There's a scene early on in the James Bond film which was on telly today, one of the two with the best James Bond actor ever, where James Bond and an FBI agent drop a corrupt US cop into a shark tank, and for dramatic effect, James Bond throws a suitcase with $2 million cash after him (we assume that the bills are destroyed).
The $2 million had been given to the cop as a bribe by a criminal, and the cop had in turn tried to bribe James Bond and the FBI agent with it. They were on US soil at the time (I think) and so the cash was proceeds of crime and the correct procedure would have been for the FBI agent to seize the money and hand it back to the US Treasury or the IRS or something.
The FBI agent shakes his head and says words to the effect of "It's a shame about the money though."
James Bond doesn't have a snappy answer to this, but if he knew anything about fiat currencies, his snappy answer would have been something like this:
"Yes, strictly speaking, we should have handed that money back to the US Treasury, but by destroying it in this way, we have achieved exactly the same thing.
Don't forget that dollar bills are merely IOUs issued by the Treasury - while they are in physical existence, they constitute a financial asset in the hands of the bearer and a financial liability on the Treasury. So by physically destroying them, we have released the Treasury of $2 millions' worth of liabilities.
As any bookkeeper will tell you, being released from a $2 million in liabilities is exactly the same as being given $2 million in assets. So apart from imposing on the Treasury the modest cost of printing up new bills with a face value of $2 million, we have in fact done the right thing.
Think about it!"
English life in 1914 was one of freedom
3 hours ago
21 comments:
Please don't have anything to do with the new bond film....
AC1
;)
Haha, maybe the writers of Johnny English could help right this wrong.
In a similar theme
How NOT to start a movie...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=regbmItdY0E
AC1
I suggest you keep away from scriptwriting, brevity being the soul of wit and all that!
Dalton's a proper actor (Moore, Connery and Brosnan are only really capable of playing themselves) and he apparantly cared a great deal about doing Bond right, re-reading the books on set. He gets the character closest to the books (Craig plays it with a little too much anxiety and introspection for my tastes).
You've also now got me thinking about movies where there's a tie-in to LVT.
I got a history of MI6 for Xmas. After a desultory beginning it's pretty good stuff. Recommended.
Licence to Kill is one of my favourites. Young Benicio del Toro and Pam Bouvier, damn.
AC1, I gave up on them years ago.
CD, would be fun. Only if JE says it, people won't take it seriously.
JT, there is a long list of films which are based on Home-Owner-Ist prejudices, but a couple of examples:
Hannah Montana
The Borrowers
i.e. any film where the property developers are automatically assumed to be ee-e-evil, i.e. a lot of cowboy and western films.
Then there are films which are a bit more in depth about how land values arise, even though they fail to draw the obvious conclusions:
Once upon a time in the west
Cars
D, how much of it is true?
RA, Pam B and Lupe were both lovely.
True? It runs only to 1949, so there's a fair chance that much of it is true. But there's lots missing, of course.
MW, what about "Heaven's Gate" in the cowboy land movies genre? I've not actually seen it.
RA, me neither. One such Western film which I have seen is Nowhere To Run...
Sam Gillen (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a convict who gets sprung from Federal custody somewhere in the Midwest by his bank-robbing partner... Sam's partner gets killed in the break, forcing Sam to go it alone in search of the loot, which is buried on the property of a farm inhabited by Clydie Anderson (Rosanna Arquette), the widowed mother of two kids.
Sam discovers that Clydie is holding out from selling her place to property developer Franklin Hale (Joss Ackland), who fears that he will be put out of business if he doesn't get Clydie's land so he can develop on it.
Sam decides to hang around, sleeping first in Clydie's barn and then in her bed... Meanwhile Hale hires an intimidation expert named Dunston (Ted Levine), to force Clydie into selling her land. Secretly on Hale's payroll is corrupt Sheriff Lonnie Cole (Edward Blatchford), who harbours feelings for Clydie.
A jealous Lonnie discovers Sam's true identity and threatens to expose him if he doesn't leave. Not wanting to place Clydie in additional danger for helping a fugitive, Sam decides to leave, only to find that Hale has already blown the whistle on him in an attempt to get him out of the way. After evading police chasing him... Sam returns to save Clydie from Dunston and Hale, who are planning to burn down her house.
etc etc, actually that's set in modern times, but the plot is not dissimilar to Pale Rider...
The film opens near the fictional town of Lahood, California, in the 1880s (based on remarks in the film about outlawing hydraulic mining), where a group of struggling miners and their families are panning for gold. However, thugs sent by rival big-time miner Coy Lahood to shoot up the camp...
RA, the plot synopsis of Heaven's Gate follows exactly the same pattern.
Question: if the Founding Fathers had listened to Tom Paine, what on earth would Hollywood have used as a fail safe plot template?
Question: If all these skirmishes, whether white settlers v Red Indians, or small holders v evil property developers, mining and rail barons had thus been avoided, how much richer would the USA have ended up?
'James Bond' is not the same character through the films; he is a number of different characters with the same name.
Perhaps this is the way the writers utilised the perceived strong points of the talents of the actors. For example Moore played the part with a much lighter touch than the others, but that's how it was written.
Until Craig came along Brosnan was my favourite, but 'James Bond' as written for Craig is much nastier.
But what about the Bond girls?
Some have been truly breathtaking.
Micelle Yeoh, Barbara Bach and Lois Chiles are my favourites.
How about a fun on-line poll about Bond girls?
JS: For me, 'James Bond' is a fairly well-defined character from a series of novels, all of which I have read. TD came nearest to being that character, i.e. English (rules out Brosnan, Connery), humourless (rules out Moore, Lazenby), dark haired (rules out Craig), borderline psychopath yet somehow charming.
"How about a fun on-line poll about Bond girls?"
Superficially, nice idea, but with dozens of films and two or three Bond girls per film, it's going to get very messy.
Just remembered Miss Potter, where Beatrix Potter, the rich daughter of a Barrister from London decides that she'd much rather have her Faux Bucolic Rural Idyll of highly inefficient hillside farming than allow property developers to build houses for people.
JT, well spotted, the plot is described thusly:
Beatrix buys a farm in the country in the Lake District and moves there to resume her work. She hires a farmhand to run the farm and finds comfort in her surroundings.
With the help of her solicitor, William Heelis, she outbids developers at auctions and buys many other farms and land in the area to preserve nature. Eight years after moving to the Lake District she marries William.
The land eventually forms part of the Lake District National Park in northwestern England.
So Potter is an early heroine of the Home-Owner-Ist movement.
That "James Bond is different people" theory is absolute bollocks.
That "James Bond is different people" theory is absolute bollocks.
True. He's really a Time Lord and has been regenerating all this time. One day there'll be a really shit James Bond who looks like Sylvester McCoy.
"So Potter is an early heroine of the Home-Owner-Ist movement."
"she outbids developers at auctions and buys many other farms and land in the area to preserve nature"
Surely some discrepancy? Isn't the second course of action what you always advise the NIMBYs to do? - if you like the view so much, then buy the land. AFAICS, HOists never put their hands in their pockets, all they do is rant on about how someone else should do all the heavy lifting, usually the Local Authority.
B, did I say that Potter herself was an HOist?
No I didn't, I said she was a heroine for the HOists who came after her and say things like "It's what Potter would have wanted. So the government should step in."
In an LVT-situation, the issue would be whether someone buying up land for conservation, would need to pay higher LVT when development closes in. I think landowner created easements are a good thing. Nothing wrong with protecting strategic locations of scenery. As AC1 frequently points out, LVT makes the NIMBYs pay for such extravagances anyway.
Happy new year by the way!
-Kj
Kj, yes of course.
I've said that before, no farmer is forced to ask for planning permission (so would pay very low agricultural rates of LVT) and if it's urban land, a land owner is free to depress the value of his land to £nil by entering into a restrictive covenant with the local council or local residents saying that the land will remain in its natural state for ever more, he will never use it for any private purpose, allow members of the public to use it as a park or playing fields etc.
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