text:
Telcos race toward an all-IP future
At the CES Broadband Unlimited conference, communications execs explain why new native IP networks are essential for consumers and the next generation of connected devices.
Larry Downes
Jan. 8, 2013 10:27 a.m. PT
LAS VEGAS--As attendees arrive today for four days of innovative developments in consumer technologies, a related revolution is also getting attention at CES. At today's Broadband Unlimited conference, representatives of the communications industries and others were unified in calls for an accelerated transition from outmoded legacy copper phone lines to new networks that would treat all traffic as IP packets from end to end -- what has sometimes been called the "Internet Everywhere" network.
"If 'The Graduate' were being remade," according to Daniel Berninger, a pioneer in voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications and now president of the nonprofit Voice Communications Exchange Committee, "the advice given to today's Benjamin Braddock wouldn't be 'plastics,' it would be 'all-IP telco.' That's where the money will be made." (VCVX is a Washington, D.C.-based startup that describes itself as "working to speed the transition to all-IP networks.")
Daniel Berninger VCXC
After decades of slow convergence of voice, video, and data communications from a wide range of different network technologies and protocols, communications industry leaders are now fully committed to transitioning to a single network infrastructure in which all communications are transmitted as packets using Internet Protocols, regardless of whether those packets travel over wired or wireless networks -- or increasingly both.
While phone companies once dismissed packet switching as an inferior communications protocol compared with traditional switched technologies, carriers large and small have now embraced the need for more efficient IP networks to support the exploding demand of mobile technology users, cloud-based services, and the coming data deluge of "machine to machine" communications.
Consumers, of course, are driving that transformation. In the U.S. and elsewhere, customers have been voting with their feet, abandoning old wireline phone services in favor of fiber and cable-based VoIP and mobile services. According to a report last week (PDF) from the Centers for Disease Control, less than half of all American homes still had wireline phone service at the end of 2011. Hank Hultquist, vice president for Regulatory Affairs at AT&T, today said that number could fall to 25 percent by 2015.
As fewer users come to rely on the copper network and older switching technologies, maintenance has become more difficult and expensive. That's a big part of why AT&T and other carriers are hoping to retire legacy networks quickly, replacing them with IP networks that will use a combination of fiber optics, 4G LTE wireless, and short copper loops to handle voice, video, and data traffic.
In November, AT&T committed an additional $14 billion over the next three years to accelerate the replacement of its wired and wireless network technologies. Other carriers are making similar investments.
Berninger argues that the operating expenses of native IP networks could be as much as 90 percent less than today's fading Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) infrastructure. But that's not the only reason carriers are investing billions to make the transition.
Native IP networks will also support new voice services, including wideband audio or "HD Voice." HD Voice dramatically expands the frequency range of what is currently possible over narrowband PSTN. While human speech ranges between 80Hz and 14kHz, legacy phone networks narrow that to between 300Hz and 3.4kHz. HD Voice, on the other hand, transmits between 50Hz and 7kHz or higher. (One reason voice quality can be poor even on LTE network calls is that the sampling range is reduced for transit over PSTN backhaul networks.)
Removing Legacy Regulatory Barriers to Change
The only thing holding back the transition to all-IP broadband networks now is an equally decaying infrastructure of legacy regulations at the federal, state, and local levels. Holdovers from the days of the former telephone monopoly, these complicated rules require carriers to seek permission to discontinue or even to change service offerings once they've been approved by regulators.
"We pretend there are two industries -- information technology and communications technology," Berninger said. "But today the only meaningful difference is that the latter is still the subject of intense federal, state, and local regulation." That's one reason -- perhaps the key reason -- consumer electronics and mobile technologies can improve at the speed of Moore's Law, while traditional voice communications are still largely stuck where they were "eighty years ago," Berninger said.
To its credit, the Federal Communications Commission last month began soliciting comments on proposed trials of PSTN to IP changeover in a few select locations. The agency also created a Technology Transitions Policy Task Force to help speed the deployment of broadband technologies.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski FCC
"Technological transitions don't change the basic mission of the FCC," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said at the time. "But technology changes can drive changes in markets and competition. And many of the Commission's existing rules draw technology-based distinctions. So the ongoing changes in our nation's communications networks require a hard look at many rules that were written for a different technological and market landscape."
(On Wednesday, Genachowski will deliver a keynote speech at CES, as he has every year since being confirmed as FCC chairman.)
Indeed, the FCC could be credited with starting the process of retiring legacy copper networks, a subject treated in detail in the 2010 National Broadband Plan.
AT&T's Hultquist said the trials will help regulators and carriers resolve several unanswered questions about how best to make the transition and over what time period, including ensuring that vital services, such as 911 calling, won't be interrupted. To conduct the trials, the FCC will need to waive a wide variety of reporting and other detailed regulations at least temporarily. The FCC may also need to run interference with state and local regulators who share jurisdiction over legacy phone service.
Ultimately, it will be up to the FCC to coordinate with other regulators to establish and enforce firm dates for the transition to new all-IP networks. Timetables will also ensure that no existing subscriber is left without basic telephone service, including those subsidized today by the Universal Service Fund. In that sense, the transition to all-IP networks will be similar to the relatively simpler transition of television broadcasting from analog to digital in 2009.
But the clock is ticking. At CES' opening keynote presentation Monday night, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs predicted that 5 billion smartphones would be sold between 2012 and 2016. And echoing comments from the Broadband Unlimited conference earlier in the day, Jacobs argued that the next revolution will be based on machine-to-machine communications. "It's not the 'Internet of Things,'" he said. "It's the Internet of Everything."
And the Internet of Everything needs a network built on the principle of Internet Everywhere.
Online Phones Mobile 4G LTE AT&T FCC VoIP
Discuss: Telcos race toward an all-IP future

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Will the Dakota Access Pipeline Leak? Vote Here!
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text:
Q: Which functors $\bf Cat \to Cat$ preserve $\mathbb D$-filtrancy? In the following, I refer to [ABLR] as the paper A classification of accessible categories by Adamek, Borceux, Lack and Rosicki.
Doodling with symbols, and studying the aforementioned article, I began pondering: are there sensible conditions on a 2-functor $\bf Cat \to Cat$ which ensure that it sends $\mathbb D$-filtered categories (in the sense of [ABRL], for a fixed doctrine $\mathbb D$) to $\mathbb D$-filtered categories?
As it turns out easily, if $\bf C$ is filtered and cofiltered (in the classical sense, i.e. $\mathbb D$-filtered for $\mathbb D$ = {finite diagrams}), then the twisted arrow category of $\bf C$ is again filtered, so that for each presentable object $K\in\bf K$ of a finitely complete category the functor ${\bf K}(K,-)$ will preserve all coends of functors $F \colon {\bf C}^{op} \times\bf C \to K$.
This is quite simple (and there is no problem in extending it to the $\alpha$-filtered case), but heavily relies on the explicit characterization of a filtered category; I wonder if there is a more general approach giving more general statements.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
SI beaten up by group of people
June 10, 2016 by shameen
Kochi A Sub-Inspector was beaten up by a group of people after he was allegedly found in the residence of a small-time serial actress near here, police said.
They allegedly beat up the SI of a local police station and also misbehaved with the woman last evening and virtually held them captive for about two hours before police rescued them.
Police said they have registered a case against 15 people for allegedly beating up the SI and seven persons for misbehaving with the woman.
Social media went abuzz with the story of the alleged "moral policing" by the local people.
Police said they could reach the place and rescue the SI after two hours of the incident as his mobile phone was seized by the the attackers.
A top official probing the case said the SI's explanation about the episode was not satisfactory and he was likely to face disciplinary action for violating police code.
Muvattupuzha DSP Prabhullachandran submitted a report to Ernakulam Rural SP P N Unnirajan about the incident today.
Meanwhile, officials in the police station suspected the drug mafia was behind the incident.
According to them, three of the people who attacked the SI had been held earlier on charges of drug trafficking.
Categories Crime and Accident Tags beaten up, Group 'A', people, SI
Kanhaiya detained for protesting against 'police brutality' on students in Bihar
Gujarat HC declines to give copy of Ishrat Jahan charge sheet to IPS officer


The Cash family have been living an alternative lifestyle in the Washington wilderness for a decade and the six children have all been home schooled. Their parents had good jobs but as anarchists became increasingly disillusioned with mainstream capitalism and withdrew. The family endure a punishing daily fitness regime and are skilled in hunting, mountaineering and a wide range of survival techniques. They live as a mini commune where the parents teach them multiple languages, history, philosophy and politics - all from a position of a strong liberal critique. For me, this film idealises a bohemian bourgeois hipster lifestyle.
The children also learn grammar and calculus as well read the classics on a predetermined schedule to make sure they keep up. Educationally they are years ahead of their peers. The kids are not indoctrinated and are taught to understand and value all sides in a debate but there is little doubt that they are chips off the old block and by osmosis have absorbed their parents' views on most things. Another view would be that through their own inability to engage and change society from within, that both parents are guilty of child abuse on a huge scale.
All is going well until something forces the entire family to travel on the family bus, named Steve, all the way to New Mexico. En route and once there, they have to engage with regular people and this exposes the one thing they are not proficient in - being socially appropriate. This behavioural segregation sets up a number of encounters which if the film is a fantasy are comedic and if it is trying to communicate something serious, extremely sad. Perhaps because for me the film's intention is never clear, I can't decide what kind of film it is.
For me, the film sets out a 'compare and contrast' scenario where the idyllic and altruistic family life of the frontiersman/woman is set against the harsh self-serving individualism of twenty-first century consumerism, where identity is expressed through consumption. For me the film offers a binary choice without offering the opportunity to select which elements of both opposing ideologies could be woven together to create something whose sum is greater than their constituent parts. For me the film puts forward both a thesis and an antithesis but produces no synthesis! Disappointing - or is this the work I am meant to do? Perhaps the way the film ends leaves the door open for a sequel that might explore that.
This film could have been so much more but loses it's defining edge because it is so introspective, which leaves me feeling very frustrated. It does however offer a fertile springboard for discussing the ills of Western society - but in the end does it offer a viable alternative? Overall I remain disappointed which means I must award it 6/10 - but this is a film which is not easily forgotten and I may have to return at some point and be a little more generous.
I enjoyed this movie more than you did, Duncan, though I agree some of it is problematical. The children are taught the value of dialectics, and this movie is certainly dialectic. The clash between a hypo-thesis and its anti-thesis leads to a new thesis, in this case a new way of being family. By the end of the movie the dialectic seems to be resolved. Not hypo-thesis A or anti-thesis C but, we presume, an acceptable B (or maybe D?) We are not shown or told how the grandparents – or children - come to agree with this resolution, or define the essentials of living it out, and that is a shame, but I can see how detailed negotiation in the last reel would defuse the dramatic tension.
The film may end with a rather conventional solution, and not everyone will find it satisfying, but at the very least it comes about after an engaging, often amusing and sometimes rather moving argument and narrative, one that visits the horrors of modern American (and increasingly the Western) lifestyle, with its waste, obesity, rampant consumerism and alienation from both the natural and philosophical realms, but also points out the isolationism, desocialisation, and ultimately dysfunctional nature of the extreme survivalist/back to nature impulse. We do need to find a way to live 'in this world', even if we do not want to be 'of this world', being properly dismayed by many aspects of it.


Whenever you are trying to create something amazing (an experience for your clients, great images or a great management system), repetition becomes the key to accomplishment.
Whenever you are setting out to create an awesome experience for your client, it does not matter how amazing it is IF the client is expecting something else.
Example: You want to under-promise and over-deliver on the turn-around time of your images. You know that if you turn them around WAY faster then they are EXPECTING, they will be on cloud nine and love you till the day you die (and promote your business until then). But, if they don't have the correct EXPECTATIONS, then it will not matter one iota. If you turn the images around in 48 hours, but the client calls wondering where they are the next day (and they have called us the next day!), then you have already not met their expectations and you leave them feeling unfulfilled.
We tell the client when we book them it will be 90 days maximum before the images are done from the wedding. We tell them after the final details meeting it will be 90 days. We send them email the day after the wedding telling them it will be 90 days. We tell them, tell them again then remind them of what we told them. It seems like we tell them allot, but this ensures that they know what to expect, and then WHEN we turn the images around faster, they are guaranteed to be stoked! Repetition Creates Clarity.
Having easily repeatable processes in the management of your business is another key to clarity. Do you ever feel overwhelmed and like you are not sure what to do next? You need some serious systems to solve that problem! Michael Gerber has an amazing book called the E-Myth that teaches you how to run your business like a franchise. Anything you do in the management of your business (blog posts, editing, finances, scheduling and so forth) that have more than ONE step in the process, NEEDS to have a specific written down system with a checklist. Once you do that, then ANYONE can come into your business, follow the directions of the next project and get it done efficiently. Confusion creates chaos and systems create clarity.
Yes! Photography is a combination of Science and Artistic Impression (science is art in and of itself). What that means is there are rules and the ability to break them. IF we use the rules to lay our foundation, then create our own artistic impression around that SYSTEM, we will have repeatable results. When we can repeat success over and over again and always create beautiful images each time we shoot, then we service our clients the way they should be serviced; with an amazing product!
An example of a Systemizing your Photography: Every time I give my camera 18% grey light that is also hitting my subject and insert that reading, I get natural color. The camera is designed to read 18% grey and when it gets that grey, it gives me the desired result. Now, in post, if I want to warm that tone up and CREATE my artistic impression with that look, I can do it each and every time. It is repeatable because of the system (or science) of photography and then gets even more creative with what I do next.
This allows me to please my clients by producing quality work each and every time by simply following the system, then being creative around that scientific process! Repetition of the process (the system) creates clarity for my images. They come out the way I want and I have complete confidence when I step out to shoot.
In the image above shot back in early 2008, I overpowered the sun by 2 stops and put my flash at 30 degrees camera right and got the above result. I have now done that thousands of times on other shoots and each time I get the repeatable results that I am looking for. The repetition of the system creates clarity in my work.
Your homework this week is to take one area of your business that frustrates you, and create a system that works to help you achieve clarity in your business. What is the area that is lacking the most?
Post a comment below and share with us what area of your business is in desperate need of a great system, OR what area of your business HAS a great system and why it WORKS for you! 20,000 photographers read this blog each and every month, so this is your chance to take advantage of this audience and become a leader by teaching us how you do what you do! We want to hear from you and so MANY others!


We have become big fans of the RUPES BigFoot Random Orbital Polishing System, and the colour coded pads really do complement the various compounds and free-spinning dual action polishers perfectly. The RUPES BigFoot UHS Foam Polishing Pad is currently available in three sizes, with each size being designed for a specific subset of BigFoot machines (100 mm for the RUPES LHR 75E Mini BigFoot Polisher, 150 mm for the RUPES LHR 12E Duetto BigFoot Polisher, RUPES LHR 15ES BigFoot Polisher and RUPES LHR 15III BigFoot Polisher, and 180 mm for the RUPES LHR 21ES BigFoot Polisher and RUPES LHR 21III BigFoot Polisher). All three sizes are made out of the same semi-coarse open cell foam and feature a centering hole, a durable hook and loop backing and a strongly splayed side profile for safety. Furthermore, they all meet a specific weight target, which ensures that they work in perfect harmony with the counterbalance in the machines they are intended to be used with. This approach, which is also used for the BigFoot backing plates, ensures that each machine is optimally balanced during use and that vibration levels are minimised. Although ultra-high solid and scratch-resistant paint systems demand a relatively firm pad for paint correction purposes, you would be forgiven for thinking that the RUPES BigFoot UHS Foam Polishing Pad is a little too firm; when it's brand new or fresh out of your kit bag it really does feel worryingly stiff and dense. However, if you prime it properly you'll find that it quickly softens up during use. It just needs some product in it and to be warmed up before its true nature is revealed!
The RUPES BigFoot UHS Foam Polishing Pad is manufactured using an ultra-high quality foam engineered specifically for the one-step correction of ultra-high solid and scratch-resistant paint systems with the long-throw free-spinning dual action polishers in the RUPES BigFoot Random Orbital Polishing System. When used in conjunction with RUPES UHS Easy Gloss Polishing Compound, this foam is capable of correcting light to moderate defects and producing a high gloss finish in just a single polishing step. Although it's much denser than the other foams used to make BigFoot foam polishing pads, this foam also features a reticulated open cell structure, which enables frictional heat to be quickly dispersed. Regardless of your level of experience, you will find the RUPES BigFoot UHS Foam Polishing Pad easy to use; although it initially feels very stiff it softens up quickly once it is primed, meaning it conforms to curved surfaces relatively well. The RUPES BigFoot UHS Foam Polishing Pad also features a centering hole, a durable hook and loop backing specifically designed to be able to withstand the high lateral forces generated by long-throw dual action polishers, and a highly splayed side profile with a bevelled lower lip, which maximises access and safety when working in hard to reach spots. The RUPES BigFoot UHS Foam Polishing Pad is currently available in three different sizes.


text:
Q: How to replace characters inplace fast using C++ I have a text file (66GB) where I would like to replace some characters. I can't load the whole thing into memory.
This is the basic idea of what I was hoping to do:
std::ifstream i(infile.c_str()); // ifsteam
while(i.good()) {
    getline(i, line);
    for(int c=0;c<line.length();c++) {
        if(line[c]=='Q')
            // *** REPLACE Q WITH X HERE
    }
}

My question is: how do I put the new character so that is actually replaces Q?
Subquestion: is there a better / faster way to do this?

I am working on a virtual ubuntu server: 2 Cores, 4GB of memory, OS is ubuntu.

A: You could use something like this which I would think would be faster.
std::ifstream ifs("input_file_name", std::ios::binary);
std::ofstream ofs("output_file_name", std::ios::binary);

char buf[4096]; // larger = faster (within limits)

while(ifs.read(buf, sizeof(buf)) || ifs.gcount())
{
    // replace the characters
    std::replace(buf, buf + ifs.gcount(), 'Q', 'X');

    // write to a new file
    ofs.write(buf, ifs.gcount());
}

If you don't want to produce a separate file (more dangerous) then you could modify the original file something a bit like this (untested code):
std::fstream fs("input_file_name", std::ios::in|std::ios::out|std::ios::binary);

char buf[4096]; // larger = faster (within limits)

auto beg = fs.tellg();

while(fs.read(buf, sizeof(buf)) || fs.gcount())
{
    auto end = fs.tellg();

    // replace the characters
    std::replace(buf, buf + fs.gcount(), 'Q', 'X');

    // return to start of block
    fs.seekp(beg);

    // overwrite this block
    fs.write(buf, fs.gcount());

    // shift old beginning to the end
    beg = end;

    // go to new beginning to start reading the next block
    fs.seekg(beg);
}

A: If you want to replace the characters in the file and not only in the data you read, then it's not as simple as one would think.
The simplest and probably also quickest way is to read the data in chunks into memory, replace the data in the memory chunk, and write it out to a temporary file. Then when done, you rename the temporary file as the original file.

A: It is probably better to avoid the C++ IO system and use the C memory mapped IO system.  You will have to add in error handling code but this should give you a start.
/// Access a file using the mmap/munmap functions
///
class mmap_file
{
private:
  char * data_;
  std::size_t size_;
  int fd_;

public:
  ~mmap_file()
  {
     ::munmap( this->data_, this->size_ );
     ::close( this->fd_ );
  }
  mmap_file( std::string fname ): data_( 0 )
    , size_( 0 )
    , fd_( -1 )
  {
     this->fd_ = ::open( fname.c_str(), O_RDWR );
     ::off_t tmp = ::lseek( this->fd_, 0, SEEK_END );
     this->size_ = ( size_t )tmp;
     tmp = ::lseek( this->fd_, 0, SEEK_SET );
     this->data_ = ::mmap( NULL, this->size_, PROT_WRITE
                         , MAP_PRIVATE, this->fd_, 0 );
  }

  // Is object valid?
  bool is_valid() const
  {
    return (char*)(0) != this->data_;
  }

  // Access the data of the object.
  char* const data()
  {
    return this->data_;
  }

  // What is the size of the object (in bytes)
  std::size_t size() const
  {
    return this->size_;
  }
};

Then
mmap_file mmfile( "some_filename" );
if (mmfile.is_valid())
{
  for( char* p = mmfile.data(); p != mmfile.data() + mmfile.size(); ++p )
  {
    if( *p == 'Q' ) *p = 'X';
  }
}

This allows you to read and write the file from the same object. The C++ iostream is more designed to read from one object and write to another which is not so useful for editing in place.  In addition the memory mapped IO uses the computer's memory paging system to handle reading and writing to disk making this efficient on very large files.
You could improve the shown class by adding begin and end methods, then the shown for loop can be replaced with std::replace.
NOTE Because this uses the OS memory paging system it will recognise which pages have had alterations and which not and automatically only save altered pages to disk (with generally a 4096 byte granularity).  You can do this manually with the other manual buffering answers but it requires more work from you.

A: Your code is good enough. Don't forget to compile it with optimizations enabled (e.g. g++ -O2 -march=native with GCC).
Some implementations of C++ standard libraries are done above C standard library. Then perhaps coding your thing in C (with getline(3)) might be very slightly faster.
Perhaps using std::replace might be slightly faster.
The bottleneck remains the disk IO itself (and the hardware!) and you won't change that. Check with time(1) that your program is I/O bound (or spend a lot of time in system CPU time, e.g. doing system calls). If you can afford it, get some better hardware (e.g. SSD disks if you have spinning hard disks).
On Linux, you might use low level system calls like posix_fadvise(2). You could avoid standard library functions and use directly system calls like read(2) (with a large enough buffer of e.g. 64Kbytes or one megabyte) and write(2). If you just need to replace characters in place (without changing the file size) e.g. replace Qby A, that could be (very slightly) faster.
On most computers (except costly servers having a terabyte of RAM), a 66 Gbyte file don't stay in  the page cache. So the problem is IO bound.
But if, as I suspect, your code is I/O bound and spend most of its time doing I/O (e.g. waiting for the disk or running system calls), improvement of your code won't really matter. You'll win at most a few percent of elapsed real time (which is what actually matters to you). You could perhaps even use existing commands like sed(1) to get the work done.
Remember that IO on spinning disk takes a dozen of milliseconds (per sectors of few kilobytes); with an SSD it could be a hundred microseconds. CPU can process a word of 8 bytes in a nanosecond.


My vision in my art is to unite the eternal and the flow of life.
Oleg Yurov from Kiev has developed his own technique, which he calls "Free Motion". He brings the colors to flow, which allows him to show the world in its movement, creating intense impressions. The large format of the paintings brings the focus on inner worlds and their character, for example in his flower pictures. His works range between abstraction and objectivity. FlowFineArt has discovered the aspiring artist in 2017 and is featuring him in Western Europe. Oleg Yurov has been represented in Ukraine and Russia since 2014 with exhibitions and numerous seminars.


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Forget Universal Basic Income, just raise Newstart
By Unconventional Economist in Australian budget, Featured Article
at 11:30 am on April 5, 2018 | 53 comments
By Leith van Onselen
Greens leader, Richard DiNatale, has been rubbished by economists for proposing a socialistic "universal basic income" (UBI) scheme in his Press Club Address yesterday. From The Australian:
Greens leader Richard Di Natale's policy to abolish all existing welfare and introduce a "universal basic income" — a non-means-tested payment to all citizens — would require federal public spending to rise by $254 billion a year, or by almost 55 per cent…
Social researcher Ben Phillips — who modelled for The Australian the cost of paying all residents aged 15 and over $23,000 a year (the Age Pension) and children $5500 a year (the maximum rate of Family Tax Benefit A) — said the plan was "utopian". On his analysis, all marginal income tax rates, including the current zero-rate on incomes up to $18,200, would need to rise by 33 percentage points to pay for the proposal, bringing the top rate on incomes above $180,000 to 78 per cent.
"One of the claims of UBI advocates is that they remove the high effective marginal tax rate," Mr Phillips said. "To some extent that's true but the majority of taxpayers move to even higher effective rates"…
Independent economist Saul Eslake said Senator Di Natale's policy, announced at the National Press Club yesterday, was an "extraordinarily expensive way of seeking to address what may well be a few cracks through which a limited number of people fall".
Peter Whiteford, social security expert at the ANU, said Australia already had the most targeted social security system in the OECD…
Privately, senior Greens conceded an effective UBI payment would need to be between $20,000 and $40,000 a year…
I think Saul Eslake's comment that UBI is an "extraordinarily expensive way of seeking to address what may well be a few cracks through which a limited number of people fall" sums up the Greens policy perfectly.
The main shortfalls of Australia's social security system are as follows:
the Newstart ('Dole') allowance for the unemployed is highly inadequate and should be significantly increased; and
the Aged Pension is too generous to those with significant wealth, but not generous enough to those with few means, thus warranting a shift in payments.
As shown in the next chart, the Newstart Allowance has not increased in real terms (i.e. above the Consumer Price Index) since 1994. This means that people who are unemployed have not shared in increases in living standards received by the rest of the community for more than 20 years.
OECD comparisons also shows that Australia's dole allowance is amongst the lowest in the world for singles:
Whereas it's only a little more generous for couples:
It's also worth highlighting that the Business Council of Australia (BCA) has recently called for "increasing the inadequate Newstart allowance, arguably the most tightly controlled corner of the welfare budget", as has KPMG, which has also described Newstart as "inadequate" and called for it to be raised by $50 a week.
When even the BCA is calling for Newstart to be raised, you know there's a problem.
The problems around the Aged Pension relate more to its distribution. That is, while older Australians generally have captured an increasing share of Australia's wealth:
Largely because they have increased their home ownership rates over the past 55 years at the same time as home values have skyrocketed:
The situation is nowhere near as rosy for Australia's renting pensioners, who are doing it increasingly tough, according to a recent reports from Mission Australia, The ABC. and the Swinburne Institute for Social Research.
Therefore, there is a clear case for broad reforms to both the housing and the Aged Pension systems.
On the housing side of the equation, there is a clear need for greater public investment in social and community housing, as well as reforms to taxation arrangements to boost affordable housing via targeting negative gearing at new builds (similar to Labor's policy). We also need rules that give greater security of tenure to renters, like those that exist across much of Europe.
Regarding the Aged Pension, it should be reformed to provide less taxpayer assistance to wealthy home owners and more assistance to renters, via:
Including one's principal place of residence in the assets test for the Aged Pension at some point in the future (e.g. 1 July 2020), thus allowing current retirees and prospective retirees adequate time to make arrangements.
Once implemented, raising the overall assets test for the Aged Pension, and the base rate as well.
Extending the existing state sponsored reverse mortgage scheme, the Pension Loans Scheme, to all people of retirement age so that asset (house) rich retirees can continue to receive a regular income stream in exchange for a HELP-style liability that is recoverable from the person's estate upon death, or upon sale of the person's home (whichever comes first).
Under this plan, house-rich pensioners could continue to receive a regular income stream as they do now under the Aged Pension, but with less longer-term drain on the Budget and on younger taxpayers. At the same time, the circa 20% of renting pensioners would receive greater financial assistance – both via and expansion of the assets test and an increase in the base rate (see here for a detailed examination of this issue).
These are the types of social reforms that The Greens should be pursuing, not daft socialist plans like UBI.
Unconventional Economist
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
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HadronCollision MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 11:42 am
When you get your tax invoice each year (assuming you aren't a leech getting dividend refund cheques LOLz) you can clearly see how much the aged pension is.
The bar chart is significantly larger than the dole
You can point to that when anyone cries "dole bludgers"
it's simply an imagined problem
Calvin27 April 5, 2018 at 1:54 pm
I never quite understood why working Aussies always treat pensioners like special flowers. In other countries their policy is strictly to support the working population.
snagard April 5, 2018 at 11:50 am
Alternatively – target full employment?
poida April 5, 2018 at 12:01 pm
..and pay a living wage
Philly Slim April 5, 2018 at 12:07 pm
Full employment will be a pipe dream with robots.
I support a UBI. Also think of the massive efficiency from abolishing all the govt departments that currently monitor and enforce the means testing.
Andrew April 5, 2018 at 12:47 pm
You support the government taking money from you, and then paying less back to you with admin costs and fraud costs stripped out?! Wow!
There are far less admin costs in a UBI than in the current set up (centrelink, etc). The ATO collects the money and then every Australian gets a regular check. There literally isn't anything else to do. The "U" stands for universal, everyone gets it, so unless you mean not telling the Feds granny has died I fail to see the avenues for much fraud here. Again, unlike the current system.
Jacob April 5, 2018 at 12:58 pm
UBI experiments show that recipients visit doctors less often. Their stress levels go down knowing that they have a guaranteed income and Centrelink stops asking them for medical certificates.
UBI recipient in Finland is much happier now that he no longer has to jump through hoops at Sarina Russo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwjNrxVd-1E
Stuff that. Halt immigration and run a saudi style economy where the locals reap all the benefits of the national wealth.
Ben April 5, 2018 at 11:59 am
When the housing bubble bursts and mass unemployment scars the soul of this nation,
,Billy Bogan will have to endure the biggest Rort of them all,- Job Network Provider's.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=30248
Sauropod MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 12:07 pm
A UBI makes sense when funded by a broad-based land tax. The UBI covers the land tax on a modest home, so the average home owner is no worse off. There is an incentive to live in a smaller home, encouraging people to downsize and make larger homes available to people who need them.
It is not necessarily a socialist idea. Coupled with a land-tax it is a stepping stone to reclaiming our commonwealth. Rather that the increased value from economic growth and infrastructure development being captured by existing land holders over time, it is captured by the land lax and distributed on a per-capita basis, without penalising people who do the right thing and only use the space they actually need.
The Claw April 5, 2018 at 12:50 pm
Peachy MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 1:34 pm
Rage MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 3:36 pm
Great idea well made Ms/Mr Lizard Foot. Why not a comprehensive wealth tax rather than just land?
Sauropod MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 7:28 pm
No, I am not suggesting a general wealth tax. A tax on the unimproved value of land specifically does not tax the value of any improvements to the land, such as a buildings, which is the actual wealth added by the effort of the land owner. We want to encourage people to improve land, and discourage people from hoarding vacant blocks and empty houses.
Newstart kills voters:
Father Of A Teenager Who Died Doing Work For The Dole Says His Son Was Made To Work With A Back Injury
https://www.buzzfeed.com/aliceworkman/work-for-the-dole-death?utm_term=.lcmrKn6rGW#.adn0QBg0AD
Therese Rein and Sarina Russo got rich by making the unemployed jump through hoops. Both sides of politics are busy giving the jobs to foreigners anyway. Atlassian's own video shows they do not even hire an Aussie for the HR position while PM Bill English said he wants foreigners to driver trucks instead of Kiwis. And Gillard gave 457 visas to KFC!
The ALP took EITC to the 1998 federal election – I think that is a wage top up scheme. So if a guy has an income of $6k/year, he would get topped up to $10k/year. If a guy already has an income of $40k/year, he would get no top up.
Ross Garnaut wanted EITC in 1999.
In Britain, people who have a terminal illness were declared "fit to work". The same happened in AUS. That is why UBI or EITC is so attractive and income tax cuts are very bad.
Foreign "students" enjoy income tax cuts while homeless Aussies get nothing.
Put in a wage top up scheme so that homeless dudes get at least $10k/year and those with an income over $60k get no top up.
AngryMan April 5, 2018 at 12:28 pm
Can i suggest that "landlords" only be entitled to NG claims if they rent to a pensioner or unemployed person/family in combination with checks that rent is controled to an acceptable amount.
Jason MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 12:49 pm
That isn't a million miles from the NRAS scheme where you would get an tax offset if you rented the new premises out at a 20% discount to market value do a low income earner.
pyjamasbeforechrist MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 12:30 pm
If we are talking utopia;
0% Income tax
0% Company tax
0% Capital gains tax
Assets tax owned by each person to replace then all
Promote Jobs
Promote Company expansion
Promote Investment
Discourage idle asset hording
Prepare for an AI world
Close the equality gap
Tassie Tom MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 12:57 pm
dumpling April 5, 2018 at 1:25 pm
"0% Income tax, 0% Company tax, 0% Capital gains tax, Assets tax owned by each person to replace then all"
Ah, my sense has been that the taxation system of future needs to progressively shift to more "stock-based" from the current overwhelmingly "flow-based" version as the population ages.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/11/85473/#comment-190527
I cannot see other viable ways.
So capital intensive businesses would have to be dismantled and sold. Terrible idea.
Even Steven MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 6:18 pm
Is a holiday house an asset? Ok… too easy.
How about a car?
A fridge?
A coin/stamp collection?
Paintings?
I'm just seeking to give a sense of how difficult it would be. I suppose we could marshall tens of thousands of home inspectors to catalogue and value your possessions (on a monthly/annual basis) but probably not the most elegant solution. And this is probably why we have an income-based tax system rather than asset-based tax system.
Any durable and portable asset that is not taxed becomes a de facto store of value (a currency).
The only occasions an asset-based tax work are at particular junctures where it is hard to avoid (or a valuation-type process already occurs) e.g. the distribution of an estate upon death.
pyjamasbeforechrist MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 8:17 pm
Indeed the 'valuation' accounting is the difficult part. But not impossible in these modern times.
And you could build in some leeway to the system to enable estimations rather than hard 'valuations' for some assets. Eg you get to lodge an estimate for X asset. But if you're audited, and found to have under estimated by more than Y% then the missed tax applies at twice the normal rate.
And all assets btw. Exclude none. Just maybe have a tax free threshold up to some value.
drsmithy MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 9:15 pm
Well, maybe not "impossible", but certainly having to keep track of acquiring and disposing everything that could be considered an "asset" would be an absurd burden.
Dennis April 5, 2018 at 12:35 pm
Ask the BCA if the minimum wage should be increased as that is also totally inadequate. Ask all large companies if there should be wage increases and they'll say yes, for all OTHER employers.
Happy for increases except when their members will have to pay for it.
The shops that pay legal-wages (Coles Express) should be demanding jail for wage theft given that rival petrol stations (7-11) pay illegal-wages.
It is like playing a cricket match in which one team is allowed to have 50 batsmen.
Dominic April 5, 2018 at 12:46 pm
Not for the reasons you think.
The BCA represents businesses that would benefit mightily from more money finding its way into the hands of the spenders (at the expense of savers). Big Business supports socialism more than you think.
Indeed. It's a variation on "other peoples money".
Now, if they would argue for an increase in Newstart in preference to lowering the Corporate Tax rate, that would be something.
TonyL April 5, 2018 at 12:50 pm
DiNatale and the Greens hold the unique talent of making uni student politics look sophisticated and nuanced.
Prometheus69 April 5, 2018 at 12:56 pm
How about putting a blanket ban on any Newstart recipient from being on the premises of a TAB, Pokies Venue, Race track (horses/greyhounds)?
Extend ban to pensioners as well. Pension money goes into pokies. A lot.
Prometheus69 April 5, 2018 at 7:46 pm
I have no doubt and agree. Ban anyone that receives a government pension; at least from the Pokies.
The damn things are evil.
Good idea. Even better, I would support ration coupons for essential items (or cashless debit cards) but not cash.
I also suspect that Jacob's idea of $900/month UBI will be followed by a headline from Domain:
"House prices rise by $900 across the board"
Jacob April 5, 2018 at 1:56 pm
Foreigners should be excluded from getting UBI – so it would give an upper hand to Aussies – unlike income tax cuts which foreign "students" enjoy.
And if UBI will make house prices go up, why has Turnbull not implemented UBI yet? He had an epic rant against Bowen's policy of making house prices go down.
Tassie Tom MEMBER April 5, 2018 at 1:12 pm
I completely agree with what Di Natale appears to have said (although I'm at work and haven't read it in detail – I'll do it tonight). It's what I've been saying for years.
How do you fill this $250 billion pa gap?
1) Begin the 30% tax bracket at about $2000 pa. I've done the sums before – I think this would raise about an extra $120 billion of that $250 billion foregone.
2) 1%pa wealth tax. There is $9 trillion of Australian wealth and about $3 trillion of foreign investment, so here's another $120 billion pa.
3) Get rid of NG, tax CGT at marginal tax rate (possibly with cost base adjusted for CPI). On paper this would raise $10 billion per year, but if the combination of items 2 and 3 successfully reduce asset prices as they are designed to, then there would be no capital gains for a while, so this would effectively cost $10 billion per year for a few years. In fact, what would be better would be putting CGT on property up to 60%. Then the public would capture a large bulk of the gains of developers' dodgy re-zoning deals.
4) Now that income splitting and CGT/NG have been resolved, super is the best game in town. Put up tax on super contributions and earnings to 20% and get rid of the tax-free pension. $50 billion per year – bonza! Would people still sacrifice into super? I would – my money is still earning 14% in a day ($80 instead of $70 per $100 earned = $14% increase).
5) Tax religious institutions like any other company. How much would this earn? It's not listed in the federal government's list of tax concessions. Some reports say they earn $100 billion pa between them, and if this is the case taxing them would earn $30 billion pa.
I think I've just paid for UBI and put the budged $70 billion pa into surplus. And this is just the low-hanging fruit. Closing multinational loopholes could earn another $50 billion or so, and the economic growth that would stem from these above reform would increase GDP by many %, earning tens of billions pa more each year over the previous year.
Actually, the recommendations contained in the Henry tax review are good. This is a bit old but still remains valid (good posts stand the test of time, you know!!)
In the long run, the taxation system will need to progressively shift to more "stock-based" from the current overwhelmingly "flow-based" version as the population ages.
As I read the Greens' proposal, their UBI would not replace existing welfare, it would be "as well as access to universal social services, health, education and housing".
I can't find any more details, however.
drSmithy, the reason to put in UBI is not the fact that inequality is the highest it has been since 1939?
You cheer on income tax cuts but the threshold is already at $18k/year and inequality is still growing. Tassie Tom above has done the numbers on how to fund UBI – and it includes not having an income tax free threshold. Raising the income tax free threshold to $18k instead of giving out a mild UBI of $5000/year was insane – Abbott won the election anyway.
You may be aware that the dole is lethal – a teen died while doing work for a dole – after all, right wing pricks online say "work or die"! They literally want the unemployed to die while giving entry level jobs in the government-funded NBN to foreigners.
An alternative to UBI is a wage top up – so if a guy has an income of $6k/year, he would get topped up to $18k/year and a guy on $40k/year would get no top up. That would be fantastic but I am not sure if it would be politically viable. UBI is very politically viable – it has existed in Alaska since 1982 and politicians dare not remove it.
You cheer on income tax cuts but the threshold is already at $18k/year and inequality is still growing.
Uh huh. When did I "cheer on tax cuts" ?
drsmithy, you cheered on income tax cuts a few weeks ago when Ermington Plumbing said the ITF threshold should be raised.
drsmithy MEMBER April 6, 2018 at 12:19 am
I imagine what I _actually_ said is that raising the tax free threshold is a better tax reform than cutting taxes for higher income earners.
You have a habit of misrepresenting – or outright fabricating – "facts" to fit your opinions.
md April 5, 2018 at 2:12 pm
The idea of a UBI sounds good in theory but raises so many questions it is hard to imagine it being practical. The richer you are the higher you get taxed presumably, but are you taxed on income or wealth (inherited or earned)? Does it mean the rich are forced to sell investment properties or shares? What if they're in trusts or offshore? I'm sure the uber-wealthy would find ways to evade these taxes.
We can look at multi-billionaires and say they could give away say 80 – 90% of their wealth and still be able to live a privileged lifestyle. But then, if the govt were able to get their hands on a large portion, what would the incentive be to work hard and build wealth? And what is considered wealthy?
And why do it anyway? Isn't it largely because home prices and rents are too high? What about simply bursting the bubble? All that has to be done is cut immigration, cut foreign buyers, stop allowing SMSFs to leverage into property and curtail negative gearing. Most of these policies were relaxed by Kevin Rudd to reinflate a slightly deflating bubble in 2008. But if you burst the bubble now, it would plunge us into recession and probably depression.
I don't see it happening.
The richer you are the higher you get taxed presumably, but are you taxed on income or wealth (inherited or earned)?
Does it mean the rich are forced to sell investment properties or shares?
No ? Why would it ?
We can look at multi-billionaires and say they could give away say 80 – 90% of their wealth and still be able to live a privileged lifestyle. But then, if the govt were able to get their hands on a large portion, what would the incentive be to work hard and build wealth?
Er, having hundreds of millions of dollars ?
And why do it anyway?
Because within a few generations, half the population or more will be unemployed and unemployable.
All that said, there's still so much to be done in the world, I think in the short to medium term a job guarantee is a better idea. But some form of UBI – assuming you're not just going to cull huge swathes of the population, either through aggression or neglect – is inevitable.
I do. But it'll be a neoliberal UBI brought in to replace all welfare/social services and accompanied by the privatisation of all publicly owned assets and publicly-run services.
Les April 5, 2018 at 2:13 pm
So a 15yo can own a house? Is this some sneaky legislation that got passed through quietly so Chinese high school students in can now buy properties in Australia?
Max April 5, 2018 at 3:06 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax
I'll just leave this here.
Flat tax on all consumption. Refunds back to everyone, who is an Australian citizen. Black market? Maybe, but the penalties on tax evasion are fairly steep, or could be strengthened. And best part of all, no refund unless you hold that passport (ok, maybe permanent residents also get the refund).
No handouts to permanent residents – unless on a refugee visa.
No Medicare for the first five years.
KeenEyeKen April 5, 2018 at 4:35 pm
There's a long way to go before this UBI debate can be taken seriously.
Why do we assume that revenue is raised solely from income/wage taxes? Tassie Tom points to plenty of low hanging fruit, with regards to a small/nominal tax on the stock of wealth.
Also, having a flat 55% tax rate on income is a stretch. If you look at the ABS national accounts, there's about $1.4 billion in income per year attributable to employees and corporate surplus. To raise the entire $254 billion you only need to have flat tax rate of about 19%. No need to have tax-free thresholds, because everyone gets a UBI. Also, that's not including the money saved by replacing the existing welfare state (nor the low hanging fruit mentioned by Tassie Tom).
edit: i'm not sold on the idea of UBI – the second order effects are what bother me – but we should at least ditch the partisan campaigns before understand it.
footsore April 5, 2018 at 7:15 pm
To be a broken record, Guy Standing is the authority in this subject. He has run large scale trials and the results have been better than expected. These include increases in health and education in children. Which is undoubtedly a good thing. An increase in all labour, except child labour, which decreased. Again, another good thing. It also acknowledges all of the unrecognised work that is done within the community by carers.
This speech covers a lot of the ground. He goes over the results I've mentioned briefly above, looks at justifications and objections, how to fund it (capture the rents and remove corporate welfare) and also voices his concern about the versions of a UBI (libertarian and neoliberal) that cost the other services of government.
The idea of a UBI seems be taken like the Church hearing that the Earth goes around the Sun. The Church's notion about the world is made up, it won't accept any evidence otherwise. The trials have shown that people don't just pull bongs all day and that not being poor assists people in being able to do stuff like pursue work or look after family. Yet the view that 'other' people are lazy and will decay away won't disappear. Hopefully, as more trials are done the results will continue to show that our worse preconceptions and judgements of others aren't always true.
https://youtu.be/UDF8o9e1QVc
Just a warning, Standing is unashamedly progressive, which is likely to deter some. That doesn't invalidate the results of the trials. So you may need to find other objections to it if they are solely " We can't afford it." and "No one will work and people will just get trashed.".
footsore, the jobs argument does not hold water – bosses can already import Kiwis/Indians to do the jobs. Heck, that is what bosses have been doing since 2008! While pushing dole recipients to their death: https://www.buzzfeed.com/aliceworkman/work-for-the-dole-death?utm_term=.lsK1xLRWm#.dnWnyeMlz
A UBI trail was conducted in 1843. We need no more trials – we need a UBI or wage top up. It is a good thing to have an income guarantee. A bloody shame the Greens did not put one in when they had Gillard over a barrel. Instead, they gave income tax cuts to foreign "students".
Curious April 5, 2018 at 9:23 pm
If we can get back to UEs article, its a well argued case for system tweaks delivering the most good for the least effort. Note that implementation effort for simplest change is substantial which is why calls for complete redesign of tax or welfare system go nowhere. Henry review high quality but will take a generation to implement it all. And a crisis or two to provide the excuse for change and accept some pain in the national interest.
ceteris paribus April 6, 2018 at 9:36 pm
Yes, I think you are most probably right, Curious. Change only occurs incrementally, not all at the one time. People are not going to start paying their proper tax overnight. The UBI may well, probably will, come in time- but it is too expensive and not yet desperately needed in the short term. Our first duty is too see every Australian lives above destitution and therefore the urgent need/priority is to raise the lowest benefit level Newstart, to a realistic level of adequacy. Good article UE.
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WolmoCore 6.4.0 Docs (97% documented)

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        WolmoCore Reference

        Timer Extension Reference

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Timer

public extension Timer

                    schedule(withDelay:<wbr>handler:<wbr>)

schedule: Creates and schedules a one-time NSTimer instance.

Note

Timer doesn’t need to be invalidated after using this function.

Seealso

CFRunLoopTimerCreateWithHandler()

Declaration

Swift

static func schedule(withDelay delay: TimeInterval, handler: @escaping (CFRunLoopTimer?) -> Void) -> Timer

Parameters

                                delay

The delay before execution.

                                handler

A closure to execute after delay.

Return Value

The newly-created NSTimer instance.

                    schedule(repeatInterval:<wbr>handler:<wbr>)

schedule: Creates and schedules a repeating NSTimer instance.

Warning

Timer should be invalidated after using this function.
Use timer.invalidate()

Declaration

Swift

static func schedule(repeatInterval interval: TimeInterval, handler: @escaping (CFRunLoopTimer?) -> Void) -> Timer

Parameters

                                repeatInterval

The interval between each execution of handler.
Note that individual calls may be delayed; subsequent calls to handler will be
based on the time the NSTimer was created.

                                handler

A closure to execute after each repeatInterval.

Return Value

The newly-created NSTimer instance.

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The original Volkswagen Golf was a C-Segment, front wheel drive car launched in 1974, that would form the base of the father of the hot hatchbacks. The Golf was intended to be the successor of the iconic Beetle, designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italdesign.
The original Golf GTI, was launched at the 1975 Frankfurt Motor Show. It was not the first hot hatchback but it was definitely one of the cars that contributed to the establishment of this category in the market, thanks to the great performance figures and handling capabilities, combined with practicality and affordability. The original GTI was fitted with a naturally aspirated 1588 cc engine equipped with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection technology, producing 110 hp (81 kw) and 140 Nm of torque, combined with a 4 speed manual gearbox. Thanks to the low weight of only 810 kg, it could accelerate from 0-100 km/h in 9,1 seconds, and could reach a top speed of 182 km/h (113 mph). The car also featured stiffened suspensions, a more rigid frame as well as larger brakes.
In 1979, the updated version was fitted with a naturally aspirated 1780 cc engine producing 111 hp (82 kw) and 152 Nm of torque, combined with a new 5 speed manual gearbox. The updated model could accelerate from 0-100 km/h in 8,2 seconds, and could reach a top speed of 188 km/h (117 mph).
Visually, the Golf I GTI was distinguished by the red grille frame, the GTI badge, the front splitter and the plastic wheel arch extensions. Inside it had a golf ball style gear stick, plaid linings upholstery and a sports steering wheel.
The total sales of the Golf I GTI were 461.690 cars, making it a huge success in the market before it was replaced by the second generation in 1983.


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text:
Stowmarket Mercury > Things to do >
Have you visited the best pub in the Ipswich area yet?
Danielle Lett
Ivan Sheldrake of The Walnut - Credit: Charlotte Bond
With the Christmas break just around the corner, there's no better way to spend a chilly winter day than down at a cosy pub, trying a number of tasty ales and beers on tap.
And one Stowmarket hostelry is the most definitely the place to be if you fancy yourself quite the ale aficionado.
The Walnut on Violet Hill Road is a one-stop-shop for all things hoppy and good, with owner Ivan Sheldrake priding it on being a no-frills establishment.
Ivan's focus on real ales and ciders has seen his pub win a number of awards since he took over just a couple of years ago - Credit: Charlotte Bond
"We're a community-style pub with a large choice of beer, and we're led by the beer. There's no food, and we removed all of the peripherals so there's no television, no dartboard, no pool table, no music, and no jukebox – just good beer and good conversation."
Originally from Stowmarket, Ivan, along with his wife Helen Sheldrake, took over The Walnut just before the Covid-19 pandemic, having previously run a pub in Market Harborough.
"I've always been interested in beer and real ale, and when the opportunity came up to take over this pub, I saw a gap in the market that wasn't being filled in Stowmarket, which was a focus real ale and craft beer."
The pair have since gone on to win a number of awards during that time thanks to their wide selection of beers and traditional atmosphere.
"Last year, we won three CAMRA awards in the Ipswich & East Suffolk category - Branch Pub of the Year, Pub of the Year and Cider Pub of the Year," he explains.
"We won the latter as we have around six or seven real ciders on tap at all times – think flat, proper ciders."
Ivan's handful of real ciders join anywhere between 10 and 16 rotating cask ales and beers that are always on tap.
But what is it he loves about the stuff so much?
"Beer is such an excellently complex product," he says.
"From only four ingredients – grain, hops, yeast, and water – there's so much variety and so many different flavour profiles you can get. A slight change in any of those ingredients or processes gives you so many places to go. It's much more complex than wine.
These complexities mean there's always something on offer at The Walnut, no matter what your preference is.
"We've got ales that are quite bitter, pale, dark, or hoppy. We've got ones that are brown, ones that look like orange juice, and ones that are ruby in colour. We've even got a milk stout on tap at the moment that's like neapolitan ice cream. There's just so much variety you can have."
But be sure to head down sooner rather than later, as Ivan adds: "Our beers change every time they run out - so in a week's time, everything will be completely different!"
One happy customer - Credit: Charlotte Bond
Ivan's top 10 current beers on tap
1. Beyond The Firs by Burnt Mill Brewery. 4.8%.
"An easy drinking modern classic from this Suffolk brewery, this pale hoppy brew has notes of pine."
2. The Dunkel by Anspach & Hobday. 5.8%.
"This is a dark lager with a smooth malty finish."
3. Mild Concussion by Fixed Wheel. 5.5%.
"A beautiful ruby mild made from gentle malts, it's easy drinking but packs a punch at 5.5%."
4. Centennial Pale by Kernel. 5.3%.
"This single hop pale ale showcases the Centennial hop with pine, citrus and floral notes."
5. Campania by Liverpool Brewing. 5.2%.
"A Neopolitan ice cream milk stout, all the flavours are there - chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. It's pretty much a liquid ice cream beer!"
6. JW Lees - Plum Pudding. 4.8%.
"Christmas in a glass, this is a ruby ale with subtle plum and spice flavours."
7. Tropical Storm by Black Storm. 4.2%.
"This one's a big citrus blast of a pale ale."
8. Sleepy Joes by Wild Weather. 4.2%.
"A classic, easy drinking best bitter."
9. Fresh Hop Heathen by Abbeydale. 4.1%.
"Made with American hops that are frozen at source and not dried, this beer has the really fresh flavours that can only come from green hops."
10. Bingle Jells by Mighty Oak. 5.2%.
"This one's a strong, complex ale in the extra special bitter style."
Stowmarket News


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Contra Returns Has Been Announced For Mobile Platforms
After 30 years, it is coming back.
After 30 years, Contra is making a return. The new title will be called Contra Returns. It will be out for Mobile platforms.
Contra Returns pre-registration is live
Contra Returns is a new game of the undying Contra game. Timi studios (part of Tencent games) has teamed up with the Japanese game company KONAMI to develop the title 'Contra Returns. The title will stick to its roots with HD graphics and more than 200 levels. Also, the game will have 1v1 and 3v3 modes which you can play the one you desire.
Contra Returns is also available for pre-registration both for Android and iOS platforms. You can click here for Android and here for iOS. But you should also keep in mind that the pre-registrations are not available for all of the regions. But don't get sad because the release date is also near. The game will make its global release on July 26, 2021.
If you have the chance to pre-register, you are lucky. Because the pre-registered players will be rewarded with unique in-game content. It is pretty good that such a famous series coming back to mobile. This means that you can play it anywhere and everywhere you want. We will surely give it a try when it comes out to mobile platforms.
When I was young, I had the original Contra. And it was the first game that made me step into the gaming world. Let's hope that Contra Returns will also impact the mobile gaming industry in a good way. Because back then, It was a major hit due to its fast-paced gameplay and great gaming mechanics. I assume that the developers will also bring in-game items and levels regularly to keep the game moving forward with every patch. Let's hope that it will not release below the expectation of the players.
Tags: AndroidfeaturediOSKonamiMobile GamesUpcoming
Demon Slayer English Trailer Has Been Released
Marvel Future Revolution Pre-Registration is Live. Lots of Details Revealed.
PlayStation Acquisition : Housemarque is Owned by Sony. Bluepoint May Also Have the Same Fate.
GTA VI Release Date is 2025. At Least Tom Henderson Says So.


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How to Watch UCLA vs Hawaii Live college football online
The Hawaii Rainbow Warriors finished in the middle of the Mountain West standings last season and will be challenged in their opening game of the 2021 college football season. On Saturday, the UCLA Bruins will host the 2020 New Mexico Bowl champs at the Rose Bowl in a non-conference matchup. Chip Kelly's Bruins are looking to bounce back from an underwhelming Pac-12 showing and could run up the score against the visitors with their explosive offense.
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WATCH ░▒▓██► UCLA vs Hawaii Live
The game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. ET, and UCLA is a 17.5-point favorite at Caesars Sportsbook. The Bruins are -600 (risk $600 to win $100) on the money line, while the Rainbow Warriors are a +900 underdog, according to the latest Hawaii vs. UCLA odds. The over-under for total points is set at 68. Before making any UCLA vs. Hawaii picks, check out the college football predictions from the SportsLine Projection Model.
The SportsLine Projection Model simulates every FBS college football game 10,000 times. Over the past five years, the proprietary computer model has generated a stunning profit of over $3,500 for $100 players on its top-rated college football picks against the spread. For the 2020 season, it went 56-37 on all top-rated picks and returned over $1,200 on its top-rated spread and over-under picks. Anyone who has followed it has seen huge returns.
Now, the model has set its sights on UCLA vs. Hawaii. You can visit SportsLine now to see the picks. Here are the college football odds and trends for Hawaii vs. UCLA:
Hawaii vs. UCLA spread: UCLA -17.5
Hawaii vs. UCLA over-under: 68 points
Hawaii vs. UCLA money line: UCLA -900, Hawaii +600
HAW: The Rainbow Warriors were 1-2 against the spread on the road during the regular season last year
UCLA: The Bruins were 2-2 against the spread at the Rose Bowl last year
Why Hawaii can cover
Hawaii is a significant underdog that has been able to rise to the occasion in recent years. The Rainbow Warriors have won three straight road openers and can depend on many experienced players early in the 2021 season. All 11 of Hawaii's 2020 defensive starters are back, and seven offensive starters are back as well.
UCLA has only managed to cover the spread in three of its last home games and is known to give up a ton of points. The Bruins haven't done a great job capitalizing on home-field advantage. The Rainbow Warriors had the better season last year and have prevailed against the odds in recent years.
Why UCLA can cover
UCLA didn't have its best season last year, but its ability to put points on the board makes it dangerous. The Bruins won by an average of 13.5 points in 2020-21, while averaging 35 points per contest. Hawaii scored a little more than 26 points per game last year and forked up 27 points per game to opposing teams.
The Rainbow Warriors averaged fewer than 20 points per game on the road, though. If Hawaii doesn't compete early on, this game could turn into a blowout quickly. UCLA averaged nearly 37 points at the Rose Bowl last season.
How to make Hawaii vs. UCLA picks
SportsLine's model is leaning under on the total, projecting the teams to combine for 62 points. The model also says one side of the spread hits in more than 60 percent of simulations. You can only get the pick at SportsLine.


6. Print and play games?
7. Buy or not buy?
My hobbies are the biggest challenge I have for adequate sleep.
Let me explain what I mean. By 9 or so in the evening, the children are in bed and the needed household tasks are done. I usually have an hour or so for hobbies, and I usually take advantage of it.
I'll read a good book. I'll paint something. I'll read the rules for a board game or card game. I'll play a computer game. I'll go for a walk.
What I often find is that I'll get engrossed in that hobby and find myself going to bed way too late. Then, the next day, I'm exhausted because of completely inadequate sleep.
It's a balancing act. The key for me is to simply say, "It's time to go to bed," and stick with it.
I work at home as a freelance graphic artist, and am fortunate to have lots of work lately. I have one computer which I use all the time. I need to have maintenance done on it occasionally, and have to be without for several days. This happens at least once a year, and I think it's a necessity to keep it in top form for my job.
The question…what is the best way to handle those several days without a computer? I can't depend on it being done on a weekend, and meanwhile I miss a lot of work time. I easily work full time or more, and generally that includes weekends if I have the work. Also, I feel like I need a way to stay in contact with people via email at the very least.
3. Get a second computer.
I think (2) is the worst option if you're actually considering an iPad for this purpose. If you're just looking at something to email someone and have web access, a netbook provides these services at $300-400 less expensive than an iPad. An iPad does certain things very well, but for the services you mention, it's not the thing you're looking for.
I think (1) is a poor idea if this is a thriving business with significant contact with clients.
This leaves us with (3). I'm not sure if a full-on second workstation is the right choice here, either. If I were to have a backup system, I would not drop thousands to have it match what I already have. I would get something lower-end that could do some minimal things that I might need to do. It doesn't necessarily have to do everything, just enough so that I can get by for a week.
If I were you, I'd probably go for a netbook or a low-end PC laptop. It can do the minimal things you need to do (email, web access) and perhaps a few lower-end things for your work at a very good price.
My husband and I are stuck. We live near DC and want to move away. We are a single car family with the car paid off. We commute together and we are gone from our house a minimum of 12 hours a day (longer if it's a day where we have to go to the grocery store or library). We both dislike our clerical type jobs… they are just jobs to pay the bills. We have Liberal Arts BAs.
We have basic internet and cell phone plans (no home phone, no cable, no credit cards). We are in the least expensive rental (at roughly 26% of our income) that I could find that would accept our two cats AND where I felt safe to be by myself (I think this is more than reasonable). Our only debt is student loans at around $29,000. We have roughly $10,000 in savings.
Our issue is that we are DESPERATE to leave this area as our current lifestyle makes us both miserable (and unhealthy as there is not much time to exercise). Additionally, we want to start a family soon (within the next 4 years) and it would be impossible in this area at our current salaries (additionally, I would like to KNOW my kids…. I feel bad enough for my CATS after we're gone 12 hours). We want to move to a much quieter (and less expensive) area where hopefully we will be able to live close to work.
On weekends, we have been looking at towns from Southern VA to New England. Do you know anyone who has just got up and moved or have advice for attempting it? We have been working on this project from over a year and it feels just as far away now as it did in the beginning. We are scared to leave these jobs though because we know the job market is shaky and we are afraid we won't be able to find anything when we move…. and if we don't have jobs… we won't be able to pay our bills or find any place to rent. We really can't figure out how to solve this problem.
My suggestion is to secure a job first. Simply look for jobs in areas where you're willing to move.
You seem to be attracted to the New England area. I would probably include the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, most of Iowa) in that search as the culture and climate (particularly in the cities) is not too different than New England and the cost of living is substantially lower.
Once one of you secures a job in an area that looks promising for the other to secure a job, move. Go there, rent a small apartment for six months or so, and give the other one time to find a job.
I don't think there's anything in your financial situation that precludes you from doing exactly that.
I am 25 years old, graduated with one degree almost 3 years ago, and now going to school at a Tech College full-time in a similar but different field. I work part-time as an intern in my field, and I am set to graduate next May, and if things go well, my internship will be upgraded to a permanent career in programming. I live with my boyfriend of 3 years as well and we have 2 pets together. As an independent full-time student, I am given a set amount of financial aid in the form of student loans every semester. This semester I received about $5k to cover my education costs. After tuition, I get about $3k leftover, which I use for textbooks and other education costs, but primarily to pay my larger bills like rent and utilities. At my part-time job I make enough to cover gas and groceries; the rest are paid for by financial aid.
There are many financial goals that I have, the most important being to pay off my student loans, as I will have $60k in student debt by next May. Other ones include getting a newer car, saving money (along with my boyfriend) for a down payment on a house, getting married (possibly), and other things. Given these huge goals, I want to start putting money away for them. I want to start putting away an x amount of money from my paycheck from my internship, but since I make so little ($160 per week before taxes), I'm not entirely sure what amount I should start with. $5? $10? Really that's all I can do after gas and groceries. I've questioned about whether using the leftover money from my financial aid at the end of the semester to save is feasible, but really it feels like I am just saving my loan money, not the money I worked hard for. Also, something always seems to come up and I end up using the financial aid for something, like extra bills. This was an issue when I worked only part-time between semesters, and I needed money to cover them.
I've been frugal for the last 3 years and I still have no money tucked away into a savings account for my goals to show for it. My boyfriend and I have about $1000 in a savings account for emergencies, but most of that money is his saving, and while I did put some of my money into it, I have roughly $200 of my money in there. It's mainly for vet bills and car repairs. Should I stick to saving as much as I can from my part-time job, albeit slow saving? Should I start now, or does it not make sense to do this until after I have a stable and higher-paying career?
As long as you're cohabitating with your boyfriend, your financial futures are intrinsically tied together. You have to make the rent together. You have to pay the other utilities together. If you're not doing it together, then one of you is just covering the bills and thus reducing the money that he or she has left over to pay for debts and other such things.
The solution here is to sit down with your boyfriend and have a serious talk about your joined financial lives. The debts you each have are going to impact the freedom you both have as a couple, as is the relatively limited income.
Come up with a plan together. Not only will this cement your relationship, it will also help you figure out what you should be doing with your limited income.
Both our parents are middle to upper middle class, they own their homes or are very close to paying them off. They have decent retirement savings and are all in the age range of 61-64. Basically, I think they are fine, but we like to not rely on them financially at all because we worry about external drains ruining their retirement. My wife has two sisters who are very young but finding their way in post-undergrad world (they both have jobs, a great accomplishment in this economy). I also have two siblings; both older than me. One is 35, the other is 40. My 35 yr old brother is married and has a family, and they are very successful. However my sister still lives with my parents. She works in education, and I do not think she makes even 30K / yr. So you can see that this is our only real problem… my parents don't have a lot of money (my father still works but wants to retire in 2-3 years) and in addition to supporting my sister, all three are in poor health due to weight. I'm really worried my father will keep working until he's 70 or older because of my sister, and that he'll work himself into an early grave. My mother is retired, and keeps the house in order and babysits my brother's children (and she is paid for it). All of us live in the same city.
My sister has a small amount of debt and obviously, relies heavily on my parents for everything. She has absolutely no savings (I do not think she has any retirement at all, or if she does it isn't even 10K). I have gotten my mother to the point where they are eating healthier, but I would still not say healthy. Assuming though, that one or both of my parents pass by the time they are 80 (a little morbid but realistic), I do not know what we can possibly do with my sister. She requires transportation to her job (she has tried learning how to drive, but it was just too expensive and she never quite got the hang of it) and there's no public transportation. She has very expensive health costs that nearly 100% of her salary go to (this is after her work insurance of course) and she has absolutely no concept of money… she can't balance a checkbook or understand how credit (interest) works. She is very sweet but naive, and has a boyfriend who, like her- works paltry jobs for very little income. I cannot count on him to take care of her.
My brother and I have already spoken to my mother and made her understand that she needs to create a will where all of their estate would be in a trust for my sister, and we'd use that. However I'm still concerned that this might not be enough… what if my sister outlives this trust? Can you possibly think of what else we can do to prepare? Do you have any ideas of what we can do right now to ease the burden on my parents? Any idea how to get my sister a little more self-sufficient? They won't take money of course, so I need something more subtle. I appreciate anything you can come up with- we want to help we just don't know how.
You can't make a person be who you want them to be. Your sister is who she is and if a significant change is going to come in her life, it's going to come from within her. You can't make it happen.
I agree that the best thing you can do is to make sure that the trust is actually put in place to take care of your sister. I would talk to a lawyer and make sure it's set up in the best possible way with the laws and rules in your state.
As for her outliving the trust: you're just going to have to accept that it's a possibility. Hopefully, her jobs are earning her Social Security credits, so she will eventually have something.
Remember, you can't make someone be who you think they should be. Trying to do that eventually ends in failure.
I am about to turn 26 and have recently ended an 8 year relationship with my boyfriend ( it was his choice to end it) I have an Associated degree in LIberal Arts & Sciences from a community college. My dream is to be a writer/screenwriter and I have been working on a novel for a couple of years and recently two screenplays. It is truly what I see myself doing, most of the time the other times I am paralyzed thinking that I will never have something good enough that people will want to read, that I am not a good enough writer and I have no talent.
Knowing how hard it is to break into the business sometimes makes me want to turn my back and run but another part of me crazily believes that I will make it. I have been 'babied' over the years, have 2 good friends and have lost all contact with my high school friends, I basically have lived with my boyfriend and he is my best friend. I have had very few financial obligations over the years since my boyfriend paid for the apartment and house we now live in. I have never had to learn about paying bills or credit scores, he takes cares of those things for me. I am soo confused and upset about everything, I cannot imagine being on my own. RIght now I am working for a temp agency and have minimal savings, about 300.00 I have no cc or student loan debt but do have a monthly car payment of 210.00 and cell phone bill of 45.00 which I will soon be getting rid of for a pay by minute phone.
I am looking into moving in with a friend into a two bedroom apartment but feel so overwhlemed about the future, I don't know if I can handle the stress and emotional turmoil, he is my first boyfriend and I am so terrified of making it on my own. I have never felt very smart and my family is not well-off and basically live paycheck to paycheck, I was homeless for awhile as a child and sincerely wish that I will never be homeless again because it is the scariest thing in the world. I don't know what to do because I have never been around successful people other than my boyfriend. I see myself as a loser, following in my parents footsteps. I don't know whether or not I should go back to school. I have been tossing and turning about that decision for a couple of years, my boyfriend tells me that I am a writer and writers don't need to go to college. I read a ton of library books and I have learned a lot from them, they taught me how to think, and in all honesty college did not provide me with lasting knowledge than books do. I am worried about my future, should i point my dream of being a writer on hold and go back to school to get a degree in the medical field? Something I know will make a lot more money than I have right now or stick it up and work minimum wage jobs while writing away? Sometimes i Just don't feel like I have it to make it.
You can do this. A lot of people make a great go of it from your very position.
You're going to have to make a fundamental choice, though. You can either continue to chase the writing dream by, as you mention, working at a minimum wage job and focusing your energies on writing and living in near-poverty or going back to school to chase a higher-earning career.
I can't tell you what the right path is for you. It depends a lot on who you are. My rule of thumb would be that I would look at the path I dream about (the one involving writing) and ask yourself whether that path fills you more with excitement or with fear. If it's fear, then I'd choose the safer path.
When I was in college, we used to play this weird little game that someone printed off the internet. It involved playing squares with four colors on them and trying to make groups of the colors.
I was wondering if you knew what game this was and if you knew of any other free games that can be printed off of the internet.
I think you're talking about micropul, which is indeed a game you can print off the internet that involves playing squares and trying to group the colors. It's a very fun game that's wonderful to pack in a spare pocket on a camping trip.
There are a lot of print-and-play games out there that are quite fun. If you add in a few basic components, such as a deck of playing cards and a chess/checkers set, there are more great games out there than you can ever play.
Here are six worth looking at in addition to micropul: Merchant of Venus, Zombie in My Pocket, Rat Hot, Decathlon, Richelieu, and Cronberg. If you have a deck of cards as well, the possibilities are endless.
Q7: Buy or not buy?
I'm 23 and I just got married (he's 28). He's an E-6 in the Navy, so a good steady income while I'm an artist (starving artist at the moment, but I've gotten into a lot of shows in my area so hopefully that'll get better soon). We live in Virginia Beach, so rent/housing prices are pretty high here. We've been in this apartment for 3 years already and dislike not having enough space for my business or a yard to grow a garden in. He already works 12+ hour days, so we don't really want to move farther away from the city and increase his commute. A woman I used to work with is trying to sell her deceased parents' house and she's asking $180k for it, though I'm sure she'd come down a bit.
I guess I was just looking for the opinion of an outside party on the matter. The reason I'm hesitant is that we've no guarantee that we're going to be here longer than 3 years and I'm worried about what we'd do with the house. We could stay here forever if he gets lucky, or we could move at the end of this tour. We -think- we'll be here at least 6 more years. Our rent increases every year so that means we'd wind up paying in the neighborhood of $90k in rent over 6 years. We have about $200k that's fairly liquid and quite a bit more in retirement accounts that we don't intend to touch. We have no debt to speak of and enough savings dedicated to replace both our cars outright and have a healthy emergency fund (the figure I gave you does not include any of that as I view those all as essential).
It sounds like you can write a check for the house right now. If that's the case, I would probably buy it.
I probably would not buy the home if it involves taking out a mortgage. The advantage you have in this case is that you can buy the home without a mortgage, which means if you do move, you can easily move out and sell the house after you've moved to another area and still have enough for a down payment on another home if you decide to buy a home elsewhere.
Is it a good investment? It would make your monthly rent payment vanish. Instead of handing money to a landlord, you put it in your own pocket instead. I think that's a very good move.
I'm 22 years old, I graduated from college this past December, and I just started working at my current job as an Administrative Assistant at the beginning of March this year. I make $36,000/yr, I have a small emergency fund of $700 (will reach my goal of $1000 – per Dave Ramsey – in about a month), I have about $29K in student loans ($10K of which is 0% interest – borrowed from an aunt), and about $500 in credit card debt (down from $1000!). Every month I pay $800 for rent, I round my student loan payments up to the nearest $10 increment ($150/month) and I try to pay double the minimum on my credit cards (I've paid off two out of five cards so far using this method).
Following the advice of my mom and others, I immediately started contributing 10% of my income to my 401(k) provided by my employer as soon as I was fully contracted with the company (which was this past May). However, after reading some articles on the difference between Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, and other retirement accounts – especially your piece on it – I've come to realize that the only benefit a 401(k) has over a Roth is the employer match. That being said, I'm not quite sure if I should keep contributing to my 401(k) – my employer matches 3% of my salary REGARDLESS of how big my own contributions are or if I even choose to contribute at all. So far I have contributed about $1000 to my 401(k) (keep in mind I just started!).
So what do you think? Should I stop contributing to my 401(k) and open up a Roth IRA instead? Either way, there's money being put into my 401(k) no matter what. Also, I've read a lot about Dave Ramsey and (from what I've read) he doesn't even mention contributing to any retirement account until after all non-mortgage debt is gone. Does this mean I'm starting too early? Should I focus on eliminating my student loans at a faster rate?
I would absolutely open up a Roth IRA and start contributing to that instead of the 401(k) in this situation.
I wouldn't worry about starting too early. It is never too early to start saving for retirement. Your debt seems to largely be under control, though it might be fine if you spent a few months between stopping your 401(k) contributions and opening a Roth to pay off that remaining credit card debt. After that, I'd go right back to plugging away at retirement.
Angie has a follow-up question.
Another question that I have is in regards to store credit cards. I've always regretted accumulating a lot of store credit cards while in college (Kohl's, JCPenney, Target, etc.) but plenty of my friends have been telling me that these store credit cards do not count on your credit score. At first I didn't believe them, but so many people were telling me this that I'm starting to think there's some truth to it. Is it true – do store credit cards not count against you?
It entirely depends on whether the cards are reported to the credit bureaus, and that's entirely dependent on the policy of the company issuing them.
The best way to find out is to simply download your credit report and see what's on there for you. The legitimate way to get your credit report is to use the FTC's site (annualcreditreport.com).
My understanding is that some are reported and some are not.
You've mentioned before that you have a pretty strong knowledge of some types of collectibles. I think you mentioned vintage baseball cards and some other kinds of trading cards.
Would you ever invest in them? I guess I'm asking a broader question. Would you invest in any collectible that you had quite a bit of knowledge about?
If I was absolutely sure I was getting a good deal on the collectible, I'd happily invest.
I have purchased many sports cards and trading cards over the years with the purpose of turning a profit on them by reselling them either on the internet or to other interested parties. It can be done if you know exactly what something is worth.
This becomes a very fun hobby when you're looking at yard sales and estate auctions. I have stumbled upon a few really good buys in such situations.