I was waiting for it and I wasn’t disappointed – the Daily Sceptic article linking the CrowdStrike debacle to CBDCs. There are many arguments against CBDCs but “if it went offline all transactions would stop” isn’t one of them. Anyone making that argument does not understand how money works. It is wrong to say, as the DS article does, that: “A country reliant on a CBDC instead of cash would see an end to all transactions as a consequence of a similar failure affecting a component within whatever software stack was being used to operate CBDC infrastructure.” As an aside, you don’t hear this criticism levelled against Bitcoin. Perhaps Libertarians have access to computer architectures denied to Governments, or perhaps it’s just politics.
How do I justify my rebuttal of the usually excellent Dr. R P? We don’t know what the CBDC system architecture will be because it hasn’t been designed yet, but however it’s constituted it will only manage CBDC transactions. CBDCs are proposed as an alternative to physical cash, particularly for online transactions where notes and coins don’t work. According to the British Retail Consortium, physical cash accounts for about 11% of consumer spend, with an average transaction value around £25. And that’s just retail activity which is a subset of all transactions. The remaining 89% are cards, gift cards, bank transfers, asset transfers and so on. These are nothing to do with the Bank of England and therefore would go nowhere near any future CBDC system. That’s just retail transactions. High value transactions are handled by CHAPS. Funnily enough, CHAPS was down on July 18th. It handles £360 billion per day, which is 90% of sterling payments by value. That was bad, but still not “all transactions” and the economy didn’t stop. Indeed, most people didn’t even realise it had happened.
Dear reader, if you take nothing else away from this article, remember that just because it has a pound sign in-front of it does not mean it would be controlled by any future CBDC system. This is why there is little to fear from CBDCs. If you still oppose them if they ever come to fruition, just don’t use them, there are dozens of alternatives.
In some ways CBDCs would not be so different from all the other electronic money that we have all been using for decades and those systems do run into difficulties from time to time. But if Visa, Mastercard, NatWest or literally thousands of other parts of the global money system go offline, it is not as Dr. R P says “an end to all transactions”. This is partly because unlike airport check-in systems, financial transactions very often have alternative means of settlement. We know this because we have all experienced it: “Sorry that card isn’t working. Try another one.”
Don’t get me wrong. The CrowdStrike debacle is a catastrophe and an almost unbelievable single point of failure in otherwise disconnected corporate IT systems. Who knew that simultaneously injecting files into Windows’ kernels in millions of machines around the globe with no canary testing would one day go wrong? The folly of corporate IT knows no bounds. Indeed, one of the objections to CBDCs is that it would be a government system (if we stretch government to include the Bank of England) which in this context should be seen as a benefit. Yes, government has an appalling track record of IT system delivery, but that is not so much the case these days. If a CBDC system ever does gets built, it will be a government system classified as Critical National Infrastructure. That puts it in the same category as things such as the Electricity System Operator’s grid balancing mechanism and therefore subject to extraordinary levels of resilience planning. These are systems that you seldom hear of because they are extraordinarily reliable, and yes, expensive in a way that only governments can afford. The people running them do have a clue what they are doing, unlike your typical globalist CIO diversity hire who is in the seat for the kudos, the salary and the ability to manage suppliers and keep costs down. There is plenty to debate about CBDCs but let’s get over this idea that they will take down the economy.
Stop Press: Microsoft has blamed EU rules for preventing it from making security changes that would have protected its computers from CrowdStrike’s faulty security update. The Telegraph has more.
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Aren’t these the people who have already decided that social distancing and forced face masking will continue for their victims no matter what?
Chances are that most new students will have had much more independence at home, before they were locked away into substandard bedsits and behaviour-policed by private security guards behind grid fences, all in the name of not posing an inacceptable risk to staff.
social distancing and forced face masking – evil – look at Australia
SPEECHLESS Australia OUT OF CONTROL
Alex Belfield – THE VOICE OF REASON – (I don’t agree with everything Alex say he, but I am willing to forgive him)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIdta7AA2IY
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“Aren’t these the people who have already decided that social distancing and forced face masking will continue for their victims no matter what?”
Exactly. As with every other body that is meant to stand up for those it represents, the suggested solution to the ills caused by coronamadness is not to question the madness or push back against it, but to ask for more help in mitigating the disastrous results.
I wish these students all the best in their coming University life, young people have been treated appallingly by this disgraceful government.
If institutions, at some point over the next year, have to go “on-line” for some reason or other ..these same students should demand refunds.
Saint Boris must remember that HE is responsible for the destruction of these young people’s futures, with his cruel and pointless lockdowns. He must also remember that they are the voters of the future, and they will remember how he totally threw them to the bottom of the pile.
But they may realise that Sneer Smarmer would have locked them up even harder and more cruelly.
I wouldn’t blame them for spoiling their ballot papers, big time.
Boomer here. I’ll have much the same thoughts next time I vote ……
It beggars belief that young people are still taking the decision to burden themselves with huge debt for the costs of university fees. Especially so now that the government has made them a target group for ‘vaccine’ coercion. The pressures they will be faced with is immense and any good parent would guide their child away from the debt slavery towards apprenticeship if at all possible.
So let’s force them to wear masks all the time, exclude them from the Student Union unless they have the jabs, and test them to remind them that they might be biohazards, that’ll definitely help.
So my employers HR came knocking asking for everyone to submit their vaccination status. Me being me, I decided to get mine in first.
I’m posting my email here if anyone wants to reuse it when their time comes. On my lunch break so no idea if I will be still employed this afternoon lol
Thanks for your email regards our return to the office.
Could you please explain to me why an individuals vaccinations status is actually important when by looking at the latest data in the PHE Variants of Concern Technical Briefings (number 21) we can see clearly see that vaccinations have neither prevented infection or reduced transmission of the virus? I have no doubt that you and many others will dispute my assertion but it’s all there to see on page 21 of the document for HM Gov below should anyone care to look.
SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Whilst I don’t doubt that some individuals within the company may sadly relish the opportunities for discrimination that the sharing of such private health related information presents, I for one find the request for this personal information deeply disturbing.
I appreciate that some vaccinated individuals within the company have strong reservations and concerns about their return to office and even returning to public life in general but I fail to see how an individual’s vaccination status is of any relevance given the above.
Is the company going to provide the unvaccinated and those who refuse to disclose with their own desks in an hermetically sealed room of their own perhaps or maybe just adorn them with yellow stars instead? Outside of such or similar measures I can see little or no use for the company knowing an individual’s private medical information.
Regards
Ask them, while they are requesting confidential medical information if they are requesting the HIV status of other staff members and if so why not?
Love it, not sure you’ll still be employed by the end of the day, do you have an HGV license by any chance?
I’m not sure all teenagers have been cooped up for 18 months, possibly those whose parents are sheep (possibly the same teenagers I now see muzzled) , but I’m happy to say we’ve had loads of them meeting up in groups throughout the whole debacle
Every time I see a group of teenagers showing total disregard for social restrictions, I think: good on you.
Not just the young ‘uns.
Last week I traipsed round my own small seaside town. Unprompted, the keepers of three businesses told me that by and large, this year’s tourists have been uncommunicative if not downright rude.
Fear does that to people.
I suspect they are the ones that normally go to the Algarve for tapas.
This year they have been grumpily tramping around tourist towns in the UK.
Teenagers don’t need help. They need to ‘do gooders’ to get out of their life – permanently.
Let us all hope that people remember all of this when the next election comes around and refuse to vote for the current incumbents of the House of Parliament. We have to change the system or we will continue to get “being locked down for almost two years, to something like as much freedom as you’re ever likely to get.” . Is that the “Freedom” you want? Let us not forget that Starmers Opposition was no Opposition at all. Those bastards took our lives and our freedoms, now we take their positions.
“The source said universities would have to address “socialisation issues” as well as academic study. “
I’m sure that the universities are doing all they can to minimize these socialization issues by enforcing such social activities as mask-wearing, antisocial distancing and enforcing inoculation with drugs of unknown effect.
You couldn’t f.ing make it up.
Another one bites the dust:
Rapper who mocked lockdown protesters dies of heart attack after having the Pfizer Covid-19 injection
https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/08/24/rapper-who-mocked-lockdown-protesters-dies-of-heart-attack-after-having-the-pfizer-covid-19-injection/
“…some concern students may overindulge after two school years in which socializing was strictly limited.”
Because students never overindulged before.
This is presumably code language for concern that students might do something other than sitting – fully masked, vaccinated and alone – in cupboards while shivering with fear because of The Terrible Virus[tm].
Students need people who taught them only a very few things. But taught them how to think. Good learning starts with how to separate the shaft from the wheat.
Mr Dalton was receive by a University when aged10.
Don’t comply. Ditch the masks. – FIGHT BACK BETTER – Updated information, resources and links: https://www.LCAHub.org/