Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Richard365054,
At last someone who is talking sensibly. Indeed, England has a higher population than Canada which is over forty times larger in land area.
Also, the USA is over 50 times larger than the UK, but it has a population of 310 million compared to the UK's 62 million. No wonder the US economy is booming. US citizens have enough room to use their own initiatives to grow their overall economy, number of restaurants, farms, manufacturing, mines, hotels, etc
England is the second most densely populated territory in the whole of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (apart from Hong Kong and Malta). And Malta doesn't count as it is a fluke, one quite large city surrounded by a tiny land mass. And Hong Kong is a huge anomaly which grew around having such a favourable geographical position for trade.
So the main issue both political parties need to address is that the UK needs better infrastructure (resurfacing the roads would be the best place to start in my opinion), it also needs more houses (I am in my thirties and couldn't afford a house whilst in my twenties despite training for a profession which had a starting salary of £32,000. But as a single person no one would lend me 11x my pre-tax salary and the cheapest detached family house (as I did plan to find a partner and have a family) within a 30-mile radius of where I worked was £340,000).
So I realised that work doesn't pay - because the rate at which Wayne Rooney's wages were increasing property prices were only ever going to get driven higher-and-higher by investors just treating them as a tradeable asset like gold or Bitcoin).
So having realised that in many instances work doesn't pay (especially not when the Bank of England can't control inflation due to the amounts of money entering the economy through the wages of overpaid footballers), and realising there was a lot wrong with the NHS, I left the NHS and pursued other avenues in life.
Nearly everyone I speak to thinks the country has become worse since 2010. Nobody really wants to see more-and-more take-aways, betting shops, and charity shops on our high streets.
Something has gone very badly wrong with our economy as can be seen by the number of quality independent shops, pubs, and businesses which have gone bankrupt since 2010.
I do think perhaps politicians need to talk about how they will address the citizens concerns over the negative impact from population densities which become too high (causes more violence and crime as humans evolved to need a certain amount of space to feel they don't need to be at war with their immediate neighbours).
I have not seen the UK roads in a worse state for over 30 years. They have closed down numerous quarries and Tarmac depots. They are only patching potholes and not resurfacing long stretches of road (except for the Motorways and a few of the lucky A roads). Resurface roads with top quality Tarmac and once the job is done right it will last for at least 5-8 years b
Jamesroo,
You assume that wealth can protect yourself and your family. That is just a belief you have formed.
If you have actually done something of value - such as building houses, running a business, or creating happy moments for people, then I wish you every success for the future.
However, if you have gained money through fraud and deceit because you looked around you and you saw that no matter how other people obtained their money (honestly or not) it would buy the same goods...then I think you may have fallen for an illusion. That you still have to answer the question ... when you are not at home does your home still exist? Or is your brain just looking at a screen and nothing except what you see, what you hear, what you read, and what you think, actually exists?
If the latter is true then every choice you have made in your life could just be a moral test. It could be that if you had chosen to give your wealth away that your family would be even better protected than they are currently. It could be reality will adjust based on your choices and not based on what you observe to happen repeatedly to other people.
So what is your view of reality. Does your house still exist when you can not see it? Or have all the choices you have made in your life been the same as just looking at a screen which you cannot see the edges of (a property of what we know as the human eye)?
Richard365054,
At last someone who is talking sensibly. Indeed, England has a lower population than Canada which is over forty times larger in land area.
England is the second most densely populated territory in the whole of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (apart from Hong Kong and Malta). And Malta doesn't count as it is a fluke, one quite large city surrounded by a tiny land mass. And Hong Kong is a huge anomaly which grew around having such a favourable geographical position for trade.
So the main issue both political parties need to address is that the UK needs better infrastructure (resurfacing the roads would be the best place to start in my opinion), it also needs more houses (I am in my thirties and couldn't afford a house whilst in my twenties despite training for a profession which had a starting salary of £32,000. But as a single person no one would lend me 11x my pre-tax salary and the cheapest detached family house (as I did plan to find a partner and have a family) within a 30-mile radius of where I worked was £340,000).
So I realised that work doesn't pay - because the rate at which Wayne Rooney's wages were increasing property prices were only ever going to get driven higher-and-higher by investors just treating them as a tradeable asset like gold or Bitcoin).
So having realised that in many instances work doesn't pay (especially not when the Bank of England can't control inflation due to the amounts of money entering the economy through the wages of overpaid footballers), and realising there was a lot wrong with the NHS, I left the NHS and pursued other avenues in life.
Nearly everyone I speak to thinks the country has become worse since 2010. Nobody really wants to see more-and-more take-aways, betting shops, and charity shops on our high streets.
Something has gone very badly wrong with our economy as can be seen by the number of quality independent shops, pubs, and businesses which have gone bankrupt since 2010.
I do think perhaps politicians need to talk about how they will address the citizens concerns over the negative impact from population densities which become too high (causes more violence and crime as humans evolved to need a certain amount of space to feel they don't need to be at war with their immediate neighbours).
Also, infrastructure should be top of the politicians agenda. I have not seen the UK roads in a worse state for over 30 years. They have closed down numerous quarries and Tarmac depots. They have clearly decided only to patch up potholes and not to resurface major stretches of roads (except for the Motorways). But potholes can only be patched for so long. They are blowing out again quicker and quicker each time they are patched. The correct solution would be to resurface roads with top quality Tarmac and once the job is done right it will last for at least 5-8 years before any potholes start to appear again.
How much have you invested, Manyana, of your own money in Providence Resources?
There is no way that the government will get elected next month. They think the economy is fine. Just look about you an all you see are charity shops, second hand furniture shops, and people wearing the same clothes as two years ago. All that's happened is wealth inequality has massive increased since 2008. I would actually say the average wealth within the UK has decreased when measured by number of cars per household, affordability of heating, number of holidays and short breaks per household, how often carpets and furniture are change/updated per household.
The government has lost the plot ...it thinks all people want are phones ...these are nice little toys for some but humans haven't changed for millions of years....the basics of a strong economy are cheap food, cheap energy, housebuilding, shipbuilding, timber production, paper production (including toilet paper), ideally every citizen should be able to afford their own car (either that or NHS ambulance times to reach outlying areas must be reduced in half or more), and a lot of our culture is being lost ... so many shops selling quality furniture, soft furnishing, and carpets have closed down. So many pubs closed down (including in my own village). So many Post Offices closed (including in my own village). And there are no houses at affordable prices for the young.
How on Earth can the government be re-elected when they have made us so much poorer on average (including closing down well-paying jobs in manufacturing and the production of natural materials/raw materials). It's all very well saying that employment is at a record high but this is mainly due to record numbers of immigrants and record numbers of minimum wage jobs and people on zero-hours contracts or doing part-time work (and not through choice). So many jobs paying £18 an hour have been lost in the trades and in industry and replaced by some rubbish job in a shoe shop paying £8.50 an hour but the job is pointless just peddling crappy overpriced trainers instead of real leather boots that hard-working men could take pride in wearing!
Manyana,
Would you like to buy a multi-fuel electrical generator from my company.
It burns wood pellets, seasoned wood logs, anthracite (or other good quality coal), peat, or oil.
Output when the fuel chamber is within the "full enough" range is around 150 kilo Watts (enough to boil 50 kettles simultaneously).
Would be happy to negotiate around €8,990 if I can also get some other orders at the same time - unfortunately unless I can obtain multiple orders it would costs a lot more.
However, think of the benefits. You would be free of needing to deal with electric and/or gas companies for the rest of your life as it will also heat your home, provide ample hot water, as well as keeping a few ovens hot throughout the day and night.
Now may I ask are there any real men on here. Those who have actually worked on an oil rig or done other types of mechanical work. If you're a pen pusher and are trying to influence whether we get the oil out of Barryoe or not then please f'ck off and play with your pen quietly by yourself. These are desperate times and real hard men are going to win ...along with some intelligent women who can work out which men actually produce things of value rather than just producing price targets which are constantly wrong. You think you can just quit your jobs as stockbrokers and pretend you never played such a ridiculous role in life. You think you can join us real men actually getting the oil out and pretend you never worked in a boring office in some city. Well I don't think it'll be that easy...and I doubt any women with sense would want much to do with men who don't actually want to improve society's standard of living by extracting more oil, and reducing the cost of electricity and gas in any ways possible. We've been to the moon, we've invented nuclear weapons, we've extracted oil to build beautiful sports cars (thank you Porsche and Ferrari) and I doubt society is just going to say thank you very much greens for telling us what we always knew deep down ...we really want to go back to driving horse and cats whilst more sensible men take our women off in 4x4Jeep Cherokees and threaten us with nuclear powered submarines .... you see without progress Ireland could end up as just a hole in the Atlantic ocean at the bottom of a crater left by a nuclear bomb...that's what trying to fight American trade policies could well lead you to ...and does Ireland deserve to be any more when you can't even organise a society that cares for one another .... too much talking politics and not enough focus on building new power stations and on extracting oil and gas!
If you really believe that I'm only a trolling algorithm then put this is your pipe and choke on your own stupidity.
The green agenda (because it is being implemented in a stupid manner without proper analysis of human behaviour) is actually going to cause to happen what it seeks to prevent. As my electric bill (for an ordinary family residence) is now exceeding €5,000 per year I am going to start cutting down trees on my land and burning them in my own mini-generator. My dad was an engineer and has helped me to build a mini-electrical generator powered by the steam from boiling water heated by burning wood (or I could also burn peat, coal, or oil - so it is also a very flexible solution). This is actually a far cheaper solution than paying exorbitant costs to an electricity company who seems intent on bankrupting me (although they can't repossess my home as the mortgage was paid off years ago).
It's the electricity companies that have over-used algorithms to set their prices - and they now have no idea what a reasonable price is in the eyes of the majority of the population. When I told my neighbours down the pub about the price I was being charged for electric they wholeheartedly agreed with me that it was reasonable for me to implement my own solution of a wood-fired electrical generator. I have not lost any social status at all because although people don't want to spoil the environment there was no support for the one knob-head in the whole pub who said they would prefer to be cold and not to use their tumble drier rather than cutting down a few trees (to be replanted with new saplings I may add).
So the Greens can't use price to try and achieve their agenda as it will have the opposite effect. But neither can they make electricity/gas cheaper as it will drive up consumption. But neither can they leave the current price the same forever as the national debt is ballooning and historically prices always move either up or down. So the Greens have lost the argument as the only argument they have is to resort to a non-market, non-democratic, system of policy-making, i.e. a Dictatorship.
Who here is going to vote for a Dictatorship - go on be honest!
If you ask me people are being manipulated by the media who they used to trust when the media were slightly more objective and trustworthy (20-30 years ago sadly).
My opinion is that the green agenda is just a narrative to try and get people to accept that they should voluntarily accept getting poorer (smaller houses, no second homes, more expensive electric and gas, colder homes, less powerful and smaller cars).
What should really be happening is we should all do what humans have done for thousands of years. We should all wake up everyday wanting to get richer - building that second home, buying a more powerful car, developing new oil fields). Otherwise what is the point of life - just to sit like a cabbage moaning about the green agenda because the government thinks they have the right to make everyone poorer. The government only exists because on the whole society has been becoming richer. It is very dangerous to try and prevent the future from being better/richer than the past.
I hope citizens just get on with making themselves richer and screw the government because they have lost their legitimacy in my opinion. It is deeply wrong to try and make society poorer when there is still oil and gas to be developed in shallow water and there are still plenty of natural resources to be mined for the benefit of human progress and to society's general benefit/well-being.
Chopping down and burning trees is not less polluting than burning coal.
I think the real problem is that not as many people are willing to spend their time mining coal these days.
All government plans are to some extent irrelevant in a capitalist economy - if something makes financial sense then it should go ahead. Workers work for money - pay them enough to drill for oil and they should be willing to do it - only things workers shouldn't do are to intentionally hurt other people - so assassins shouldn't exist for example.
Trade deal with China pretty much irrelevant. What matters is what they will be trading. Electronic goods take little oil and are a disaster for oil companies as is the knowledge economy. If people want to drive muscle cars and to trade real physical goods such as tables, chairs, and to build real estate (new holiday resorts) then this is very positive for the oil sector. In a capitalist economy consumers should be free to choose. Will they spend their disposable income on a holiday or updating their phone/computer. If consumers in general (on average) choose larger cars and more holidays then this should logically be positive for PMO. If China - USA trade deal lowers the price of tech and if people also choose to spend more time in virtual reality (instead of taking holidays or buying a more powerful sports car) then this is very negative for the oil sector including for PMO.
Really the future is about the choice between whether consumers want to continue to pay for tech or whether they will reject the knowledge economy (a Gordon Brown idea and in my opinion an unhappy one) and instead whether they will invest their time in creating real live for themselves - which will certainly require new energy projects such as new natural gas fields and new oil fields.
There is something deeply wrong with UK society Oxo42. I name these as the top five things wrong:
(1) Share prices were meant to reflect a company's likely future profitability. Instead shares became treated as things to sell to slightly naive investors at over-inflated values. The result was massive losses for private investors and pension funds and huge gains for those able to manipulate the narrative via the media. Think about 1999 - the Lloyds share price was over £5 and yet people selling investments were still promoting investing in banks (although they must have known all the future value had already been priced in and anyone investing so late in the cycle would stand a very good chance of losing money on their shares).
(2) Investing actually is healthy as it allows markets to understand that consumers want businesses to grow. What is wrong is when markets view consumers as cash cows to fund the institutional investors. Anyway the institutional investors have cooked their own goose - by killing the retail market by allowing grossly excessive fraud - they can no longer objectively use financial flows as an indicator of what society wants for its economic future. Hence they have lost their objective method of discovering which business ideas deserve funding and hence they have lost their social license to operate - hence the goose of big institutional investors is cooked as they no longer represent what's considered the economic good by the majority of society.
(3) Ultra-low interest rates are a system of a sick financial system whereby previous broken promises are being gradually inflated away and people who worked a lifetime to pay into the system are receiving far less in return than they were promised (or could reasonably have expected) on average.
(4) Mass production is great for lowering costs but automation means millions of jobs will be lost. Capitalism does not have a way to self-correct for this. The result will be too little purchasing power on average and hence companies will not be able to expand production as much as would easily be possible (using automation) and also necessary to raise the average living standard within Western economies.
(5) Cheap imports are devaluing our culture and people who depended on making high quality products for their sense of identity, as well as economic well-being, are being thrown to the wolves by faceless city bankers who are closing down small businesses left-right-and-centre and don't care so long as they don't live in the affected communities themselves. In short the problem of ego-centrism and only caring about enriching themselves is putting lots of banks at odds with the democratic economic goals of the majority of citizens. I'm surprised at how slow populism has been to take off and to overthrow the people who are in favour of austerity. For thousands of years humans have been getting richer and there are still enough natural resources available to continue to ge
Another hypothesis is that customers are expecting too much. There are medium amounts of bad reviews for a very high percentage of products sold by online only retailers.
Also, why would people move away from the high-street voluntarily. I can be in town from my village in 15 mins - the drive is enjoyable. Also, I can take the products which I've bought straight home with me. Plus, I can grab a bite to eat whilst in town.
However, if I shop online I don't get a nice little drive or to grab a bite to eat. Also I will probably have to wait until the next day (or maybe 2-3 days) for my purchase to arrive.
Also, I may be out when my delivery arrives and the local youths may remove it from my safe place before I return home (if the safe place isn't really completely safe).
I think we all construct worlds/belief systems that make sense to us.
Some might say objective reality is the aggregation, or average, of all these billions of different belief systems which exists on planet Earth.
Another hypothesis is that customers are expecting too much. There are medium amounts of bad reviews for a very high percentage of products sold by online only retailers.
Also why would people move away from the high-street voluntarily. I can be in town from my village in 15 mins - the driveis enjoyable - I can buy the product and take it straight home with me - I can grab a bite to eat whilst in town. Meanwhile if I shop online I don't get a nice little drive or to grab a bite to eat. Also I will probably have to wait until the next day (or maybe 2-3 days) for my purchase to arrive. I may be out when it arrives and the local youths may remove it from my safe place before I return home if the safe place isn't really completely safe.
I think we all construct worlds/belief systems that make sense to us. Some might say objective reality is the aggregation, or average, all these billions of different belief systems which exists on planet Earth.
Do you support the Green agenda Manyana?
I ask because it is patently obvious that drilling 24 wells makes complete economic sense to recover over 150 million barrels of oil at any oil price (because the field is shallow water and only 50kms offshore). At any oil price Barryoe is economic due to the very favourable location of the field and the easy weather conditions - they are drilling for oil in the arctic and in war zones - of course developing the Barryoe oilfield is economic.
An oil well is only steel pipe and cement - of course it needs a floating ship with a massive drill to get to the oil. However, some people seem to have no sense of proportion. To drill 24 wells at Barryoe is like eating one acorn in order to dig deep enough to recover over 10,000 acorns. It is massively economic to press ahead with developing Barryoe.
It can only be the green agenda that is holding up the development of this oil - it would add $20 Billion to the Irish economy over the next 12 years. The fact the Irish people are being made poorer is a sad reflection of the selfishness of the people in the government who will not support PVR to train up local people in order to commercialise the Barryoe field.
There should be no need to rely on the Chinese to help develop the oil at Barryoe. The proposed development is a simple oil development in shallow water (it's orders of magnitude easier than the ultra-long lateral wells they are fracking in the USA, and the ultra-deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico).
The economics of Barryoe are extremely attractive and pressing ahead would remove the threat of poverty from the Irish working classes and lower middle classes for the next decade.
Why doesn't PVR reach out to some realistic partners such as Hurricane Energy, Premier Oil, Apache Oil, Eni, Genel Energy, Dyas, Norge AS, Lundin, Dalek (an Israeli conglomerate interested in financing new oilfields), and a hundred other mid-sized oil companies which would probably be interested if PVR approached them in a humble, cooperative and sensible tone.
Do you support the Green agenda Manyana?
I ask because it is patently obvious that drilling 24 wells makes complete economic sense to recover over 150 million barrels of oil at any oil price (because the field is shallow water and only 50kms offshore). At any oil price Barryoe is economic due to the very favourable location of the field and the easy weather conditions - they are drilling for oil in the artic and in war zones - of course Barryoe is economic.
An oil well is only steel pipe and cement - of course it needs a floating ship with a massive drill to get to the oil. However, some people seem to have no sense of proportion. To drill 24 wells at Barryoe is like eating one acorn in order to dig deep enough to recover 10,000 acorns. It is massive economic. It can only be the green agenda that is holding up the development of this oil - it would add $20 Billion to the Irish economy over the next 12 years. The fact the Irish people are being made poorer is a sad reflection of the selfishness of the people in the government who will not support PVR to train up local people in order to commercialise the Barryoe field. There should be no need to rely on the Chinese. This is a simple oil development in shallow water with very attractive economics. Why not reach out to some realistic partners such as Hurricane Energy, Premier Oil, Apache Oil, Eni, Genel Energy, Dyas, Norge AS, Lundin, Dalek (an Israeli conglomerate interested in financing new oilfields), and a hundred other mid-sized oil companies which would probably be interested if PVR approached them with a humble, cooperative and sensible tone.
If the Directors don't deliver can't we lock them up. Surely this was what the vast majority of citizens wanted post the financial crisis of 2008. They wanted people to grow the economy and to do what they promised to do. The citizens don't want rocket science. They want cheap energy, cheap food, and plenty of leisure time. Just deliver on cheap petrol/diesel, cheap electricity, cheap natural gas, and cheap high-quality food, and let people create a thriving economy once their core needs have been met (energy, transport, food, fuel, and freedom from violence - safety).
The banks should be working to enhance the core of the economy - to reduce the price of necessities such as fuel, food, light, heat, basic medicines.
Then the role of business lending is to add more complex layers of value.
However, at the core of banking in the UK should be the responsibility of delivering a higher minimum standard of living for all of the citizens in our UK Democracy as long as they want to contribute a reasonable amount of their time to the UK economy.
The above is all politicians need to say if they want to win by a landslide - people are essentially going to vote for what is in their own interest unless we wouldn't have survived as a species from the hardships of hunter-gathering, the stone age and iron age.
Sometimes it's best to take a break. Share trading should not be short-term. The long-term goals of the economy should be remembered by people dealing in shares. The citizens want cheap energy, cheap fuel, cheap electricity, cheap high-quality food, cheap transport/cars, and more leisure time.
If the Directors don't deliver can't we lock them up. Surely this was what the vast majority of citizens wanted post the financial crisis of 2008. They wanted people to grow the economy and to do what they promised to do. The citizens don't want rocket science. They want cheap energy, cheap food, and plenty of leisure time. Just deliver on cheap petrol/diesel, cheap electricity, cheap natural gas, and cheap high-quality food, and let people create a thriving economy once their core needs have been met (energy, transport, food, fuel, and freedom from violence - safety).
The banks should be working to enhance the core of the economy - to reduce the price of necessities such as fuel, food, light, heat, basic medicines.
Then the role of business lending is to add more complex layers of value.
However, at the core of banking in the UK should be the responsibility of delivering a higher minimum standard of living for all of the citizens in our UK Democracy as long as they want to contribute a reasonable amount of their time to the UK economy.
The above is all politicians need to say if they want to win by a landslide - people are essentially going to vote for what is in their own interest unless we wouldn't have survived as a species from the hardships of hunter-gathering, the stone age and iron age.
If the Directors don't deliver can't we lock them up. Surely this was what the vast majority of citizens wanted post the financial crisis of 2008. They wanted people to grow the economy and to do what they promised to do. The citizens don't want rocket science. They want cheap energy, cheap food, and plenty of leisure time. Just deliver on cheap petrol/diesel, cheap electricity, cheap natural gas, and cheap high-quality food, and let people create a thriving economy once their core needs have been met (energy, transport, food, fuel, and freedom from violence - safety).
The banks should be working to enhance the core of the economy - to reduce the price of necessities such as fuel, food, light, heat, basic medicines.
Then the role of business lending is to add more complex layers of value.
However, at the core of banking in the UK should be the responsibility of delivering a higher minimum standard of living for all of the citizens in our UK Democracy as long as they want to contribute a reasonable amount of their time to the UK economy.
Te above is all politicians need to say if they want to win by a landslide - people are essentially going to vote for what is in their own interest unless we wouldn't have survived as a species from the hardships of hunter-gathering, the stone age and iron age.
This is just a load of nonsense (the stocks and shares game) that is created to enable players to have choices. If there weren't different options available and decisions to make for better or for worse there would be no choice and therefore the game of life would not exist for its current players.
I figured this all out over seven years ago when I realised that it does not cost $300 million to drill about 5 wells in a water depth of less than 500 metres. Clearly the market was just feeding the players some information in order to give the players a choice to make. Anyone who takes this stuff seriously will wake up one day to find it didn't matter at all and every decision they faced was just a choice created by operatives in a higher dimension whose job it is to generate choices for players who are currently playing the game of life.
Has anyone else figured out more than this yet? Has anyone else figured out what the choice mechanism is whereby the higher dimensions can read our likely intentions? Does anyone know the hardware and software which creates the world we live in and the choices we are faced with as we progress through the game of life?
Clearly it does not cost $300 million to drill 5 wells in less than 500 metres water depth. The rig is just steel which floats and a drill bit and motor - this can be made for a hundred million and can therefore be hired for six months for less than $5 million. Even if the rig took 30 full-time personnel to operate it and they were paid $120,000 each this would only amount to $3.6 million annually. If the rig was needed for 6 months this would only be a cost of $1.8 million. The materials for drilling the 5 wells would at most cost $20 million (it's mostly 12 inch steel pipe and cement that's needed).
Add it all together and the costs for drilling 5 wells would be under $30 million.
Hence when a company I was invested in was asked by a contractor to pay $300 million for a 5 well drilling programme in 2012, in a water depth of less than 450 metres, I knew the price made no sense at all. However, the company paid the money and the share price subsequently lost over 90% of its value (although it took several years for the share price to reflect the full loss in value from vastly overpaying for drilling services).
The value to me was that I realised the market was just one area of the game of life in which players face choices - and the choice to sell out of a company when its directors vastly overpay for services/contractors should be a very easy choice - please don't hang around invested in a company when the directors are frittering away your money (the shareholders' equity) by overpaying for contractors/services) compared to fair value/fair cost.
(NB. There can be rational reasons to stay invested in those circumstances - but the majority of people will not see it that way - and, (as I don't make up the rules in the game of life), the majority view seems important to how we're jud
If Directors don't deliver can't we lock them up. Surely this was what the vast majority of citizens wanted post the financial crisis of 2008. They wanted people to grow the economy and to do what they promised to do. The citizens don't want rocket science. They want cheap energy, cheap food, and plenty of leisure time.