One for the Fashists out there, undergrounds of the world quiz

http://www.citymetric.com/transport/these-travel-time-maps-s how-how-well-or-badly-british-cities-are-connected-rail-1483

I was reet ****e, in feairness

http://www.citymetric.com/transport/game-can-you-identify-ci ty-its-metro-logo-1484

I read the one about rail-time distances and was all ready to counter your whining about Londoncentricity when I realised you had intended to draw our attention to a different article. How I laughed!

I like that website though. Did you see the piece a while back about how the London property market could be a haven for money-laundering?

That said, I dont "whine" about "Londoncentricity" (or as we called them back in the day, The Leccy Board) I am merely pointing out that a balanced, diverse and proportional economy is a strong one.

It's madness to base the entire economy on the twin headed beast that is London's property prices and its financial services industry.

I think only the other day some sort of research body pointed out that London's overheated property market is actually costing the country money now. You're a pretty good example of that whole business too, if you dont mind me saying.

What I was about to say was that it's no surprise that Plymouth, Norwich and Inverness are railistically remote, as nobody really wants to go there, and it would be more disturbing if massive investment was made to make them transport hubs.

Apparently market forces will eventually eventually distribute the economy in a more geographically sane way though. Don't hold your breath.

Perhaps it will happen when London collapses under the weight of all the people trying to live there. Of course it is well known that London's growth and strength has always been about people being attracted to it from far and wide but I doubt it was ever so that 38% of Londoners were not born in the United Kingdom.

It's quite amusing that the people who crow most about the supremacy of market forces have had to go cap in hand to the public sector for bailouts in the last decade or so, less so that we've ended up carrying the can for their misguided profligacy, even less so that we appear to have not positioned ourselves to reap any of the dividends from that investment.

Say what you like about the victorians but they did do infrastructure exceptionally well. If only we could inherit the good parts of their spirit rather than the mean spirited, conservative and narrow ideas of virtue though.

while making it clear that it is certainly happening. Basically in the countries with fewer liberties the guvmint can just seize the criminals' assets at will. Whereas here you can practically turn your suitcases full of cash into property with no questions asked.

imported drugs to Miami in the 70s and 80s

in 1979 the Federal Reserve’s Miami branch reported a $5 billion cash surplus -- more than the country’s other Federal Reserve banks combined

At the time the government's enterprise tzar (just think about those two words together for a minute) was the grand fromage no less.

it was easier to just bulldoze everyone out of the way back then. Not just poor people either, although it was usually them. The line out of St Pancras in and around 1860 required the demolition of swathes of recently-built and fairly large houses on the Christ Church estate - Caversham Road, Islip Street, Gaisford Street.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5485427,-0.1389631,17z

In the old days, so long as you could make it over the threshold of a Zurich branch, they would happily bank your swag for you with, as you say, no questions asked, even if you had Crockett & Tubbs and half the FBI and Interpol laying down fire in close pursuit.

That most fundamental business principle, which had held up since time immemorial, of course, all went out the window the day Maggie shamefully decided to steal all Scargill's cash that time. Even Threadneedle Street was no longer safehaven.

The Law of Unintended Consequences, I suppose.

Nice houses around that way, know the area very well.

There's no way her and her Milton Friedman fundamentalist mates would be out of pocket, that's for sure.

http://clas.berkeley.edu/research/colombia-rise-and-fall-nar co-soccer

stacks of pallets full of cash that was just rotting away thanks to the weevils and rats and damp. Investment banks have been sending their top people to negotiate with narcotics entrepreneurs for years, offering their their services. ***Free Money***

After he was doing it for a year, I don't know why he didn't just walk away. He had more problems figuring out how to store and spend the cash than he did figuring out how to make more of it

It's their work; running a business, making money. It's what they *do*.

say Sod all that training and dieting and PR guff for a laugh. The money is a consequence of the lifestyle, not the reason for it.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...ey_783743c.jpg

You'd think there'd be more like that. But, to me, it kind of makes sense that there aren't, if you know what I mean.

for the money for his family but eventually admitted that he was a criminal because he was good at it and he liked it.

A man's got to do what he's got to do, and a' that. It's the only way to be satisfied with life regardless of whether you make any money or not. Especially for blokes; girls have different "achievement ideals".

Of course, the educated middle-class office drone types, who never go anywhere or do anything, hate hearing this so such chaps are always written off as psychopaths or whatever, and their success somehow doesn't really count, is illegitimate.

We can't all be glamorous gangsters and soldiers-of-fortune. Someone has to provide the regular goods and services. :shrug:

choices they've freely made with their own lives. Otherwise what's the point of being free.

My chums couldn't understand anybody wanting to be a soldier :shrug: