Britain's busiest train stations or not

Somone was kind enough to leave a comment on this old post on railways so I'm pointing you there as otherwise it'll never be seen.

Blog Stats

Total number of posts
2,330

Posts mentioning...
Not quite as obsessive as I'd imagined.

Nick Cohen - 67 (3%)

"Decent Left" - 24 (1%)

"Daily Mail" - 74 (3%)

"Cuthie" - 46 (2%)

Posts by Year
You were a bit short-changed this year, Ross, Chris, Peter, Jackie, Dan, John, Nick, Alex, Katherine & of course Stephen, as I only managed 300 posts, down from over 400 in 2003, 2004 and 2006, and an enormous 628 in 2004.

2002 - 108 (scaled up from 8 months blogging)
2003 - 462
2004 - 628
2005 - 448
2006 - 402
2007 - 300 (including this one - possibly a few more to come)

Comfort on the Underground

29/12/2007
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

Here Jonathan Glancey declares the rolling stock on the Metropolitian line of the London Underground to be a 'design classic', partly because it is by far the most comfortable train on the network. He's right about that - when you're at one of the stations (such as Great Portland Street) where your choice is a Circle or H&C train, or a Metropolitan line train, when the latter arrives there is a sense of relief, particularly if (as is often the case in daytime) it is relatively empty. You really do sink back in those over-sized seats.

The main reason they are the most comfortable trains, however, is that they are a lot larger than most trains on the network, particularly the ones that have to go into deep level 'tubes', such as the Central Line.

The H&C line (and possibly the Circle?) trains are not as comfortable. However, in what is probably not a little-known secret, they do have two "business class" (ok, perhaps premium economy) seats, one at the end of each carriage, which are 50% wider than the standard seat (pictured). Luxury...

Really?

The Guardian reports, and correctly, that the Nationwide estimates the average house price in Belfast is £306,698, more than in Cambridge, and £50,000 more than in Ediburgh.

Can that really be correct? It is said to have risen 32% in a year, which is £70,000 or so, but it still seems remarkable. What multiple is that of earnings?

Miserable news for 2008

That dreadful man Michael Parkison is to get a knighthood.

On the other hand I was unaware you could change the font in blogger, so that's a bonus. It's like reading school newsletters of the late 1980s when Pagemaker 2.0 came out.

Won't the poor just shut up?

After all they have a refrigerator and TV.

Incidentally doesn't their argument support moves to greater income equality, i.e. redistribution of wealth on a grand scale? If utility is (say) the square root of income, so an income of 10 is about 3.2, 100 10, and 1000 32, which seems to be what they are saying, then taking 400 off the 1000 earner only reduces his utility by 7, or less than a quarter. You could then give 40 people on 10 another 10, which would increase their utility by 1.5 each, or nearly 50%. Total utility would rise by an enormous 53.

Currency speculation - end of year roundup

Back on the 25th July I declared that sterling was clearly overvalued against the dollar, and as such I would be buying dollars through Citibank in an attempt to profit from its inevitable rise.

I've periodically updated how its going on this site (usually inaccurately - I declared in November there was $2000, when in fact there was nowhere near that much). Anyway here's the final year tally:

Paid in: £800
Dollars held: $1,631
Average exchange rate realised: 2.038
Current exchange rate: 1.984
Current sterling value: £822

So a gain of about 2.75%, and although the account does pay some interest so it's probably a bit less than that solely due to exchange rate movements, one should also calculate it on the average amount that was in the account, and that would show a higher return.

So it's looking OK.

Food halls of London

Here is my guide according to the amount of free tasters you get:

Selfridges

Very disappointing. Walked around three times and saw nothing. Remember in the past they sometimes give a few chocolates away. 1/10

Harrods

Even more disappointing. Almost nothing. Can't remember ever once getting anything, except perhaps a free Krispy Kreme when that first launched. 0/10

Fortnum and Masons

Zilch. Maybe if you took your butler?

John Lewis

A small piece of stilton, but ruined by it being handed out by an assistant who gave it to you meaning you couldn't get seconds. However free glass of red wine in the homeware section. 4/10

Whole Foods Market

Easily the winner. Starts of with bits of stollen, then salted caramels, moving onto cheese, then piece of strawberries and finally chocolates. Could probably stay here all day and not have to buy any food. 9/10

Galeries Lafayette (Paris)

Disappointing. Will let you try cheeses if you ask in fluent French. 0/10

Pollard's in anti-Gordon mood today

I'll try and leave a comment on the Spectator blog [1], but I've had not had much luck in the past with getting them published, so I'll also revel here in my moment of fame - Stephen Pollard, of Maida Vale Manifesto fame, has outed himself as a reader of this blog[2]!

He is of course totally correct (although what's with the 'matey' - is that meant to sound hard?) about Gordon Brown's poll ratings and my criticism. Although it is early days, and many of the problems have had little to do with Brown, since I made that post one could not say the performance of Gordon Brown has augured well for an election (although of course he has had the achievement of making Oliver Kamm declare he will switch his vote to Labour at a general election).

On the other hand, of course Pollard can't gloat about his sagacity. It is true that he has made posts claiming Blair was the best PM and Brown would be a disaster, but this is Pollard, and of course he has made posts claiming the opposite. If you take both sides of the argument you'll always be right, but it also means that you'll always be wrong, too. And so it was only just over 18 months ago that Pollard said:

If Labour is to pull itself round, the Chancellor needs to take over soon. With every passing day, Labour’s internal wounds grow deeper, and the Conservatives grow stronger. The electorate know that Tony Blair now stands for little bar the lame and morally bankrupt occupation of office.

A post for every eventuality - I expect if Brown recovers he'll dig out the positive one above.

[1] Hurrah, it's turned up. Could be slightly better formatted.
[2] Or maybe a friend sent it to him.

Cheek to cheek

Well there you go. We knew Dick Cheney was Machiavellian, but I never thought he would stoop to such levels. Talk about provoking the Iranians into a war.

Melanie Phillips again

Aside from the even loopier conspiracy theories about the US and the Middle East that she is advocating today, this gem is worth reading her column for alone:

REASON FIGHTS BACK...reason appears to have got its boots on at last. First the Pope denounces the man-made-global-warming ‘prophets of doom’ for ‘scare-mongering’ on the basis of dogma rather than science.

What has happened to her? I know even her hitherto supporters are now drifting away.

Army losing 'battalion' a year to drugs...

...warns the BBC. The good news is that it hasn't affected their martial spirit -apparently the battalion is always first to volunteer for Aghanistan duty.

Boom, boom. Actually the importance of story is entirely lost on me, as I have no idea how large a battalion is. But give there is an automatic discharge for testing positive, and 769 soldiers were last year, that's a pretty hefty % of the army to lose each year.

Wet Wet Wet Concert TWO

Is it really Right to be Anti-American? Nick Cohen's famous post 9/11 essay which declared that it is is not that persuasive.

Anyway our newest recruit has been to another WWW concert, this time in Glasgow, the band's home town.

I've been to many Wet Wet Wet concerts in my time but nothing prepared me for the madness that was Glasgow. A rollercoaster that started with a stupidly early flight from heathrow and ended with me realising that some of my friends can shatter glass from 30 paces. A few changes were made to the set and a truly bonkers night.

More exclusive live WWW blogging to come.

More Melanie Phillips conspiracy theories

You must go and read this post.

Pension nonsense

The figures in this Daily Mail article, partly (I think not wholly) based on this Lib Dem release, are absurd.

First, pensioners do not "now receive less than in 1950" - they receive, if you believe the numbers (and they seem reasonable) a smaller proportion of the average wage. We might - I do - think it should be higher, but we shouldn't pretend it actually means a smaller amount of money.

Second, their conversions to today's money should hae alarm bells ringing. Can it really be true that the average wage, apparently 7.08 pounds a week in 1950, is equivalent to 499 pounds a week today, only slightly less than the current average wage of 549 pounds a week? Of course it isn't, even allowing for a smaller % of people in the labour force (and hence higher wages for those who were). In fact the correct figure is that 7 pounds a week is equivalent to 165 pounds a week today, and the pension of 1950 equivalent to about 31 pounds a week, less than half today's level.

Near-Live Wet Wet Wet blogging

Nick Cohen said this [1], Nick Cohen said that [2], is all very well. But as promised more than a year ago this blog is proud to announce near-live-blogging of Wet Wet Wet's [see picture [3]] 20th anniversary tour.

Our new employee (of whom all i can reveal is that she is not the tallest women in the audience) is to attend a whole string of these, and has promised to report back on Pellow and the Boys. Last night was Birmingham, and after meeting the band in their hotel beforehand the concert was as follows:

"It was very good, although the audience felt subdued and, typically, I had the tallest woman in the audience stood directly in front of me! Pellow was on great form and the sound was terrific. One of the best things was getting Love Is All Around done and dusted in the first five minutes, and there were loads of new tracks and some of the oldies were given a wash and brush-up. Bring on Glasgow on Sunday!"

[1] "Why It Is Right to be Anti-American"
[2] Can we have a decent left? Here.
[3] Searching google images for "wet wet wet" is not advisable if you are at work.

Are we safer?

Hurrah! one feels like saying. The "Natwest Three" apparently were guilty. They have admitted as such, and have received what one must say is a remarkably lenient sentence of 37 months.

But what's this? Apparently it's not obviously they were guilty. The American justice system - the best in the world, I thought - cannot deliver justice. It ensures guilty verdicts by the use of plea bargains.

Well maybe. I don't recall many articles in the FT about it being so useless before, but that doesn't mean it's not. But I'm not sure I understand Martin Wolf's solution (he's not prepared to say we should never extradite people):

"At the least, the US must be asked to make a prima facie case. The conclusion is that simple."

Well of course. But this surely isn't the point? The concern is that the US system makes pleading guilty for a lesser sentence a better option than risking a guilty verdict in a trial. Wolf, however, doesn't believe the "Nat West Three" shouldn't be on trial, as far as I can work out. So the verdict of a UK judge would make no difference as far as the merits of the case go, it could only be on whether the US judicial system was fair or not fair. Which is surely a political decision.

Update: For all us lovers of liberty and those who worry about the mechanics of the extradition Treaty this seems even worse.

The Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society turns a profit*

Hurrah! They have filed their first year's accounts with the Charity** Commission. I'm not entirely sure they had to, as their income is less than £10,000 per year. But here goes - for calendar year 2006:

Gross Income - £4,082
Gross Expenditure - £1,806

Happiness. "Scoop" would be a little embarassed, I would imagine, given it wouldn't buy a set of tyres on a shiny 747, but he's been dead quite a while.

* Or a surplus, if that's what charities do.
*yes, bizarrely it is a charity - it exists "TO ADVANCE THE EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC IN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC POLICY, INCLUDING THE PROMOTION OF RESEARCH IN ANY OF THOSE AREAS AND THE PUBLICATION OF THE USEFUL RESULTS OF SUCH RESEARCH"

Melanie Phillips takes to the offensive

To the People of Australia, she thunders:

Whatever now happens, the fact that he ran on a platform of pulling troops out of Iraq and endorsing the ludicrous scam of man-made global warming are enough in themselves to tell the jihadis that Australia has now lost its (one-man) nerve. Australia just made itself (and the rest of us) a whole lot less safe.

That isn't the loopiest thing she says today, however. That surely must be this piece, in which she declares:

Whatever actually happens at Annapolis, what is blindingly obvious right now is the extent of America’s betrayal of the Jewish people and, in the process, of its own supposed core doctrine post 9/11...Annapolis is America’s Munich — and Israel is the new Czechoslovakia

It is hard to know where to begin.

Update: Andrew in the comments points out that in the Daily Mail (mine were in Spectator - links added now) she is wibbling on about creationism and all that. It is indeed strange that she is so keen on that (and on the Measles vaccination scare long after it was sensible) and yet talks about rationality, much like she goes on about conspiracy theorists and yet believes such huge ones herself, such as the Bush Administration one above. By the way, Melanie, as Nick points out here it wasn't Blair's religious views that looked nutterish, it was his nutterish behaviour (presuming the account is accurate, which given its in the Daily Mail, her own paper, I assume it must be).

The people of Australia have let Melahie Phillips down

Another light goes off.

Compensation after football sackings

Steve McClaren has been sacked, but will get £2m as a payout. This is not uncommon in football, although it seems rather silly.

I presume it is something to do with labour laws on unfair dismissal. Is the point something like you can only be sacked for gross misconduct, and given one goal more or less last night would have meant England qualified, that can't be shown?

Average buyer looks at house for 17 mins

Says this survey, and it certainly reflects my own experience - in fact perhaps that's a bit high. If the current owners are in their house, as they were in my case, you feel a little embarassed at your intrusion.

I've noted before that this does not explain why you are prepared to spend so much money on it without looking again, and for example, this is less time than you would spend, say, on a pair of jeans. One explanation I came up with is because it is seen as an investment, rather than an act of consumption. This can't quite be right for two reasons. One, because people usually spend quite a bit of time researching investments, and second, because rental houses are more purely a consumption good and those are similarly given only a short research time.

Another explatation is surely that a lot of research (on area, size, etc) has gone in beforehand, and when you're there, there is not much really you can once you've had a look at it. I'm sure those more experienced than I check for damp, sunlight, etc, but that still can't take very long.

Slightly related to this is William Buiter's argument that housing is not net wealth, as an increase in house prices makes us richer, but it also increases our future costs (unless we can get out of being housing consumers by moving abroad or something similar), and hence the net effect is zero. Martin Wolf in the comments notes that obviously the housing stock is net wealth, as if it was demolished we would be a lot poorer, and so what Buiter means is an increase in house prices is not an increase in net wealth. I'd modify this slightly - an increase in house prices not reflected by an increase in quality of housing is not net wealth. I imagine a lot of the renovations done in the last 10 years have not added much to a houses value, and in some cases might have detracted, but there must be a small positive impact.

Phone Norris McWhirter

19112007583.jpg
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

My first experience of these Mumbai taxis - essentially old fiat cars and not really large enough for me - might have set a world record. The driver told me at the end of the 1km journey that it was 200 rupee, which seemed a bit expensive, but as it's £2.50 I thought it would be OK. I only had a 500 rupee note, however, and would you believe it he had no change. So it cost 500 rupees (about £6).

Next morning I met someone I knew in the hotel who mentioned that I might have overpaid a bit. I got in a similar cab for the same journey and we paid the correct price, which is 25 rupee.

Hong Kong's liberation

21112007638.jpg
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

I suppose it's not so surprising in an Indian magazine, but I didn't realise people spoke of the 1997 Hong Kong handover as its 'liberation'.

I'm back

Taj Mahal hotel
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

India trip went well. Virgin Atlantic Upper Class was very comfortable - I can see how the super-rich don't mind travelling thousands of miles for a weekend - as was the Taj Mahal hotel (pictured).

Dollars

The Independent has one of its front-pages today on the dollar. Pretty superficial stuff, and I'm not sure whether I agree with the usually good Hamish McRae's argument that one reason for dollar weakness is declining US share of global GDP, which seems to me to be more a function of dollar weakness rather than its cause.

My own currency speculation, now up to something near $2,000, has obviously a negative return so far. It's going to get worse, probably, as McRae points out - even if the dollar is undervalued it can get more undervalued. I wouldn't say I was worried particularly as I've always valued the saving part of investment more than the return - an investment with a 10% negative return is still worth 90% more than if the money had been used for consumption.

Anyway I'm off to India to check out the rather more laggardly rising star of the economic world. Back Wednesday.

If we'd had a laptop the War would have been over in 1944

Colossus loses the race involving the one thing it is good at. To a German, and a laptop. I wouldn't like to play Grand Theft Auto on it.

Tremendous achievement to get one up and code-breaking though. It's just a shame that's our entry ino the World Supercomputer League.

Boyzone had split up before today!!!

Good god. This is big news. Until today apparently Boyzone had split up, and in fact were no longer a band. From today they have reformed and are now so. For those of us who will never forget the 14 no.1 singles, Coast to Coast, an' all that, this is a momentous day.

A new record on Bloglines

I'm sure you all use Bloglines or some other RSS type thingy which tells you when there are new blog posts.

Today, a record. Tim Worstall, the blogger, pornographer and spammer, has apparently updated his spam site (the original one - the proper one has now moved to www.timworstall.com) 134 times. I think this is misleading, as the earliest one was about the US change from Daylight Saving Time. But it remains my Bloglines record.

Stumbling and Mumbling chap has two posts which won't leave Bloglines, however many times I read them. Confusing.

How the Guardian welcomed Hitler

or underestimated him, at least. Ian Kershaw looks through the archives.

Leaf crisis being resolved

Hurrah, Brent Council have come and bagged up all the leaves in the street. We can start to move our cars again.

Marko Attilia Hoare and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

On his new blog, Marko Hoare says of Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

There is nothing ’extreme’ about Hirsi Ali’s position; she does not argue that Islam should be banned, nor that its followers be persecuted. She simply sees it as a problem, and wants to free Muslim women from the abuse inflicted upon them in the name of Islam.

I don't think this is sustainable given her stated comments. She said in an interview with Reason, these kind of things (my italics):

Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

....

Reason: Here in the United States, you’d advocate the abolition of—

Hirsi Ali: All Muslim schools. Close them down.


----------
"At war with", "crush", "close down schools", not allowing "westerners to convert to Islam". This is an "extreme" position by anyone standards, surely?

Vectorisation

Remarkable free program in a website here. It takes any photograph or line art drawing and turns it into a scalable vector graphic. Good for logos and things, but most fun on a photo.

Leaves crisis

Why are there so many in London, collecting in great piles? I don't remember this from previous Autumns. Is there a 'leaf collector' strike going on?

Sunday papers

The Army doesn't think much of Britain's Iraq war policy and planning

Immigration is everywhere. This is Nick Cohen's image of modern Britain:

The old English rich complain that they can't compete against the new men from Russia and India. Crime isn't as bad as you would guess from the papers - but our police force is second-rate and the reassuring bonds of community have broken down in suburbs where 50 different languages are spoken. The middle class, which was once delighted to have cheap Polish plumbers, now thinks that foreigners will be competing for its jobs. The working class - white, black and brown - has never liked that, and is as suspicious as ever of new immigrants.

Andrew Green says that its not EU immigration but extra-EU immigration that matters. He also says that half of London's new babies have a foreign parent, which I don't think is quite right - it's a 'foreign born' parent.

And finally, "The Ten Wackiest Scientific Experiments of All Time", certainly are wacky, many are plain nasty. Amusing article though.

Getting richer

With the current exchange rate the IMF puts UK per capita GDP at $47,281, compared with that of the United States, $45,593. In dollars UK GDp has risen at a similar speed to China's since 2004.

Tim Congdon

Not seen him for a long time, and he was on Newsnight. I didn't really understand his argument, he seemed to be saying that the Government must keep Northern Rock going until a private buyer moved in. Very confusing, but he was certainly more interventionist than Vince Cable. But I guess that's the current Tory position [Whoops - Tim Congdon is a UKIP supporter] - I still have no idea if David Cameron thinks our population is too high, low or about right.

Update: Watching it again, it is still strange. He seemed to be deliberately misunderstanding Vince Cable's point about new loans being offered at 120% of the value of the house, with an average figure on its old loans.

Nick Cohen was very Anti-American

I can't pretend to understand the nuances of this post by Oliver on 'the attitudes Nick Cohen finds outrageous', but I think he he must mean the most famous of all Nick Cohen essays: "Why it is right to Be anti-American"

Most of us would not share Nick Cohen's outrage in this matter, or for example his Cohen's conspiratorial ramblings about the Iraq war being due to our being in hock to the Americans from WWII. I think the best attitude when faced with this kind of nasty stuff is to ignore it most of the time, but loudly publicise it from time to time.

Currency speculation again

As the pound nears $2.09 you are probably hoping for an update on my currency speculating, all of which has been unprofitable so far. My only advice is to buy more dollars - they're getting even cheaper.

Exciting news

I was unaware until today, when I happened on its website, that the Daily Express was the "World's Greatest Newspaper", although I was aware that it was such if you were a Diana-ultra. The website does not back this up, but websites are not always a good guide to the printed newspaper.

So I will buy a copy on the way to work and report back on this exciting news.

Maybe they shouldn't have bought an Ipod?

The "Ipod generation" are having a bad time of it, according to Reform.

Of the average graduate's salary, which stands at £27,155, £4,608,40 now disappears in income tax, £2,432,21 in national insurance contributions, £3,043,15 in indirect taxes such as VAT, £1,493.53 in pension contributions, £1,093.95 in compulsory student loan repayments, and £618.50 in council tax.

This leaves them, excluding VAT, £16,905. Diddums. It's worth noting that if that really is a graduate's starting salary (see below), then that's a lot more than I and most graduates I knew had to spend (allowing for inflation) in 1996 after direct taxes, council tax, pension contributions and student loan repayments.

Slightly bizarrely, the report then demands (well, the Daily Mail report of the report says it does, which might not be the same thing):

Strict public spending curbs, tax cuts and more private contributions to healthcare and pensions were needed to allow resources to be redirected, he said.

Er..private pension contributions are what they say play a factor in reducing disposable income.

Update: Reading the actual report adds to the confusion. Of course new graduates don't have an average starting salary of £27k, it's an average of those aged 21-35. So it includes me! The average for new graduates is given as £14,515.

This though is puzzling, as they say the average 21-35 year graduate old has to repay £1,100 of student loans this year. Can that be right? It assumes surely that every ex-graduate aged 21-35 is paying back a student loan (at 9% over £15k)?

David Cameron thinks the population is too low

"Gordon Brown cannot tell us if he thinks the population of the country is too low, too high, or just about right", Mr Cameron said.

What a bizarre criticism. I have no idea whether the population is too high, too low or just about right. It's not something, it seems to me, that anyone can really have a view on with any confidence. Too low/high for what? It's entirely to Gordon Brown's credit if he really doesn't have a view.

And the absurdity of the question is shown by asking what is David Cameron's view? Apparently he thinks that immigration should continue, albeit at a lower level. So he must think the population is "too low", if that's how he wants to frame it.

Your friends are ruining your life!

This article says apparently there are seven types - you might recognise some. For those of my readers who don't have five friends, perhaps they have ones who combine multiple types.

Passive aggressive underminer

The friend who uses their knowledge of you to subtly undermine you, often making barbed comments about your appearance or habits cloaked in a veil of concern
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The constant talker

The friend who hogs every conversation and wants to be the centre of attention, with you in their orbit and shadow

The drama queen

The friend who elevates every minor setback into a major crisis, who is convinced that she's going to be fired because the boss didn't smile at her

The naysayer

The friend who dismisses your hopes and dreams as unrealistic and is generally negative about your plans. The classic 'glass half-empty' individual

The peer pressurer

The friend who imposes their need for fun and attention over your best interest, who knows that you have a job interview tomorrow morning but pressures you to drink until midnight

The plan breaker

The unreliable friend who agrees to go out for dinner but then ditches you at the last minute because they got a better offer

The sob sister

The friend who saps your energy by whining all the time, who would rather complain about the things in his or her life than fix them, dragging you into a culture of victimhood and using you as a therapist

The EU Treaty

An interesting report here on yesterday's pro-referendum march. The march wasn't a success, which gives some evidence to my view that is not an issue that people really care about. Anthony Wells had some good polling evidence on this score. That doesn't necessarily mean they don't want a referendum, many people presumably will say they want a referendum merely on the grounds that referendums seem jolly good things to have.

The blog post and commenters take the line, it seems, that English must free ourself from th EU (or 'interfering foreigners' in the blog's lingo) in order to continue to be allowed to create such a horrible country.

Airlines

We were discussing over the weekend the need for a word to describe, when boarding an aircraft, the feeling one has when it dawns upon one that the horror one felt on walking through business class and arriving at the overcrowded and unpleasant economy class was in fact misplaced, as one has only got to Economy Plus/Premium Economy, and it - almost unimaginably - is actually going to get worse.

Britain 100 years ago in colour

I really like the Daily Mail website these days - loads of fun things to read. It never disappoints.

I also like old colour pictures, so I thought I would love this article with previously unseen colour pictures of the UK 100 years ago, but in fact they're a little boring. Anyway here you go.

Aged politicians

In largely sensible piece (my own view of Ming Campbell was that he was always too old to be leader of a major party, as it's a job that requires a bit of street-fighting), Matthew d'Ancona said this last week about Menzies Campbell:

Ming's problem was never age - Mick Jagger and Michael Heseltine are proof enough that you can still bring down the house after 60.

This isn't really true, is it? Heseltine was 60 on the 21st March 1993, and I'd say by then he was looking a bit past it. The coal mines fiasco had damaged his reputation as a moderate, fairly or unfairly, and only a bit later, in June of the year he had a heart attack.

Spectacular missing of the point

From just about everyone involved.

Quick links

Hurrah! Apparently men can drink 63 units a week without any negative health effects.

John Lewis is to narrow its price promise of 'never knowingly undersold'. I suppose the advantages of it are that only a few people have to do it for us all to benefit, as I was going to say I don't know anyone who has ever used it.

The Telegraph says Chinese growth will overtake US growth in dollar terms at market exchange rates for the first time in the modern era. I don't know if this is absolutely correct - did America not have negative GDP growth in 1980? Anyway you know what they mean.

Back at home the economy is still growing at a rate of over 3% a year, or at least was in Q3 07.

Daniel Finkelstein must think his readers are fools

...and it is The Times*, so he might be right.

In this post here he defends himself against complaints that he was accusing Richard Dawkins of anti-semitism in this post here:

Because I didn't accuse the Professor of anti-semitism. I just noted his comments and said I found it frightening that he could believe that. Which I do. It is pretty standard this. A comment is made about Israel or Jews and when that comment is questioned the originator or their defenders says: "Ooh, don't get all shirty and come the politically correct with me. Don't accuse me of anti-semitism every time I criticise you". But they haven't been accused of anti-semitism at all. No one even mentioned it. They are using the idea that they are being accused of anti-semitism as a cover for insupportable remarks. [My italics]

In the comments he even gets a little exasperated:

I didn't call him an anti-semite. Perhaps it would have made your life easier if I had. But I didn't. Live with it.

There's a major problem with his protestations though, even if you don't accept that the post was implying Dawkins is an anti-semite. That is the subject heading, or category, that Finkelstein gave to his original piece, which was...

ANTI-SEMITISM [his capitals]

I can't imagine why people though it was about anti-semitism.

* Actually I found copy on the Tube the other day and I have to say the news pages are pretty good these days, perhaps better now than the Telegraph, which has slipped into Mail/Independent style campaigning.

“I’ve made passes, at women of all classes” ...

Gawd bless 'er.

Former Conservative voter will switch to Labour at next election

Some good news for Gordon Brown in a week without much. He seems to have swung one formerly Tory voter in a marginal constituency. Is it too late for a November election?

North South divide in tax and spend

The Daily Mail has some figures (not necessarily correct, however I find the Mail more accurate than say the Telegraph in these matters). There seems no recognition, however, that the differences between areas might to some extent reflect difference in income, and what is seen as regional transfers are also income redistribution. You might not agree with that, but it should at least be referred to.

What % of Americans are richer than you?

Well you have to go back to 2005, as that's the last available data.

To be in the top 1% of income tax payers you need to earn (individually) $365k, whcih is about £180k or I guess £200k back then. To be in the top 5% you need $145k, or about £70-80k, and the top 10%, $104k, which his £50k or a bit more.

Martin Amis keeps rumbling on

To recap the situation, Martin Amis is finally being called to account for his comments of August last year (the day of the liquid air explosives drama] that have feature here many times:

What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suff­­er­­­ing? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan… Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs – well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people. It’s a huge dereliction on their part.

There have been three views that most people have taken from this. The first is that by 'there is an urge' Amis means that he has it, and more he assumes it is widely shared 'dont' you', that such a programme needs to be carried out not just on the Muslim community but also on anyone who looks like they are from the Middle East or Pakistan. An urge, but only that. The less charitable interpretation, which I have leaned to, that he is using the formulation 'there's a definite urge' as way of saying what he doesn't wish to say directly, 'I think it should be done'. A third more charitable interpretation is merely that he is, much like Mary Beard, only passing on what he has heard.

A fourth interpretation is given in the comments here. I am not sure I understand it fully, but to the extent I think I do, it is that because of Amis's history of anti-discrimination, any knowledgeable reader would interpret his remarks as being of the form:

Such actions (terrorism) are giving rise to a wish to take collective action against Muslims. But this would be terrible because it would lead to not letting them travel, strip-searching...

In other words a prophecy, not in the 30th January 1939 mould as the harsher critics allege, but to non-Muslims about the risks of giving in to such urges. This interpretation (if I have understood it correctly) is not that obvious. The interviewer didn't read it like that 'This last response is likely to be extremely hardline, inflamingly so, if Amis’s message [ie the quote above - MJT] to me is anything to go by'. One of Amis's best friends, Christopher Hitchens, didn't either, seeing it as a potentially necessary 'extraordinary response' that Mark Steyn would recognise.

Amis himself has replied, once in a letter to an Independent columnist and friend, and second in a letter to The Guardian. The former is here and the paragraph that matters:

The anti-Muslim measures he says I "advocated" I merely adumbrated, not "in an essay" ("he wrote", "wrote Amis" – each of these is an untruth), but in a long interview with the press. It was a thought experiment, or a mood experiment, and the remarks were preceded by the following: "There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say... [etc, etc]." I felt that urge, for a day or two...There were two additional depressants [to the August plane drama]. At least one of the alleged would-be mass murderers had taken the trouble to convert to Islam, suggesting that the exterminatory virus was about to mutate, like bird flu. And I'm sure you remember, Yasmin, that passengers on this route were suddenly forbidden to take books on the eight-hour flight – a resonant symbolic victory for the forces of ignorance, humourlessness, literalism, boredom and misery. Anyway, the mood, the retaliatory "urge" soon evaporated, and I went back to feeling that we must, of course, build all the bridges we can between ourselves and the Muslim majority, which we know to be moderate.

To the Guardian he wrote:

I was not "advocating" anything. I was conversationally describing an urge - an urge that soon wore off. And I hereby declare that "harassing the Muslim community in Britain" would be neither moral nor efficacious.

So Amis is giving the second explanation, that he said those remarks, and meant them 'a retaliatory urge', but it was only a passing fad. That probably is the correct interpretation - he clearly says in the letter that he does not wish his urge to be put into practice.

Does this get him off the hook? Well probably not. Do most people ever have such an urge? To strip-search completely innocent people merely to punish people that look like them? Even on the day you learnt about the plot to blow up aeroplanes.

It's also worth noting that Amis's concern in the interview was the vast majority of Muslims, not just Islamists. In the same interview he said:

It’s a very chilling thought because the only thing the Islamists like about modernity is modern weapons. And they’re going to get better and better at that. They’re also gaining on us demographically at a huge rate. A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they’ll be a third. Italy’s down to 1.1 child per woman. We’re just going to be outnumbered.

This has extra resonance currently because of this remarkable interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Reason magazine in which she makes it clear that she believes we are at war with Islam, and that it must be destroyed through various discriminatory measures. It doesn't even seem to be merely an urge in her case. As I have said elsewhere I think as she has had (credible) death threats one can understand she is not going to be very balanced in her view, which is why we must hope she is not representative of a trend.

Update: There is also the Kingsley bit. I think there is a lot of conflicting evidence on the homophobia/racism/sexism (well perhaps not the last), testament to a man who said and did a lot of things. Obviously his views changed on certain subjects throughout his life too. But I think the defence led by his ex-wife and brother-in-law that he was not anti-semitic (although EJH perhaps meant only he was not an anti-semitic-boor), 'Calling him anti-Semitic should be actionable were it not so absurd' is a bit silly. Here's Martin saying he was anti-semitic in private to a certain extent, and in the Daily Telegraph.

30 reasons to hate the French

I have no idea what this is about - it's not funny or relevant to a game of rugby.

Inheritance tax again

The Daily Mail is hilarious today. It says at one point that the government's proposal does nothing for the 500,000 couples who already split their assets so as to both benefit from their nil rate of inheritance tax. Er...yes, that's because they aren't paying the tax.

What does the Mail want - perhaps George Osborne should counter with a proposal that the government will 'top up' inheritances, perhaps matching them £1 for £1. On the score I presume the Tory policy will quietly be dropped, as it now just seems like a £1bn bonus for the very rich.

A good article in the Daily Mail

I've been a bit critical of newspapers' reporting of research groups' reports recently - either because they accept clearly skewed estimates or they fail to note their obvious agenda. This report about Capital Economics in today's Daily Mail, who have forecast a house price decline and possible collapse, is actually quite good. I was reading it somewhat sceptically, when suddenly this paragraph turned up against my expectations:

Capital Economics and Mr Bootle have a history of forecasting property market slowdowns and busts that have failed to materialise. However, the organisation believes economic conditions mean the predictions are more likely to be accurate this time.

Now you might add, 'And so does the Daily Mail', and indeed, 'And so do you, Matt'. But it was refreshing to see some ability to remember the past, something that seems totally lacking in the D.Telegraph's financial and personal finance pages.

Obviously I too think it will be different this time, but if Capital Economics, me and the Daily Mail are all bears it might be time to buy.

100% wrong

"Disposable income at lowest level in ten years", screams the Telegraph, still presumably on election alert. Actually a more accurate headline would be "Disposable income at highest level in ten years". But the whole survey is screwy - if the household income looks rather on the high side it's because they have simply divided GDP by the number of households.

Election

The decision not to have an election is of course the right one. The political system might be increasingly presidential, but it is not, and for individual MPs it would be difficult to explain why they felt the need to get another mandate from the electorate given they don't.

On the other hand the system where the PM gets to call an election is ridiculous. The Lib Dems have suggested fixed terms, which I would agree, and admid the flying pigs, Gordon Brown should announce now that the next election will be held in May 2009 (I think June is getting too much into summer). He should also announce that it will be held under PR, but maybe I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.

Anne Widdecombe is to step down

There's not really much you can say. I can't remember anything she ever stood for, and only a few things she was against. She'll be most famous for her comment about Michael Howard, which seems less agreeable every passing year.

Inheritance Tax again

Why does it arouse such anger? The principle seems sound - tax mostly unearned inheritances rather than productive work. It is one of the easiest to pay, as it is levied as a % of money you are about to receive - not say like council tax. But in any case, most people don't pay it (about 5% of estates paid it in the latest available year, 2004/2005), and most people will never pay it if present trends persist (the rate goes up, house prices are likely to stagnate).

Many explanations can be easily dismissed. That it could be because they think (wrongly) they are going to pay it, or because they expect to pay it, much like people put their income in much higher bracket than it really is. Yet today's Mail on Sunday has a poll which puts paid to this line of thinking:

Only 20% say they would expect to inherit enough to qualify for inheritance tax at its present threshold of £300,000. And only 33% expect to leave enough money to make their children liable to pay death duty.

Given people must know the threshold will increase in 10-50 years before they die, this last figure must actually massively over estimate those who even think they will pay it. And yet the article says 71% welcome the Tories' proposal. It is also suggested that this issue is more salient in Britain than in many countries.

Another often heard suggestion is that people resent double taxation, i.e. the money has paid income tax when it was earned, and then again when it is disposed of. That this only applies to the dead person, and also that much of the concern is said to be highly inflated house prices, which of course weren't taxed, are factors to consider here. But more importantly, people don't seem to get so upset about double taxation that affects them every day, most noticeably VAT on expenditure funded by income that has been taxed. I think I even saw a poll that said people would prefer a cut in inheritance tax that won't benefit them even if it means a rise in VAT which will hurt them.

Is it the rate then - at 40% -- seen as simply too high? I find this a little hard to believe too given people seem to think its fine that higher-rate taxpayers pay that marginal rate on productive work, or at least if not 'fine' then there is not a huge campaign to get it reduced.

It must then, I think, be something to do with the nature of inheritance itself, an d as such although it won't affect most people much, and they realise that [1], they simply don't believe inheritance per se should be taxed. The most obvious explanation here is that it is a rare example of inter-family transactions on which tax is paid. The same would be true if your father employed you, which doesn't seem to be such an issue, but that is pretty rare. Nevertheless again I'm a little sceptical to this as an explanation as Britain hardly has the most close of family ties. The Daily Mail not only wants no inheritance tax but it also wants the state to pay for nursing care for people's parents, so 'they don't need to eat into their savings'.

I think for the inheritors it might have something to do with a British love of a "freebie", the idea that if you can get away with doing no work you should do no work. For many people their parent's house has risen in value far more than any savings they could ever hope to accumulate. This idea is boosted by the fact that many of the people who get most exercised about inheritance tax always strike you as the ones who aren't going to make the money any other way [2]. Maybe those who aren't going to benefit still enjoy the thought of others' doing so. Yet I don't really know if this is a particularly British characteristic, and if it is one that is strong enough to outweigh the other factors, or what those who have money to leave get out of it.

Unfortunately the case is probably lost. Will Hutton has a go here, and his arguments are sound, but even he somehow seems to have decided it is a tax the poor pay (his figures seem all screwy).



[1] Although I have doubts people realise the tax is 0% rated below £300k or thereabouts and tax is paid only on the balance - as two people I know who have financial-related jobs didn't know this.
[2] This would fit in with Tim Worstall's argument, that inheritance is good for social mobility because the children always fritter it away.

A rather concerning moment

A rather concerning moment
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

It's not quite a horse's head, or fish, but I arrived home from a weekend away to find a huge stack of Saturday's newspapers on my drive. One bundle of the Guardian and Independent, and two of the Express. What can it mean?

Terry Eagleton is, of course, largely correct

In his comments about Martin Amis. Amis's comments were disgraceful - his 'urge' to see people who looked as if they were from the Middle East 'strip searched' and banned from travelling - as I noted here, here and here.

George doesn't like Gordon as much as he likes Nicolas and Angela, although she's a Girl

Yes, it's international politics as the junior school playground. Of course this is the problem with going out of your way to cultivate the "Special Relationship" - it only lasts as long as you keep on cultivating it. It doesn't have very deep roots, despite all of the history. Even then it can disappear (see John Major) if the personalities change.

Brown's approach seems sensible. There's been nothing that can be seen as hostile - with any other country the relationship he has had with the United States would be described as 'close'. That is the right policy - good relations with the United States should be maintained. It is the most powerful country in the world by far, and its actions will have a huge impact on Britain now, and (given the imbalance in economic and military power will only get worse in the next 50 years and beyond) for the rest of our lifetimes. Furthermore the interests of the United States and UK are often the same.

Yet they are only often the same, and often they are not. Blair seemed to think that if the UK interest and the US interest didn't suggest the same policy, the best thing to was change what was seen as being in the UK's interest, rather than the policy. The (limited) evidence so far is that Brown isn't that short-sightedness.

Tony Benn = Henry Scoop Jackson

Oliver Kamm loyally makes a brave defence of the left-wingness of Nick Cohen, saying of Tony Benn:

Note that this thoughtful and original sentiment comes from a politician who urged in the 1960s and 1970s a fundamental shift in the balance of wealth away from working people and their families, in the form of a huge taxpayer subsidy to rich people travelling by Concorde

This solves a puzzle. For obviously there is another politician of that era who will forever be linked with wasting taxpayers' money on a supersonic aircraft, repeatedly voting for funding for it, and against attempts to stop that funding, and minimising very real environmental concerns about it.

Of course I realise that the comparison of 'Scoop' with Tony Benn is quite unfair. Concorde flew successfully for 30 years, whereas 'Scoop's version didn't get off the ground. But it explains what Oliver meant when last week, he said of the late Senator:

His ... interventionist views on economic policy – he believed Nixon’s wage and price controls were too weak – would put him around the position of Tony Benn in today’s political debates.

He must have meant Scoop was too right wing.

Inheritance Tax proposal

The inheritance tax threshold is to rise to £1m. The proposal will cost around £4bn, which is going to be funded by an annual levy on the right to declare yourself 'non-domiciled' for tax purposes.

The proposal is very skewed towards the rich. In 2004/2005, 5.4%, or 32,000, estates paid inheritance tax, which raised £3bn. Of this 2,700 estates of over £1m paid £1.3bn. The beneficiaries of these super-estates will under Osborne's proposal receive an extra £280,000 or so. 6,722 estates over £0.5m paid just under £1bn, an average of £142,000 each, which they would now not have to pay.

I can't agree with in terms of good governance. All taxes have opportunity costs. The opportunity costs of this seems particularly extragavant. It would (on 2004/2005 figures) lower the tax of people inheriting between £0.5m and £1 by £142,000 on average, and of those above £1m by £280,000 on average. The money foregone here, from less than 10,000 estates, could have been used to cut income tax by 1-2p in the pound for millions of hard working families.

The more thoughtful advocates of such a proposal note that with rising house prices more and estates would be subject to inheritance tax. Yet this means that income tax could have been lower and lower. I'd rather tax bequests (often simply due to house price inflation) than productive work.

Stamp Duty

The Conservatives propose to eradicate stamp duty for "first-time buyers" on house purchases of "less than £250,000".

I'm not sure if there are more details. For instance would someone who bought a house for £300,000 only pay stamp duty on £50,000, ie the balance, or on the whole lot? I think the reason a lot of people didn't like stamp duty was that it was levied at higher bands on all of the house value, rather than just the balance over each banding level. And will there be issues with "first-time buyers"?

Also, as many people say about the minimum wage, will there be regional variations? In the North-East very few buyers will pay stamp duty, but in London most will.

Jeffrey Archer

Hardly the most novel of blog posts coming up, but (I can't remember why) on Amazon I saw this review of Jeffrey Archer's "cat o' nine tails":

'Stylish, witty and constantly entertaining ...Jeffrey Archer has a natural aptitude for short stories.' - "The Times".

It's repeated everywhere, so clearly came from the publishers. A Times website search, however, doesn't bring it up. There are two main references to the Archer book, one mainly about the cartoonist who illustrated it, and contains a passing complimentary reference to Archer as a person and a few negative ones, and this review:

CAT O’NINE TALES
by Jeffrey Archer
Pan Macmillan, £16.99

Will nothing stop this man? According to Archer, some of these stories are based on yarns heard from fellow cons in prison. Whatever. They are all vastly boring and apparently written by a team of trained chimps. Who reads this stuff? His books are bestsellers, yet strangely invisible. I’m starting to suspect that Lord A buys them all himself. This has the redeeming feature of illustrations by the great Ronald Searle, but even these do not justify the price. Sadists take note — a special “gift edition” is available. Ooh, the pain.

The price suggests the hardback, i.e. orginal, edition, and doesn't contain the words 'stylish' or 'constantly entertaining'.

The Centre for Policy Studies

I was under the impression that the CPS was a right-wing think tank, and indeed its website says that:

It exists to promote coherent and practical public policy, to roll back the state...

In today's Sunday Telegraph there is a letter from a "Kathy Gyngell" that blames Gordon Brown for teenage drinking because he has not raised taxes on alcohol sufficiently and she demands (presumably vastly) higher taxes. How is this coherent with rolling back the state?

Tax and Smith & Williamson

"Familes pay 50% more tax under Labour", screams the Daily Telegraph, repeating (I assume, as the conclusions seem as absurd) an updated version of the completely flawed analysis undertaken by Smith & Williamson three (can it really be? - must be because of the prospect of an election). As I noted last year, here and here, the implications of this analysis are either that the average family buys a £1m plus house, or they move house every year.

More based in reality is the Sunday Telegraph's rather similar story, which is that "income tax had doubled under Labour". By this the mean twice as money is now collected by income tax than it was in 1997. This seems plausible. However they then say:

Official figures show a 100 per cent increase in the tax burden faced by wage earners – whose income has only risen 40 per cent since 1997.

This is less defensible. The wording 'burden' implies usually the % paid in tax, rather than an absolute figure. In any case it is only correct if 'wage earners' means ALL 'wage earners' as collective group, not an average individual. As the article notes later there are more 'wage earners' than there was in 1997. Finally, that 40% figure looks very suspect. It would mean that average earnings have risen by 3.4% a year since 1997 - in NOMINAL terms. So less 2.5% inflation, that would be real wage growth of just 0.9%, which I think is too low. The National Statistics data suggests more like 50%.

A statue but no factory?

A letter in yesterday's FT:

From Mr Andrew Cook.

Sir, A few years ago I was touring the Rolls Royce car factory in Crewe. On a plinth in the middle of the factory is an example of the Merlin aero engine, which powered the Spitfire and the Hurricane and which the factory had been built to make in the run-up to the second world war.

"Without that engine, this factory wouldn't be here," commented my guide. "Without that engine, none of us would be here!" I replied.

The latter suggestion seems easier to defend than the one before it - I think a maker of aeroplane engines might have done quite well in a Nazi-controlled Britain. But in addition,with rather bad timing, we just a few pages before this letter learn that Rolls Royce have decided to locate their new aeroplane engine factory just outside Berlin.

Tim Worstall's blog

...is now dedicated to showing pictures of Britney Spears and other celebrities naked.

Wider still, and wider

I quite like "Land of Hope and Glory" as a song for all its Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Societyesque lyrics, but hearing it again for the first time in a while I realised that it's been forever ruined for me by Peter Lilley's badly sung and badly conceived version, "Land of Chattering Classes". I just can't help but hear his whiny and weedy voice heading for political oblivion. I can't find it online but here's some others and here's some more.

Here's also some favourite moments from conferences. You don't see drama such as Kinnock's militant speech any more.

What a difference a year makes

With Labour 11% ahead in the polls (albeit a conference special) it is interesting to hear the thoughts of political commenters and bloggers on Gordon Brown.

Stephen Pollard (and Oliver Kamm) have described him as:

Mr Unelectable

Robert Harris, in the Times, argues:

[Gordon Brown] has shown the most appalling political ineptitude and has reduced the Labour government to a farcical grotesquerie without precedent in living memory. So much so that, as the reality sinks in, I would put Brown’s chances of succeeding Blair at not much more than 50-50 and his hopes of winning the next general election at substantially less than that.

Ah, apparently those comments were made last September. "Has reduced the Labour government to a farcical grotesquerie without precedent in living memory" - good grief, surely analysis of that standard should disqualify Robert Harris from ever being taken seriously again?

Naked pensioners

If ever there was a case for a government bail-out it is to stop pensioners parading naked. What is it with people in Britain in the last few years and taking their clothes off - hardly a week passes without some new hilarious bunch of people stripping off for a charity calendar.

Norman Tebbit to vote Labour

He doesn't quite say that, but if he believes Gordon Brown is the natural heir to Thatcher it's the logical conclusion, particularly as he is apparently the current MP for Chingford. In fact, that adds two to the Labour majority.

Did Henry 'Scoop' Jackson regret his enthusiastic support for internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII?

The Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society claims he did:

In America, Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson initially believed the internment of Japanese-Americans to be a necessary action in the fighting of the Second World War, but he later realised that this action was a mistake.

Oliver Kamm (who possibly could be getting his information from the H'S'JS page, or be the contributor) also believes this:

I have a suspicion that you refer to his support for the shameful injustice of the internment of Japanese Americans in WW2 because it may be one of the few things you know about him. Yes, he was wrong, and he regretted it.

Others aren't so sure. Robert Kaufamn, in his biography of 'Scoop', makes no reference to any 'regret'. And David Neiwert, who has written a book on Japanese/American internment, has noted on his blog that:

In all my research, I could, however, find no evidence that Jackson ever expressed any regret for his wartime activism against Japanese Americans, even as reparations were being discussed late in his career. He remained mum, hoping no one would remember his own role in the affair.

Anyway, it'll be far easier to prove he did than he didn't (if he did), and so I've emailed the head (Alan Mendoza, a Conservative councillor in Brent)
of the Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society asking where their information has come from and hopefully this matter of historical fact can be cleared up quite quickly.

46 out of 60 on US politics

At this quiz. I was quite pleased with that score. I think if I had not been rushing (ie about 10 seconds per question) I might have got 50, as (for example) I misread the Fed buying bonds one as having the answer 'lower interest rate'. On the other hand I guessed quite a few, and might not be so lucky another time.

Marcel Marceau was still alive on Friday

Tributes here.

Northern Rock and the Taxpayer

Press coverage of the Northern Rock, credit crisis, etc has been all over the place. Business editors of newspapers are suddenly experts on monetary policy, able to tell Ben Bernanke how it should be done. There's been almost no consistency either, with sometimes the same article appearing to both demand government intervention, and attack it. On the whole there has been much criticism of the Fed - This was a particular favourite.

Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman's celebrated predecessor, spent 20 years putting off the day of reckoning by cutting the cost of money at the first whiff of trouble.

TWENTY YEARS putting off the day of reckoning? So it should have been in 1987, 1988, 1989 and so on? Given the US economy must have nearly doubled in size in those 20 years I suspect almost everyone would take the putting off, rather than the apparently desirable pain.

This story quotes the Taxpayer's Alliance. I have some sympathy for their view, although the political realities were such that I doubt any government would follow the course they suggest. My concern though is that the Times calls them an 'organisation representing British taxpayers'. I think this should be 'organisation that purports to represent British taxpayers' at the least, unless they have a huge mass membership I am unaware of.

Northern Rock...

is not apparently as hard as we'd been led to believe. At present we have an old-fashioned bank run, and Robert Peston at the BBC suggests it can go on for almost as long as there are savers with money left in Northern Rock, as it just about has enough cash available. Surely then however the Bank of England would end up as the de facto owner of a huge chunk of Northern Rock's mortgage business, which is perhaps not the situation it wanted itself to be in.

The one thing I don't understand is whether these savers know that bank deposits are guaranteed by the government up to £2k for100% and then 90% on the next £30k or something like that. Sure there are still pretty good reasons to get your money out if there's no major penalties, but you'd think it might be worth the government pointing this out a bit more. I suppose to do so would imply they think there's a chance of it going bust.

At this point, those who aren't shouting 'Land Value Tax' or 'Citizen's Basic Income' start to go on about moral hazard, but I suspect that wouldn't go down to well in the Northern Rock panic withdrawals queue*.

* If you were wondering whether people really were walking around with thousands of pounds in cash on them, then it appears probably not. Most of the 'run' was done via the bank's website. That must be a first in UK history.

Strange Conservative times

First we have Conservative MP (albeit not one I had heard of) in an attack on Mrs Thatcher's mental state, and an attack that was apparently that was sanctioned by the leadership. Malcom Rifkind asks some slightly more decent questions, though this is something only a politician could say:

Why did she agree to go last week, of all weeks, when there was talk of an election in the air?

Last week, of all weeks? Did you notice anything different about last week compared with any other political week? Not sure I did. I imagine most people if asked to characterise last week would either talk about Kate McCann, England v Russia or the first bank run since the 1970s. Apparently however there was an election in the air.

Then in today's Sunday Telegraph, Cameron blames Labour for the crisis at Northern Rock, arguing that:

Under Labour our economic growth has been built on a mountain of debt.

and argues that we need more State regulation and less free markets. Perhaps we do, although I can't see what policy any Tory government would have followed that would mean less debt. Kenneth Clarke, whom we now must see as being on the economically liberal wing of the party, argues the opposite in the same piece. Or maybe it's just that George Osborne and David Cameron have never seen the point of a mortgage?

The McCanns

The whole situation is terrible, and I have to say I'm in the camp of rather disbelieving the Portuguese police's story on grounds of sheer impracticalty plus scepticism that anyone could be that good actors. On the other hand so little detail is really known about the events of the day Madeleine disappeared that it's not possible to be 100% certain.

But the McCanns are now back in Britain. If the Portuguese police do press charges then presumably they will have to go back, although I do not know anything about the extradition laws, European arrest warrant etc. But in any case, unless the British authorities are explicitly going to say they don't believe the charges, and so far the Home Secretary has apparently expressed satisfaction with the investigation, given the gravity of the charges - murder/accidental killing of their child, hiding a dead body, fraud, etc - they should be arrested in the UK?

Is there an opposite of:

"victim of his own success"?

I suppose "beneficiary of his own failing", but I'm sure there must be something better.

Ambrose Evans Pritchard

If the French people chose to accept this disgraceful rehash after already having voted No, shame on them. I am not sure I wish to share a Union with a nation that proves itself so supine, and so unwilling to defend its democracy.

Here's one for the lawyers. Is there a way Ambrose Evans Pritchard could leave the EU, whilst the rest of us remain in it? I don't like sharing a Union with him.

Bush not engaged in key policy areas

Not really a revelation, is it?

Did he, or didn't he?

I am mystified:

On September 7th, 2006, Oliver Kamm talked of "Brown's Coup". One cannot fault his calm and rational language:

"The Chancellor has mounted a coup against a serving Prime Minister, and a successful coup at that."

Nine months later, on June 27th 2007, Oliver spoke of Blair, presumably bouncing back from that 'successful coup', such that it was neither 'successful' or a 'coup'

"leave[ing] office today after a decade as prime minister and at a time of his choosing."

Two quotes not in the most perfect of harmony. Unless, the successful coup happened exactly the same time as Blair decided to resign. Unfortunately, today , there's more:

To my regret, Tony Blair has left office earlier than he would have done otherwise and with a tarnished public image.

This will take a bit of arguing, but really it's quite simple. Tony Blair was forced out in a coup, but that fortuitously happened exactly at the time of his choosing, however rather less fortunately that time of his choosing was earlier than his time of choosing really would have been, if he had been free to choose, nevertheless one shouldn't believe it wasn't his choice.

Got that?

Beaten at last

Baroness Thatcher comes second, but only just.

David Cameron on Newsnight

I thought he was rather good. I note that Scoopism is pretty well dead in British politics, suggesting Michael Gove isn't making much headway. His answer to the question on exporting democracy, however, would have been better if he'd just said at one point that there really isn't much the UK PM can do about many situations in far away countries, and 'do no harm' is a good starting point.

On marriage, he would have perhaps been better to talk about external costs and benefits, and suggested that IDS's marriage bribe could be seen as aligning the social benefits with the private benefits. Then the criticism from Stephanie Flanders would have been as sensible (which is not to say it is not) as criticism of tax on petrol.

When he mentioned the pensions system, I would have asked him whether he would simply reinstate the dividend tax credit if it was that simple.

113 Days of Lies and Smears

So shouts the today's Daily Mail, before republishing all 14 allegations about the McCanns in some detail.

Yes, I am a genius

My Citibank dollar account statement came through the post this morning, and it tells me that my £100 investment, made on the 25th July, has turned into [drum roll] ...

$205.22

Yes, $2.5022 [whoops - I mean $2.0522, $2.50 really would be a cause for celebration] dollars for each of my pounds. So I am sitting on at least a 2.5% gain, and when the pound collapses to parity as George Osborne takes over I'll have doubled my money!

Nick Cohen's £100,000 a year couple only average in K&C

Yes, Nick's Cohen 'less fortunate' couple with their £100,000 household income really are less fortunate in the Royal Borough.

12yr old boy accused of throwing a sausage

... in court, makes amusing copy though obviously the detail is rather more complex. But it was this that caught my eye from his mother:

"It had quite a bit of an effect on him. He couldn't sleep. He takes sleeping tablets anyway - but they didn't work."

War deaths

I'm reading Adam Tooze's excellent book on the Nazi war economy (in short - it wasn't much of one) and it has a staggering chart that reminds you just how deadly the battle on the Eastern Front was.

The worst month for the German armed forces was August 1944, when 280,000 soldiers died. The previous month 175,000 died. Thus in July - August 1944 more German soldiers died than British soldiers did in the entire conflict, and our deaths were horrendously high.

In total between June 1941 and May 1944, more than 60,000 German soldiers died each month, and that doesn't include Summer 1944, which as noted above was the most deadly period (although January 1943, after Stalingrad, was the second most deadly month). This means on average every two-three days more German soldiers died than Allied casualties in the Iraq war.

Of course Soviet Union casualties were even worse, if at different time periods.

Some updates on the exam/blonde girls

A reader asks what the rules are about your extra points - namely, if you have enough, can you have a whole new A-level, or does it have to be a better grade in an existing one? She asks because she would always have liked to be able to speak Spanish, and as she has 10 points to add she could have an A-grade in the langauge, which is a pretty good standard. I feel the rules need to be clarified. In the first instance I believe the extra points have to go to giving you a better grade in the subjects you have already sat, that after all is the rationale behind them. Only then, when you have all A-grades, can you begin to entertain the idea of another A-level, and I think then it has to be related to one you already have - so if you have French, you can have Spanish, but not if you have Physics.

On the education theme, there is I fear a growing crisis in the education of blonde girls. This year there has been a noticeable lack of them getting a large number of A-levels. The Daily Mail here and The Times show that their academic achievements are not totally a thing of the past, but the Telegraph has a 12 page picture special with just the one. The glory days are gone.

Tories' big plan

Drum roll...yes it's to scrap inheritance tax. The way they portray it is fabulous:

"In London and the south particularly, but also in areas of the north, because of rising house prices there are hundreds of thousands of couples who are going to suddenly be hit with this inheritance tax when their parents die," he said.

"It's not paid by the wealthy. It's paid by those of course who inherit."

Those poor couples - can you imagine waiting desperately for your parents to die, and then suddenly finding that you don't get £500,000, but instead you get £420,000. How does one cope? I suppose the point is those couples who just creep into the threshold, and so would have got £350,000, but instead get, £330,000. The inequity!

The second statement from the Tories is a complete non sequitur. But the main reason its a bad idea is this: the Tories claim the problem, so to speak, is because of rising house prices. That is, indeed, the reason why the numbers paying inheritance tax will rise from their current miniscule base. Yet if anything can be described as unearned wealth, it is that. Furthermore if any increase in wealth is government-caused, it is that. So the Tories are planning on cutting the already-low taxes on inheritances of couples of unearned government-caused wealth, rather than (all things have an opportunity cost) cutting taxes on productive behaviour. It makes no sense.

I wouldn't disagree that the system could be refomed, in fact I would make it explicitly a tax on the recipients, and thus make it essentially avoidable if it was spread around enough people.

George Soros, meet Matt T

Can it only be three weeks ago that I announced a foray into the currency markets, betting against the pound at $2.03? Yes, and now I see it's at $1.97, which excluding costs, I make a huge 3% profit! That's, exluding costs, £3!

How Clever Am I? 2007 edition

"6 As, really? Your 18yr old? How amazing. I would have never thought it"
"Yes, you only got 2 Bs and a C yourself, didn't you?"
"Well remembered, I feel such a failure"

We've all had this type of conversation with either a youngster or their parents, and although unable to deny the facts, felt that something wasn't quite right.

The problem is inflation. Most people understand price inflation, e.g., no-one would let this conversation stand:

"£400m a year, really? Your 18yr hold - A hedge fund? How amazing, I would never have thought it"
"Yes, you only started on £8,400, did't you?"
"Well remembered, I feel such a failure"

Because obviously £8,400 in 1987 is worth much more today. About £25,000, or something like that. The same goes for exam results. They were HARDER in our day, just as policeman were younger*.

But how do we quantify that? Now in its 3rd year, the "How Clever Am I?" ready-reckoner has won international acclaim from leading journalists, and offers an easy way to tell people just how clever you were, and how unclever their little brat is. In other words, it provides a real level of exam results, to allow historical comparisons to be made fairly. The methodology is simple - it assumes there has been no improvement in standards and thus all of the increase in grades is due to pure inflation**. If you believe there has been some increase in standards you will need to lower the multiplication factor, but if you believe standards have dropped you will need to increase it.

First, calculate your A-level points using the old-fashioned method of 10 for an A, 8 for a B, 6 for a C etc. So for example 2 Bs and a C would be 22 points. Then multiply that by the multiplication factor, which is the number next to the year in which you took your A-levels. There are two examples given below. If you have done A-level mathematics in the last five years then I suggest you use a calculator.



It can also be used in reverse. 6 A-grades? That's 60 points, which back in 1994 would only have been 44 points, or 4 As and a D.

Coming next: A ready-reckoner to calculate how many blonde girls would have been jumping up and down to celebrate their results in YOUR day. This one has a much higher multiplication factor.

* As Christopher Howse said after last week's Lord Lucan story, "you know you are getting old when Lord Lucan is getting younger".
** I tend to believe that better teaching for specfic exams is behind most of the rise in results, but I'm in a minority. Conversely, even if you do believe that all of the gain has been due to higher standards, then the multiplication factor can still be seen as telling you what position in 'class', so to speak, you would have got if you were doing your exams now.

Update: I am in negotiations with Britain's leading 500 companies to allow the "HCAI" adjusted A-Level points score to go on one's CV.

US Treasuries

Over here, rather inconclusively, I've been arguing whether the US would be able to renege on its public debt (US Treasuries) held by China in the event of a war between the two countries. I'm not sure how practical it is, as in whether the Treasury knows which bonds are held by China (although it must know where to send the coupon payments) and of course what the impact would be on the reputation of Treasuries as a safe asset.

There must have been something similar, if one a much smaller scale (gold was stil the reserve asset of choice) during World War II, but I can't find anything on the internet about it. I've just bought a book about the Nazi economy in WWII so maybe that will mention it.

You can get too bogged down in financialmarketism here, and forget the basic problem, which is the US Treasury would be paying large amounts of money (if it's 5% p.a on $500bn that's $2bn a month) to a country it was fighting a war against. I can't see how that would be allowed to happen.

Would an economic downturn hurt or help Labour?

Some of the more wishful thinking Conservatives have been suggesting that with global financial markets having another of their periodic bouts of nervousness, an economic downturn could be what finishes off Labour and brings the Conservatives back to office.

I think this could be 100% wrong. It certainly won't be the case, I belive, if any economic downturn can be convincingly said to have been caused by external factors (even if those external factors are particularly hard on the UK). I don't even think it will be the case if the rest of the world/OECD carries on as normal and we are hit by a bad patch.

The reason is partly that people think Gordon Brown did an OK job as chancellor, and that view is not going to change now, so any downturn could see a preference for what is tried and tested. The other reason is, of course, George Osborne. I don't see any embattled home owner, trying to pay 8% mortgage rates with unemployment creeping up, thinking "I wish that George Osborne was in charge".

Separated at birth?

Flicking through today's Daily Mail, as one does at lunchtime, I thought - 'Gosh, Tim Worstall's got a column', but in fact it was Christopher Booker. The resemblance is uncanny, although of course in reality one spends his days writing meaningless rubbish clogging up the world's media, and the other has a successful blog.

When you get to the top (nearly but unquestionably) there's nowhere else to go but down

James Rogers, who famously two years ago declared that Britain was 'unquestionably the world's second strongest power' seems to have been a little unnerved by recent developments, and is demanding more EU military co-operation.

Given the geopolitical changes under way, what seems crystal clear is that Britain's power and authority in the world is going to decline in the coming years, as an expansive China, a growing India, an increasingly wild and truculent Russia and a myriad of regional powers assert themselves on the world stage. And as the United States becomes more concerned with Asian politics and security, Europeans are likely to be left on their own

.

Have faith, James! Also please note despite appearances, this is his personal view and not that of the H'S'JS.

How is the Maida Vale Manifesto doing?

Talking of blog campaigns, alert readers will recall that in April 2006 Stephen Pollard launched a competitor to the Euston Declaration, called the Maida Vale Manifesto.

The Manifesto was classic Pollard. Showing his natural modesty, he noted that it was probably most likely that only he would sign it, and the 'we' would have to become 'I'. But his real intentions were perhaps revealed by his allowing comments on the post, so people could sign, when he had stopped them on others.

The content of the Manifesto was extraordinary. Historians can, and surely will, debate which was more so - his UAT declaration of an 'enemy within' or his Maida Vale Manifesto claim that:

Theoretical arguments about what is or is not a proper left-wing position are now meaningless. The mainstream Left has demonstrated clearly which side of the battle to preserve Western civilisation and freedom it is on. The Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy.

The public response was wildy in excess of Pollard's stated hopes. As of this morning (August 7th)  I count SIX definite signatories, and possibly another SEVEN if Spambots are to be counted, although their output was mostly question-marks, which could be seen as a neutral position. Tim Worstall, if he hadn't already signed with the question marks, also seemed neutral. Two contributors contributed despite having 'nothing useful to say', so I think they could be supporters too.