

Individuals are of course to blame too, but it is hard to pin point who got the ball rolling.

It would certainly raise a lot of questions as to what it means to be human and what is fulfillment.

I know a fair few people that are just lost as to what to do when they do not have work. It seems bizarre to me in a way how many people are just simply lost without the confines of a job and being told how to occupy their day.

I hope those people would rediscover what truly fulfills them.

I am curious as to what you mean by that?

An image by definition would always be represented as a 2D array. Unless you are using hologrophy or a projection field... which still in essence require a 2D array of representing the light field, often needing a higher resolution.

Images aren't always processed in 2D arrays though but are always represented in 2D arrays for display.

Well, all bubbles burst and things always change. Give it another financial crisis, housing crash or big change in UK housing policy (unlikely to happen before a crash) and London might calm down again.

During the 80s, people couldn't leave the place quick enough.

Exactly, capital over the past couple of decades has been unfairly undertaxed vs labour which has been overtaxed to some degrees in places.

If we don't alter this course we, I fear will end up at early 1900s distribution of ownership with a crippling economy because actual growth driven by labour will significantly decrease.

I am not saying split England into different countries, but split regions into federal districts. That has nothing to do with separation of England, does the USA send states to the world cup? I don't know what you are saying there.

This is a lot of why I voted no. Scotland isn't unique in it's struggle in the UK against London concentrated power, it just in happens to have a get out clause from historical geography and politics. This does not mean we should leave behind those we have much in common with in the regions of England.

I think English regions should be split up too, and their is great desire for that. England is made up of many quite distinct regions, the problem is much of the power is concentrated in London and subsequently a lot of investment and money is poured into London and immediate surroundings. The fact that England has such a disparity in investment between it's first city (London) and second city (Birmingham) is a problem. It also isn't helping concentration of populations and jobs which remained close to London.

The issues Scotland has are felt throughout the UK, and Scotland therefore has a lot in common as far as wanting powers as do regions of England out with the immediate surroundings of London. This in essence is why this result could be better for the regions of England.

Politically it is very interesting and a result that in a lot of ways can bring about real change too (however, I do have obvious scepticism).

The tide is now with change as for the Union to continue change must happen. A lot of the high yes vote was not because people 100% believed Scotland should be independent but more they wanted change to the system (and I do believe a Scottish Parliment offered a better system), it did come with a lot of risk and a possible lose / lose for the people of the UK as a whole.

It opens up the question of representation for people of the regions of England, Northern Ireland and Wales. I think a lot of momentum has been gathered for something a kin to federal government in the UK and is something I would very much welcome.

In essence that is in a lot of ways what that Nationalists wanted... to keep the currency union and have essentially the same terms of attachment to the EU.

I voted no on the day after a long time believing in a yes, the tide of politcal change swayed me that we may ultimately be better in a UK that had the momentum with change to our representation. The no campaign however ran an abysmal campaign and it pained me to end up siding with them, and that was in more in spite of what they had to say.

Being part of the UK benefits Scotland's internal trade immensely and to think terms would have remained the same with the rUK who would have become a foreign nation at that point was naive. I think a Union with the UK has much the same arguments as staying in the EU with respect to trade, contracts and funding. It is just English nationalism and Scottish nationalism have picked differing sides.

University of Aberdeen alumni here, do they still use the awful portal for timetables? I got half way through writing an Android app for parsing it and displaying it in a clearer way last year.

Basically > 90% of my year at school in the UK went on to university. A lot of these people IMO were never really of the inquisitive mind or drive that I thought would be the type to go to university. However for one reason or another it was pushed by my school that pretty much everyone in the final year should go to uni. Most were of middle class and I think, at least within the UK, it is the done thing to do if you are middle class or above to go on to uni. We don't really encourage or present alternatives.

My own experience with university has been a mixed bag. I've loved the lecturers who have challenged my ideas and not just presented solutions. However others I feel encouraged wrote learning through the way they presented courses and a lot of exams are question guessing to gear up to pass. However on the whole I think I have come out of it with more logical basis and reasoning for things, it's definitely been at least beneficial intellectually and I love that. I think that part is wasted on quite a lot of people though who go to uni merely as the done thing.

Can't wait till these work on country roads!

Would really free me up from living in the city I work. Can get work and other things done on the commute to work. Or live miles away and telecommute work most days then travel overnight whilst sleeping for times I need to be in the office.

Best yet, I can go on nights out without worrying about driving home / paying taxi.

The other maniacs and safety of country roads has always put me off commuting from rural areas, but this really changes that!