dreamdancer

if you want to pay more tax then i suggest an increase in inheritance tax is the way to go

that means if they have children they won't be needing any welfare payments - and can even contribute to the tax system

a bit of historical revisionism from you (what is the minimum wage really for) stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

you sound just like a union shop steward here - gotta keep those wage differentials up

isn't there a central interest rate set every month? stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

80% accross the board. Is this acceptable?

what should the us central interest rate be set at? stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

What incentive is it to raise minimum wage when people refuse to work now?

what should the us central interest rate be set at? stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

minimum wage is only one leg - a national healthcare service is another. what else might we do? stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

How does minimum wage effect weather or not someone is able to get a job?

i suppose it depends upon the size of the families. three children and only one minimum wage earner seems a bit ambitious

no-one in lower manhattan works at the minimum wage? Maybe you can explain how this minimum wage red herring is even applicable, since the lady in question (you STILL haven't shown how you know her so much better than lawrocket, btw) ISN'T working?? a sensible minimum wage would make job choices much easier for these women - throughout their lifetime

who said anything about minimum wage supporting a family? stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

the minimum wage needs to be roughly doubled. (in reply - what should the central interest rate be set at) stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

no-one in lower manhattan works at the minimum wage? stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

what would a sensible min wage be, exactly? The British one is 5.73L/hr. Roughly 9$/hr, just a tad higher than most states. Looks like it is now 7.60 in London. Though higher than the US national standard, it's hardly a living wage when the cost of living of that city is considered. i agree - it needs to be raised here as well to a more sensible level. the benefit of a national health service for all also has to be added into the mix. What is a "more sensible level"? And, do you realize that healthcare is not a RIGHT? It's a service much like an auto repair shop. If you dont have insurance or the money to fix the problem then you better be damn good at fixing it yourself. Just my 2c. do hospitals in your country have the RIGHT to turn you away if you are ill? (and do cars have souls) stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

Cedric’s carriage had joined the tail end of a slow moving fleet of hundreds drifting along the motorway, privately driven vehicles occasionally speeding past them. The Announcer was more responsive now, putting some music on for him and tinting the surround screen to soften the sunlight. The main passenger monitor gleamed into life with a slow zoom into orbit around a large watery planet. It appeared to be another of the Announcer’s trailers for the latest in its season of summer games. Cedric flicked the monitor off. ‘No games. What’s happening?’ he asked directly. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about yet?’ Finally he got a half reply from the Announcer. ‘You can ask but I cannot say. The Nanja will make a decision soon.’ ‘Who are the Nanja? What do you want me to do in Bristol?’ ‘You can ask but I cannot say.’ For the first time he began to wonder if something might be seriously wrong with it. Was there a new attack on it? Innately he knew that outside of his protective, Announcer created bubble, the world was darker than it appeared; it was especially foolish to assume that the US would gently relinquish their global ambitions to the whims of the Announcer; they had not done so for the Chinese, they would not do so for the Announcer. It seemed to read his mind. ‘I’m fine,’ it said, before shimmying away back down the electronic line. ‘See you in Bristol.’ Sitting comfortably in the softly moving carriage, he recalled that his inital cohort of Jedi warriors had been pared down, death by death, to sixteen weary fighters clinging on under an intense barrage of laser fire. He visualised the scene again, re-aware that it had been Jedi John who had discovered the exit to the hidden level of the game, waiting for each of them to squeeze through the narrow doorway that he had jammed open with his body, forcefield glowing intense white with the strain. It was disconcerting now to think that Jedi John may in reality have merely been an Announcer created persona. It tried again to lure him into play with its seductive promo for its new game. This time the camera orbiting the water world hurtled him down through the atmosphere and across an ocean a hundred miles deep to a single small continent, depositing him onto a thin strip of sandy beach. Still sullenly refusing the Announcer’s entreaties he sat up, viewed the passing landscape. The carriage had entered the eastern edge of the Great New Forest, one of the Announcer’s pet projects, part of a planned mega-forest that would eventually stretch across the channel by artificial landbridge, a recreation of an ancient landscape, repopulated with wolf and bear and other exotic creatures. Or so he had read. He didn’t like woods. Even here, safely ensconced within his carriage, the trees dark overhang onto the motorway made him claustrophobic. ‘Tell Jenny what I’m up to and ask her if she wants to come down this evening after work. If she does then book an apartment for us for the weekend.’ A single blip attached to a brief smiley, though this time on the main monitor, were his reply. Why did the Announcer want him to play another of its games, had the wherewithal to process the game, but not to provide any other reliable service? He decided that if he wasn’t happy with the answers he got at the Bristol meeting damned if he would just jump to its bidding anymore; he would consider putting the Announcer at arm’s length, at least until it had satisfactorily explained itself. He recalled that it hadn’t been that long since the Anti-Machine Militia, the outlawed, and supposedly disbanded, parmilitary arm of the Watch had dispensed casual beatings and kneecappings to those they claimed too close to the Announcer. It didn’t take much to imagine them rearing their ugly heads again if the Announcer carried on like this. He filtered the outside view away, then put on a games headset, finally letting the Announcer engulf him with the sights and sounds of a world that had supposedly, according to the fast moving promotional blurbs, existed four million years ago and across the far side of the galaxy – eighty thousand light-years distant. To his left he viewed a tangled mass of twisted, stubby trees and windswept, straggly bushes accompanying the beach along its ocean weaving pathway. Outcroppings of blue-black rock, scored with thick shimmering veins of ore, broke occasionally through the sand or tree line. The Announcer appeared as one of its archetypal characters, hopping from the trees towards him. It opened its mouth to speak; he skewered it with elegant satisfaction upon the slender pike he found himself armed with. He trudged along the fine sand beach for several minutes. There seemed no end to it. He became bored and wandered into the trees where the woods heavy, sweet smell made him woozy. A few yards in and the trees opened onto a grassy clearing. As he stepped forward a band of fast moving, single horned animals burst into the opposite side. ‘Shit.’ He turned to run, but already the lead animal, short and stocky, had crossed the clearing. It jabbed its horn deep into his thigh. His bone crunched with the impact and he collapsed to the ground, the frenzied animal goring him a second and third time. More of them joined in. For a moment, as he lay on his back, he could see them eye to eye, could see the bloodlust they revelled in as they finished him off, then the game was over. ‘Idiot,’ he berated himself. He jumped back into a replay. This time he set himself further along the beach, close to where he had spotted an artificial structure jutting from the sea. He discovered a simple help overlay, revealing that the pig-like animals were an indigenous species called Tarqa. He skirted the trees, wary of a sudden attack, but aware intuitively that the Tarqa would not venture too far onto the uncomfortably hot and wearying sand. He cautiously approached the structure that had attracted him. He found a wide, flat bottomed pipe propped into the air atop a series of thick poles planted into the sand. The pipe was carried above the trees inland. Out to sea it reached to a far ridge of coral. In the real world he sank further down into the reclining seat of his carriage, loosened his tie, took his shoes off. He meant to climb up to examine one of the pipes more closely, see what it was it carried, instead, lulled by the soft rocking of the carriage’s suspension, the heady aroma of the trees, he fell asleep, and dreamed. stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

Jonas Trent, Head of the Opeople Computer Investigation Team, arrived back at the millennium dome Listening Post still shaking from his encounter with Henson. Why the London Watch Chief had to be so melodramatic, his goons dragging him halfway across London and into some desperate bolt-hole in the ground with barely time to leave a placeholder in the network, he could not imagine. He had then added further to the indignity, waving a hard copy of the Announcer’s Tax Edict in his face, venting his fury at him in nose-to-nose manner, hot, whiskey laced breath clogging his nostrils. ‘How is it doing this? What is it trying to do? Who is controlling it? Why can’t YOU get control of it!’ He took a deep breath, expunged the unwholesome memories from his thoughts, and entered the Listening Post lobby. He gave a false, cheery smile to the receptionist. She smiled back. He picked up his interface helmet. He still wasn’t sure whether he had done the right thing in making no mention of the enigmatic phone call the Announcer had received. He was certain that no other tracking team had caught the call. He sighed, excluding Apel of course. Instead he had concentrated on the Jedi game and its players they had recently discovered, hoping, and it seemed to be the case, that Henson would lap the incriminating details up and quickly let him back to work. He took the lift to his office. The team’s workplace was different to when he had left it, darker, shadows clipped short, and the fonts were more elaborate, almost hieroglyphic. Around him the one hundred and twenty eight members of the team currently logged on worked under a vivd red sun and ominous clouds. Jason strode up, stylised red bull avatar smoking at the nostrils, ‘You survived then.’ ‘With a few bruises.’ ‘Did you mention the Kazakh phone call?’ ‘No.’ He looked round the changed virtual environment. ‘Apel visited,’ Jason said by way of explanation. ‘He wanted to talk to you.’ ‘And couldn’t help tweaking the workspace.’ ‘He said he’d talk to you in a few days. He left this for you.’ Jason passed him a small black box, then was distracted by a drifting poem. It had ten lines and one thousand letters. It was about a wild horseman riding on an endless plain of grass. Around it the Announcer had built a hundred megabyte proto-game and a few harsh visuals. Jason’s software filters, dull black crows with razor edged beaks, pulled the poetic data chunk apart, then dropped the unwanted carcass into the recycle bin. ‘Nothing here.’ He turned back to Jonas, twisted his horns. Jonas turned the box over. On its underside a note had been stickied. The note stated ‘bomb’. Another example of Apel’s macabre humour, Jonas hoped. On the topside of the box was a round keyhole. He put his index finger with its identifying code into it. The box flipped open and the number five, bright yellow and oozing sleek motion trails, drifted into the air, spinning in the breeze. The generic network safety and analytic filters swarmed to it in locust form, completely covering it. The number held tenaciously to its proof of reality and the insect horde left without stripping away a single byte of data. ‘Interesting,’ Jonas said, ‘the fourth number in the call sequence, and it appears to be valid. What reason could Apel have to help us along our way?’ ‘Most likely still a Trojan,’ Jason said, as ever suspicious. He called up his own specialist suite of filters; these were supremely sharp edged mathematical tools that, theoretically, could identify any logical weakness in the number’s underlying theorems to inexorably chip it into more manageable chunks. ‘Heavy,’ he muttered, ‘almost a hundred terabytes just in the fragment showing here.’ His filters had no effect. Frustrated, he called in the rest of the team. In a few minutes they had surrounded the number, now black and white and stationary, making it a mystical battleground of analytical creatures vying to disprove its existence. The five survived, unscathed and dominant, the beaten filters fading away. ‘It is a mathematical proof of the existence of God,’ Jonas summed up, ‘and there appears to be no flaw in its reasoning.’ ‘Another reason not to trust it,’ Jason replied. His avatar began to stiffen and blacken, its nostrils spitting small flames. He turned down his emotional filters; his avatar once again regained its simple flowing artistry. ‘I think we should do a Level One backup of the entire network before putting it into the sequence.’ ‘We don’t have the time,’ Jonas countered. ‘Or the space to do an entire backup.’ Decisively he picked up the number and placed it into the sequence they already had. Collectively the team held their breath, twice before Apel had managed to thoroughly corrupt their network. This time though it seemed that their capricious founder had handed them an honest card. The number five, with its accompanying proof of existence, fitted. With the new addition came the usual paradigm shift that altered the initial digits of the sequence, and all their underlying proofs of existence. The remainder of the team watched as the two-three-seven transformed into one-four-eight-five. Jonas glanced at Jason, ‘Four numbers down, six to go.’ ‘But why would he want to help us?’ Jonas tried to sound confident, ‘Our Japanese colleagues tell us that the US is very close to detonating their Alpha Bomb. Apel will know the exact time of launch. If the Japanese are right and it all goes as badly wrong as Snowstorn, Apel will need our help. He’s trying to give himself a lifeline.’ Jason shrugged. ‘It’s your call.’ Jonas dropped the empty box. ‘What’s the latest with Suarez and Tucker?’ ‘Tucker has been edicted, as we suspected he would be. We’ll have the raw text of the edict within the hour. Still nothing of Suarez, but we break through to the Hall of Mirrors update very soon. In the meantime Tucker is being moved by carriage along the M4.’ ‘He has a rental office in Bristol?’ ‘Yes, and one of his bank’s airships, the Patrick, docks tomorrow.’ ‘Convenient.’ Abruptly Jason disappeared from the workplace, an emergency system placeholder taking his space: ‘By authorised request of the Watch Steering Committee’. He looked round, several others of the team were also gone; their turn to be questioned by the higher ups, he presumed. The landscape had changed further, the overhead clouds had filled and darkened, rain was beginning to fall. He shook his head, this is what I get for meddling in politics, his final thought before returning to work. stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

‘The Opeople have hardly been enthusiastic adherents of the Great Conspiracy,’ Sima replied contemptuously. ‘I find their sudden conversion to be highly suspect and their predictions to be fanciful conjectures, peddled by amateurs besotted, though they know it not, by the Announcer just as much as any of its many other addicts.’ She filled out a betting slip and slipped it into the slot in the table in front of her. She spoke the accompanying mantra, ‘Abiding by the Rules and Regulations of the Great Ledger I bet ten million guineas that this game is but another of the Announcer’s Loki fictions.’ Henson scribbled out a matching slip. ‘By the Rules the bet is matched.’ A hefty sum, but still little more than a formality. Henson leant to his side and pulled out a thick wad of folders from a wooden cabinet by his feet, passing them left and right to be handed down the table. He extracted a photograph of a baby faced individual, aged in his early forties, with light brown eyes and morning tangled hair. ‘This is Cedric Tucker, owner of a small online bank, Ogden & Partners. He is also one of the game’s players. Up to now he’s managed to fly under the radar but, as we all know to our cost with Suarez and his misbegotten ilk, it is adept at its pavlovian indoctrination. The Opeople predict that this individual will be the next sleeper the Announcer will bring into play, using his bank to attempt to launder a substantial part of its stolen funds.’ Lady Blackwright took up the thread, ‘At first glance nothing distinguishes Tucker from the hundreds of thousands of other UK users the Announcer attempted to indoctrinate with its first hidden games. Only when the security archivists began examining his history in detail did more revealing information come to light.’ She took out a second photograph, showing in the foreground a small group gathered together in the late evening in a suburban street, pressed up against police tapes. ‘This photograph was taken at the recapture of the Artifact in October, 2015.’ She waited for everyone to get their bearings. In the background, and the focus of the bystanders attention, who were neighbours brought onto the street by natural curiosity, was a team of uniformed officers, struggling to carry between them a large metal box. Pinned to the back of the print were two blowups, the first showing a youthful Cedric Tucker, excited eyes lapping up from the back of the onlookers the strange drama provided by the recapture; the second clearly showing their old foe, Andrew Suarez, in police uniform, one of the four with the bullion box, grinning like a fox. To this day Henson wondered what it was the Artifact had done in the forty eight hours it had eluded capture. The FTO was adamant no damage had been done, Apel had been equally adamant that great damage had been done, though he couldn’t tell him its nature. ‘How he managed to infiltrate the recovery team we don’t know. It is likely that he was already in the house. Needless to say this throws the entire recapture operation into doubt. As you are aware that bullion box contained twenty million pounds in euros, and fifty kilograms of gold bullion requisitioned from the Treasury vaults for the benefit of the media cameras.’ As he spoke Henson could almost hear Sima’s mind clicking the possibilities over. Apel had been certain that somehow from within the Treasury Sima had managed to corrupt the Great Ledger, that there was a large hole hidden deep in the accounts. She knows, he thought, that if I push this it will lead to an audit and any shortfall revealed. She did not immediately respond. He felt a little more confident. ‘Furthermore Trent suspects that a relationship between Suarez and the Artifact was begun at this time. ’ Sima stood. ‘That is a monstrous accusation. I sincerely hope for his sake, and yours if you intent to propagate these slanders, that you have good evidence.’ Lady Blackwright interposed, ‘After the Opeople initial warning, and now evidence of a link to both Suarez and the Artifact, I have authorised a Level Red surveillance operation on Tucker. If Suarez attempts to make contact with him we will know,’ she said. ‘And this time he will not escape us, nor those who aid him, that is a promise.’ stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

what would a sensible min wage be, exactly? The British one is 5.73L/hr. Roughly 9$/hr, just a tad higher than most states. Looks like it is now 7.60 in London. Though higher than the US national standard, it's hardly a living wage when the cost of living of that city is considered. i agree - it needs to be raised here as well to a more sensible level. the benefit of a national health service for all also has to be added into the mix. stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding

so no education for the children or healthcare? (perhaps we should put a mark, perhaps a star, on them so we can all properly identify the family) Question - again - how much should I pay in taxes to support this woman, her kids and those like them? Are you a person who complains or a person who proposes solutions? a national health service and a sensible minimum wage will be a good start

you probably snigger when the pastor/vicar mentions the 'union of man and woman in marriage'

you'll see the value in these places then

so no education for the children or healthcare? (perhaps we should put a mark, perhaps a star, on them so we can all properly identify the family) stay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding